Editing Help talk:Citation Style 1 (section)

== preview warning messages tweak ==

In page-preview mode, the live [[Module:Citation/CS1]] creates a temporary <code>CITEREF</code> anchor id for every template that does not create an id from contributor/author/editor and year.  This works but, doing that is not necessary.  The only time that the module should create a temporary <code>CITEREF</code> anchor id is when the template it is rendering emits an error or maintenance message.  For those who employ a user script to locate cs1|2 templates that are not linked from a short-form reference ({{tlx|sfn}} etc), creating temporary <code>CITEREF</code> anchor id for templates without error or maintenance messages hides those templates that legitimately aren't linked.

I have tweaked the sandbox so that temporary <code>CITEREF</code> anchor ids are created only for those templates with error or maintenance messages.

—[[User:Trappist the monk|Trappist the monk]] ([[User talk:Trappist the monk|talk]]) 17:02, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

:Currently, it appears that identical preview warnings are bundled together, as in the previous specification. [[User:FlatLanguage|FlatLanguage]] ([[User talk:FlatLanguage|talk]]) 04:05, 30 January 2026 (UTC)
::The preview warnings are unique as much as <code>CITEREF</code> anchor IDs are unique; which is to say that they aren't guaranteed to be unique.  So two (or more) templates with the same or different cs1|2 errors but which generate the same <code>CITEREF</code> anchor ID will have an identical preview warning message.  When you preview this section, these two templates, despite different error messages, create identical preview warning messages.  MediaWiki displays only one preview warning message:
:::<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline="1">{{cite book/new |title= |date=1994 |last=Green |first=EB}}</syntaxhighlight>
::::{{cite book/new |title= |date=1994 |last=Green |first=EB}}
:::<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext" inline="1">{{cite book/new |title=No url error |date=1994 |last=Green |first=EB |url-access=subscription}}</syntaxhighlight>
::::{{cite book/new |title=No url error |date=1994 |last=Green |first=EB |url-access=subscription}}
::I wonder if tagging each warning message with a pseudo random number hidden inside a {{tag|span|attribs=style="display:none"|content=XXXXXX}} tag might fix, or at the least substantially reduce this identical warning messages problem?  But maybe not... An individually tagged warning message will be more unique, but the target template linked from the warning message will always be the first target with the duplicated <code>CITEREF</code> anchor ID.
::
::We could, but probably should not, alter a <code>CITEREF</code> anchor ID created from author/contributor/editor name(s) and year to make them unique.  We should not because doing so will break the links from {{tlx|sfn}} and {{tlx|harv}}-family templates.
::—[[User:Trappist the monk|Trappist the monk]] ([[User talk:Trappist the monk|talk]]) 16:06, 30 January 2026 (UTC)
:::This just adds yet another reason to the list why multiple editors have requested that the cite module be fixed. It is currently the number one lint error generator with [[MW:Help:Lint errors/duplicate-ids]] being the millions. [[User:Gonnym|Gonnym]] ([[User talk:Gonnym|talk]]) 16:47, 3 February 2026 (UTC)
::::Are you sure?  If you edit this talk page section and then '''Show preview''', you will see the warning that [[Module:Citation/CS1]] adds to the preview message box.  The warning message html looks like this:
:::::<syntaxhighlight lang="html" inline="1"><span style="color:#d33"><code style="color: inherit; background: inherit; border: none; padding: inherit;">{{<a href="/wiki/Template:Cite_book" title="Template:Cite book">cite book</a>}}</code>: this <a href="#CITEREFGreen1994">reference</a> has errors</span>; messages may be hidden (<a href="/wiki/Help:CS1_errors#Controlling_error_message_display" title="Help:CS1 errors">help</a>).</syntaxhighlight>
::::That html does not set any <code>id=</code> attributes.
::::
::::This section does have duplicate-id lint errors but they are not caused by adding a warning message to the preview message box.
::::—[[User:Trappist the monk|Trappist the monk]] ([[User talk:Trappist the monk|talk]]) 17:43, 3 February 2026 (UTC)