Template talk:Sfn/Archive 2

Statue of Liberty is very messed up right now, as it has "Script Error" in big red bold all over it, apparently where sfn is used. Is someone looking at this?

Oddly it seems OK in Opera and Firefox, but fails in Chrome "Version 36.0.1985.125 m" on Windows 8. The first instance is on the last words of "Origin":

which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty.Script error

A quick survey of a few other pages which use sfn shows no problems for me. Opening the article with Chrome in an incognito window gives me the same error, though. johantheghost (talk) 16:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, it was happening consistently through restarts etc., but now it's OK... maybe a server glitch? johantheghost (talk) 03:33, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a good way to cite an article in an anthology (book or otherwise), with just a short listing for the book which links to the full entry? This would be like sfn, but would include the author and title of the article. There is now a Template:Source in source to do this. But it is now limited in its capability. Is there a better way to do this, perhaps with sfn? DougHill (talk) 23:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd tried to implement {{sfn}} at Cakewalk to stop the References section looking too cluttered with replicated citations of the same thing, just with different page numbers, but it threw up errors each time. Could someone please check my code? Thanks! It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:59, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

@It Is Me Here: The {{sfn}} template cannot be used inside <ref>...</ref>. Either remove the <ref> and </ref> wherever {{sfn}} is used, or use {{harvnb}} instead of {{sfn}} (but still inside <ref>...</ref>). --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

That is correct. For the diff you have provided, with the callout consisting of just the template, I would suggest removing the ref tags and leaving just sfn as that will result in simpler source. --Mirokado (talk) 22:07, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

To editor Redrose64: OK, thanks, I've gone for the {{harvnb}} option. Now, the internal links Fletcher 1984 and Stearns & Stearns 1994 at Cakewalk#Notes work, but Baldwin 1981 doesn't. Any ideas? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 22:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

{{cite jstor}} doesn't recognise |ref=harv, nor does it pass it along the chain. Even if it did, the other links in the chain don't recognise it or pass it along either; so rather than amend each one, it's easier to go right to the end and do this. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Is that a bug, or intentional? Would it make sense to start a thread about this at Template talk:Cite jstor? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 12:20, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know; jstor is outside my field (the identifiers that I typically use are isbn, lccn and oclc), so I never use {{cite jstor}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:15, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Along with some other templates, {{cite jstor}} shouldn't be used for any new sources at present, as it relied on software on the old tool server, now defunct. See its documentation. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:28, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Recently, there and edit was made (not here, but I don't know where it was), that breaks {sfn} behaviour wrt {{cite doi}} (possibly because {cite doi} was deprecated recvently). That breaking edit is unacceptable. It is up to the closing process (actors) to cleanup any undesired (newly introduced) usage. That could be a bot in this case. -DePiep (talk) 09:11, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@DePiep: The {{sfn}} template hasn't been edited in six months, and {{cite doi}} not in eight months. What is this breakage, and on what pages does it manifest itself? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:17, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't know where the edit was made. This question is evolving at Module_talk:Citation/CS1#Where_dos_this_break_come_from.3F (I'm sorry, bad I did multi-forum this). -DePiep (talk) 13:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

"The postscript is only effective the first time sfn is used for a particular author, year and location." Is this deliberate or is it a bug? I can't see any obvious reason why this would be a good thing, but equally it's presumably quite easy to change with the addition of an extra conditional? Unless I'm missing something there could well be occasions when a two refs would want to refer to the same page, but not quote the same text or make the same point. JimmyGuano (talk) 07:55, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

In that, probably rare, case consider using |loc= to disambiguate the quotations: {{sfn|Jones|1984|loc= p. 34, para 1|ps= (but he contradicts himself below)}} and {{sfn|Jones|1984|p=34}}.^[1][2]

Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:51, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks - that does look like a viable workaround. I'm still not clear why this situation is the case though? JimmyGuano (talk) 07:26, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I think because virtually always editors are content to simply cite pages (indeed getting them to do that can be an issue). {{sfn}} is explicitly aimed to collect citations, and the tuple (author, date, page) is nearly always adequate. Off hand, except for references to multicolumn works (newspapers, physically large encyclopaedias), I can't recall seeing detail finer than that. As an alternative to using |ps= to add a note, you can always use the {{efn}} mechanism. See Hartley Colliery Disaster for an example of footnotes. HTH, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:44, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

@JimmyGuano:When two instances of {{sfn}} have identical authors, year, |p= |pp= |loc= they are treated as entirely identical, regardless of any other parameters that may be present. This is because it is only those eight parameters which are used to construct the name= attribute of a <ref name=...> tag, and when the MediaWiki software finds two such tags with identical names, it assumes that they are identical in all other respects, and only displays the information pertaining to the first instance. You can get a similar effect with regular <ref>...</ref> tags:

