Template talk:Cquote

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Chrome error[edit]

This template does not work correctly in Google Chrome when next to an image. The text ignores the image. Why is the template made with a table? And not <blockquote>?

Moberg (talk) 06:56, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It also happens with infoboxes, was doing it at Scream (film) so I had to change it to regular quote. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 10:41, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Cquote above looked normal in my previous version (16.0.912.63 m) of Chrome. While looking at it, Chrome updated itself (I don't use it all that often), and the new version (19.0.1084.46 m) exhibits the faulty behaviour you describe. Clearly Chrome's fault. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:53, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I then installed the developers' version 20.0.1132.11 dev-m and that showed the Cquote and the image properly again. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Really starting to hate CHrome, can't find a way to stop it auto-updating and it almost always breaks something when it does update.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 11:19, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hah, I was just investigating this bug. I hadn't realized someone had already started a thread. Specifying display:block; on the table seems to fix this. Not sure what the other consequences of specifying display:block; on a table are, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's go ahead and try setting display:block; on the table as this is still a problem in Chrome. If anything breaks horribly, we can revert. People around here are never shy to complain about breakage, after all. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If this is just Chrome misbehaving then I would suggest we should not "fix" this template because it is not broken ... But I suppose if this has no effect for other users, then it could be harmless. Code is on Template:Cquote/sandbox. Anyone want to test it on some different browsers? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:26, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I created Template:Cquote/testcases. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Screenshot of the phenomenon in Google Chrome here: commons:File:Google Chrome cquote overlap.png.
I also tested with Safari. Both versions are fine in Safari/Mac OS X. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:54, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The sandbox and live versions look identical on Opera, Firefox and IE. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:01, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as File:Wikimedia browser share pie chart 3.png suggests that Chrome is a major browser used by Wikipedia readers (actually the second most-used), it should be fairly important to make sure things behave correctly in that browser. As MSGJ and MZ have said that the addition of display:block doesn't harm other browsers, I've made the addition to the live template. Regards, Killiondude (talk) 07:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Raw numbers are at Wikimedia Analytics - User Agent Breakdown by Browser. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:33, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good to see some of you on the case - but can something be done? Surely the collective knowledge of Wikipedia is better than the autocratic behemoth of Google. :) Wikidea 11:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Undo[edit]

I think the June 2, 2012 edit by Killiondude that added "display:block;" should be undone as now all quotes that use this template in articles are showing up on the left side rather then the center. This doesn't look right and for that reason I think that edit should be undone.--Dom497 (talk) 14:15, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

arrow Reverted. Back to the drawing board — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:02, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've got to think that them not being centered is a bit less damaging than them being completely useless altogether.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 17:03, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the above statement, especially given what I said about Chrome's usage above. Killiondude (talk) 20:53, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Screenshot would've been helpful. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK can we get display:block put back on? Dom497's complaint is minor, as it is described it basically means they're not centered. Meanwhile Chrome users get this. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move. -- tariqabjotu 23:31, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Template:Cquote → Template:Centered pull quote – Something has to be done about rampant abuse of this thing. Years after the fact has been raised that this template is rampantly abused in thousands of articles, and raised again and then again (few templates have been narrowly TfD'd this many times), nothing been done to remedy the situation. It has simply gotten worse, with more and more and more articles every day abusing this as a block quotation template, and no one paying any attention at all to the template's own documentation saying "don't do that". The idea "{{cquote}} means block quotation" is demonstrably embedded, incorrectly but irreparably, into the Wikipedia psyche.

I think the only solution at this point is to come up with a list of the 1% or so of pages that actually properly use this as a pull quote template, move this to, say, {{centered pull quote}}, and if we really need a short version {{cpquote}} as a redir, and then redirect {{cquote}} to {{quote}} after updating the small percentage of legit uses to call {{centered pull quote}}. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 15:23, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Most people don't know what a "pull quote" is. They just like the graphical quotation marks. Renaming the template doesn't change that. Powers T 16:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to renaming, but it won't fix any misuse. Just take a look at the TfDs. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 09:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I too agree that this template is massively overused, and this might help by making it more explicit when the pull quotes really are intended (rather than "looks cool"). Don't get your hopes up on redirecting cquote to quote too soon (perhaps in a year?), but baby steps. SnowFire (talk) 20:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support.  davidiad.:τ 21:38, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: There are 33,408 transclusions. Is the plan to rename all uses? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:20, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The move request suggests that the correct course of action would be to point the redirect at {{quote}} and thus silently convert all of the "wrong" uses automatically. The alternative is a painstaking elimination drive which will inevitably result in massive edit wars as editors shriek in horror at the alteration of their pretty articles. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:14, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I kill it on sight, but I'm just one guy. Who is going to be brave enough to do this? I had a sandbox version at one point with the typographic quotes removed when transcluded in articles. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:50, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. My guess is that anyone who wants to use these will figure out that they can get them by using "centered pull quote", and we will have the same problem all over again. Apteva (talk) 00:32, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Without a rather ambiguously-named shortcut, the hope would be that this will be easier to catch and police. The problem here is largely historical, owing to our having ~20 different quotation templates in 2007 that were used entirely at editors saw fit. That issue still isn't as cleanly resolved as I'd like, but it's far less murky, and fixing over 30,000 of the remaining problematic uses would be a massive step forward in that regard. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:45, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • support move, then redirect cquote to quote as suggested. Frietjes (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is a move in the right direction, and it will help, at least a little. I hope that SMcCandlish has begun compiling the list of those few uses that are in fact pulled quotes. A more effective fix would be to provide internal checking within the template that would inhibit such incorrect usage. --Bejnar (talk) 19:24, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Please redirect Template:Cquote to: Template:Centered pull quote[edit]

Currently the talk page redirects to Centered pull quote, and cquote is indeed (historically) 'centered'. Can someone fix the actual current redirect template to Centered pull quote not Quote. Leng T'che (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See the discussion above. If you truly desire a pull quote, then use the new name. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But please be sure to read Block quotations under WP:MOSQUOTE, where one finds:
Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes)
Very rarely is there actually a situation that would call for a pull quote in an encyclopedia article.  davidiad.:τ 11:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No opinion on how it should be, but the above consensus needs a better transitioning strategy: the two templates are not parameter compatible so the redirect broke all transclusions that used cquote specific parameters. At the very least it needs to correctly pipe through the parameters, possibly with a namespace switch.
    Personally I'm not convinced that indiscriminately changing the look of those 33k transclusions from centered-with-quotes to left-aligned-no-quotes doesn't cause more problems than it solves.
    Amalthea 18:26, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I now note that the above proposal didn't intend to actually indiscriminiately redirect the template right away, so this may have been a misunderstanding anyway. Amalthea 18:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Saw this issue yesterday and just updated {{Quote/sandbox}} to support author. I think this is everything but bgcolor and width. Anyone want to do some checks? I had a sandbox version of cquote that added the typographic quotes only in non-article space. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another parameter of cquote is the quotation mark size, both of which are usually expressed.  davidiad.:τ 00:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which is wildly misused in violation of the template documentation and MOS. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep.  davidiad.:τ 13:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rcats needed[edit]

­This redirect needs Rcats (redirect categories) added. Please modify it as follows:

  • from this...
#REDIRECT [[Template:Centered pull quote]]
  • to this...
#REDIRECT [[Template:Centered pull quote]]
*WHEN YOU COPY & PASTE, PLEASE ERASE THE TEXT ON THIS LINE & LEAVE THIS LINE BLANK.
{{Redr|move|from template shortcut|protected}}

Template {{Redr}} is a shortcut for the {{This is a redirect}} template, which is itself a shortcut used to add categories to redirects. Thank you in advance! – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 20:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 22:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
 Thank you very much! – Redrose64 – PAINE ELLSWORTH CLIMAX! 02:40, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let's fix this[edit]

The following editors are invited to recollect their own involvement in a discussion regarding this template's misuse and to provide comments here:

The {{cquote}} template is not supposed to be used in article space. I remember a very divisive discussion about this fact, when a very good faith user opened a {{TfD}} because of its rampant misuse. I stumbled across an example today, and notice from this special page that the misuse is creeping back. Instead of saying "This template shouldn't be used ... use {{quotation}}", why not add syntax to the template code that defaults it to {{quotation}} whenever an #ifeq: switch matches it to article space? It seems like a best solution.--My76Strat (talk) 04:56, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Please do.  davidiad { t } 05:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Naturally I support this as proposer.--My76Strat (talk) 05:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Frankly, I don't understand what the actual legitimate use for this template is supposed to be. If there is one, can someone explain it in the template documentation. Kaldari (talk) 06:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    The main reason it is resilient at {{TfD}} is because so many want it available for ornamental use on user pages where quotes are often included. The misuse in article space never stands as a justified reason to delete but its misuse can be eliminated by the #ifeq: parser function; and I believe it should be.--My76Strat (talk) 07:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose. If this template really isn't supposed to be used in article space, it should say that in the documentation. Existing uses could be migrated with a bot. I don't see how you expect people to not use it in article space if it doesn't tell them that in the instructions. Having a template have 2 totally different behaviors, depending on the namespace is a poor solution, IMO, and would cause confusion. Never fix a temporary problem with a permanent hack. Kaldari (talk) 17:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I don't really understand why using this template for quotes in articles is considered abuse. It's basically the same as {{quotation}}, just less ugly. If there is no clear rationale presented in the documentation about why this is 'abuse', why should we expect people to stop using it? The current instructions are confusing and arbitrary, so it's not surprising that thousands of people are 'abusing' it. It says that the Manual of style recommends {{quotation}} "for visually distinctive quotation", so why is there an exception for pull quotes? There's nothing inherently different about pull quotes. Why would they be styled differently? And why is this difference so important that it has to be rigorously enforced? Kaldari (talk) 17:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm inclined to agree with everything you've posted here. I don't really understand the alleged underlying problem. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed as well. I understand why using this template for pull quotes (i.e. drawing attention to a passage already included elsewhere in the text) might be considered undesirable, but using this template as a less ugly way to format quotations sounds perfectly reasonable to me. --Waldir talk 13:40, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • support yet again. I had this in sandbox at one time. --  Gadget850 talk 10:01, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • An NS0 check is the most elegant solution yet. Great idea. Let's get it done. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure about attempting to enforce (questionable) editorial decisions with technical means. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not at all uncommon for templates to generate error messages when they are misused, inadvertently or otherwise. These kinds of things should already have been done. I agree with Kaldari above that much of the woes surrounding this templates use is a byproduct of inadequate documentation; I suggest this is coupled with inadequate template coding as well.--My76Strat (talk) 06:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yuck. Why is this an HTML table instead of a blockquote element? Cquote should have the same HTML as {{quotation}}. Use CSS to render the different appearances. Add class="decorative" to render the fancy, home-page-only version. —Michael Z. 2013-06-07 18:50 z
    I don't see why the two templates couldn't ultimately be merged.--My76Strat (talk) 06:51, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have been considering a meta-template that other quote templates could build on. --  Gadget850 talk 13:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Then rename to {{User page quote}}, get a bot to switch all instances, then delete the redirect. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:53, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Use in articles[edit]

These are some objections and queries above, so let's discuss that here.

A pull quote "is a quotation or excerpt from an article that is typically placed in a larger or distinctive typeface on the same page, serving to entice readers into an article or to highlight a key topic."

Thus, the quote is already in the article content and is placed in the pull quote for highlighting. The template documentation states: "This template should not be used for quotations if they are not repeated elsewhere in the main text". In practice, this is never done. It is simply used as a quote block with the fat quote marks.

This is a layout technique used by journals and magazines. Along with bylines, kickers and decks. I really don't think it reflects the professionalism of Wikipedia. --  Gadget850 talk 19:45, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The documentation should clearly say "don't use this in article space". Wikipedia is not a magazine, and doesn't need giant redundant text to draw your attention to the page. — Omegatron (talk) 04:35, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why pull quotes should be styled differently than regular quotes. Nothing in the Manual of Style supports this distinction. Either this template should be allowed for both types of quotes or neither. Personally, I think this template looks more "professional" than {{quotation}}, which is just an ugly box and looks rather amateurish from a design perspective. So I guess my opinion would be to allow it for either type of quotation in article space. Kaldari (talk) 20:11, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Does that mean you are for or against the fat quotes? --  Gadget850 talk 21:25, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I quite like the fat quotes, but it is long past time that we stopped treating quotations in articles as some sacrosanct expression of editor individuality. That means that something has to give here, and the plainer quotation style has won out in terms of editor mindshare. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:58, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Guidelines[edit]

Applicable guidelines:

  • MOS:QUOTE:
    • "Styling of apostrophes and quotation marks. These should all be straight, not curly or slanted."
    • "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes)."
  • MOS:QUOTEMARKS: "... we use quotation marks or block quotes (not both) to distinguish long quotations from other text"
    • This template does not use <blockquote>, but it replicates the offset style and it really should be updated to use <blockquote>.

--  Gadget850 talk 13:30, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Stale

--  Gadget850 talk 14:26, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Include only[edit]

Add <includeonly> tags around "Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks." Apteva (talk) 23:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Examples[edit]

One of the reasons that this is used for quotes instead of for pull quotes is that our examples show it being used for quotes instead of showing it used for pull quotes. The way to fix that is to at least in the first two examples, show that the quote already exists in the text, like this.[1] Apteva (talk) 00:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source parameter[edit]

The source parameter doesn't work if the author is unknown.

{{cquote|x|author=y}}

{{cquote|x|source=z}}

{{cquote|x|author=y|source=z}}

Stefan2 (talk) 22:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC) [Slightly modified the above to show the code also (instead of just the result) to understand the issue better. Hmm... Maybe this behavior has been changed since the original post. Thanks! — Geekdiva (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2016 (UTC)][reply]

Apparently, that's intentional behaviour. A work-around is to specify the source in the parameter |author=: {{cquote|this is the quote|author=this is the source}} gives:
-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:43, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing the line-height[edit]

Could someone add "line-height: 1;" to both of the quotation mark table cells so that the the line-height matches the font-size. This should make the formatting less broken-looking for single-line quotes. Kaldari (talk) 02:17, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done. It's not dead center, but a big improvement (see section above). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:12, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You could reduce it even further. 0.5 seems to work well. The cells have generous padding on them, so making the line-height less than 1 doesn't pose any text-overlap problems (until you get really tiny, like 0.1). Kaldari (talk) 22:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I get partly obscured quote marks below 1em with single line qoutes. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:10, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Still doesn't look right (in Firefox on Mac OS X, anyway). The quotation text is above the giant quotation marks, when the quote is short (as it should be - pull quotes are not block quotations).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:30, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also happening in the Chrome browser.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:31, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated MOS guidelines in documentation?[edit]

The documentation reads:

  • NOTE: This template should not be used for quotations if they are not repeated elsewhere in the main text. The Manual of Style recommendation is:
    • For visually distinctive quotation, use {{Quotation}} template.
    • For long quotations, use the HTML <blockquote> element, such as through the use of the {{Quote}} or {{quote box}} template.

