Module talk:Footnotes

NHLE and false positives

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T407617

The harv no-target error list has recently been inundated with pages that invoke the National Heritage List for England template. It is proudly non-standard (as admitted in the documentation) but hasn't been flagged until now. I don't know how the error list is generated but it does seem to be picking up errors that were ignored before.

I discovered a slightly suspect way to suppress the false positive errors. If there is more than one invocation of NHLE, the parameter "fewer-links" can be set to yes to suppress redundant links to National Heritage. If you set the second instance of this parameter to "x", no errors are raised. If all the instances are already set to "x", set one to "yes". I've worked through the "A" section of the error list but this "fix" is not intuitive and I wonder if I should continue or stop until a better solution is found.

It's been very disheartening to see the list swell with these new errors. Andy02124 (talk) 18:31, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Those error messages were purportedly caused by a security 'fix' at MediaWiki which has since, apparently been refixed. A null edit will probably be sufficient to undo the effects of the security fix.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:42, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. The problem seems to have resolved itself without any intervention on my part. Good to see the percent resolved back over 80.

Andy02124 (talk) 19:01, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Mgwirizano Coalition sfn false positive?

I just now expanded Mgwirizano Coalition and, in the process, redid the citations a little bit for the original citation style was a thrown-in reference. I looked at my edit history after by chance and saw that it was tagged with "harv or sfn errors." I only used sfn, and there are only 4 such citations present, and they all seem to work to my knowledge? Anyone willing to take a glance to see if it is a false positive or if I made a mistake with them? Banana61904 (talk) 11:47, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

They're not working. There are misspellings of Lembeni / Lembani, and Kadima & Lembani (2006) is mistakenly referred to as Kadima & Denis (2006). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:52, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

I kept re-looking at it and just did not realize it a single time. Thank you and apologies for that one!

(Is there any way then to delete this topic perhaps or is it stuck here?) Banana61904 (talk) 18:06, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

You're most welcome, and there's no need to apologise. // It's not stuck. As is custom, this page has an automatic archiving mechanism (which I just shortened to 120 days), so this section will eventually be archived. Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:35, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

0-2-4 False positive

Can someone please fix this one? I see Baxter1984 is listed on the "Module:Footnotes/whitelist" but I have no idea why the Baster1984 ref is still throwing a false positive in this article. Thanks. - Shearonink (talk) 18:27, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Change the template in 0-2-4 to {{Baxter-BritishLocoCat4}} or add {{Baxter: British Locomotive Catalogue 1825–1923}} to the ['CITEREFBaxter1984'] entry at Module:Footnotes/whitelist line 491.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, Trappist the monk I *would* gladly do the adding to line 491 but I can't edit that Module because I'm not a Template editor or an administrator. I would rather have it "corrected" at the whitelist because that would fix any other possible issues rambing around WP (rather than just fixing the problem at the individual article 0-2-4). If you could do that?...Thanks! Shearonink (talk) 20:03, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Edit done by Editor Redrose64.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:00, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Redrose64 I see you've done the others, could you add 'Baxter: British Locomotive Catalogue 1825–1923' to CITEREFBaxter1984 and CITEREFBaxter1988 as well? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:24, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Bless you all. Thanks so much. - Shearonink (talk) 02:03, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Cite Q False positive

Shirer, William Lawrence (1960), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, London: Secker & Warburg, Wikidata Q138049061 generates a false positive. DuncanHill (talk) 16:29, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Adding |year=1960 will make it go away. This is a problem with Cite Q. Unless the correct fields exist as part of the cite on Wikipedia the code can't see it. If you add author and date fields it makes no difference to the way the cite is displayed, but allows the code to see them and makes the false positive go away. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:34, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I suppose it's impossible to fix Cite Q to stop this happening? DuncanHill (talk) 16:44, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I've raised it on the talk page of the cite Q template twice before, there seems to be no desire to do anything about it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:48, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Coflein false positives

• "Tomen Castell, Dolwyddelan (303046)", Coflein, RCAHMW, retrieved 24 November 2025
• "Dolwyddelan Castle (95299)", Coflein, RCAHMW, retrieved 24 November 2025
• "Six Inscribed Stones in St Tudclud's Church, Penmachno (275728)", Coflein, RCAHMW, retrieved 24 November 2025

produce false positives. DuncanHill (talk) 16:31, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

This will require a new pattern entry, which is a bit beyond me. The template is {{Coflein}} and the pattern will be "RCAHMW" followed by a space, followed by a number between 0 and 999999. Hike395 any chance you could help with this? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:02, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