First claim;<ref name=Smith2015p1>Smith (2015), p. 1 "The Government announced that some taxes were to be increased"</ref> Second claim.<ref name=Smith2015p1>Smith (2015), p. 1 "The Government announced that some restrictions would be imposed"</ref>

gives

First claim;^[1] Second claim.^[1]

Notice how the two refs are merged, with the text of the second being ignored. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose, very good point about the similar <ref></ref> behaviour. Just to make it absolutely clear, in your example the whole of the text is being ignored, even the repeated citation:

One<ref name=Smith2015p1>Smith (2015), p. 1 "Comment 1"</ref> Two<ref name=Smith2015p1>Text with no relation to Smith</ref> Three<ref name=Smith2015p1/> The third instance shows the more typical way of doing this, instead of a <ref></ref> pair you can close the tag off internally.

One^[1] Two^[1] Three^[1]

Personally I prefer the {{sfn}} method. With ref tags you need to invent a name which is unique and which you reuse as appropriate. Too much work for late night sessions, {{sfn}} does all the work for you! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:12, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

In the (rare) cases that I use {{sfn}} to cite two different items on the same page, I would use the |loc= parameter instead of |p=, as in {{sfn|Smith|2015|loc=p. 1, paragraph 2}} {{sfn|Smith|2015|loc=p. 1, paragraph 4}} or for a newspaper {{sfn|Smith|2015|loc=p. 1, col. 2}} {{sfn|Smith|2015|loc=p. 1, col. 4}} - these are treated as distinct refs because the |loc= parameters differ. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks both - I understand now. I had assumed that there was a piece of logic that separated out the footnotes where the author, date and page were not the same, and it would therefore be quite straightforward to add "and if ps is different too". Now you've explained how it works I appreciate that it isn't that simple. The workaround you've explained seems the way forward when this is needed. I'm a big fan of sfn in general too - a very elegant footnoting solution. Apologies for the awkward question! JimmyGuano (talk) 20:40, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

In section No author name in citation template it lists examples of referencing by book title or periodical title rather than author, but there are two issues.

1. Book and periodical titles are ordinarily in italics. The examples show italics in the main footnote but not in the short footnote. It should say definitively whether short footnotes should have book and periodical title in italics, and the examples should be consistent with this.
2. Some Wikipedia articles may reference multiple articles in the same periodical, some with authors and some without. For consistency, it may be desirable to list all such articles by publication. For example, 1992 European Community Monitor Mission helicopter downing#News reports lists 5 articles in The New York Times, one of which comes from Reuters and does not have a listed author, and the article references all news stories using short footnotes referencing the periodical name even if the author is listed in the long footnote, which I think is stylistically more pleasing than using authors for some news stories. I edited this article to italicize periodical names —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:32, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Please see Template talk:Sfn#Title-Date with wiki markup in link above, which discusses work titles in sfn. Clearly the preference is for italics for work titles and I would agree with that. If you are working a lot with sfn etc it would be a good idea to install User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js. If you do that you will see several red messages reporting problems in the article you mentioned. It is rather difficult to catch these without some automated help. --Mirokado (talk) 01:08, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Mirokado: Thank you for your comment. It's nice that there has been some discussion of book or periodical titles in italics on this talk page, but I am talking about the lack of discussion of this topic at Template:Sfn#No_author_name_in_citation_template, where it is needed. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:20, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

I posted this under {{citation}}, but perhaps the experts here could have a think?

I've recently been working on Tir national and am trying to tie up the citations. One problem that has surfaced is the lack of authors for web sites, particularly those in a foreign (to me) language. In order to get an anchor for short form footnotes, I have simply forced the ref to be the title: ref = CITEREFTir_National for example. In the absence of an author the title displays first and so both the electronic linkage and the human's view agree: ^Tir National looks right.

The problem comes with long names. A title such as: "Ancienne caserne Prince Baudouin, dite également caserne Dailly" can hardly be called SHORT form! Basing the anchor on a subset works electronically but is confusing to the reader. What I'm trying is putting (in this case) "History:" before the citation, then using ref = CITEREFHistory and {{sfn|History}}. I did look at the display options, specifically author-mask, but that only works when there is a real author. Advice/comments please! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