MOS:Blockquote actually discourages the use of this template, saying:

Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins. Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{centered pull quote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged. Block quotations can be enclosed between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags; or use {{quote}} or {{quote box}}.

Assuming the MOS is kept more up-to-date than this template documentation, shouldn't this be updated to say:

I have also replaced the red colour with bold formatting, per MOS:COLOUR ("Do not use color alone to mark differences in text: they may be invisible to people with color blindness"). —sroc 💬 04:02, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this template's documentation should be kept in synch with the guideline (not vice versa - hardly anyone ever watchlists these templates, and tweaking them or their docs cannot be used to circumvent the broader consensus-building processes at major pages like MOS).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:19, 2 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Possible incoming merges[edit]

Just a heads-up: In case you haven't seen it, Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 October 11 has several templates that may possibly be good candidates to merge with this one. Comments are welcome. :) —PC-XT+ 08:12, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Blockquote[edit]

I've created a version of this template, in its sandbox, which uses the correct semantic markup, <blockquote>. This affects the padding, which needs to be adjusted. Or is there a better way to do this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ditch the table. Nesting a blockquote inside a table is bonkers. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:39, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree; how would you then align the quote marks (my CSS is rusty)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:21, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Probably using :before and :after, as was done with the Typography refresh, but though out better this time. That should make any quote-formatting code redundant. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Could you do that, please? I'll watch and learn. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll start tomorrow. It requires some CSS in Common.css. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:11, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I find it disturbing that time and effort is being made to shore up a template we mostly do not need, and which is being abused on tens of thousands of mainspace pages, making concessions for it at Mediawiki:Common.css, when most legitimate requests for classes and other handling at that interface page get filibustered. We have better things to do that lend extra legitimacy to something that is only being used correctly about 0.1% of the time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:00, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Vertical tweak[edit]

Anyone else find the closing giant quotation mark to be a bit too high? It's too high in Chrome/Chromium on Mac OS X. I haven't broken out my virtual machine collection to see if this is a consistent issue, but given that it's all done with CSS I'm pretty sure it will be.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:53, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Better check anyway. It was put in to accomodate single line quotes. Without the tweak, the quote would end up too low. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pull quote templates edit request on 6 April 2016[edit]

I know these templates are low priority, but editors might peek at the code for ideas. <cite><div>...</div></cite> isn't passing tidy — only phrasing/inline elements are allowed inside <cite>. I tweaked each template to use just <cite>, make tidy happy, and set a better example.

Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 11:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: Would you mind making it clear what the difference is between each of the sandboxes and main templates? You can use Special:ComparePages if you would like. Thanks! Izno (talk) 11:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno:

  • Pull quote: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing table cell (diff)
  • Reduced pull quote: sp "allign", deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing table cell (diff)
  • Quote frame: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing cite, sets display:block on cite to make sure it stays on its own line and text-align works (diff)
  • Quote box: deletes internal div, moves the div's style to the containing cite, sets display:block on cite to make sure it stays on its own line and text-align works (diff)

No visual difference in any of the /testcases, but that's to be expected, since tidy is already modifying the live templates in a similar way. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 07:54, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Feel free to reactivate the edit request next time. I'll take care of these now. --Izno (talk) 11:02, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
 Done --Izno (talk) 11:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This template's text formatting used for block quotes in WP app[edit]

It undermines the style guideline that this formatting, especially the large quotation marks, is supposed to be reserved for pull quotes if the app uses the style for text in blockquote tags. I'm using the WP beta app on an Android phone. Sorry all I can do is point this out here! At least right now, I don't know how to notify the app team, & I likely won't be able to follow up on this. Thanks, Geekdiva (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC) Geekdiva (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comments on use and documentation[edit]

WITHDRAWN
Well, there are enough editors jusfiably challenging the legitimacy of this RfC, either because of improper venue (should be at WP:MOS), or presentation, or both, that I don't think it would can really go forward. Let's do it over at WP:MOS, and think about starting with a broader discussion of the issue first. Herostratus (talk) 13:28, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Statement of the problem[edit]

OK. This is complicated so bear with me (or just skip straight to the Proposal section). Let's fix this long-term bleeding wound. The documentation for this template says

This template is meant for pull quotes, the visually distinctive repetition of text that is already present on the same page.

But this is nonsense, and in fact nobody -- and I mean, literally, nobody -- uses this template for that reason.

"Pull quotes" are a technique used by by magazines to spiff up the layout. You "pull" a interesting section of text from the body of the article and highlight it by repeating in a box or whatever with a bigger font so so forth.

But an encyclopedia has no use -- literally no use -- for pull quotes in this sense. We are not a magazine. Repeating text in this way will only confuse the reader, and that is why it is never done. By "never done", I mean that in my 10+ fully active years here I have never seen it done even once. And I challenge the reader to look at n instances if "what links here" for {{Pull quote}}, and I expect you will find zero instances of {{Pull quote}} being used for actual "pull quotes" for any value of n. I know I have, expanding n until I was overcome with boredom. All instances -- all instances -- of {{Pull quote}} are used for normal quotes, in the same way {{Quote}} and {{Quotebox}} are used.

And if, by chance, you should find one instance of {{Pull quote}} being used for it's supposed use of actual pull quotes, I suggest you consider editing the article to remove this, since repeating material in this manner is only going to confuse the reader, probably. This is why the second sentence of the documentation is (properly) "In most cases, this is not appropriate for use in encyclopedia articles." which someone shoehorned into the text describing how to use it in articles, which makes quite a dog's breakfast of the documentation and BTW renders this useful and attractive template with essentially no earthly use.

(But look, I'm open minded: it's not impossible that some use for pull quotes could be found. I guess. I can't think of any, but I guess you never know. Anything's possible I suppose. If such an unlikely circumstance should arise someday, we could then either create a new template for this unique situation, or -- more likely -- just let the editor use one of the existing quote templates (cquote, rquote, quote, quotebox, or whatever else we have)).

OK? With me so far? There's no use for pull quotes in this encyclopedia, evidenced by the the fact that there are are no pull quotes, or practically none, and indeed the second sentence of the documentation says just that.

OK, so then why not just delete this template? Well, because it's attractive and useful. I use it all the time and recommend that you do also. To my mind it's far superior to {{quote}}, which highlights quotes just by indenting them, which (to my mind) is confusingly insufficient to separate them from the normal text (especially when there are lots of thumbnail pictures or other formatting geegaws, when you can substitute "insufficient" with "completely useless"). I don't like to use {{quote}} because in a lot of instances it's just not at all clear that we are shifting from normal article text to a quotation, and it's confusing to the reader IMO.

But then there is {{quotebox}}, which puts an ASCII-type box around the quote, which is fine -- if you are editing in 1986. I'm not. We used to put ASCII boxes around text in our MS-DOS programs and we thought we were the bee's knees. It was cool then. It's not now. If disco comes back we can talk about reviving {{quotebox}}. Until then, it's horribly ugly and archaic looking.

But hey. I'm OK with people using {{quote}} and {{quotebox}} if they want. Let a thousand flowers bloom. For my part, I've been using {{cquote}} and {{rquote}} for quotes, with their at least somewhat sporty large quotation marks, for like ten years now, with no objections and no problems. So have lots of other editors, according to the "what links here here" results.

So I changed the documentation to reflect this (a while back) and an editor objected, so here we are with this RfC which should, to my mind, be open-and-shut. Even if you don't agree with me, you ought to agree that rules should document actual practice, not what some editor thought should be actual practice ten years ago.

In one sense it doesn't matter. People are (sensibly) not going to put pull quotes in article, and (sensibly) are going to use to {{cquote}} and {{rquote}} for normal quotes. In another sense, it would make sense to have the documentation reflect this use; probably some editors have been dissuaded from using this functional and useful template because of the incorrect documentation.

Proposal[edit]

  • 1) Move "Template:Pull quote" to "Template:Cquote", and move "Template:Reduced pull quote" to "Template:Rquote". (These pages already exist as redirects).
  • 2) Change the documentation for {{Cquote}}. Remove this material from the beginning of the documentation:
This template is meant for pull quotes, the visually distinctive repetition of text that is already present on the same page. In most cases, this is not appropriate for use in encyclopedia articles. The Manual of Style guidelines for block quotations recommend formatting block quotations using the {{Quote}} template or the HTML <blockquote> element, for which that template provides a wrapper. Pull quotes work best when used with short sentences, and at the start or end of a section, as a hint of or to help emphasize the section's content. For typical pull quotes, especially those longer than the rest of the paragraph in which they are quoted, {{Pull quote}} provides a borderless quote with decorative quotation marks, and {{Quote frame}} provided [sic] a bordered quote. Both span the article width. For very short pull quotes, {{Reduced pull quote}} (with decorative quotation marks) or {{Quote box}} (framed) can be used to set the quote off to either the right or left as in a magazine sidebar. This can be effective on essay pages and WikiProject homepages. -- Usage -- For actual pull quotes, this template provides a centered, borderless pull quote, with scalable decorative quotation marks, and optional attribution of the source of the quote. It can be used with or without the names of the parameters.
and replace it with this:
{{Cquote}} adds a block quotation to an article page. It is similar to {{Quote}}, but more decorative in that it adds a set of large (but scalable) quotation marks, at the beginning and end of the quoted text, around a centered, borderless quote, and optional attribution of the source of the quote. It can be used with or without the names of the parameters. In all other ways it is similar to {{Quote}}, and may be used in place of {{Quote}}, at the editor's discretion. See also {{Rquote}} for when it is desired to include a short quote which does not span the width of the paragraph.
Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes).
to
{{Cquote}} and {{rquote}} are alternatives to {{quote}} which enclose the block quotation in large quotation marks.

Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

  • Support as proposer. Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a pretty good idea. I also looked at a number of uses of this template; all of them - even in GAs and FAs - are for regular quotes. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 21:46, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, as an invalid RfC, as well as a terrible idea. This directly conflicts with MOS:BQ. This RfC is invalid on it's face: You can't, as a matter of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, change a template and its documentation to defy a site-wide guideline. If this spurious RfC somehow did close with such a result, the templates themselves would be subject to speedy deletion per WP:CSD#T2! We already have a huge mess to clean up, and this proposal would make it an order of magnitude worse, if it were actually viable. The central problem here is that there there are inline quotations, block quotation2 (i.e. indented, long inline quotations that form their own paragraphs), and pull quotes, which are highlighted, decorative reiterations of quotes (or parts of quotes) that are already in the main document flow (and very, very rarely appropriate in an encyclopedia). What people keep abusing these templates for is a style that doesn't really exist in professional publications, just blogs and marketing materials, of decoratively highlighting, out of all context and proportionality, quotations that do not appear in the document's main prose at all. MOS has specifically said not to do this for years, and it violates at least two policies, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, yet people keep doing it, because other people abused the pull quote templates years ago to do this, and it hasn't been cleaned up fast enough for people to stop copy-catting this pseudo-convention. Memetically and as cleanup matter, it's basically exactly the same issue we had with people rampantly capitalizing the common (vernacular) names of all species of everything because one wikiproject was doing it for one biological order as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS matter, until big RfC finally put an end to that. It took nearly a decade to clean up the mess that resulted from from people seeing it in one topic, assuming it was "the Wikipedia way" and applying it everywhere else (I kid you not, only one day ago I ran across the text "The Cat (Felis silvestris catus), also known as the Domestic Cat or House Cat ..." in an article [2], so this cleanup still isn't 100% complete). It will take a long time, too, to clean up the quotation-related "I wanna decorate!" disaster we have going on with abuse of pull-quote templates. If fans of this visual festooning of articles with WP:NPOV violations really think they have a case to change MOS regarding them, they are welcome to have an RfC about doing so, at WT:MOS or WP:VPPOL, but the present "let's try to eke out a false consensus among fans of decorate, screaming quotation templates, against a site-wide guideline and NPoV policies" pseudo-RfC cannot fly. See also MOS:IMAGES, MOS:ICONS, and every other guideline we have about encyclopedic presentation: they consistently say to not decorate for the sake of decoration.

