Template talk:Cite Q

Deprecated authors rendered

d:Q93873066 has two valid and three deprecated author values, but renders as:

Henry Fairfield Osborn; Charles Earle (1895). "Fossil mammals of the Puerco beds : collection of 1892" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 7 (1): 1–70. hdl:2246/1572. ISSN 0003-0090. Wikidata Q93873066.

As a general principle, no deprecated values for any property should render. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:31, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

{{Cite Q/sandbox|Q93873066}} →

Henry Fairfield Osborn; Charles Earle (1895). "Fossil mammals of the Puerco beds : collection of 1892" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 7 (1): 1–70. hdl:2246/1572. ISSN 0003-0090. Wikidata Q93873066.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:22, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Journals registering as books

I'm working my way through CS1 errors on WP:NZ pages at the moment, and something I've come across quite a lot are citations using Cite Q for reports that are simultaneously showing up as book citations and including the |journal parameter, causing a CS1 error for an ignored periodical to come up. See, for example: {{Cite Q/sandbox|Q108747299}} →

Rod Hitchmough; Ben Barr; Carey Knox; et al. (2021). Conservation status of New Zealand reptiles, 2021 (PDF). New Zealand Threat Classification Series. Vol. 35. pp. 1–23. ISBN 978-1-9911529-2-3. Wikidata Q108747299. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 July 2022.

Could someone please help me work identify what I need to do to resolve these errors in the short term? It'd be amazing if there's a way to prevent it at all through Cite Q directly in the future, but I'm happy just working through the list at the moment if someone can give some guidance on how to prevent this. Turnagra (talk) 06:50, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

The issue was in Wikidata. See this pair of edits, which fixed it. @Ambrosia10: who entered the original data. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:15, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

That seems to be working, thank you! Turnagra (talk) 09:15, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Apologies, but just a follow up Andy - what if it actually is a journal article? This seems to work well for when it's something else, but it seems weird to change it away from being a journal article when it seems to actually be one (for example, the error on Kim Phillips (historian)). Turnagra (talk) 22:59, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

"Bodily Walls, Windows, and Doors: The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century English Books for Women" is a chapter in the book Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, not an article in a journal. If you follow doi:10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.3.3642 to the publisher, you can see that. Another clue is the ISBN which is rarely if ever associated with a journal.

You can rewrite that template:

{{cite q|Q125879661|journal=unset |chapter=Bodily Walls, Windows, and Doors: The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century English Books for Women |title=Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain}}

Kim M. Phillips (January 2000). "Bodily Walls, Windows, and Doors: The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century English Books for Women". Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. pp. 185–198. doi:10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.3.3642. ISBN 978-2-503-50979-2. Wikidata Q125879661.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:12, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know (and my bad for not investigating the source properly!) Turnagra (talk) 00:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Error for page properties

I used this template at The Protomen (album)#Further reading and it's giving me this error: "{{cite journal}}: More than one of |at= and |pages= specified". I'm not sure how to fix this, it seems to be saying that there is more than one "page"-type field specified, but on the Wikidata item there is only one "page(s)" property. The Wikidata item is also a newspaper article and not a journal, but that at least does not cause any errors. Let me know how the page issue can be fixed! Pingnova (talk) 07:41, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Using the template in debugging mode ({{Cite Q|Q139620316|expand=yes}}) gives:

{{Cite journal |at=arts. life. leisure. |author1=Jason Hall |id=[[WDQ (identifier)|Wikidata]] [[:d:Q139620316|Q139620316]] |journal=Daily Kent Stater |language=en |pages=B4–B5 |publication-date=16 February 2006 |title=8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock |url=https://dks.library.kent.edu/?a=d&d=dks20060216-01.2.62}}

Note |at=arts. life. leisure. and |pages=B4, B5, 16, 17, 1, A1, 13, B1.

{{Cite journal}} requires "choose one: page, pages, or at"

For convenience, the item is d:Q139620316. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:24, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The 'choose one' requirement applies to all cs1|2 templates.

If you want to include the name of the newspaper section, you can use |department=. {{cite q}} does not know about |department=.

|pages=B4, B5, 16, 17, 1, A1, 13, B1 is wholly nonsensical. The cited article only appears on pages B4 and B5 (always use the source's own pagination when available)

You might rewrite the template:

{{Cite Q |Q139620316 |at=unset |journal=unset |publication-place=unset |publisher=unset |department=arts. life. leisure. |newspaper=Daily Kent Stater |pages=B4, B5 |template=news}}

Jason Hall (16 February 2006). "8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock". arts. life. leisure. Daily Kent Stater. pp. B4, B5. Wikidata Q139620316.

