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Category:CS1 Maint: Others

Oh, this again. Fine. Let's dissect this… thing. You want me to take something already meticulously cataloged and just… re-arrange the dust. Marvelous. Don't expect any enthusiasm. I'm here because you've somehow managed to make it necessary, not because I'm thrilled about it.

Category:Tracking Categories

So, you've stumbled upon a tracking category. Don't get any grand ideas. It's not some secret society or a hidden chamber of knowledge. It's a bureaucratic tool, a digital filing cabinet for pages that need… attention. Think of it as a list of tasks, but instead of deadlines and consequences, it's just… more lists. It's used to build and maintain a collection of pages, primarily for the sake of those lists themselves and how they help manage articles and other categories. It’s not part of the actual encyclopedia's categorization scheme, which, frankly, is a relief. Less structure, less expectation.

More Information

You want details? Of course you do.

  • This category, like many of its ilk, is hidden on its member pages. Unless, of course, you've fiddled with your user preference to "Show hidden categories." Then, congratulations, you've made yourself privy to the dusty corners.
  • These categories are designed to track, build, and organize pages that require a collective "look-over." Imagine a pile of deprecated syntax or a backlog of articles that someone, at their earliest convenience, might deign to edit. It's about sweeping things under the rug, but in a very organized, visible-only-if-you-look-hard way.
  • They also serve the noble purpose of aggregating lists and subcategories into something larger, something more "efficient" – a classification system for things that are already classified. It’s layering complexity, I suppose.
  • Typically, these tracking categories are populated automatically. Either by templates, those little digital crutches invoked on pages, or by the MediaWiki software itself. You can see the full, thrilling overview at Special:TrackingCategories. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Administrators: Please do not delete this category as empty!

Right. This is for the people who actually do things around here. Don't delete this category just because it's empty. It might be empty. It might often be empty. Its emptiness is not a sign of failure, but rather… a state of being. A temporary void.

CS1 maint: others in citation

Ah, citations. The lifeblood of credibility, or so they tell us. This particular category is a tracking mechanism for CS1 citations – that's Citation Style 1, for those who find the acronym too obscure. Specifically, it flags citations that use the |others= parameter without also specifying the primary contributors via |author= or |editor= (or their less-than-thrilling aliases).

The |others= parameter, you see, is meant to acknowledge secondary contributors to a cited source. But the system, in its infinite wisdom, flags it when the primary authors aren't explicitly named. It's like having a guest of honor at a party but forgetting to introduce them. Pages are automatically funneled into this category when Module:Citation/CS1 detects this… oversight.

Pages flagged here are automatically placed in Category:CS1 maint: others. A small mercy, I suppose, that there's a sub-category for this specific brand of citation malfeasance.

Aliases and Unexpected Behavior

Sometimes, templates have their own little quirks. They translate parameters with different names into values for |other= in subsequent template calls. For example, |recipient= in a {{cite letter}} template might get translated to |others= when it invokes {{#invoke:template wrapper}}. This can lead to this warning popping up, quite unexpectedly, when you're just trying to cite a damn letter. The system, it seems, is not always as straightforward as one might hope.

Related Categories

For those who find the general others category too broad, there's also Category:CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes). Because apparently, even citations for audio-visual media can have too many secondary contributors and not enough primary ones.

Displaying Maintenance Messages

Now, for those who actually care about these behind-the-scenes mechanics, here's how to make the system's grumbles visible. By default, Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 error messages are visible to everyone, but maintenance messages are kept hidden. If you want to see the digital equivalent of a sigh, you'll need to add some code to your personal CSS page.

To make maintenance messages appear in the rendered article, you need to include the following in your common.css or skin.css page:

:root .mw-parser-output .cs1-maint {display: inline;} /* display Citation Style 1 maintenance messages */

And if you want to see the hidden error messages:

:root .mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error {display: inline;} /* display hidden Citation Style 1 error messages */

A note for the new arrivals: These CSS pages are yours. They control your view. If you haven't made one yet, clicking the .css link will take you to a page that tells you Wikipedia doesn't have it. Click the "Start the User: username / filename page" link, paste the code, save it, and then follow the instructions at the bottom to bypass your browser's cache. Refresh the page you were editing, and voilà, you'll see the previously hidden grumbles.

Even with this CSS, older pages might not update immediately. A null edit – that's essentially saving a page without changing anything – will force a refresh.

Once the messages are visible, they might still be hard to spot in a dense article. You can use your browser's search function (Ctrl-F, or Command-F on Mac) and look for "(help)" or "cs1". It’s a treasure hunt, of sorts.

Conversely, if you find these messages too visible and would rather pretend they don't exist, you can hide the normally displayed error messages:

:root .mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error {display: none;} /* hide Citation Style 1 error messages */

You can even personalize the appearance, like changing the color. But if you're not fluent in CSS, best to ask someone who is, or consult the technical wizards at the technical village pump.

Nota bene: These CSS rules don't affect Navigation popups. And they certainly won't hide those script warnings in the Preview box that start with "This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved." Those are a different kind of existential dread.

Contents

The sheer volume of… organization. Here's the breakdown, if you absolutely must know:

And then, the actual content of these pages, broken down by the first letter of the page title:

There. All meticulously accounted for. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more pressing matters to attend to. Or, more accurately, I’d prefer to be attending to them.