 Done Added. Note that by overriding |ref=, you may generate new false positives. I wrote the pattern entry to accomodate adding spaces in between RCAHMW and the digits, so these still work. — hike395 (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks hike395. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:27, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

cite TCOF02

• Stevens, Albert C., ed. (1907). The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (2nd ed.). New York City; Paterson, NJ: E. B. Treat and Co. LCCN 07036716. OCLC 2570157. OL 6990518M – via HathiTrust. produces a false positive. DuncanHill (talk) 16:55, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  That would be:
  ['CITEREFStevens1907'] = {'Cite TCOF02'},
  Unfortunately without template rights we'll have to wait for someone else to add it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:11, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

 Done — hike395 (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

A couple more causing false-positives

• {{Bauschke Combettes Convex Analysis and Monotone Operator Theory in Hilbert Spaces 2nd ed 2017}}
• {{Boyd Vandenberghe Convex Optimization 2004}}

Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 22:54, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: It would be helpful if you could give links to articles where the false negatives are occurring. — hike395 (talk) 04:23, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

It would be helpful if people stopped making these fucking awful templates, but there we go. At least these two have meaningful names.

Bauschke - Convex analysis.

Boyd - Convex analysis. DuncanHill (talk) 08:12, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Its helpful if you include the CITEREFs, as they are needed to whitelist the template. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:55, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

{{Bauschke Combettes Convex Analysis and Monotone Operator Theory in Hilbert Spaces 2nd ed 2017}} and {{Boyd Vandenberghe Convex Optimization 2004}} don't seem to be used in sufficient quantities to warrant inclusion in the whitelist. Bauschke Combettes 2017 is used in Convex analysis and Strongly monotone operator; Boyd Vandenberghe 2004 is used in Convex analysis. Probably best to subst these templates where they exist or, if they must be kept as templates, use {{sfn whitelist}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:07, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Went ahead and subst'ed those templates, per Trappist — hike395 (talk) 13:48, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

False positive - Cite Morrison Broadway

• Template:Cite Morrison Broadway in August Wilson Theatre. DuncanHill (talk) 13:41, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Fixed — hike395 (talk) 14:03, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

False positives Cite SEP

Template:Cite SEP causing false-positives at Eternity. DuncanHill (talk) 20:17, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

In those two {{cite SEP}} templates use |date=Fall 2018 and |date=Summer 2010 instead of |edition=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:40, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, this change seems to have fixed it. DuncanHill (talk) 20:51, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Sfn and orig-date

I've got a new one for you. It could not be lower priority, but here it is. I thought this might work, but it doesn't.

"Voilà"

• Voltaire (2021) [1752]. Le Micromégas.

Notice I tried the {{sfnref}} hack. The problem is that it doesn't get that 2021 [1752] is a date. It thinks it's a second author name. It would be nice if realized it was a date. That's all we need.

Like I say, not super important, as there are plenty of other workarounds, but if you're interested and have nothing else todo ...

Thanks --- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Btw, here's the workaround I offered the user:

"Voilà"

• Voltaire (2021) [1752]. Le Micromégas.

It's not ideal, because hacks like this undermine the semantics. If, for example, {{sfn}} starts automatically generating a URL link to the page in Google books, this citation will be left out of the party. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

When using sfnref don't split the author, and date / orig-date. Instead just have it as one field:
{{sfnref|Voltaire (2021) [1752]}}
Then just set the sfn template to match. Using a single field sfnref means you can make the link anything you want. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:41, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's a better hack. Put it all in the author. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 22:35, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

False positives in "Social structure of China" article

I keep getting a warning for linking items properly in this article in the same way I've done hundreds of times. I make a reference, call it with {{harvnb}}, and then it has the error "Harv error: linked from CITEREFNameYear". I strongly suspect something on that page in particular is forcing this error, but I can't seem to shake it. Would someone take a look at it to make sure I haven't borked something important? ----- A garbage person (talk) 18:54, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

This reference? And this target? 'Yi Li 2005' is not the same 'Li Yi 2005'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! I thought I edited that out, but alas.

Instead, I'm talking about the error that's occurring at the end of the sources. The short footnote is fine, but the linked source has an error about how it's being linked. For example, for the Robert Mortimer Marsh source, the citation has "Harv error: linked from CITEREFMarsh1980" directly after it, but the {{harvnb}} linking to it is going to the correct citation. This is the same for all the harvnbs I've used so far. A garbage person (talk) 15:02, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Not a false positive. See User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:17, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! I thought I was losing my mind. A garbage person (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2026 (UTC)