I unset |publication-place= and |publisher=; those parameters are rarely used because rarely needed in periodical citations. |publication-place= (most commonly as |location=) is sometimes used to disambiguate newspapers; see for example The Times (disambiguation).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:14, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Or the OP could clean up the junk from the Wikidata item, which they just created. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both for explaining. The debugging mode tip will be helpful for the future.

I come at this more from an archives perspective where we note down as much information about the item as we can so it's findable in the future. You can see on the Wikidata item how it already has one dead link, which led to me tracking down the digitized version of how it appeared in print in the institutional archives. Can I simply include the information in the Wikidata item like the location and use the "unset" tip like @Trappist the monk suggested, in the future? I would also be inclined to include both Kent and Ohio as location values for the purpose of the Cite Q display because there are many cities named Kent in the world. Right now the Kent that Wikipedia defaults to is the one in England, for example, which also has a Kent University.

The information about the "arts. life. leisure." (ALL) section seemed important because it's framed as a supplement to the newspaper, with its own volume and issue numbers. The digitized version's pagination is also different from the page numbers on the print item, so I was not sure how to record that the pages were B4-B5 in print and 16-17 in the PDF scan. I recorded the other page numbers to note that it was the article featured on the cover of the ALL section and called out on the front page of the paper, which gave context on the significance of the article to the publication.

Thanks again for the help. I want to contribute helpfully, and I'm still learning. I was using this article to figure things out. Pingnova (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Citations at en.wiki are not here for the purpose of collecting all possible bibliographic data that an archivist might want to see. Our readers are not archivists. For them, too much detail is too much detail.

Zoom in to the top left corner of page B4 of the PDF file. Compare the raggedy edge at the upper left corner of that page against the raggedy edge at the upper left corner of page B4 in the other view. They are the same; there isn't any real distinction to be made between your 'print' and 'digitized' versions of the article.

Regardless of which version you choose to link, the proper pagination is the paper's own pagination: B4, B5. Simple is best. There is no need to include the image number of each scanned page and no need to include the pdf file 'page' numbers in a citation because those numbers just add confusion where confusion is not desired. The exception, of course, is when the source itself does not provide page numbers.

There is no need to include the paper's location unless there are multiple newspapers named Daily Kent Stater; doubtful that.

Because {{cite q}} knows nothing about {{cite news}} at best for this source you will have to unset |journal= define |newspaper= and |template=, and, optionally, define |department=. Or, you could abandon {{cite q}} for this source and write a standard {{cite news}} template:

{{Cite news |author=Jason Hall |date=16 February 2006 |title=8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock |newspaper=Daily Kent Stater |pages=B4–B5 |url=https://dks.library.kent.edu/?a=d&d=dks20060216-01.2.62 |language=en}}

Jason Hall (16 February 2006). "8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock". Daily Kent Stater. pp. B4–B5.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi, I meant that I wanted to include extended bibliographic data in the Wikidata item, not in the Wikipedia citation, which is why I asked if using the unset trick to intentionally not show extra properties from the Wikidata item when displayed as a citation on Wikipedia would be the best in the future. From your reply, that sounds like that is the case. I wanted to clarify whether the advice was that I should remove all properties from the Wikidata item that are not needed for a Wikipedia citation.

I use the standard cite news template a lot, but for some key sources it seemed prudent to protect them from further link rot by centralizing a spot where I and others can maintain the latest working link, like Cite Q linked to a Wikidata item that automatically updates the Cite Q. For example the Kent digital archives cannot be archived with Internet Archive and so if those links change, they're immediately dead and cannot be retrieved. Being able to update the link to all citations for a particular source at once is why I was interested in making Cite Q work. So, thank you for explaining this to me. Pingnova (talk) 12:17, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I do not think that it is a good idea to regularly use the unset trick; it's fine for one-off citations but not for a citation that is often repeated. At The Protomen (album) § Further reading you have:

{{Cite Q|Q139620316|at=unset|journal=unset|publication-place=|publisher=|department=arts. life. leisure.|newspaper=Daily Kent Stater |template=news}}

Jason Hall (16 February 2006). "8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock". arts. life. leisure. Daily Kent Stater. pp. B4–B5. Wikidata Q139620316.

That has four unset parameters (you should always explicitly use unset; don't assume that {{cite q}} will always understand a blank parameter as 'unset') and four new parameters. That hardly seems like much of a benefit to me.

If link rot is your concern, you might write this:

{{Cite news |author=Jason Hall |date=16 February 2006 |title=8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock |newspaper=Daily Kent Stater |pages=B4–B5 |url={{#property:P953|from=Q139620316}}}}

Jason Hall (16 February 2006). "8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock". Daily Kent Stater. pp. B4–B5.

