Talk:An Wasserflüssen Babylon

RISM

@Matthiaspaul: please don't discuss via edit summaries: this page is the place where to do that, tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:28, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Talk pages are overkill to discuss stuff where a one-line hint is all that is necessary to communicate among experienced editors. We're not here to talk for the purpose of talking, but to work on an encyclopedia.

The solution is obvious. My switch of the {{RISM}} template to use the {{Catalog lookup link}} template caused a error message in citations where RISM was used as argument to the |postscript= parameter. (This is down to the new Lua code of CLL, the original template code wouldn't have caused this warning to occur in the first place.) |postscript= does some plausibility checks. They could be removed to mute the message, but the actual solution is to move the problematic stuff out of that parameter - not to just masquerade the problem. The ID info simply does not belong there. The purpose of the |postscript= parameter is to define the citation template's leadout character. All identifier info, for which we do not have a dedicated parameter already, belongs into the |id= parameter.

BTW, even for WP:BRD reversion is the last thing to do to solve a problem. There are alternatives: WP:ONLYREVERT, WP:ALTREV. So, if you took issue with me moving {{RISM}} to |id=, you should have preserved my other changes.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 04:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

No, I don't see the advantages of anything you propose: you'll have to do better to convince your fellow-editors of anything. That's what talk pages are for. The broader issue can be discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Link to ISMN not going through identifier redirect. The {{RISM}} template, and whether or not it needs an update, can be discussed at Template talk:RISM. I think you took the wrong article for experimentation, and anyhow, as far as this article is concerned, the experiment failed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:26, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, it was agreed to get rid of the {{citation}} templates, see previous section, so I oppose messing with them, that is: without conversion to the appropriate cite templates. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:50, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, so far you did not provide any arguments, but only issued accusations. Not helpful.

In my edit ([1]) I was neither "experimenting" nor "messing" with the citations. Instead, I fixed two error messages caused by a misuse of the |postscript= parameter, in another two cases removed the no longer needed |ref=harv parameter (because the template is now doing harv style references by default Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#make_ref=harv_the_default_for_CS1), and while being here I replaced the deprecated |year= parameter by the |date= parameter, which is the more flexible successor. The |year= parameter is a left-over from old times when we still had |month= and |day= parameters as well, and is generally replaced by |date= except for in the rare case that all of the following conditions apply at the same time:

• the publication-date format in the template is YYYY-MM-DD
• the citation requires a CITEREF disambiguator
• the template uses |ref=harv or |mode=cs2 or the template is {{citation}}

Since this does not apply here, I replaced it by |date=. I have checked the links and did not found any dangling ones.

Regarding |postscript= the help states:

Controls the closing punctuation for a citation; defaults to a period (.); for no terminating punctuation, specify |postscript=none – leaving |postscript= empty is the same as omitting it, but is ambiguous. Additional text or templates beyond the terminating punctuation may generate an error message.

Regarding |id= the help knows:

A custom identifier can be specified through |id=: A unique identifier, used where none of the specialized identifiers are applicable; wikilink or use a template as applicable. For example, |id=NCJ 122967 will append "NCJ 122967" at the end of the citation. You can use templates such as |id={{NCJ|122967}} to append NCJ 122967 instead.

If it was agreed upon to get rid of the {{citation}} templates, just go ahead. I don't care and I certainly won't hinder you or anyone else doing this. But it has nothing to do with my edit.

Just for the records, Gerda Arendt thanked me for my edit.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 12:18, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, not helpful. The {{RISM}} template no longer causes problems, so there are no longer error messages showing for the postscripts. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:56, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

You unfortunately did not address any of my arguments. All the reasons for my changes are still valid and apply independent of {{RISM}}. The abusive use of the |postscript= parameter will have to stop anyway.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Were you going to help with the {{citation}} to cite template conversion? Or any other of the direly needed clean-up? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Do you need any specific help? As I said, I don't personally care if it is CS1 or CS2.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with my well reasoned and constructive edit, which should be restored back into the live article, because it fixes problems and aids the maintenance of the article.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