    PS: The fastest way to clean up this mess is to install a namespace switch in all the pull-quote templates so that if used in mainspace they only output the same normal blockquote markup as {{quote}}. Those that do not flow well in their inline context will be moved over time to flow better, and the less than 1% of uses of these template that are honest-to-goodness pull quotes, as defined at Pull quote, can either be removed as redundant, or manually formatted with CSS to remain as highlighted pull quotes, if there's a consensus that the specific article in question is improved by having a news-style pull quote in it for some reason, which is highly unlikely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

    Long back-and-forth commentary moved to #Threaded discussion section.
  • Strong oppose per Stanton (SMcCandlish). The proposer has acknowledged that this is in violation of the MOS. Therefore, the appropriate thing for Herostratus to do would be to discontinue this RfC and take the discussion to WT:MOS where it belongs. As Stanton noted, should these changes be made without the prerequisite amendments to the MOS, the template could be subject to speedy deletion per WP:T2. Graham (talk) 07:10, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The necessary changes to the MOS are included in the RfC, and the RfC is prominently advertised at the MOS talk page. It'd be impossible to implement proposal points #1 - #3 without also implementing #4, so this objection is moot, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 11:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Template should be deleted as a MOS violation. Regards, James (talk/contribs) 07:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But it won't be an MOS violation if the proposal is accepted -- see point #4 of the proposal. If then proposal is not accepted, then the template should arguably be deleted. Problem is, that has been attempted three times. A fourth attempt would also likely fail, leaving us with the present non-optimal situation. Herostratus (talk) 11:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The Manual of Style is a guideline that editors are at liberty to ignore when doing so benefits the encyclopaedia (although I've found that convincing MOS-focused editors of this fact is often a colossal bugbear and timesink).—S Marshall T/C 07:36, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • WP:IAR means "make an exception in this case for this article, for good reason." It does not mean "pervert this template's documentation as an anti-MoS WP:BATTLEGROUNDING platform". For that sort of idea, see WP:POINT, and for the proper way to see if consensus will change, see WP:PROPOSAL and how to do one. A back-channel template talk page attempt to do an end-run around a guideline you don't like is not it. It also doesn't matter how many editors insert things into the encyclopedia that violate NPOV; they still have to come out, whether it's manipulative wording, cherry-picked sourcing, or grossly undue visual emphasis of specific parties' statements.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • What brought that on? It's not "perverting" or "battlegrounding" to see that Herostratus' clear and intelligent reasoning about the purpose and function of quotes in our encyclopaedia outweighs the Manual of Style. It's simple common sense.—S Marshall T/C 13:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as "a pretty good idea", per Enterprisey. I also am not convinced that the Manual of Style should prevail unless it gives adequate guidance - as it should - in situations such as the present problem, which is: making block quotes sufficiently distinct from body text, but without compromising usability or (preferably elegant) simplicity of presentation. yoyo (talk) 08:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural Oppose. Honestly, if you can't write a neutral and brief RfC (per the WP:RfC guidlines) you have my oppose on that score alone. TL;DR. Softlavender (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Opppose at this stage, per Softlavender. Tony (talk) 10:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support measures to reduce/eliminate use of pull quotes in article space. Not interested in the details of implementation. Rhoark (talk) 14:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – I have used these on certain occasions without thinking too much about them, but now that I have thought about it in light of nom's arguments, I have to admit that their use makes no sense in the context of WP. My use was always to give emphasis, at seems to fall foul of WP:SOAP or even WP:ADVOCACY. -- Ohc ¡digame! 14:42, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – This encylopaedia doesn't need pull quotes, but it doesn't need kitsch inverted commas either. I agree entirely with SMcCandlish. RGloucester — ☎ 15:14, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support alternative proposal especially with amendments as I suggest below. (See alternative proposal 2 in following section). I've been thinking along the same lines myself. Documentation should reflect practice. I support the use of {{cquote}} in articles, but not as an alternative way of quoting text in the body of the article. Instead, it has another well defined alternative use case, as I note in my proposal below. LK (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Poorly executed, if well-intentioned RfC; it should have been discussed at WT:MOS instead of here. SMcCandlish has also given us a good explanation as to why MOS forbids using pull quote templates for block quotes: they are a distraction and prone to abuse, let alone stylistically inconsistent. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs)
  • Oppose. I'd like it if we had prettier block quotes too, but that should happen as a site-wide change to formatting, not through inconsistently used templates. Essentially what you are proposing is that we reward careless editors for systematically misusing this template, against its very emphatically stated guidelines and MOS:QUOTE, by seeking approval after the fact. Adding a switch that disables "pull quotes" in mainspace, per SMcCandlish, is the way to solve this problem. Joe Roe (talk) 18:06, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – There are issues around block quotes, but this kind of prettification doesn't make those problems less. Let's have a round of design based on the actual problems instead. Dicklyon (talk) 01:32, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion[edit]

BTW, if you think the template should be deleted, fine, but you should still Support these corrections to the documentation. Then send it to WP:MFD if you want, but if it doesn't get deleted, no one is served by having false documentation.

And I hope to not see "Oppose, new name should be Qmarkquote not Cquote" or whatever. I used those names because they are existing redirects of long-standing duration. You can do a WP:Requested move later. Let's fix one thing at a time here.

And if there's anything in the above which is wrong -- some technical point which I've failed to see, or something -- for goodness' sake please do not be like "Oppose, {{Pull quote}} and {{Quote}} differ in obscure technical sense X, so the proffered documentation is slightly wrong". If you're generally with me on this, make your point and we can be reasonable about changing the documentation in a reasonable way, either now or later. Herostratus (talk) 01:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Changing template documentation does not cut it when MOS still has this to say (MOS:BLOCKQUOTE):

    Format a long quote (more than about 40 words or a few hundred characters, or consisting of more than one paragraph, regardless of length) as a block quotation, which Wikimedia's software will indent from both margins. Block quotations can be enclosed in the {{quote}} template, or between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags. The template also provides parameters for attribution. Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{pull quote}} a.k.a. {{cquote}} template, which are reserved for pull quotes).

    As such, this proposal is trying introduce a nasty inconsistency between MOS and template documentations that are supposed to be subordinate to it. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:00, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Herostratus: Is this not a discussion better suited to WT:MOS as the proposal appears to violate the MOS as it currently stands? Graham (talk) 04:44, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well these are good points. I think the best solution now is to point to this discussion from the WP:MOS talk page (and I have now done this), and to add the requisite change to the MOS here (and I have now done this), on the grounds that all these proposed changes work together and should be stated in one place. The actual place they're stated doesn't matter much, as long as the right pointers from other involved pages are in place, and since we've started here, let's stay here.
I will just remind people that to my mind are two, and only two, reasonable outcomes here:
1) change the documentation (and the MOS) to some variation of what I have proposed, or
2) delete this template.
Simply leaving the template hanging around as is is simply an invitation to misuse the template (according to its documentation) and violate the MOS. Herostratus (talk) 14:58, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Getting back to the merits, I'd like to drive home these three points:
  1. {{Quote}} is confusing in some contexts -- particularly when there is a thumbnail image involved, which can alter the spacing such that the indent is lost. I've seen articles when the transition to a quote is completely lost because the indent is lost due to the presence of images, and it is confusing. That's just a fact. If we don't want to use cquote/rquote to address this we need some other method. (IMO even when the indent is clear that's usually insufficient to indicate that we are switching from body text to a quote (which is a very important thing for the reader to instantly realize) and cquote/rquote provides an improvement in information design here.
  2. Even though we're not a magazine and don't want to use pull quotes, neither should we be willfully blind to current art of page design. You'll note that popular publications -- print and online -- do use methods often including large quote marks, simply to break up visually forbidding swaths of text and just make a better looking page. There's nothing wrong with a good looking page.
  3. Even if you buy neither of those arguments: I hope editors are able to, in their own minds, separate "I, myself, don't like {{cquote}} and wouldn't use it" and "All persons should be forbidden from using {{cquote}}". See the difference? It's a big project, and we want to offer editors tools for various situations and preferences.

Herostratus (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anyone at all in this discussion or any of dozens of prior rounds of it has any trouble distinguishing these concepts. Rather, the cognitive dissonance is coming from the other side: "I, myself, like this template's style, therefore no rationales in the world are good enough to prevent me decorating and drawing undue attention with it." There are undeniable reasons (WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:ENC) that templates should not be used to scream quotations at our readers, as if to forcibly steer them into accepting what you think the important point in a page/section is, and there are less serious reasons (MOS:ICONS, WP:NOT#BLOG, etc.) that, in particular, cutesy giant quotation marks should not be used to indicate quoted material in an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here's something I didn't know: the mobile version of Wikipedia renders {{quote}} with decorative quote marks, black instead of the blueish of {{Pull quote}} but otherwise almost identical. You may make of that what you will. Herostratus (talk) 00:02, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Largely meaningless. The mobile version is in development and flux, with little done with it yet in the way of en.wiki MoS compliance. Because the stylization is applied uniformly in that skin, at the CSS level to every <blockquote>...</blockquote> element, it does not raise the NPOV, etc., concerns that abuse of pull quote templates do when used selectively to drill a "special" point into readers' heads. All the present mobile behavior is, really, is a MoS failure, not a WP:CCPOL problem. Fixing that has been on the to-do list for some time now. The central issue behind the #Alternative suggestion below is probably the only reason that mobile stylization has not been changed already. Aside from all the problems I already identified with this ersatz RfC, an obvious one is the fallacy that the solution in one's hand is the only solution (the inverse of the "all I have is a hammer so ever problem is a nail" fallacy). To wit: the fact that it is technically possible to misuse a pull-quote template to make a block quotation more clearly distinguished from the surrounding text does not mean it is the only way, much less the best way. We have a long-standing and repeatedly tested consensus against a) randomly stylizing quotations to editor whim, b) misusing pull-quote templates for non-pull-quotes, c) actually having real pull quotes in mainspace pages except with very rare exceptions, d) radically changing the default style of block quotes, and e) being inconsistent with blockquote presentation with a profusion of templates for them (they've almost all been deleted, and have been undergoing parameter normalization over time so they can all be merged away).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Back-and-forth commentary moved here out of !voting section.
@SMcCandlish: Well, relax. There's a difference between "I don't agree with your proposal" and "I reject your right to even make this proposal". See the difference? It's a perfectly valid proposal, and I advertised it at WP:MOS; since the changes to this template and the MOS hang together, it's only sensible to have the discussion in one place. Right here is fine, since it's advertised at the MOS talk page.

We're on the same side here, User:SMcCandlish. We want to bring documentation in line with practice. That is how functional organizations operate.

As to deleting the template, that's been tried three times so far. It hasn't succeeded, probably because it is used in tens of thousands of articles, including FA's and GA's. it is used in tens of thousands of articles, including FA's and GA's either because it's useful, functional, and attractive tool of information design which helps the reader quickly comprehend what she is reading, or we have thousands of morons editing here. I guess we disagree about that. Herostratus (talk) 11:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that this and similar templates have been TfDed so many times is clear evidence of unresolved community concerns about them. If you go over those discussions in detail, the supports amount primarily to A) "our present block quotation style isn't distinct enough", B) "MoS should be defied because I hate rules", and C) "I love decorating". These templates have been kept on the basis of vote counting, not rationale analysis. Only point A matters, and the solution to it isn't festooning articles with inappropriate aggrandizement of cherry-picked quotations with excessive and inconsistent stylization drawn from blogs and tabloids; it's making block quotation style just distinct enough. The stle being used here is essentially unknown in other, professional-grade publications. It is not used in other encyclopedias, and not even in mainstream journalism, which uses actual pull quotes. If it were "useful, functional" (which sound like the same thing" and "attractive", we would see it everywhere. Instead we see it in marketing materials and in self-published blogs written by people won don't understand what a pull quote is. It's in FAs because they pre-date MoS saying anything about it, and then people have used a thinkly disguised WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument to insert it into more FAs. FA is not a "get out of guideline compliance forever" card. But there's a a strong current of "fuck the MoS and other guidelines and policy, I own this article I wrote and it will be the way I want it to be" running through FA discussions, so fixing compliance problems with FAs is tedious and slow (see, e.g., recent entrenched resistance to MOS:JR, fighting tooth and nail against an RfC and guideline for four months straight. Pure WP:TE. See also the "death to infoboxes in bios" holy war that has already produced one ArbCom case without making a dent in the disruptive campaigning, plus an ongoing ARCA filing, and a probablye send RFARB soon. These quote templates are abused i thousands of other articles because of copy-catting. People see it used in one place and assume it's "WP-favored style", when it is really the opposite. I already covered this above; it's a common memetic problem in a collaborative and zillion-editor environment, affecting over-capitalization (of species, job titles, descriptive terms for events that are not proper nouns, words like "a" and "of" in song titles, and dozens more areas), and many other style matters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Challenge 1: Find another encyclopedia treating quotations this way (good luck).
Challenge 2: Find a mainstream, formal publication doing so (and I'll explain why either it's not actually directly comparable, or in the off chance it is, why it's not appropriate in Wikipedia, if that's not already obvious, because of radical differences between the genres/registers of the writing, its intent, and the audience expectations and needs).
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Side discussions[edit]

Alternative suggestion[edit]

The legitimate concern (i.e., not "I wanna decorate!" or – much worse – "I can use this to browbeat readers with cherry-picked and politicized quoting to steer their interpretation") that leads some editors to favor there being some alternative to {{Quote}}, the standardized block quotation template, is that our present formatting of block quotations may not make them easy enough to distinguish from regular text (sometimes just on particular devices, or in particular layouts).

Seek consensus at WT:MOS to mildly stylize block quotations, consistently and site-wide. It's actually fairly common in off-WP style guides to recommend a font change (usually slightly smaller text), not just indentation alone, to set off a block quotation from regular prose, and we could take this approach here. I'd been thinking of proposing this myself for some time, probably applying a 90%-or-so font size and/or a very slight background tinting, barely noticeable and well within WP:ACCESS limits.

Please note that previous proposals for non-mild stylization, at MOS, Village Pump, and elsewhere (e.g. italic, colored vertical bar similar to how dispute/cleanup templates looks, giant quotation marks, splashy color, borders, etc.) have previously all failed. This is a very strong indicator that no proposal to alter site-wide appearance of block quotations will succeed unless it is subtle. Previous attempts to just let chaos reign and permit any random stylization people want to apply to quotations (i.e, sporadic "down with MoS!" activism) has also been shot down again and again, at multiple venues, and has led to the deletion of various instances of "my new quotation styling template" stuff.