@Martin of Sheffield: {{Sfn}} is for use when different pages or sections in a work are referred to. To use it, you only give the full citation to the work once (either the first time it appears in the article or in a separate Bibliography section) and then use expressions like {{sfn|Smith|2010|p=100}}, {{sfn|Smith|2010|p=110}}, {{sfn|Smith|2010|p=220}}, etc. to refer to different pages in the work. You don't need to do this for web citations as they don't have pages or chapters, so you don't need {{sfn}}. Just use <ref name=SOMENAME>FULL WEB CITATION</ref> the first time and then <ref name=SOMENAME/> thereafter. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: We seem to have two threads on this; it's also under discussion at Template talk:Citation#Anchors. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I use sfn as my primary cite markup. Recently I was admonished because I used "minus signs" in page ranges instead of ndash. Is there any reason sfn couldn't translate these for me? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:12, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

My guess is that you actually used hyphens ("-"). The minus sign ("−") is different from the en-dash ("–") and em-dash ("—"). Anyway, one reason is that sometimes you want to refer to a single page that has a hyphen in its number. There is no good way of distinguishing those correctly formed but hyphenated pages from mistyped page ranges. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure there is, pp vs. p. The alternative requires significant work for basically zero benefit to the end user. Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:55, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to to add to the template documenation that the tool at User:Ucucha/HarvErrors will give an error message when the coding is wrong. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:57, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think having a citeref that is never linked to should be classified as an error. That would prevent many/most uses of {{citation}}, for instance, which automatically makes citerefs. But the warning about links that don't go anywhere does look useful. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:23, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree that it is annoying that the tool gives false error messages when citation is used without harv refs, but it is extremely useful in picking up errors. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:03, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

I made a copy in my userspace at User:David Eppstein/HarvErrors.js with only the messages about missing link targets, and not about unused link targets. (The other difference is that I write-protected it so that vandals can't inject bad javascript into your Wikipedia page views.) I'm already finding it very useful. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:16, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

You don't need a customised script. You can do it using the normal script: all you need to do is to add

span.citation strong.error { display: none; }

to Special:MyPage/common.css. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:31, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much Redrose64. Brilliant. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Would someone who knows what they're doing be willing to add TemplateData to sfn? I'd try it myself but I don't like experimenting with such a widely used template. As far as I can see there's no TemplateData currently; no parameters descriptions appear in the VE template dialog. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The documentation is mostly in {{Harvard citation documentation}} which is shared with several others. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

The reason I asked is that in adding an sfn earlier I saw no template data come up in VE. Would that mean I just have to copy the relevant portions of the Harvard citation documentation over to sfn's TemplateData? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:50, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

What relevant portions would those be? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with sfn (I'm trying to learn how to use it on an article I'm working on) so I don't know what the most commonly used fields would be. To see what I'm seeing, edit an article in VE, choose Insert -> Template and put "sfn" in the template name field, then click "Add template". The resulting dialog has no fields displayed, so I've no idea what to put in. If you do the same with "cite book" instead of "sfn", you'll see numerous fields pop up for the fields in cite book that are most often entered. That's what I want to have happen with sfn. So I guess the answer to your question is "whatever fields a user of sfn would expect to be defined"; I'm not really sure which they are because I don't know my way around sfn yet. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I never bother with "Add template" - to see what parameters are valid, I use the template's own documentation. In brief: {{sfn}} recognises eight parameters, but three are mutually exclusive, so a maximum of six may be used simultaneously. Five of the six are positional (unnamed) parameters: the surnames of up to four authors, plus a year. The remaining parameter may be either |p= |pp= or |loc= and these last three correspond directly with the |page= |pages= or |at= parameters in {{cite book}}. For working examples see NBR 224 and 420 Classes, but you've got the right idea here. Are you experiencing some difficulty with the usage? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

That edit was basically copied from another one, but I had to do it in the wikitext editor. I'd really like to use the visual editor if I can; I find it more productive, but I don't think it's possible to use a template in the visual editor if there's no templatedata for it. You're right, I can figure it out the old-fashioned way; I was just hoping to use VE. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:52, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Is it the case that parameter 1 is the author name, parameter 2 is the year if no parameter 3 is given, but is another author if there is a parameter 3, and so on up to parameter 5? I understand there are named parameters mentioned in the documentation; I'm just trying to get a clear definition of the interpretation of the unnamed ones so I can create the TemplateData for the basic ones. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:04, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes. The unnamed parameters are between 1 and 4 author last names (which must match the corresponding author last names in the citation to which it links) followed by a year (matching the year of the date in the citation to which it links). So the formats can be {{sfn|last1|year|...}}, {{sfn|last1|last2|year|...}}, {{sfn|last1|last2|last3|year|...}} or {{sfn|last1|last2|last3|last4|year|...}}, where ... represents the optional named parameters. Note that there are two other possible named parameters: |ref= and |ps= or |postscript=. {{Sfnp}} has the same parameters, but puts parentheses round the year on output. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks; that's what I thought. I'll see if I can build the TemplateData with that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to use {{sfn}} within a footnote (e.g., {{refn|Blah blah blah footnote side conversation.{{sfn|Author|2004}} }} but the sfn doesn't stack with other instances used throughout the article. Instead it dumps the ref in its own automatic section at the bottom of the page. What are my options for handling this? I'd prefer if this footnote's footnote pointed to the "Author 2004" short entry (in reflist) alongside the others. – czar 17:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried {{efn|blah}} instead of refn? It does not seem to cause the problem. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I have, and it solves the issue, but I'd prefer to have the footnote appear as a normal ref in the {{reflist}} rather than having to use {{notelist}} as well. I thought {{refn}} is supposed to be specifically for nested refs? It might have something to do with how refn is processed. The example article is Albany Free School. No matter where my refn rests in the article, it won't place the nested sfn in the main reflist. Is there any way to have the same effect as sfn (with the short harv style, direct link, and stacking instances) with just the <ref> tags? – czar 17:37, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

