Template talk:Cite ODNB

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Dictionary of National Biography
This template is within the scope of WikiProject DNB, a collaborative effort to improve British historical biographies on Wikipedia by providing access to the Dictionary of National Biography. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.

Linking with ID does NOT work - the links come in different styles[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_Charlton_Bradley&type=revision&diff=1006255040&oldid=997969563 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It often does work.[1]. I think the problem is that some ODNB articles have much longer IDs, and these don't work with this template. Verbcatcher (talk) 23:01, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to me that |id= should be deprecated and removed. I have created Category:Pages using cite ODNB with id parameter and tweaked the template to fill that category.
Trappist the monk (talk) 23:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience it works with most ODNB articles, but possibly only those with simple ID numbers of up to five digits. The broken ones may be only those that were written recently, which will mostly be for people who died in recent years. I have identified three where this is a problem: Lance Percival (died 2015), Donald Charlton Bradley (died 2014) and Lucian Freud (died 2011). Rather than changing all of the articles that use |id= we should try to get the template fixed, if this is feasible. Verbcatcher (talk) 01:28, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The final DOIs are not all the same format. There is no way for the template to deal with this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would converting all the |id= to |doi= be viewed as a good thing? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:14, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is little to be gained from this. The doi is displayed even if the id is specified. The template description should be revised to indicate that using |id= can cause a problem – can we establish that all five-digit ids will work? If |id= or |doi= is specified then |url= should not be specified, as this results in duplicate links. Verbcatcher (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My gut reaction is that over the long term, |doi= as published on the article's page is best. I think this because ODNB doesn't publish the doi that we have derived from a (vaguely defined) small portion of a url. We all know that urls can change at the site-owner's whim. ODNB does publish a doi on each of their article pages so that is the doi we should be using.
For me, this search returned 173 articles where {{cite ODNB}} uses |id= of six digits. I tested the twenty that landed on the first page of results when I did the search (the order of your results may be different because of the vagaries of cirrus search). All of the six-digit ids that I tested worked.
Here is another search, this one for nine-digit ids (no results for seven- and eight-digit ids). The search returned sixteen results, all beginning with 1010. The couple that I tested did not work.
And yet another search that returned ten results. This search looks for an ISBN-like number (978+10 more digits). Interestingly, none of these ids work and they all include ISBN 9780198614128 which is part of the id that started this discussion. (A similar search for any thirteen-digit ids returned the same results.)
Trappist the monk (talk) 19:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at three articles with nine-digit IDs, and they all had 1010 or 10100 prepended to the true ID. I have fixed these three and the template works ok. I guess either the ONDB website changed or the Wikipedia editor made a mistake and failed to check. I am reluctant to support mass changes as this makes more work for editors who watch their watchlists – I seem to spend hours checking modified pages whose only changes have been made by Monkbot or Citation bot. Verbcatcher (talk) 19:56, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Manually fixed them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:42, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Author[edit]

Recent ODNB entries nomally have a named author. It would be good to add first and lastname parameters so that we can give proper attribution where it's due. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

From the template's documentation:
This template supports all parameters that are supported by {{cite encyclopedia}}.
Can you show an example where |authorn=, |lastn=, |firstn=, etc do not work with {{cite ODNB}}?
Trappist the monk (talk) 12:22, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, sorry, my mistake. I missed that. I read the documentation too quickly and just scanned the parameters that were specifically mentioned. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:42, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Overriding automatic links[edit]

The documentation states "Several parameters have pre-set defaults (but may be overridden)", but does not give any information on how to override, for example, the automatic link to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Could some let me now a. how to do this; and b. add this to the documentation so others can also do it. Many thanks - SchroCat (talk) 09:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The documentation was wrong about overriding. I have fixed it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:16, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so can these be set so they can be overridden? At the moment I have a list of sources where no similar titles are linked, but there are four repeated links to the the ONDB. We need to be able to manage the output to some level if this template is to be used, or I will just go back to put everything in a different template so that the output can be managed appropriately. - SchroCat (talk) 11:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The documentation was wrong about overriding. Evidence to support that claim? Every parameter preset by this template should be overridable. If there are any that cannot be overridden, that should be fixed, not the documentation.
Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The evidence is in the template code, as far as I can tell:
  |encyclopedia=[[Dictionary of National Biography#Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]
  |edition=online
  |publisher=Oxford University Press
"Bar". Foo (Baz ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
If I am wrong, as I often am, corrections are welcome. I added an example above, and overriding appears to work fine. Magic. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:35, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent - that works well and I won't get pulled up on it during a source review. Thanks very much! - SchroCat (talk) 12:15, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 19 March 2024[edit]