I would support a reasonable proposal in the sort of direction I outline above, in the right venue, and I'm sure many others would, too, given how frequently "block quotes aren't distinct enough on Wikipedia" is offered as a complaint, or as a rationale for abusing pull quote templates.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:50, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support a reasonable proposal to more adequately - yet as subtly as possible! - distinguish quotes from body text. Which is one reason I've long longed for a much more universal implementation of demi-bold weights in common typefaces ... but perhaps that's not gonna happen this year, lustrum, decade, ... Without such a feature, I don't have any better suggestion than this rather ugly one: to use italics (and to flip its use back to upright for text already italicised). Please, editors, give some thought to better ways of distinguishing block quotes without creating visual vomit. And encourage others to do likewise! yoyo (talk) 08:24, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We'd never get consensus to italicize, since it's generally interpreted as fairly strong emphasis (i.e., it's very unsubtle, and we've already had years of problems with editors randomly italicizing things between quotations marks, largely because new editors get confused about the difference between "..." quotation and ''...'' wikimarkup, and inexperienced writers get confused about things like titles of major works in italics and or minor works/sub-works in quotation marks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative suggestion 2[edit]

There is an important point that most of the commentators here are missing, {{cquote}} is usually not used as an alternative to {{quote}}. Instead {{cquote}} is a complement to {{quote}}. They have different use cases. See this section of the Mark Twain article. The section uses both {{cquote}} and {{quote}}. I'm not sure if I'm articulating it correctly, but {{cquote}} is used in a way similar to how we use photos in articles. It creates a prose picture, that illustrates and complements the text – but that is not directly related to the text. On the other hand, {{quote}} is used when the emphasis is on the text itself. With {{quote}}, the quoted text forms part of the text of the article, in a way that photos, and {{cquote}} prose boxes do not. Hence, I think that most of the people who argue against the use of {{cquote}}(as an alternative way of quoting text) are missing the point. I propose that we implement the proposal, except we remove the any proposed text that suggests that it may be used in place of {{cquote}}. Instead, someone who writes better than I should document how to use {{cquote}} properly, to create illustrative prose boxes. LK (talk) 15:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC) LK (talk) 15:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC) [reply]

Yes you have a valid point. However, your joining in in shooting down the proposal (by not supporting it with your !vote) is counter-functional, and a good demonstration of why it so difficult to move forward in Wikipedia in ways that other functional, successful organizations move forward: "This is a good proposal, but it is not worded exactly perfectly, therefore I oppose."
The current documentation flat forbids the use of the template as it is used at Mark_Twain#Later_life_and_death. Flat forbids it. You are honor-bound to remove that use of rquote (which you have praised) if you wish to not stand in lawless defiance of the MOS and the template documentation.
The current proposal simply says {{Cquote}}... is similar to {{Quote}}, but more decorative... and, at the MOS, {{Cquote}} and {{rquote}} are alternatives to {{quote}}.... This absolutely permits the use you cite as useful and functional. It gives the editor credit for some modicum of intelligence and some leeway to use the tool as she has been given the wit and grace to see the right.
I implore you to change your comment to Support. You are welcome to make other, separate proposals at another time. Moving forward is hard enough, this is an encyclopedia business not a debating society, and we need every shoulder at the wheel that we can get. Herostratus (talk) 16:47, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I largely agree with you, and have changed my !vote to reflect this. LK (talk) 02:12, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's not like we're proposing to put quotations on the pavement...
By the way, while I'm here, here's one example of one of the problems. Here I've got two pictures, and of course you can say "well don't do that" but it doesn't matter what you say: people do do that (often by putting a picture in where there's a long infobox), and it puts a strain on the information display system.
...or on rustic signs!

There was always some kind of strain, but it was workable. The bigger you get, the more of a strain it is, because in your everyday life, you're less used to compromising. As you get bigger, you have your own way. But in a partnership you always have to compromise. ... When you get into a partnership, you're not the boss. There's no boss. That makes it hard.

— Paul Simon

Did you catch right away where the text ended and the quote began. (And even if you did, are you confident that a new reader would have.) It's very important for the reader's comprehension to be able to detect this switch instantly. Why do we want to be like "Well, let the reader read the whole section, and maybe move back a couple lines, and puzzle over it a bit, and them be like 'oh I get it, this part is a quote'"? How does that help our mission. Herostratus (talk) 18:03, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Lawrencekhoo and Herostratus: I've made the same point here but regarding {{Quote box}}, which is better suited, and more often used, in this role. Refer to the example article in an older version which still used this template: Thorpe affair (rev. 733290489). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:25, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I can see right away where the regular text ends the quote begins, and the regular text restarts. If there are specific browser situations where this is not so clear, this is a matter for CSS tweaks, and if necessary for making minor changes to default blockquote display, per #Alternative suggestion, below. See also below about overhaul of the Thorpe affair article, vastly improved by removing the decorative quote templates and working the material into the article at the quotations' proper contexts, plus eliminating one as redundant, unencyclopedic trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:33, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The vast majority of the uses of {{pull quote}}, etc., are abuses of the templates to do one of three things, none of which are encyclopedic:
  1. Put material in a sidebar, out of context and confusing to readers, rather than do any work to integrate it into the prose, a habit of bloggers and other amateurs, and favored by no one but people who fancy themselves Web layout people (and who are actually poor at it, and do not understand that WP is not a blog or a webhost for their experiments);
  2. Add trivia, teasers, and "mystery" to an article for purely decorative or attention-seeking reasons, a habit of tabloid journalism and public relations (marketing);
  3. Add fake pull quotes – quotations that are probably pertinent but are in fact not highlighting material integrated into the prose, just grand-standing one party's viewpoint in a visually disruptive, PoV-pushing, and reader-steering manner. I just a an hour ago fixed all three at once in a single article, along with other problems in it, like making allegations in WP's voice, burying the lede by hiding outcomes of legal cases in "cliffhanger" headings, etc. [3].
The fourth case, real pull quotes, are rare on Wikipedia, because it's a news style practice not suited to encyclopedic text; every single case of it can be eliminated by integrated quotations into the prose. If quote is really important to highlight (perhaps because an entire section is devoted to the statement and public reactions to it, it can be put in the block quotation at or near the top of the section. It needs mo more excessive highlighting that that – not with giant quote marks, not with boxes, not with colorful backgrounds, not with a huge font.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:49, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I hear you. You have a kind of narrow and stuffy view what is "encyclopedic" in my view. My experience and perception differs from yours, I guess, and we just disagree. We've both made our points and, what with the various alternative proposals and different discussion sections being actively edited and all, the discussion is close to becoming chaotic (I would prefer all discussion take place in the main body of the "Threaded discussion" discussion section (although I myself just violated that with the picture thing) and I will now reformat to help bring more order to the discussion. I'd suggest that both you and I pipe down for a while, User:SMcCandlish, and let other wise heads make their points. Herostratus (talk) 19:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Herostratus: Fair enough. I don't want to get repetitive. See bottom of my talk page for a detailed analysis of why all three of the quote boxes in the article I diff above were severely wrong-headed (yet are precisely exemplary of what this RfC is trying put a stamp of approval on). If you walk through the editing steps at that article (that diff is a multi-edit diff), the individual edit summaries also get the problems across in less detail but an easier scan.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:27, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@ SMcCandlish, well, I guess you agree with me on when {{cquote}} is usually used, that is to not in the main text itself, but off to one side. You just don't agree that it should be used. Can I suggest that the question of whether 'fake' pull quotes (including those created with {{Quote box}}) should or shouldn't be in articles, is a question for another forum? In the mean time, I think we can agree that the documentation here should accurately reflect how it is currently used by the community. LK (talk) 02:12, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

August 2016 Notice -- RfC involving this template[edit]

It is here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184#RfC: What (if anything) to do about quotations, and the quotation templates? Herostratus (talk) 21:01, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The RfC is actually about the entire class of such templates, to clarify.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The archive of this important but convoluted discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184. Daask (talk) 18:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request[edit]

  • However the RFC and template discussion comes out, before then it would be really nice if the pass arguments to these templates were consistent with citation templates.

Particularly, publication or publisher should alias source; so in {{pull quote}}:

Original code sample:
{{{source|{{{publication|publisher}}} }}} }}}
and 


source={{{source|{{{publication|publisher}}}}}}}}}

should do the trick. The latter in {{cquote}} should be tested in the X1`... X4 trial templates to verify no source= define cause no problems in the sub-template logic. // FrankB 19:10, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: Hi Fabartus, I might be reading this wrong, but given the current template spec, I believe your request is to default to "publisher" if |source=, |publication=, |title=, |quotesource=, and |5= are not given...? It's a not 100% clear exactly what syntactic change is requested here. May you make the change in the template sandbox, update the testcases, and re-open this request then? — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 23:48, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. Thanks User:Andy M. Wang, I seem to have forgotten the internal pipes, both quantities should default to nil, so express only when one of those parameters are defined. I've passed parameters like this to subtemplates extensively on the Wikibooks project, so the tech is up to it. In forty years of programming, have never been a fan of single defaults... (My memory is too bad for starters, at least if I haven't used it for a few months! Hence contextual natural terms interest me--they make me more efficient and eliminate false starts!)... my wikimarkup above says: to alias the 'source' parameter with both publication and publisher, which, context dependent, are what might naturally occur to those using the quote templates. (about here I spotted the missing pipes! ~8(> sniff!)

— so (Correcting request) in {{pull quote}}: 

{{{source|{{{publication|publisher|}}} }}} }}}

any place source occurs in the code... and 


source={{{source|{{{publication|publisher|}}}}}}}}}

in the calls to {{pull quote}} in the other quote templates like {{cquote}} calling it. I generally use cquote to use paragraphs by nineteenth century paragraphs that I frankly, can't top for context or conciseness. See the two in Lehigh Coal Company (section), for example. Since I normally cite author, a book or publication has publisher, or if a journal, is a publication. Hence my nefarious desire. Thanks for the time. // FrankB 01:59, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fabartus: This probably makes sense; I've been slowly, carefully normalizing all the quote template parameters to be cross-compatible where this is possible (one of the decorative templates has radically different parameters and just needs to be replaced) over the last year or so, with an eye to having a bot make them consistent so we can remove the extraneous ones permanently. As Andy M. Wang said, please integrate the desired changes into a sandbox copy; this sort of thing should be tested well, since this template is used much more frequently (mostly outside mainspace) than most of the other quote-decorating templates. However, this template should not be used, per MOS:BQ, for block quotations from documents like you propose above. If that train-wreck of an RfC makes a radical change at MOS, I'm sure we can revisit this, but in the interim, if you're planning to use the forthcoming parameter compatibility to convert a bunch of {{Quote}} instances to {{Pull quote}}, please do not. It would be interpreted as disruptive and WP:FAITACCOMPLI.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy M. Wang: — apologies... entirely missed reading the request to do this up in a sandbox template... besides, t'was hoping someone here would take on the time, I haven't done much with templates here since 2009! FrankB
@SMcCandlish: - as noted in the above apology, missed that request! I'm afraid I was more focused on keeping several involved but related edits straight when answering that. IIRC, had seven browsers going each with multiple tabs to references at the time... much of that is still pending. Citations are a pain when editing! I'll see if I can get to this sometime this week. It's really not hard...
  • See for example: b:template:FUN-top and sub-template b:template:TRS-hdrbox if either of you feel like taking it on first. The trick is managing the parameters so the calling template doesn't pass anything but a NIL value to the sub-template when none of the names are defined. Real life calls... best regards! // FrankB 14:48, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of external RfC[edit]

An RfC which also envisions changes to this page is here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes. Herostratus (talk) 17:32, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Right to left quotes[edit]

I have added an optional |rtl=y for Arabic quotes. see here for an example. Frietjes (talk) 14:02, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 19 January 2017[edit]

Please redirect Template:Centered pull quote to Template:Cquote, as at the moment it is a double redirect and breaks its use. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 21:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done Cabayi (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 11 May 2017[edit]

Documentation is not showing up. I note that the name of this page and its documentation name was changed in January 2017. Whether this broke it and its been like this since, I don't know. The name of the page and its doc page match, I think ("Template:Cquote" and "Template:Cquote/doc"), so {{documentation}} should automatically bring in the doc page. The problem could be in {{documentation}} but I can't see why just this page would be affected. At any rate, edit request is: fix this please, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 08:56, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Herostratus: Question: The setup of the documentation looks ok to me from a quick look at it, and it's showing up ok. Have you tried a WP:PURGE, as it could be just a bad cached copy? Murph9000 (talk) 09:06, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Showing up here, too. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:20, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, you're right. It's showing up now. Ohhhh.... someone blanked the page today. It was rolled back but I must have picked it up. Nevermind, sorry. Herostratus (talk) 09:25, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not semantic and other issues[edit]

Despite being a blockquote, this template does not utilize the <blockquote> element. On top of that, this template uses tables in the year 2018! (CSS has improved leaps and bounds and should make the necessity of this zero) This is bad for accessibility and is unsemantic. Perhaps this was done so the enclosing quotes could be selected, but those are actually redundant to the block formatting, per the Manual of Style:

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks (and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{cquote}} template

So not only are they gaudy, this template is specifically called out for overuse by our own Manual of Style. Opencooper (talk) 23:27, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 27 September 2019[edit]

Please change template call {{trimq}} to {{trim quotes}} to avoid the redirect. The call to that template is transcluded in more than 35,000 articles through being called in this template, so that unnecessary redirect has to be followed every time one of those articles is viewed. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:11, 25 September 2019 (UTC) Colonies Chris (talk) 14:43, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Done – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:09, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed changes re {cquote}[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Actual RfC is now open, so closing this thread-of-threads about drafting it, per WP:TALKFORK and WP:MULTI.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I propose to edit this template so that it either becomes a cover for a call to {{quote}} in article space, or else simply emits an error if used in article space, in line with suggestions in that page, and with Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 188#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes where consensus was developed (or arguably confirmed) not to use a pull-quote format (which is what cquote does) in Wikipedia articles.

