User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2018/February

Using AutoWikiBrowser to "root-out" external links in the source field of the rugby league infobox…

Hi Mikeblas, I was using AutoWikiBrowser to "root-out" external links in the source field of the rugby league infobox so that I can covert them to actual references. I couldn't find an alternative way to identify these external links, as a text string search fails, as the external link and reference have the same name, any alternatives? I'm following-up these cite errors as we speak. Best regards DynamoDegsy (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for getting the duplicates fixed up! I think you're asking about fixing source= fields that have links in them; if so, I don't know of a tool that helps for that. Maybe you're asking about the external links themselves. I like to use reFill for that. It's pretty good. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Templates with identical source

Hello Mike.

Before re-reverting, did you actually read the edit summary of my revert?

Regards

HandsomeFella (talk) 16:32, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I did. Did you read my edit note, or investigate the issue further? Maybe some other solution is possible, I think pages that render with repeated but correct references are preferred over pages that render with errors. It is very difficult to assure that every template referenced by a given page defines different names, and intentionally does so for different content. As such, I don't think casual templates should produce named references because the maintenance requirement is too high. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:37, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Actually, these two templates do indeed use the exact same source. You can use the find function in your browser to verify that. And if the usage of this source in multiple templates is variably http and https, I suggest that we change them so they all use the same, rather than removing the ref name, so what is in reality one source doesn't appear to be multiple sources.

Will you do that?

Please also check the history of those templates, in particular who created them. I know what I'm talking about.

Cheers.

HandsomeFella (talk) 16:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for further investigating the issue. The issue isn't that the templates themselves use different sources; the issue is that one of the articles re-including the templates uses a reference of the same name and that definition differs. It would be possible to find and fix that definition, but that's not practical for two reasons. One reason is that this collection of templates is elaborate and highly inter-dependent; there are three or four levels of transclusion. It's difficult to traverse the structure and find all the re-defined references to assure they're precisely the same. That's complicated by Wikipedia's aggressive caching, which is necessary for site performance but makes troubleshooting such problems arduous. The other issue is that fixing the definitions to match is only a temporary solution. If any instance of any of the repeated references are modified (deliberately or not) the redefinition errors reappear and the troubleshooting begins again.

Adding references to templates is very tricky because of these issues. The simplest solution is to add references that are anonymous so there's no chance of name collisions. While this does result in repeated references in the reflist sections of articles, it never results in errors when rendering the page to a reader -- errors that, by the way, obscure the intended references from appearing. The edits I made remove the names from the references to assure the references are visible and that including pages produce the desired citation information without error. Whit that approach, there's no chance a subsequent edit to the content of the reference causes a mismatch, avoiding altogether the troubleshooting that would be required to remedy the subsequent page rendering errors. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:56, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I did in fact read your edit summary, but you didn't say anything about errors there. Nevertheless, I should have realized that refs with the same name, but not identical content, leads to such errors, but I didn't.

Ok, maybe the downsides outweigh the upsides, so I'll let it be.

Cheers.

HandsomeFella (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry; I thought that the errors generated as a consequence of duplicate reference anchor names were well-known. You can read lots more aabout them at the Help:Cite errors/Cite error references duplicate key topic.

The Category:Pages_with_duplicate_reference_names enumerates pages which have duplicate reference problems. At this moment, the Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Paralympics article is still in that list, though the page itself is not actively showing an error. In my experience, this state usually means that there's still a duplicate reference name in some transcluded article or template that's a tertiary (not a direct) reference from the page in question. Sometimes, this state is caused by caching. But I've refreshed everything I can think of and the topic doesn't clear from the list.

The state we're in -- with this article listed as a problem but no visible errors -- is exemplary of complicated inclusion hierarchies that generate named references. I certainly can understand the interested in making templates out of repeated content; and I'm all about better referencing because, until referencing is fixed, the viability of the encyclopedia remains in doubt.

It's just that there's no really good solution for now, and so we have to live with compromises. Meanwhile, I'm trying to fix the pages (and templates) with duplicate names because those errors obscure references from being visible to the end user, which blocks a very fundamental feature of the encyclopedia. (And the errors look terrible.) -- Mikeblas (talk) 01:06, 12 February 2018 (UTC)