The template is invoked on Template:Cite ODNB itself with a harmless but unsightly warning about a missing title parameter. With <includeonly> inserted at the code start and </includeonly> before the <noinclude>, the warning should go away (similar to the code for Template:Cite OED). The full text of the template should read:

<includeonly>{{#invoke:template wrapper|{{#if:{{{_debug|}}}|list|wrap}}|_template=cite encyclopedia
  |_exclude=freearticle, id, _debug
  |_alias-map=accessdate:access-date,authorlink:author-link,origyear:orig-date

  |encyclopedia=[[Dictionary of National Biography#Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]
  |edition=online
  |publisher=Oxford University Press
  |doi={{#if:{{{id|}}}|10.1093/ref:odnb/{{{id|}}}}}
  |doi-access={{#if:{{{doi|}}}{{{id|}}}|{{#if:{{{freearticle|}}}|free}}}}
  |url-access={{#if:{{{url|}}}|{{#if:{{{freearticle|}}}||subscription}}}}
}}{{#if:{{{freearticle|}}}| |&#x20;{{ODNBsub|sentence=yes}}}}<!--
-->{{main other|[[Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB]]}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{both|{{{id|}}}|{{{doi|}}}}}|[[Category:Pages using cite ODNB with both doi and id parameters]]|<!-- id with doi
-->      {{#if:{{{id|}}}|[[Category:Pages using cite ODNB with id parameter]]}}}}<!-- id without doi
 --></includeonly><noinclude>
{{Documentation}}
</noinclude>

73.37.211.177 (talk) 06:01, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'd prefer the warning stay rather than lose all the output of the template on the page. If you can suppress the warning on the template without hiding everything else, that would be okay — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:09, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Done — with {{Cite ODNB|title={{{title}}}}} added to the noinclude section to still show an indication of the output per MSGJ. SilverLocust 💬 13:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:42, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Date parameter[edit]

In the process of building out Free and Candid Disquisitions, I found that date= does not work. It is present in Template:Cite encyclopedia, so I figured that it was at least at some point functional on this template. There appears to have been discussion on the ODNB template back in 2011 on this parameter, but I don't quite understand the content of that technical discussion. Is there a way to insert a date of publication for a particular entry from the ODNB? ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:41, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by does not work? Here is an example from the template's doc page to which I have added |date=2024 (a bogus date):
{{Cite ODNB|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/29986|title=Worsley, Sir Richard |date=2024}}
"Worsley, Sir Richard". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2024. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29986. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Clearly, the 2024 date is rendered in the citation which suggests that |date= does work.
Trappist the monk (talk) 18:28, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using the Feather Taverns petition reference on Free and Candid Disquisitions, adding date=2005 renders "(2005)" but, as visible in the preview window, also introduces some sort of issue resulting in the following notice displayed at the top of the page:
  • Script warning: One or more {{cite encyclopedia}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help).
What might be the cause of this issue? ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:52, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This one? – 'Feathers tavern' not 'Feather Taverns'. I've added |date=2005:
{{cite ODNB|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/93823|title=Feathers tavern petitioners|first=Grayson&nbsp;M.|last=Ditchfield|edition=online|date=2005|ref={{harvid|Ditchfield|2005}}}}
Ditchfield, Grayson M. (2005). "Feathers tavern petitioners". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93823.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
As written, that template adds the article to Category:CS1 maint: ref duplicates default because the value assigned to |ref= (a CITEREF anchor id) is the same as the CITEREF anchor id that Module:Citation/CS1 created from |last=Ditchfield and |date=2005 so |ref= is redundant and should be removed.
Follow the help link from the preview message you quoted to learn how to make maintenance messaging visible.
Trappist the monk (talk) 19:12, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, my issue is resolved. ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:28, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]