First things first. There's consensus about converting the {{citation}} templates to cite templates. There's also a consensus that cite templates not called by footnotes ({{sfn}}-like and others) should be moved to the "Further reading" section (that consensus was established here). If you do minor updates in the mean while, no problem. But doing minor clean-up on templates that have to be converted to other templates is without actual benefit, and might complicate matters for those doing the broader clean-up. So, indeed, I'd really appreciate not messing with templates unless the larger issues are handled at the same time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I certainly don't want to disturb you in the middle of some work (actually, this discussion is disturbing me in the middle of my work on other articles), but, honestly, I also can't see what's so complicated about changing {{citation}} to CS1 (if that's what you want as target). This discussion already lasts much longer than the time necessary to carry out the conversion. And according to the other thread the conversion is something that has been pending for close to two years, so nobody can expect that you are doing this just right now. Also, my changes apply regardless of the target template type, so it is making conversion easier rather than complicating things.

In general, you can expect more good will from your fellow editors if you try to avoid reversions (unless in cases of vandalism), work collaboratively with them (including trying to understand their reasoning) rather than to confront them, and explain your moves, e.g. "Sorry, I'm temporarily reverting you because I'm in the middle of some other conversion and the change is making things more difficult for me. Will re-reply your changes later on." rather than "RISM is not an ID in that sense"[2] (while in fact it is an ID in exactly the sense of the |id= parameter) and engaging in lengthly discussions without communicating proper reasons.

If you carry out large-scale changes and need to block the article for a couple of hours, that's fine (at least with me). The best way to do it is to temporarily add a "{{under construction}}" template so that other editors know about it.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:15, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

This is what I did over the period of a few days last week. I also check references in the mean while, adjust text etc. Just converting all references to cite templates and/or moving the unused (I mean: not used as references) ones to the "Further reading" section would be a great help, might reduce the work of checking & updating considerably. I also do other things in the mean while, I mean other than editing this article (which can get quite tedious after a few days with its many big and small problems).

I use the |ID= only for publisher's ID (RISM is not by any stretch a publisher of the early prints used as references in this article). According to the documentation neither |ID= nor |postscript= is used for gathering metadata, so moving from one to the other is purely cosmetic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:40, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

|id= is for identifiers somehow associated with the reference, and for which we don't (yet) have a dedicated parameter. If it were only for publisher's IDs or even only for those already in existence at the time of publication, we'd have to remove most identifiers from references except for the most recent ones, as most of them were introduced retroactively long after a work's publication. So, you do not need to worry about implying a publisher's ID - it is not.

The fact that both |id= and |postscript= don't emit metadata is not important as well. The first parameter is designed to hold one or more identifiers, and the second one is designed to specify the leadout character of a citation. The second one also supports certain keywords (like "none") and has some plausibility checks in place.

The documentation (quoted above) is quite clear about that identifiers (like {{RISM}}) belong into |id=, and also mentions explicitly that the template might issue error messages when |postscript= is used for purposes it was not designed for. So, no, this is not a cosmetical issue only, it is an abuse of a parameter. This is potentially defeating the purpose of using citation templates at all, keeping separable information separate and distinguishing between information provided through parameters and output format generated by the template. For example, there could be a future new output device leading to an output format not needing any postscripts. In this case, we would simply mute the parameter, but with you using it for other purposes, we would loose vital information from being displayed. This might look hyphothetical at first, but we already have responsive templates delivering different outputs for different types of target devices.

Perhaps what you actually need is a |comment= parameter accepting free-flow text issued at the very end of a citation. This is in fact something that was proposed a number of times already and can be found in some other Wikipedias.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:40, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, no longer interested. Either you help getting the referencing system of this article back on track, which it hasn't been for a very long time, or you keep ranting on about insubstantial side-aspects that have no real significance for a sound referencing system, and then I stop reading. Thanks for your efforts. I'll put my time in updating the article, not in reading any more of this though, despite your very good, but somewhat unhelpful, intentions. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:45, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Implemented. See also Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_75#Postscript_redux --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Mention of the 20th century, not just 19th and prior?

I wonder if the pop band ABBA and their hit song "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down" could be mentioned in this article as a distant descendant? 84.236.83.145 (talk) 16:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Dachstein vs Greitten

does anyone know about this? The melody seems to be wrongly attributed...

https://www.bach-cantatas.com/CM/Z7663.htm 2A01:C22:882A:2D00:D86C:CC6B:8510:F457 (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)