There is a related discussion at Template talk:Refn#Refn references getting sent to the bottom of the page?, it's not a problem with either {{sfn}} or {{refn}}. Have a look how I did it at LB&SCR A1X Class W8 Freshwater#Notes. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Was just going to post that it is more of a refn than a sfn thing. Will follow up there. – czar 18:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Would it be useful to reserve {{s}} and/or {{sf}} as {{sfn}} shortcuts? They would be easy to repurpose (not in high use) and would save us a few keystrokes and screen real estate on a high use template. – czar 18:39, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Save one or two characters? On a template that is already considered over-cryptic by its use of a three letter name? No thanks. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:07, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

We need the code for Be.wiki.org. Where could we see it? Belarus2578 (talk) 10:31, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

@Belarus2578: Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template {{Sfn}}; it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The template page doesn't explain or provide examples of the pp parameter. How do you specify a page range? With a dash? ndash? comma? This needs to be documented, and, ideally, one of the examples should use it. — J D (talk) 14:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

This is probably the wrong place to ask, but since I'm at a loss as to the correct venue and Sfn was what I was trying to use to solve my problem, and I expect at least some interested editors might be watching here, I'm taking a chance y'all can at least point me in the right direction.

The case is this: I have a navbox that contains encyclopedic content (a family tree), and thus needs to be verifiable. Since the navbox is transcluded onto several articles in mainspace, just stuffing Sfn+Reflist in the template will interfere with references on the page it is transcluded into. My approach to solving this was to try to put the navbox's refs into a separate group. However, the first problem I ran across is that Sfn doesn't appear to support a |group parameter. The second was that there's no apparent way to supress wikilinking the short footnote (the links form the navbox will also conflict with those of the page it's transcluded onto).

So my next attempt was to use {{Efn}}, which does support a |group parameter. However it seems to overload it so that setting it affects both which "namespace" (in CS terms, not Wiki terms) the refs are in and how the reference markers are displayed. And, crucially, for that reason restricts the valid arguments to "lower-alpha", "lower-greek" etc. (the predefined ones). Which means the navbox can't invent its own namespace to reduce the chance of collisions with the pages it's used on.

And finally, I've resorted to just plain <ref group="foo"> (which I, incidentally, would prefer not to for various reasons anyway), but find that this ends up creating footnote markers of the form "foo 1" (or "navboxwsft" in my first attempt). That is, the plain ref tag overloads the |group parameter to mean both which namespace to use and how to display the marker.

In summary: *sigh*

So… What my wishlist contains just now is the following:

• A way to suppress generating the wikilink
• A way to place the ref in a separate (CS) namespace, that has no side effects (not overloaded; does not affect list-style-type or prefix the footnote marker)
• A way to choose a list-style-type that matches {{Reflist}}, i.e. such that Sfn and Reflist can be set to display lower-greek (or whatever)
• A way to tune the footnote marker prefix / display distinct from the namespace, for instance |group=randomstring and |note-prefix=nb. (should be able to combine with list-style-type, e.g. "nb. 1" or "fn. α")

Am I hopelessly confused here? Did I miss anything? And is this the wrong venue for this question? If so, can anyone point me at the right place?

PS. For those who are curious (or just want to point and laugh), the template in question is {{William Shakespeare family tree}} (transcluded on several high-visibility articles, so edit with care!). --Xover (talk) 06:14, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't really understand why you think you need groups. This is intended to be used as a navbox at the end of an article, after the references section of that article, right? So if you just use <ref>/{{sfn}} and {{reflist}} with no group name, all the previous references should be cleared by the reference section, and you can get your own set of footnote numbers that don't interfere with anything. That is, if you have an article containing

Article text with references^[1][2]

Followed by a references section with {{reflist}}