I will sandbox possible versions of this template and present them here. I will also probalby edit existing articles with cquote in place to covert it to {{quote}}. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 21:09, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. In plain English, what will you be doing? Sorry; I don't understand. Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:57, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Three things, BeenAroundAWhile.
  1. I will be preparing a version of this template which, when invoked in the main article space becomes just a call to {{quote}}. I have started this at Template:Cquote/sandbox1, but it isn't working correctly yet.
  2. I will be preparing a version of this template which, when invoked in the main article space, displays an error message instead of the quote. Once I have the first version this should be easy. Both will use {{main other}}. When i have both ready I will post links here and suggest that one or the other replace the current version of cquote.
  3. I will find a few of the 35,000-odd articles that use {{cquote}} and convert them to use {{quote}}, and see if anyone reverts or objects. I have done about 10 such articles so far, they can be found in my contributions, or I can post a list here if anyone wishes me to. If after a few days there is no objection, and no one here objects either, I may use AWB to do somewhat larger numbers.
Is that clear, BeenAroundAWhile? Oh, please ping me in any reply, if you would be so kind. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 17:10, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DESiegel, this needs a new RFC. I, being fussy, hate to see decorated quotes in Wikipedia articles and agree with all the notices at the top of the templates that say they are not to be used. I support removing the templates. But your notice at WT:MOS said "act on" the Dec 2016 RfC. It already has been completely acted on. During 17-19 January 2017 Herostratus made all the changes to implement the specific results of the Dec 2016 RfC. That involved removing any mention of pull quotes, and created {{Cquote}} by moving {{Pull quote}}. It was suggested the issue of whether to "legalize" Cquote for ordinary quotations, remove it, or ignore it would need a further RfC. StarryGrandma (talk) 01:07, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
StarryGrandma Perhaps it does, and I will see about starting one. Do you think it should again be on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style or on this page, or somewhere else? I would welcome your advice. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 03:50, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
An RfC would need to be at WT:MOS and put on Centralized discussions, but I suggest not doing it. It will be long, drawn out, and a mess. There are editors who love it and editors who hate it. I've been looking at the talk page archives here and at MOS as well as looking at TfD. It turns out Cquote has a longer history than I realized; it went through other names and ended back at Cquote. It's been controversial from the start (2005), and there have been many discussions about removing it. With this history I feel a new RfC will not be able to reach consensus to remove it. The Dec 2016 RfC was just about removing references to pull quote, but it wasn't being used for pull quotes in articles so that wasn't a big issue. StarryGrandma (talk) 06:30, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right. I mean, at the end of the day, the conflict is not so much between "I like this template" and "I don't like this template" as it is between "I like to boss around other editors and tell them how do to stuff" and "I don't". This later conflict you're never going to resolve, it's a matter of personality. And some people roll that way and some people don't. But for what it's worth, the Wikipedia is a bit anarchic compared to, let's say, the Los Angeles Times. At the Times, the stylebook is promulgated top-down by the senior editors or managers, specifies the details of precisely how every minor situation is handled, and is to be followed and if you refuse to you're out on your ear. There are enough people here that don't think the Wikipedia can or even should operate like that's it hard to generate a popular enforcement regime to remove otherwise-good editors for refusing to be micro-managed re formatting issues. So in a way it's kind of pointless to try. This is one reason I'm leery of an RfC, especially a broad one. Herostratus (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:DESiegel...

I will be preparing a version of this template which, when invoked in the main article space becomes just a call to {{quote}}.

Uh... no, I wouldn't advise doing that, no. I mean that essentially destroys the template doesn't it?? I for one have put some work into it so, not, I don't think that'd be great idea.

I will find a few of the 35,000-odd articles that use {{cquote}} and convert them to use {{quote}}, and see if anyone reverts or objects

Yeah I object. This would be... not to be flippant, but "I will set loose giant carnivore spiders on the subway and see if anyone objects" is the sort of thing that comes to mind as similar. I wouldn't recommend this, no.

I will be preparing a version of this template which, when invoked in the main article space, displays an error message instead of the quote

That's... not a good idea? I'm going to just assume that you're not familiar with the history of the many discussions around this template and related issues, which: fine, it's impossible to keep up with even a fraction of the various things around so, so no problem. But yeah I'd recommend slowing down a good deal and getting familiar with that, if you want to pursue the matter.

On the merits, there're a lot of things to say about how to format quotes, and many of them have been said many times, but one thing for sure is that despite the admonition not to, many thousands of editors have "voted with their feet" to use this template in articles. You can choose to not respect that if that's how you roll, I guess, but you can't make other people not respect it.

If you like, we can engage on the merits, and this would surely be helpful to you if you want to proceed. If you can defeat me in open argument, you might have a clear road; if not, maybe not; but at any rate we can surely learn from each other.

Statements to the effect of "I personally don't care for..." or "To me it looks..." or "To my eyes, seems rather..." or "But the template says right there to not..." and so forth are not, in my opinion, as useful as statements such as "Henderson's Information Design for the 21st Century says..." or "Looking at similar publications, we see..." or "Data from this survey shows..." or "Principles of ergonomic user interface design suggest that..." and so forth. See the difference? Looking forward to engaging on he subject if you like. Herostratus (talk) 03:21, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Herostratus...

  • You wrote (about developign an alternate version of this template) that essentially destroys the template doesn't it?? Not at all. It reamins useful for pull quotes on user pages, whoch i belive is its only legitimate function. I think that previous consensuss, while perhaps not as celar cut as it might have been supports this view. Therefore i will proceed with creating nthe modified versiosn described above. However, I will not substitute them for the curren version, not use them in articel space, until consensus to do so is clear. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wrote above: I will find a few of the 35,000-odd articles that use {{cquote}} and convert them to use {{quote}}, and see if anyone reverts or objects I have now done this on aboiut nten articles, and I will probably do a fgew more over time. I will not do this on a larger scale without significant support, however. I was not, until recvently, aware of this template, but I ahve now read a good deal of its history and tread though the key RfC linked above, as well as the histoy of this talk page. I do not see any valid arguments for the use of this template (in unmodified form) in the main article space. And the current MOS specifiically indicates that this shoudl not be done. Now it is true that the MOS is not a set of abdolute, never to be vio9lated ruels. But it si a lot mroe than a set of mild suggestiosn, and there should generally be a very good readon for defviatign from the MOS. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • You wrote above: Statements to the effect of "I personally don't care for..." or "To me it looks..." or "To my eyes, seems rather..." or "But the template says right there to not..." and so forth are not, in my opinion, as useful as statements such as "Henderson's Information Design for the 21st Century says..." or "Looking at similar publications, we see..." or "Data from this survey shows..." or "Principles of ergonomic user interface design suggest that..." and so forth. See the difference? I do see the difference, but I disagree with you as to which is more persuasive. This is a matter of Wikipedia's self-selected house style, and I cannotr see that the practicves of any other publication nor authority are at all controlling, or even highly relvant. What matters, and all that matters is the consensus of Wikipedia editors. That consensus was, as of the previous RfC, clearly agaist this practice (large decorative quotes in articles), although not perhaps to the point of trying to ban it outright. Of course consensus can change, and perhaps it has. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It seems now that a fuller discussion, in the form of a new RfC, may be needed. That would be a "discussion on the merits". Do you, Herostratus, have an opnion as to where that RfC might take place? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I repeat that wihile I will go ahead with creating alternate versions of this template, they will only be sandboxed versions not invoked except on test pages not in article space, until adn unless there is consensus to replace the current tempalte. Surely creating a sandbox version to demonstrsate a possible alternative canot be so horrid an idea? Or did you nthink I was goign to unilatereally replace a widely used template in all its invocations? I thought I made it clear above that i was not. But if I didn't i am not going to do that, nor change thousands of apges directly without consensus. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 04:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh all right, yes, of course, creating pages in your userspace is fine, proof of concept pages and so on are useful. I misunderstood.
At the same time, you have said

I will find a few of the 35,000-odd articles that use {{cquote}} and convert them to use {{quote}}, and see if anyone reverts or objects" I have now done this on about [ten?] articles, and I will probably do a few more over time.

Which seems more than just creating pages in your userspace? At any rate: probably better not. Anybody does object: me. I am anybody. No I don't want to follow you around reverting you, please self-revert, thanks.
I think an RfC on the matter should probably go at WP:MOS, but with pointers to that RfC from a few other place, such as this talk page, and really anywhere else you can (without canvassing) publicize it.
You'd want to be real careful with how the RfC is worded. I think we'd want to something along the lines of "The template documentation says 'This template should not be used for block quotations in article text'. Should this be removed, modified, or left in place? If modified, how?"
That alone is a lot of questions. RfCs work less well the more questions there are, if the goal is an actual action item. In one sense better might be "keep it or remove it, yes or no", altho you're going to get a lot of "Keep, but change it to say should be used" and "Keep, but change it to just a recommendation" etc. and "Neither, just delete the template" and etc. etc. and how do you handle that.
In addition, there's the separate question of what the MOS says. MOS:BLOCKQUOTE also says not to use this template. So you might not want to change one without changing the other, altho then again you might. (I see that MOS:BLOCKQUOTE still gives use of raw <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML as a legit alternative, heh. We tried to get this removed, but there were enough boomers around to block that... just goes to show how we can get encrusted with nonsense that nobody actually pays attention to, but can't get removed, either. Oh well: Wikipedia.)
So this is not going to be an easy RfC to construct and run, which I why I myself have put it off. But yeah it's been on my back burner. Probably might need a couple-few RfCs, and since this is such a long-term contentious issues, which scores of editors have expressed opinions on over the years, and which affects the actual appearance of many thousands of pages, maybe a WP:CENT RfC ought to be considered.
My guess is that, after a great deal of effort, you're going to end up with no supermajority, so nothing much will change: neither the MOS nor this template will be changed, nor will people stop using this template in articles. If so, kind of a waste of energy, but you never know; RfC's have a way of surprising you.
There's another question, which is, if it is decided to leave the admonition in place, should the enforcement regime be altered? Right now, nobody much pays attention to it (that's true of a number of rules, and this "slack" is usually a good thing). "Enforcement" is not a good rubric for peer-to-peer interactions, so if we're going to go that way we want to figure out something, and the MOS talk page is maybe not the place. Since you prominently say "I support Wikipedia:Process is Important and I urge all Wikipedians to read it and consider it before undertaking out-of-process actions, particularly in regard to administrative functions", and since mass conversions of article formats is an administrative function, and sanctions against people who continue to use the template in a way unpleasing to you even more so, I'm sure you agree we want to go slow here. There's no hurry. Maybe the best thing would to make or obtain a bot and go thru of the bot approval process. It is here: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, but I'm not familiar with it. If you'd rather do it by hand... well, that's down the road. That can be discussed later, following an enthusiastic approval of keeping the current admonition.
As to

pull quotes on user pages, which I believe is its only legitimate function

You believe wrong. One way I know you're wrong is that the legitimate function of things here is decided by practice. Rules codify best practice, common practice, and consensus, and are not supposed to be prescriptive. Thousands of editors apparently think that best practice is to use this template in articles. Calling this illegitimate is... not how it works. You may think that it is silly or ugly or declasse or offputting or whatever to use this template in articles, but I mean that's way different from "illegitimate".
Anyway, on the merits, the main thing that matters is how using this template in articles affects the reader. If it confuses her, that's bad. But we're pretty sure it doesn't; at any rate, no mechanism for how that would happen has been established, I don't think. There are several other reasons using the template in articles might lead to a bad (or: good) experience for the reader, and of course how it affects the editing process is not nothing even if its secondary to the reader's experience. But if you want to do an RfC there'll be space aplenty to stretch all this out. Herostratus (talk) 06:29, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As I've said recently, the only subject I have ever studied that has more esoteric ways of doing things than Wikipedia is quantum mechanics. This template exists in a superposition of states, both alive and dead. DESiegel, the warning at the top is a compromise left there as the result of many discussions. Editors who like the template use it. Editors who don't like it can point to the warning. But there is no consensus to stop using it or to say it is fine to use it. Herostratus, how is someone seeing this template supposed to know this? Normally a warning like this means that if you see it in use you should remove it. This is a good faith effort to do what seems to be required. I think the warning needs a warning, or at least a talk page box mentioning that this is not a normal warning. StarryGrandma (talk) 13:39, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not see a need for the kind of complex, multi-level RfC that Herostratus suggests above. As I see it, the main question is simple, even binary: Given the existing consensus, embodyed in the MOS and the instructions to cquote, should cquote be changed so that it does not provide decorative quotes in the main article space? If not, what other measures (if any) should be taken instead to prevent such use in future? DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:34, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As to substantive reasons on the mertis, to me the main issue is that such formatting gives undue weight to any quotation so marked, and thus tends to violate WP:NPOV even if that was not the intent of the editor using cquote or any similar template DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:37, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm really tired of this reasoning being mindlessly trotted out. We make decisions all the time about what to emphasize and what to deemphasize; we do it every time we quote from one source instead of another, or quote just part of a given source instead of the whole source. These things can be done in a NPOV way or not, just like all other content choices. It's not often, but now and then there's a quotation which incontrovertibly epitomizes something larger, and which is useful to highlight at a level beyond mere blockquoting, just as we hihglight images. In Gettysburg Address, there would be nothing NPOV about about highlighting, say, we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.. Or if we had an article specifically on Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, to highlight We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done would be in no way NPOV.
    Now, as it happens I think cquote and its big curly quotes are unsightly, so I don't think it should be used; I'd rather see the above passages in quote boxes. But NPOV has nothing to do with it. It's a red herring. EEng 10:38, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh any any article edits to convert cquote to quote are simply a matter of bringing an articel into MOS compliance, and no more inappropriate than supplying a missing boldface in the lead sentence, or changing a section header from title case to sentence case. I expect to keep on, probably about 10 articles in a batch, and at most one batch per day, for the forseeable future. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:37, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Is the proposal to get rid of this style? I like this distinction to use in articles even though they are not really pull-quotes but simply a way to highlight some facet of a story for the benefit of the article. Often they are misused as block quotes, which serve an entirely different purpose. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 22:37, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for an RfC at WT:MOS[edit]

DESiegel, Herostratus, I propose to start an RfC at WT:MOS and post it on centralized discussion because it affects so many editors and a wide range of articles. I don't plan to be on one side or the other. I think this needs a project-wide hearing again before proceeding. What do you think of the wording below for the basic RfC statement?

Cquote is used in many articles to set off quotes with large decorative quote marks in spite of the MOS saying not to use it and the warning at the template that it not be used in articles. Should Cquote redirect to Quote in mainspace, or should its use be legitimized and the warnings removed?

Where else should it be posted? StarryGrandma (talk) 22:58, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

StarryGrandma I wish you would wait until I have the sandbox version of cquote that will call quote in mainspace but act as it does now in other spaces working properly, so it can be linked in the RfC. I would also probably suggest some slightly modified wording, including links to the previous RfC thatr resulted in the current wording at MOS:BLOCKQUOTE saying that cquote should not be used in article space. I expect to be working on this sandbox template tomorrow, possibly tonight (ET, aka UTC-5). DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:18, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DESiegel, I am not in a rush but I don't think it is necessary to have anything working at this point. The proposal to redirect when in mainspace has come up before. RfCs run for 30 days. The wording above is just for the brief statement that gets posted at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All. I'm working on the background and proposal statements and will ask here for comments on those too. We can see where you are then. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Very well, StarryGrandma DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 01:20, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, StarryGrandma, we need to work more on the RfC text... it's tricky. Let's see... "in spite of" isn't really neutral language; it's generally used to describe either illegal or heroic action. Nobody's spiting anybody here, they're just formatting text. "the warning at the template that it not be used in articles", with that bolding? That's uncalled for and no, you don't want to do that.

