Help talk:Citation Style 1

Listing a committee

The documentation for 'author1' says "this parameter is used to hold the name of an organizational author (e.g. a committee)", but using it for that purpose generates an error. As an example:

Committee on the Review of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes; Space Studies Board; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (September 17, 2018). Review and Assessment of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25172. ISBN 978-0-309-47865-6. {{cite book}}: |author1= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Does the documentation need to be revised? Praemonitus (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Use |authorn=((Committee on the Review of ...)) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:19, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm aware of the work-around, thanks. My question was regarding the documentation. Praemonitus (talk) 20:22, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

@Praemonitus: Your citation got flagged by Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration because it contains the word "policy". I have edited the documentation for this error to be a little more informative. I'm not sure what led to that particular pattern being added, but I wonder if it was related to privacy policy.

I think the current set of patterns is overzealous and produces too many false positives. I propose removing at least "policy" and "bureau" as relatively common organizational names that are likely appropriate collective authors.

My efforts to craft a regular expression to review existing uses are timing out. Perhaps someone here knows a better way to query. Daask (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Here's a better one Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:16, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 18:43, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Please remove the lines containing '^[Bb]ureau$' and 'policy', due to excessive false positives as described above. Daask (talk) 15:09, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Not done. When we constrain the searches to just those uses that trigger the error messaging, there aren't really that many:

'contains 'policy': ~260 articles

is 'Bureau' or 'bureau': ~510 articles

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:55, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: My review of the citations found in your search query for "policy" indicates that the author is accurate in the overwhelming majority of these citations (although many are split into last= and first= inappropriately). Why are we flagging these as errors? I understand that these queries are only causing false positives for some hundreds or perhaps thousands of citations (including those using accept-as-written markup), which you find trivial. Yet this still appears to be significantly more than the number of true positives they are finding. This thread indicates that flagging false positives is causing editor confusion, and it isn't obvious to me why showing an error message on the rare and obviously-wrong author of "Policy, Privacy" is worth the trouble.

I'm happy to withdraw my request regarding ^[Bb]ureau$, because it is anchored to the beginning and ending of the author name. Perhaps we could do the same and replace this with ^[Pp]olicy$ ? Daask (talk) 16:05, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Typo in the description of template Template:Cite journal

In the description of the journal option in the template Template:Cite journal there is (what I believe to be) a typo. The example reads "[[Nature (journal)|]]" instead of "[[Nature (journal)]]" (note the additional bar). In solidarity with Wiki Workers United, zvavybir (talk) 21:43, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

That is the result of this edit by Editor Cremastra ostensibly to [allow] us to demonstrate the use of the pipe trick in the example like this:

{{cite journal |title=Title |journal=[[Nature (journal)|]]}}

"Title". Nature.

But, the pipe trick does not work in <ref>...</ref> tags:

<ref>{{cite journal |title=Title |journal=[[Nature (journal)|]]}}</ref>

References

Feel free to fix it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:01, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Cite journal deprecated |citeseerx=: rationale and migration path?

I'm encountering warnings for a deprecated |citeseerx= parameter, for example, on this citation. However, it's not clear from the template documentation precisely why the parameter is deprecated, or how to eliminate this warning by migrating to features with ongoing support. These warrant an explanation in the obvious place editors will look to resolve the warning. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 14:29, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

This parameter is deprecated. See discussion.––KEmel49(📝,📋) 15:13, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Update bibcode URL to SciX

ADS is scheduled to be shutdown on 16 November 2026. It's replacement, SciX, has been available for some time. See Template talk:Bibcode § ADS to SciX migration for details.

In Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration, please replace the line:

prefix = 'https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/',

with

prefix = 'https://scixplorer.org/abs/',
suffix = '/abstract',

Daask (talk) 17:30, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

This should be done in the sandbox, and deployed with the rest of the changes. So long as it's live before Nov 16th or so. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:26, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

 Task complete. Implemented in sandbox in Diff/1378836392. Daask (talk) 11:37, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

You should always provide evidence that the changes you make actually work.