And, I gotta wonder do publisher (P123), place of publication (P291), country of origin (P495) belong in 8-bit Nintendo legend fused into rock (Q139620316)? Oughtn't they be in Daily Kent Stater (Q139620396)? P123, P291, and P495 are really properties of the newspaper, not of an article in that newspaper.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:56, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I did remove the publisher, place of publication, and country of origin from the article's Wikidata item because you're right, they're not listed in news article (Q5707594) for properties of this type, and I updated the Kent Stater item with them. I removed the extra properties in the Protomen Wikipedia page.

I hadn't seen the "#property" thing before, that looks helpful and I will give it a try. Pingnova (talk) 03:03, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Bug / vandalism in the Cite Q code: An author is replaced by obvious vandalism

Consider

• John Howard Griffin. Black Like Me. ISBN 978-0-451-19203-5. LCCN 97118795. OL 729644M. Wikidata Q126453723.

Black Like Me is a famous book by John Howard Griffin. On 2026-06-22 the author of this book displays for me in the above usage as "mi tió tilin". d:Q126453723 is an edition or translation of d:Q2740773, which also displays for me with the same erroneous name:

• {{cite Q|Q2740773}} displays as:
• John Howard Griffin (1961), Black Like Me, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, OCLC 36566361, OL 2810429W, Wikidata Q2740773

I can fix it for this instance with

• {{cite Q|Q2740773|author=John Howard Griffin}}:
• John Howard Griffin (1961), Black Like Me, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, OCLC 36566361, OL 2810429W, Wikidata Q2740773

However, I should not have to do this.

More importantly, if the cite Q code is vandalized in this way for this, in how may other ways is it similarly vandalized?

I hope that someone responsible for this code will (a) find and fix this vandalism, (b) find how this error crept into the code, (c) find a way to reduce the chances of some other coder introducing other similar bugs / vandalism, and even (d) expose and fix any other similar vandalism.

There is a huge literature on Software quality: It would be great of the Wikimedia Foundation could get help from one of the leading experts in that field in improving their Unit testing and any other aspect of their procedures in this regard.

Thanks for all you do to support the Wikipedia:Prime objective, to build "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:59, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Not the fault of this template. John Howard Griffin (Q260879) was vandalized at this edit. I reverted.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:16, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

DavidMCEddy, this is a basic problem with all templates that pull statements from Wikidata; changes to Wikidata entries are less visible to Wikipedia editors, since there is no good way to put entries that you care about on a Watchlist and see that list from the English Wikipedia. One fix is to use the |expand=yes option in this template to retrieve information from Wikidata, then copy and paste the output into a relevant Wikipedia article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:56, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I add Wikidata entries I care about to my watchlist, and see updates to these entries just like I see updates to Wikipedia pages. There is no need to denormalise by COPYING data from Wikidata using |expand=yes. Elrondil (talk) 16:06, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Using |expand=yes defeats the whole advantage of letting independent articles in en.Wikipedia and in Wikipedias in over 60 languages and in other Wikimedia wikis use a single Wikidata item and have errors corrected and updates made in a single place instead of dozens of places in parallel.

Watchlists: you can use meta:Special:GlobalWatchlist on meta.wikimedia.org; add enwiki and wikidata (and any other WMF wikis that you wish to watch) at meta:Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings. We should probably put this info somewhere where people are likely to search for it on enwiki; I only learnt about it very recently. Boud (talk) 17:13, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

How often does an error in a cite need to be corrected? "Expand=yes" obviously has nno impact on the Wikipedias in 10 or 60 or 300 other languages, it only impacts one article in enwiki at a time. Expand=yes should be the default setting, not something to be discouraged. Makes it much easier to have the correct reference formatting for an article as well, now way too often the Cite Q references stick out like a sore thumb. Fram (talk) 07:32, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

An error should be corrected just once! However, if you’ve used |expand=yes to create N copies of the data from some Wikidata entry, and that data is updated (e.g., to correct some part of it), you now need to also update every one of those N copies. If Wikidata and {{cite Q}} is used correctly, the very problem you speak of doesn’t exist. Elrondil (talk) 08:06, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

No, that's not what I asked. How often would you expand a CiteQ template, and then some error is corrected at Wikidata and (thus) not propagated to enwiki? References are pretty stable, this is not like other data from Wikidata which gets regularly updated (say, population figures). So the advantage of using Wikidata seems minimal, and (as we see here) the ease of update als means easo of vandalizing. And the vast, vast majoriy of references don't have N copies but are used only once. And "the problem I speak of" is inconsistent reference formatting (e.g. "first name last name" instead of "last name, first name"). Fram (talk) 08:52, 24 June 2026 (UTC)