(Fun fact, "not be used" is bolded in the template doc, even tho it's not bolded in the MOS, because some random person just wrote it that way. I looked it up; name was L-something. He's retired years ago now. It's not like there was a considered discussion "Well, after this well-attended, erudite, and fruitful discussion, do we have general agreement to bold this text so as to make the proscription particularly dramatic"? Heck no, L-something-guy just decided to bold it on his own dime. A lot of minor rules and details of rules get created that way; you'd be surprised. You can't take this stuff as gospel.)

However, "Should Cquote redirect to Quote in mainspace, or should its use be legitimized and the warnings removed?" is getting closer to the heart of the matter. Yes, in my opinion it should be one or the other; this is a 10-year running sore. However, good luck with that. You're going to get a lot of "Neither, instead let's do X" or "Neither, just leave it all as is" and a 50-50 split on the merits, so much time spent with no change. If you word the question exactly right, maybe you can improve on that.

If the community does decide to put paid to Cquote, an entirely separate question is whether it should be replaced by {{quote}} or {{quotebox}}. In particular this question has to be asked for less-than-full-page-width uses. I think a "make {{cquote}} just a redirect to {{quote}}" is going to run into problems that "Deprecate {{cquote}} and replace it over time with either {{quote}} or {{quotebox}} on a case-by-case basis" won't. Problem is, {{cquote}} is already deprecated, but it just won't take, nor can it be deleted (people have tried)... so... complicated.

Why don't you ask User:SMcCandlish and User:EEng for advice? They've been involved in this issue since at least the Eisenhower Administration, they'll know what to do. Herostratus (talk) 02:42, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • I would present three and only three options: 1) deprecate cquote for manspace and enforce this by so changing it so that in mainspace it becomes an invocation of quote (not quote box) instead; 2) deprecate cquote and so change nit that any invocation in mainspace produces a big red error message, followed by an AWB or bot task to remove all such invocations; 3) do nothing. Of course, peoe can always add options, but i would not start them in play. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 03:58, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
One of the things to consider is that {{quotebox}} is pretty popular too. If you're going to destroy {{cquote}}, an automatic conversion to {{quote}} rather than a case-by-case conversion of {{cquote}} to eithe {{quote}} or {{quotebox}} depending on various factors, is going to be not terribly popular I don't think. Yet, this case-by-case conversion would be a different can of worms, and a timesink.
If, on consideration, your goal is really basically (immediately, or sooner or later) end up with just {{quote}} as the permitted format for all long quotes... at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184#Summary to date, and thinking about next steps I count 20 to 9 in favor of allowing {{quotebox}} as an alternative to {{quote}}, so looks like an uphill battle there.
I wouldn't favor introducing big red error messages on purpose. More importantly, I don't think it will gain consensus support, so it's a waste to include it as an option. In my opinion.
Maybe one thing that could be done is just grandfather {{cquote}} like this: leave the code in place, but blank and salt the documentation page, and remove all mention of {{cquote}} from the MOS, in the hope that over the years and decades use of {{cquote}} in articles will dwindle. Thing is, tho, the big bolded admonition to DO NOT USE hasn't worked, so I don't know as this will.
Mind, I'm opposed to all these options, and a lot of other people will be too. So, dunno if all this is worth it. Herostratus (talk) 11:25, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mainspace use of {{Cquote}} and its ilk has already been deprecated by RfCs more than once. The problems have been that a) replacing them with {{Quote}} throughout mainspace is a massive job (unless they're changed to just output {{Quote}} formatting in that namespace), and b) people keep adding more instances of {{Cquote}}, etc., to mainspace through the "monkey see, monkey do" effect. As long as there remain uses of decorative quote templates in mainspace, editors will continue to imitate and spread those uses to other articles. We can deprecate this yet again, but we have to arrive at an actual solution this time. Also, suggesting an option to replace it with big red error messages is not viable. There are too many uses of it in mainspace for that to be practical. "The documentation hasn't worked" ... because most editors don't usually read template documentation; they just copy-paste what they see in one article into another and fill in the content. The value in the mainspace-deprecation being in the template documentation is that a) it discourages misuse of the template by those editors who actually do read template documentation, and b) it provides a documented and easy-to-cite rationale for changing a mainspace {{Cquote}} (or whatever) to {{Quote}}. That is to say, "Various editors don't pay attention to the documentation" isn't ever a rationale for anything. People all the time ignore, say, the instructions for which parameters means what in citation and infobox templates, but we do not delete the documentation, or pretend it doesn't mean what it says, we just clean up after the lazy editors and ask them to be less lazy.

    What I would suggest is an RfC like this:
    The Manual of Style (at MOS:BQ) advises the use of a particular block-quotation template, {{Quote}}, which uses the traditional indentation style. Several other quotation templates exist (pre-dating the MOS:BQ advice) which set off quotations with large, decorative quotation marks, borders, left-side vertical lines, backgrounds, centering, sidebars, and other techniques, and editors have sometimes used them in articles despite their template documentation deprecating such usage. Given previous discussions at WT:MOS and WP:TFD, the following options should be explored:

    1. MoS should continue to call for {{Quote}} to be used consistently in mainspace for block quotations. Incrementally replace {{Cquote}} and similar templates with {{Quote}} when found in mainspace (i.e., no change from the current situation).
    2. MoS should continue to call for {{Quote}} to be used consistently in mainspace for block quotations. Change {{Cquote}} and similar quotation-decoration templates to simply generate the same output as {{Quote}} when used in mainspace. This will ease the maintenance burden and produce consistent articles much more quickly.
    3. MoS should continue to call for {{Quote}} to be used consistently in mainspace for block quotations. But the style of it should change away from the traditional indentation-based block and become something more decorative, such as the output of {{Cquote}} or {{Talk quote block}}. A followup RfC might be needed to decide what that formatting will be, then the entire set of templates would be adjusted to conform to it.
    4. MoS shouldn't recommend any particular block-quotation formatting, leaving editors to create and use whatever quotation-formatting options they like in articles, including all of the extant pull quote-style decorative templates, subject to consensus at WP:TFD or other processes.
    Yes, I would put the RfC at WT:MOS, and "advertise" it at WP:VPPOL and possibly via WP:CENT. While MoS RfCs have sometimes been held directly in VPPOL, it doesn't actually increase the turn-out, while it makes it harder to find old discussions (you search in the MoS archives yet don't find it). RfCs in VPPOL are better when they are to establish major policy/guideline changes, or establish a particular interpretation of one, and the matter in question goes to the heart of numerous categories/wikiprojects. People get tired of seeing trivial MoS stuff being hashed out in VPPOL itself. MoS has its own talk page for a reason. I would notify VPPOL, though (e.g. with a neutrally worded {{FYI|pointer=y}} post), since the number of articles that this could affect in a trivial way is a non-trivial count. (The OP's "because it affects so many editors", however, is fallacious, an argument to emotion. It doesn't affect editors at all, any more than any other line-item in any other guideline.) I agree there is no call to dwell on things like "warning" and whether template documentation has boldface in it. That looks like argument to emotion again, and a non-neutral presentation. (And it's a trivial matter; if the RfC concluded to either permit whatever quotation style any editor wants to use, or to settle on a single new style, the template documentation would automatically have to change to go along with the new consensus.) Similarly, "Cquote is used in many articles to set off quotes with large decorative quote marks in spite of [MoS]" is loaded wording and comes off as anti-MoS grandstanding. The version I wrote above is more accurate, and I thought pretty carefully about the wording, along "writing policy is hard" lines.

    Side issues:

    • There are some more-or-less accepted uses of sidebar quotation templates for document excerpts. We probably need a template specifically for this, e.g. named {{Document excerpt}}, so it is not randomly misused for decoration of regular block quotations. I would actually create this template before opening such an RfC, or the RfC is likely to get derailed by "Well, what about document excerpts?" argumentation. If you want to proceed with such an RfC, I can make that template, and I've been meaning to do it for a long time anyway.
    • The most common use of decorative quotation templates is to present fake pull quotes. I've never quite seen anything like it, except at crappy blogs (which is also where you most often find decorative quotation markup in the first place). A real pull quote is a journalistic (especially magazine-style) reader-attention-grabbing device, in which "juicy" material already present in the main prose is recapitulated in a large quotation that is designed to provoke a "WTF? I can't believe it! I'd better read on ..." mental reaction in the reader. Pull quotes were never used much on WP, and were deprecated by RfC several years ago (MoS advice on when/how to use them was removed); they're just not appropriate in encyclopedic writing. In an examination of 100 randomly picked mainspace uses of {{Cquote}}, I found that only two of them were actual pull quotes (neither of them appropriate, for WP:NPOV and WP:NOT#NEWS policy reasons). All the rest were not repeated material, but were just regular block quotations that someone wanted to decorate: fake pull quotes. (And I've repeated this experiment more than once. Some days I'm just bored and go on a quote-cleanup spree.)
    • Policy problems with such decoration include that it draws WP:UNDUE attention to a particular party's statements and implies Wikipedia endorsement of it, and it is WP:NOR-problematic "steering" of the reader's psychology toward what some random editor considers most important for the reader to notice and absorb.
    • In converting all 100 of those uses of {{Cquote}} to {{Quote}}, I was reverted or otherwise challenged zero times. It's not that the {{Cquote}} template is popular or {{Quote}} isn't, it's that: a) Editors who don't dwell in style guidelines and template documentation don't know or care which to use and just copy-paste what they found somewhere else. And, b) there actually are a small number of editors who are "activistic" about preferring {{Cquote}} or some other decorative approach, and they make a lot of noise about it and interfere with its mainspace deprecation. They caused quite a local shit-storm at WT:FAC back around the end of 2016, including all kinds of histrionic nonsense, including two "I quit Wikipedia" declarations (they did not quit, but just took wikibreaks, though one later got T-banned from another MoS "issue" then indeffed), and a disruptive proposal to set up an "anti-MoS" specifically for FAC regulars (WP:CONLEVEL policy failure). This kind of "give me my pet style or give me death" WP:REICHSTAG behavior is why we have WP:ARBATC, with WP:AC/DS sanctions hanging over MoS discussions.
    • One of those quote-decoration fans forked a new quotation template that looked a lot like {{Talk quote block}}, but this got deleted at WP:TFD. If I remember the conclusion there correctly, it was that either MoS should not say to use a particular template (let chaos reign), or it should continue to do so but the template's formatting should change, if there's consensus for a new style; but people should not be defying the guidelines to get formatting they prefer via alternative templates, nor creating new redundant ones, rather than merging the redundant ones we already have. Five or so years later, we're right back at the same conclusion and question.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:25, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish, thanks for your input. The comments about wording from you and Herostratus are very helpful. (I have a grandson who is skilled at derailing any discussion of his behavior unless carefully worded.) I've been thinking and revising. I would like to keep the RfC as simple as possible. The issue here at the moment is whether or not there is consensus to remove the template from all the articles. The MOS and warnings might indicate there is, but I don't see a recorded discussion for removal. I have seen periodic proposals to do a wholesale removal, but editors tend to get jumped on for that. I'm trying to frame an RfC such that a no consensus result would be just as useful here as support for any of the alternatives. I think details of how to implement consensus (if any is reached) can be done with later discussions. I am putting my revised version below for comment. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:23, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for an RfC at WT:MOS (version 2)[edit]

Part to be picked up by Legotbot:

RfC: Should decorated quotes (Cquote) be removed from articles? Be accepted?
The Cquote template, {{Cquote}}, is used in many articles to set off quotes with large decorative quote marks. The MOS says not to use it in articles and the template contains that warning. It is in use in thousands of articles. Should Cquote be removed from these articles or should its use be accepted and the warnings removed. (signature)

Remainder of the RfC proposal:

Background
We have a current proposal at Template talk:Cquote to replace all of the Cquote templates in articles to enact the consensus that seems to be indicated by MOS:BLOCKQUOTE and the warning on the template. This also affects {{Rquote}} which is a variant. However Cquote's usage in articles has been controversial ever since the template was created in 2005, and this is a big change to make without a formal discussion. The template is in use in over 15,000 articles. The last discussions were in 2016 at Template talk:Cquote#Request for comments on use and documentation, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184#RfC: What (if anything) to do about quotations, and the quotation templates?, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 188#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes.
Below are two proposals with opposite effects. If no consensus is reached on either we will at least have a clear statement that no consensus for removal exists regardless of the MOS statement and template warning. (signature)
Proposal 1. Replace {{Cquote}} currently in articles with other quote templates. Prevent the future use of Cquote for quotes by redirecting the template to {{Quote}} when used in mainspace. How to do the replacement can be decided in further discussions.


Proposal 2. Accept the use of {{Cquote}} for quotes by removing the template warnings and not forbidding it at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Block quotations. What to say about the template there (if anything) can be decided in a further discussion.


Discussion

DESiegel, Herostratus, SMcCandlish, EEng, your comments would be appreciated. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel that you've absorbed much that was said to you above by anyone (or by WP:RFC). This is still misrepresenting the situation as if "many" people hate what MoS says and are rebelling against it, is suggesting that template documentation is "warnings" and "forbidding", is hinting that not being "accepting" of decorative templates is intolerant, and other emotive clap-trap, all while posing an oversimplified false dichotomy that does not actually address any extant problem. You're also mistaking the nature of guidelines and WP:CONLEVEL policy. This isn't a matter of editor clan A wants this and editor clan B wants that. We have a well-accepted and stable site-wide guideline. Some people don't comply with it (because fixing non-compliance has historically been a hassle so wasn't finished, providing a lot of poor examples for people to copy-paste from). How do we clean that problem up? That is the central question. If someone wants to say "Death to the guideline!" they have a much steeper hill to climb than "let's change what the template does". And there is no camp of editors who want to get rid of the guideline. (The closest we ever had to one was at FAC three years ago, and that was really two editors making a bunch of noise, not on the principles but because someone who wasn't an FAC regular was arguing with an FAC regular.) We have no use for an RfC that panders to an imaginary faction; all that's going to do is manufacture WP:DRAMA. And very often the last thing we need is a black-or-white choice of "two proposals with opposite effects"; the majority of what we do here is grey.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:StarryGrandma, The first part you have above -- the Legobot part -- is pretty much fine. Most of the rest, about the history and usage and so on... what I usually do when I create an RfC, is make the actual RfC as short as reasonably possible, then -- since I'm posting the RfC -- immediately go to the "Threaded discussion" discussion session and add in the details and background that people need. Since its at the top of the Threaded discussion section, basically everyone will read it. And I try to make it pretty much neutral, so it's valid for all readers.
That way, I don't have to worry about being people complaining that the text of the RfC itself is polluted with POV.
But that's just how I roll. Your draft is fine also.
One POV issue that occurs to me... to some, {{Cquote}}'s large quote marks are decorative. To others, they are informative. Perhaps best to avoid either term and just use "large quote marks".
Here's how I might do it:

What should be done about {{Cquote}}?