Cite book comparison

Wikitext	{{cite book|bibcode=1998ApJ...508L..81K|title=Keck Speckle Imaging of the White Dwarf G29-38: No Brown Dwarf Companion Detected}}
Live	Keck Speckle Imaging of the White Dwarf G29-38: No Brown Dwarf Companion Detected. Bibcode:1998ApJ...508L..81K.
Sandbox	Keck Speckle Imaging of the White Dwarf G29-38: No Brown Dwarf Companion Detected. Bibcode:1998ApJ...508L..81K.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

Cite sign - content only, or also things like location?

Hi all,

Is {{Cite Sign}} supposed to be used only for, say, the text of a sign, or can it also be used for things like the specific location of a sign? Say if a construction plaque or gravestone was moved, even if the text was the same, would that be within the scope or not? Or could a sign's presence or lack thereof be used, e.g. if a builder's plate on an object went missing at some point, and that fact was somehow relevant to an article about falsified or altered products or devices etc?

(I'm aiming for a generalised guideline, but the specific example that got me thinking about this is for two very similar railway wagon types; the easiest way to differentiate between them is whether the builder's plate is centred or at one end of the wagon (and that can be established separately from WP:RS's). So I'd be "referencing" both types of sign, but based on the location not the content.)

Anothersignalman (talk) 15:16, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

Citing generally refers to the content of a specific work. In the case you suggest, you would cite the RS, rather than the sign. I can imagine edge cases where something is verifiable but not documented in a usual way, but these would probably be outside the scope as they would probably fall foul of WP:OR since they haven't been documented.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 07:15, 13 October 2026 (UTC).

Thanks :)

The RS's, from memory, give high level generalisations but don't list or explain the edge cases. Without an RS to back up what I'm observing in photos I guess the only thing I can do is put a note on the talk page, as a "Pending RS" or something like that.

Anothersignalman (talk) 14:17, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Where are the photos? If they are in a book or magazine they should be citable. If they are your own you can upload them to commons under a suitable free license, and use them in the article. I guess there's no {{Cite railway wagon}} though. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 20:35, 14 October 2026 (UTC).

"Verifying your browser" should be a generic title

Seen at Special:Diff/1378865138 * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:12, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

Please increase SSRN

SSRN 7534918 is valid and found in Trump v. Slaughter. Thanks! Snowman304|talk 00:48, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

Deviated Bradley Kilgore

This article has {{{url-status}}} set to deviated which is still useful (if it were to display a suitable warning, or add to a suitable backlog, or both). However it throws an error.

Can it be fixed please?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 06:58, 13 October 2026 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: The message is green, not red, so it's not an error - consider it to be a warning message instead. The actual message reads "{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)", and if you follow that link, you'll find ... CS1 citations that use |url-status= with a valid value when |archive-url= is empty or omitted. While not an error, CS1 and CS2 templates that have |url-status= but not |archive-url= should be repaired.
To repair, ... replace the citation or add |archive-url= and |archive-date=. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:43, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

|url-status=deviated indicates that the archive URL should be used and the original URL not shown, as the original no longer shows the correct information. |url-status= is only used when an archive-url is present, it's not to indicate the general status of the URL. I've always thought the name was confusing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:07, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

So in this case what needs to happen is firstly someone should look for a suitable archive, and if it can't be found for a different source.

It seems to me that if url-status is not supporting this, then we will need a second mechanism. For 'dead' we have {{Dead link}}. Live is the default, there is no need to document it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 22:00, 13 October 2026 (UTC).

Yeah archive or replacement, failing that would {{verification failed}} be useful as the source no longer verifies the content? It has |reason= that can be used to document the issue. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:46, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

MR module needs update to linked url

The link from {{MR}}, such as MR 0919658, leads to a url like https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=0919658 . When I follow it, I get a landing page that says "Please update your url to use https://mathscinet.ams.org". This is obviously an unhelpful error message, because that is the domain already in the url. But what it really appears to mean is that the rest of the url should now be in a different format. The new format is https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/article?mr=0919658 . (If you have MathSciNet subscription access this will take you to a review page and otherwise to a login page.) I would fix the template but apparently it does nothing itself but merely invokes the CS1 machinery, hence my request here: please update the MR urls. This is presumably also happening in the same way for the |mr= parameter of the CS1 citation templates, but {{MR}} provides a more direct method of testing it. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:41, 15 October 2026 (UTC)