1: Delete it effectively by replacing the {{Cquote}} code with a call to {{Quote}} (thus ending all instances of {{Cquote}}'s large quote marks being displayed in articles)

2: Keep {{Cquote}} and remove its proscription from the MOS and from the {{Cquote}} documentation; don't add a prescription either, simply don't mention it in the MOS and remove the disrecommendation from the {{Cquote}} documentation without adding anything

3: Other -- leave situation as is, or some other solution (describe).

(Yeah I know that's three choices, but people are going to come up with their own ideas anyway, might as well give them a number to use. Hopefully, #3 won't garner too much support, and can be discounted. Of course on the other hand maybe someone will come up with brilliant solution that we haven't thought of; you never know.)
Then, in the top of the "Threaded discussion" section, maybe something like this:
"The MOS (at MOS:BLOCKQUOTE) and the {{Cquote}} documentation itself proscribe using {{Cquote}} in articles. But it is used in about 15,000 articles. This is dysfunctional, since rules and usage should be in alignment. We wish to end this dysfunctional situation. Either eliminating {{Cquote}}, or changing the rule, will do this. We are asking the community which should be done."
But I mean what you have is good too. Herostratus (talk) 03:33, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for an RfC at WT:MOS (version 3)[edit]

Third proposal is to just forget the whole thing.

So, I did some sleuthing, and here's what I found out: on 18 September 2007, an editor -- User:SMcCandlish as a matter of fact -- added the prohibiton to using {{Cquote}}. He did this on his own dime. There had been a brief discussion before, it is here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 92#Quotation marks around block quotes (ie: cquote template). Of the four participants, two favored including a prescription to use {{Cquote}}, one had no opdinion, and User:SMcCandlish was the only one wanting to proscribe {{Cquote}}.

He wrote the proscription in the MOS anyway, got away with it -- it happens -- and has been claiming "consensus" ever since.

So, in all this, people should bear in mind that when anyone says there is, or ever was, any kind of consensus to proscribe {{Cquote}}, they are... making an error of fact. That doesn't affect us here, but it does mean than that when its pointed out its not going to help incline people to look on kindly on the "existing consensus" argument -- which is really the only good argument you have.

Here's what your going to get in your ideal best scenario:

  • Let's say you get 20% of editors to say "Actually, I pretty much like {{Cquote}}, use it myself, so yeah it shouldn't be proscribed. Prescribed as a valid alternative would be more like it." (You're likely going to get more than 20%, but this is your ideal best-luck scenario.)
  • Let's say you get 20% of editors of the mind "I don't have an opinion on the merits, or maybe I kind of don't like {{Cquote}}, but I mean let editors choose how they want to format quotes, within reason. We don't need to have just one single way." You're also going to get editors who aren't happy with... how the proscription got in the MOS in the first place, once I've pointed it out -- and I will -- and not inclined to go have that sort of thing validated. (You're likely going to get more than 20%, but this is your ideal best-luck scenario.)
  • Let's say you get 10% of editors of the mind "Neither, just change the wording to such-and-such" and "Neither, instead use {{Quote box}}" or "Neither, allow me to present this new template that uses a blue line at the left" or "This entire RfC is illegitimate because of canvasing and blah blah blah" and so forth. You always get these.
  • Let's say you get -- again, ideal scenario -- get 50% of editors to say "Yeah, just get rid of {{Cquote}}."

Well that's 50-40-10. Discard the ten and it it's 56% - 44%. No consensus, nothing will change. Even if you edge even higher to say 60% - 40%... that's not enough. You can hope for dishonest closer who Wikipedia:Supervotes. That's your only real chance IMO, and since there's no RfC review you'd be home safe, probably. Not the way you want to "win" I hope.

So... waste of time. The only way it's not a waste of time is to establish that there must be a change. Which you can't. Unless you have another RfC first, where you do establish that -- "Shall we fix this problem? Vote YES if you want to either change the rule to fit use, or change use to fit the rule, or anything else to fix the problem (descrie). Vote NO if you want to keep things as they are". Assuming you get a supermajority for YES, then you can have the RfC you're proposing, and can legitimately discard any "Neither, keep as is" type votes.

Lot of work. Herostratus (talk) 07:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The situation as you describe it has some remarkable parallels to Trump's impeachment. EEng 07:29, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • So far I see no one except you, Herostratus arguing for continuing to permit the use of cquote or any similar use of large quote marks in articles. The mini discussion at Talk:Factorial#quote vs cquote is perhaps instructive. I converted a cquote call to {{quote}}. You reverted and started a discussion as per WP:BRD. 4 editors who were neither you nor myself commented. None supported your view. One questioned why you favored cquote, three clearly favored quote. Two different editors undid your reversion (you reverted the first one). I don't see the significant numbers favoring the use of cquote you predict.
Also, when you say that the direction not to use cquote had no consensus, you are overlooking the "pull quotes" RfC (which i think you ran, it is linked above) which pretty clearly established consensus, if it wasn't there before, for this direction in the MOS, and in the cquote documentation.
I am also not seeing any response to the UNDUE WEIGHT issue here.
I do not see any good reason for a multi-stage RfC as you suggest. An rfc can, and one often does, establish both that there is a problem, and there there is consensus for a solution. Obviously no one knows what the numbers or ratio of responders will be, but note that cquote, while used in many articles, is currently in less that 0.5% of all articles. I am really not expecting percentages similar to the ones you predict. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:53, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, I for one am not going to "forget the whole thing" and if StarryGrandma or SMcCandlish does not post an RfC, I surely will, probably before the end of 2019. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:58, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@StarryGrandma and SMcCandlish: DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 16:59, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, fine, it's fine. Just giving advice, man. I mean there's only one way to find out. RfC's can certainly surprise.
Right, anybody can post whatever RfC's they want, it's the encyclopedia that anybody can edit.
Right, a wider discussion will surely bring more arguments re any undue weight issue. I suspect that a lot of them will be in the manner of "it's nonsense, you're being disingenuous and grasping at straws when your real objection is aesthetic offense to your personal bourgeois taste, and stop it". I mean, I would never say such a thing, but others might, so better be ready. My argument would be more along the lines of "Don't be silly. Anything, including text, pictures, categorization, and many other things can be used to spin. Images certainly are -- they're very noticeable and attractive, and accusing people of using one over the other purposes of spin happens sometimes. It doesn't mean we aren't going to have pictures. Categories are often used to spin... you see it a lot. Someone who is maybe an enthusiast of (say) Catholicism will go about putting people in (say) "Category: Catholic science fiction writers" when they never went to church after age 12, and so on. The solution is not to get rid of categories, but to fix that particular misuse of categories. Ditto for block quotes -- whether {{Quote}}, {{Cquote}} or another template -- or for that matter inline quotes.
My guess is that you feel too strongly about the subject right now to write a proper RfC. I mean you can try, but you're liable to slip up without meaning to -- slipping in terms like "decorative" or "in spite of" or "consensus" or whatever, without intending to offend. Leave it to Grandma, or somebody. Otherwise, you're liable to end up with more attention paid to the format of the RfC than the merits of the question, and that helps noone.
But your call. I'm getting the popcorn popper ready. Herostratus (talk) 20:04, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
While I am not fond of Cquote (and think quotations are overused in the articles I've been dealing with), I've become neutral on the issue. In other places I've tended to argue for editor preferences rather than strict rules. Lets go with a simple approach and have an RfC on the single issue of whether to make Cquote functionality disappear in mainspace using a call to Quote. (We don't want to mess up back issues of The Signpost.)
About being careful with language. When I tell my grandchildren they should not do something, they understand there will be consequences. My grandson's usual response is to play mind games with the meanings of the words I have used. It is effective with his peers, but I call him on it and we restart the discussion. I see a lot of this in discussions on Wikipedia, and there isn't any way to call editors on it. No matter what words we put in the RfC there will be a lot of this going on. The best we can do is leave out all unconscious similes and metaphors. (And maybe not quote the MOS or the template since they both slip in words like "decorative". ) StarryGrandma (talk) 21:42, 22 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not another proposal for an RfC[edit]

I've been pinged several times but have stayed on the sidelines because you guys are just too verbose. I'll say this:

  • I do think {cquotes}'s big curly quotes look tacky and it's hard to see where they'd ever, on due consideration, be appropriate (we're talking about articles here, not project space). As I mentioned earlier I reject the idea that it's never appropriate to highlight or feature a particular quotation, though I think this is best done in a quote box floating to the side.
  • I urge that Herostratus's warnings about strongarming editors on such matters be taken seriously.

EEng 02:33, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another proposal for an RfC[edit]

RFC about the Cquote template
(categorize as style)
Should the block quote template {{Cquote}} stop displaying large quote marks when used in article space? (signature)
Survey
Threaded discussion
The Manual of Style, at MOS:BLOCKQUOTE, says "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks." Should Cquote be modified to support this by not displaying large quote marks when used in article space? (signature)

-- StarryGrandma (talk) 15:27, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mnmn, well, no, I have problems with this.
The admonition to not use quotes just means

"Don't use {{Quote}} to indent quotes AND have (normal text) quotation marks, as you see here."

like that. That was there before anything about {{Cquote}} was there, maybe before {{Cquote}} even existed. (Whether that prohibition is a good idea I don't know; probably not I guess. Different issue tho.)
It's a bit of a problem, since after all quotation marks are pretty much the universal visual signal in the English speaking world that the following text is a quotation. N'est-ce pas?
I think this is a main reason that {{Cquote}} was adopted -- it gets around this problem. And it works a charm. And it was adopted -- thousands of editors have used it in probably more than 20,000 articles.
The text that specifically addresses {{Cquote}} is text added later:

(and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{Cquote}} template). Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged.

That'd be the text in question, to be deleted or not. Most people get, I would think, that the prohibition against using text quotation marks ("Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks") doesn't really bear on whether or not to use {{Cquote}}.
But per the links above, this was just something that somebody put in the MOS, and got away with because everybody was not paying attention or didn't care or were busy or assumed there had been a consensus to include it, or something (including that they liked the edit). So it wasn't really a licit edit; that's not how the Wikipedia is supposed to work, it is against the principles of approved practice of the project. Given, that, this would be more truthful:
The Manual of Style, at MOS:BLOCKQUOTE, was illicitly altered in 2007 to say "and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{Cquote}} template". Should we retain this?
I'm not recommending this either of course. That's for the discussion.
I'd again recommend stating something like this:

Use of {{Cquote}} is a case where the rule and practice don't match up. Which shall we change, rule or practice? Vote Change Rule if you want to remove the text "and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{Cquote}} template" from the MOS. Vote Change Practice if you want {{Cquote}} to be made identical to {{Quote}}.

Herostratus (talk) 18:29, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mais non. Quote marks are not the only way to signal a quote. In scholarly writing quote marks are used for inline quotations to set them off from the rest of the text. Longer excerpts are formatted as block quotes. According to the MLA style guide, "The block format is a freestanding quote that does not include quotation marks." I don't have access to the Chicago Manual of Style but I know it says the same thing. So having quote marks of any kind in a block quote in an encyclopedia article is jarring for editors who are used to reading journals and most non-fiction.
I initially did want to line up rule and practice with two proposals. However I think it is better to keep the RfC statement as brief as possible. Fewer words means fewer discussions about the meaning of words. Aligning rules and practice should be left to the discussion. The template is in wide use in practice, and no-consensus would leave quotes in there. The discussion can also argue for changing the rules. Whether rules and practice should completely align seems to be controversial around here. This statement deals with DESiegel's immediate issue. I have put a quote on my user page though. With really big quote marks. Cquote's doc page does not match its functionality. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:57, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After more thought about what you said, I am back to a longer statement at the threaded discussion section. I am trying to summarize more of the issue, but may be losing neutrality. But it is in the discussion section.
Threaded discussion
Most manuals of style say something like "The block format is a freestanding quote that does not include quotation marks.". Ours reminds editors not to add quotation marks to a block quote. Should Cquote be modified to stop displaying large quote marks when used in article space or not? Many of the previous related discussions are listed here.
Editors who are willing to provide proper encyclopedic content could be given some leeway from this in article layout. Printed encyclopedias have different styles depending on topic and interests of their editors. Here we are multiple encyclopedias "bound" in the same virtual volumes. We could focus on the content and leave a bit of room for differences in style. On the other hand it is jarring for editors used to formal non-fiction writing to see quotes around block quotes. Quotes there are punctuation errors in an encyclopedia; large quotes like these can feel like highlighted punctuation errors. It might be better to leave the large quote marks to {{Rquote}}, which puts quotes to the side of the flow of text. We don't compromise on keeping content encyclopedic. But we should be able to make compromises on style. (signature)
Maybe my better self can make compromises on style. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As far as "scholarly writing", it doesn't necessarily have all that much with what we are trying to do here. Keep in mind that few readers are actual scholars, and our readership includes your 12 year old in Mumbai, your retired postal worker in Billings, your bookkeeper in Gdansk, your prison inmate in Belfast, your farm worker in Fresno, and so on and so forth. All these people have reason to look up various kinds of stuff, some scholarly but a lot not. I'm not too worried about the gal who has a master's degree in economics -- she will figure out what's going on regardless of what we do -- I'm worried about the ESL factory worker in Dacca. Since we're a popular general-use encyclopedia, it also doesn't bother me if our layout and typography is a little north of staid.
"Cquote's doc page does not match its functionality" because somebody messed with the the doc page'. So what, why would we be bound to that. I've pointed this out before and will continue to do so, and its likely to resonate with some people.
But, all these are arguments on the merits, not on the format of the RfC... if I'm reading you right, the "threaded discussion" section you wrote above would be your personal contribution to the top of the threaded discussion section. That's fine, you're free to write what you like there.
Again, am I getting thru that

Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks

and

(and especially avoid decorative quotation marks in normal use, such as those provided by the {{Cquote}} template).

are two basically different things, added in by different people at different times for different purposes and describing two different issues, and should not be mixed together. Unless you or anyone wants to make the case that they are or should be mixed together. But that's a point to be made in argument, I guess. If you mix them together in the RfC text, that's just going to confuse and delegitimize the issue. Herostratus (talk) 11:16, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Cquote was inspired by the format of magazine pull-quotes, I can see why you think they are two completely different things. But a lot of editors don't see it that way. I do agree with you on the span of our readership, but I would add most American readers to it. When I was in school we diagrammed sentences for years and memorized a lot of grammar rules. Except for the dreaded senior term paper in high school English, we did very little writing. Happily that balance had changed by the time my kids were in school.
Wikipedia is scholarly writing. We require editors to search out and find reliable sources, not just write what they know. New editors discover this in the trenches, resulting in a high casualty rate. Just like crowd-sourced citizen science, Wikipedia is citizen-scholarship. The question here is about style. Does the classic half-inch indent do enough to indicate a block quote for text that is not fixed on a printed page or a typed term paper? Our articles shift and flow with edits and with the width of the reader's screen. The mobile view doesn't mess with Cquote formatting, but puts a gray stripe down the left of other block quotes. (Yuck! - and that is an emotive word.) That may be the RfC to have. I have to think more about it. StarryGrandma (talk) 13:36, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for an RfC (version 5)[edit]

(this is a slight modification of version 2 above. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Part to be picked up by Legotbot:

RfC: Should decorated quotes (via Cquote or Rquote) be removed from articles?
The Cquote template, {{Cquote}}, is used in many articles to set off quotes with large decorative quote marks. The MOS says not to use it in articles and the template contains that instruction. It is, however, in use in thousands of articles (although only a tiny fraction of all articles). Should Cquote be removed from these articles, or converted into a call to {{quote}} in mainspace? (signature)

Remainder of the RfC proposal:

Background
We have a current proposal at Template talk:Cquote to replace all of the Cquote templates in articles to enact the consensus that seems to be indicated by MOS:BLOCKQUOTE and the warning on the template. This also affects {{Rquote}} which is a variant. However Cquote's usage in articles has been controversial ever since the template was created in 2005, and this is a big change to make without a formal discussion. The template is in use in over 15,000 articles. The last discussions were in 2016 at Template talk:Cquote#Request for comments on use and documentation, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 184#RfC: What (if anything) to do about quotations, and the quotation templates?, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 188#Proposal to stop supporting pull quotes.
Proposal 1: Replace {{cquote}} with the code from {{cquote/sandbox1}}, with results that can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases1. This would have the effect of converting {{cquote}} into {{quote}} in all mainspace uses, all at once.
Proposal 2: Replace {{cquote}} with the code from {{cquote/sandbox2}}, with results that can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases2. This would have the effect of converting {{cquote}} into an error message in all mainspace uses, all at once.

--DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DESiegel, it's been hard to write a background people will feel is neutral on this topic. This discussion has such a long history that many editors will not need background. There is a nice list in the archives here for those who want to do some reading. I suggest this for the part to be picked up by Legobot:
The Cquote template is used in many articles to set off quotes with blue quote marks. The MOS says not to use it in articles and the template contains that instruction. Should the quote marks be removed from those articles that use it by modifying {{Cquote}}? Most of the earlier Cquote discussions are listed here. (signature)
Then just list your two proposals with the test cases without any further background. Having examples that editors can look at is very helpful. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And consider leaving off proposal 2. Widespread error messages, as happens with TfD discussions, tend to be upsetting. The RfC will be calmer without it. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:22, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DESiegel, would you modify proposal 2 and test case 2 to have Cquote display as usual with the following error message on top: Error: This template should not be used in the main article space.? I think this would be a calmer approach. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:21, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{od}User:StarryGrandma, User:DESiegel: Wanting to keep as succinct and neutral as possible, I think we ought to go with this:

{{Cquote}} is sometimes used in articles, which its documentation prohibits. Wikipedia functions best when documentation and practice agree. What should we do here?

  • Change the practice by preventing {{Cquote}} from being used in articles
  • Change the documentation by removing the prohibition against using {{Cquote}}

And put everything else in the Background section that immediately follows, in these subsections:

  1. Show an example of each template in use, and a short description of how "preventing" or "removing" would entail.
  2. Pointing to the previous discussions.
  3. Giving usage stats of the templates under consideration.

The first subsection is to be pretty short, and since it follows directly the RfC it's right up there in the reader's face. There's no need to describe anything as "decorative", "informative", or even "large" or "pastel; this puts words in the editor's mind. Since the examples immediately follow the short RfC statement, they show rather than tell the relative format of each.

I also suggest a final subsection called "Appeal to the closer" which something like this: "We are basically needing a decision one way or the other. If head count and strength of argument are about equal, the usual close is "No consensus, retain existing state", but this is not what's needed here, since the existing state is simply not acceptable: it puts usage and rule in conflict, has been a running sore for ten years, has consumed hundreds of man hours, and encourages dysfunctional editor interactions. It's just not OK. We request, if you are going to close, that you be prepared to use the material here generated to make a final decision one way or the other."

Otherwise there's a danger that, after more scores more of mandhours expended, we make no progress. Herostratus (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Herostratus, I think adding a third proposal will do it: Proposal 3: Remove the prohibition on using Cquote. I don't want to put an "advice to closer" before discussion has taken place. But after a month we will have to nag ask nicely at the admin boards for a closer, which they hate. Using your "advice to closer" paragraph then will justify our request. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well that sucks. This is far from excellent and I can't really acquiesce to this, for my part.
One of the problems is that, since you are unlikely to get consensus, the entirely unacceptable situation -- rule and practice being in conflict -- will continue. And this after asking editors to spend a great deal more time and effort on this on top of the hundreds of manhours already spent.
Well, unacceptable to most Wikipedians. Acceptable to some of a certain mindset, I suppose, since they will be to continue to use what is in the MOS to continue to "correct" the "errors" made by other editors and just generally harass and enrage people. Even tho, as I've pointed out and you've read, the prohibition in the MOS was put in by one (rather... non-neutral) editor, with no consensus whatsoever and in fact against a 2-1 "vote" in favor of doing the exact opposite in the preceding discussion. Which is entirely illegitimate and unwikipedian and should be (and often is) properly ignored. It's especially appalling since on your user page you prominently say "I support Wikipedia:Process is Important and I urge all wikipedians to read it and consider it before undertaking out-of-process actions". I mean make up your mind.
Another problem is that you are presenting only your own preferred outcome, even tho we have discussed ways to not do that, and it ought to be clear that there are two equally acceptable ways to fix the problem. That is... not OK.
Anther problem is the use of "decorative". Not neutral, and I point this out also. It says here that they are "informative". Using neither term is the best solution.
Let's see how we can clear this up. I'd request that you roll back the entire thing for the time being and see how we can fix this. If you don't... it's going to be a big hassle. Trying to work out behavior issues in addition to running an RfC is... not excellent. But that's where we are headed isn't it. I guess what I'm going to do is edit the RfC heavily. Unusual as that is, I hope you'll accept it. If you roll that back, it ends up being messy, possibly ending up at ANI and so on, and none of us want that, I hope. Herostratus (talk) 06:40, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. Not in any way, shape or form will I roll this RfC back. Nor will I add to it any suggestion that the solution is to change the MOS or thd Cquote documentation to not forbid such use. I would much rather have nothign at all happen than that. Nor I might add, do I think your description of the origin of the current MOS languaghe to be correct, and even if it were, it having stood as long as it has gives it a degree of consensus in and of itself. That is not a page little edited or generally ignored - it has been highly scrutinized, and been through multiple discussions. Expect RfC changes to be reverted unless several others post supporting them. Then we can have a side-discussion on the point, as per BRD. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 07:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to add additional proposals, of course, any editor can do that, and i would not ever revert such changes. And the poll and threaded discussion are, of course, open to all.
I have carefully included a link to these discussions in the RfC. Nothing is being hidden here. I have been careful to make clear all along what kind of RfC I planned, and the kind of objections you are making do not seem to me to be shared by anyone else who has commented. Your objections did not seem persuasive to me. If I am wrong, and many editors agree with you, well than I am wrong, and the current proposals will not gain consensus. We will see what results. To me this is a very simple question. The MOS already has consensus, but to implement it requires making a significant change to many articles at once. That requires an additional consensus. I am asking for one. It is as simple as that. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 07:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would add that two editors have already supported one of the proposals. No one has yet posted saying that none of them should be implemented, or suggesting different course of action. One should not "simply roll back" an RfC after responses have been made. Not in my view, at least. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 07:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
EDIT: Enh, I'm not going to do that, I don't want to get dragged to ANI where you'll have the whip hand, on the merits and being an administrator. I have too much going on right now to put my wikicareer on the line over this. What I am is going to do is bring my point forward. This will make the RfC be a mix of discussion and meta-discussion about the RfC itself which... is a huge mess and an appalling waste of everyone's time. But can't be helped. Herostratus (talk) 07:10, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Herostratus If you were to edit the RfC I would revert and discuss, as eny editor might. I would not bring that to ANI, nor support anyone else doing so. I would not in any way use any admin tools or powers, nor imply that i know butter because of begin an admin.
I do have a reputation, some tend to like me or think well of my judgement, others, including soem admins, quite consistently disagree with me on various issues. Check my positions at WT:CSD at WP:DRV, at WT:MFD, even at ANI, for some of those who have often disagreed with me. I cannot change how others may think of me, for good or ill. But I promise that I will take no advantage of my status as an admin in this issue, and I honestly doubt that many will be swayed one way or the other b y that, as the MOS is not where I have had the most of my strong positions. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 07:31, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Since the actual RfC is now open, I'm closing this thread-of-threads about drafting it, per WP:TALKFORK and WP:MULTI.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Examples of altered template[edit]

I refer you to Template:Cquote/sandbox1 example uses can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases1. This version checks the namespace, and if called in the main article space converts to a call to {{quote}}. Otherwise it remains a call to {{cquote}}.

I also refer you to Template:Cquote/sandbox2 example uses can be seen at Template:Cquote/testcases2. This version checks the namespace, and if called in the main article space cdispl;ays an error message instead of a quote. Otherwise it remains a call to {{cquote}}.

It is my hope and belief that the forthcoming RfC will result in consensus to substitute one of these for the current content of {{cquote}}, and that a request for such consensus should be the main focus of such an RfC. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 23:41, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well... in one way, this is an elegant solution (and thank you for the work). In another way, it's kind of klunky, in that you have one template doing different things... No templates that I can think of do that. Nor offhand can I think of templates being changed to do importantly different things rather than just deleted or deprecated and replaced. It would be a little bit harder to explain in the RfC too.
Would it be possible to have invocations of {{Cquote}} in article space be actually converted to {{Quote}} in the pages themselves? This would require a robot I guess. But there is a place to request robots I think? But I don't know how long it takes or if its guaranteed to be ever done.
(Or, you could have {{Cquote}} remain by that name in article space, and be replaced with (let' say) template FancyQuote in non article space. Advantage is there are probably few instances to change, but the various downsides outweigh this IMO.) Herostratus (talk) 05:04, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are many templates that do different things, or do them differently, in different namespaces. For example, the AfC templates produce an error message in the article namespace. That is why {{main other}} and several similar templates were devised, and if you check "what links here" you wiull find that over 2,000 15,000 templates transclude {{main other}}, and over 6,000,000 pages make use of it.
Yes a bot could be devised to actually convert the call, but that would cause significant extra work, and would leave cquote intact and a temptation to be misueed again in future. If that were to be done, cquote should be deleted.
In any case this was exactly what I had in mind when I started this discussion, as I said then. I am sorry if you did not understand that clearly. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 06:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll mention that {{tq}}, if used in article space, gives a big red warning "Template:Tq is only for quoting in talk and project pages. Do not use it in actual articles." Oddly I don't see where its documentation says anything about that. EEng 08:44, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Easy enough to fix in the /doc. Lots of templates have incomplete or otherwise poor documentation, more commonly when they're not intended for mainspace (i.e., when it's just going to be wikinerds using them, not noob editors).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note that {{Namespace and pagename-detecting templates}} lists 28 different templates that provide the ability to give different behavior in different namespaces or on different types of pages, or indeed to detect pages that meet specific patters and act differently there. All are normally used in the construction of other templates to provide this ability, at least some of them many many times. That Herostratus is not aware of such templates is really not relevant, many of them exist and are widely used. Nor is there any policy or guideline agaisnt such use, to mthe best of my knowledge. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 11:44, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, right, alright, consider me educated, so no objection Yeah I did see that earlier but it slipped my mind. Herostratus (talk) 14:52, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020[edit]

Please edit this template per the RfC result at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template, which is remove the large quotes. {{Rquote}} needs the same edit.

I believe that's it, but any questions, ask User:SMcCandlish, and if there's any required changes to the documentation he can make them. Herostratus (talk) 13:53, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done This is a big change, so please report any problems here. I checked a handful of articles and they appear to be displaying fine after this update. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ping SMcCandlish to check on the documentation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Herostratus, let me know when you have a sandbox and test cases for {{Rquote}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not to be difficult, but I don't have a sandbox for anything and I won't. Number one, I don't approve of this change. I'm requesting it because it was decided by an RfC (and by a large margin) so it needs to be implemented. The person who did want this change and initiated the process was User:DESiegel, who is an admin has the chops and could do it. But he hasn't edited since January. Anyway, I don't want to write code for something I don't believe in.
Number two, I was refused the template-editor flag even tho I'd previously done some template work and actually have two legit template barnstars. So I'm retired from all that, thank you very much, it's now your job not mine. Herostratus (talk) 19:24, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the response. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:20, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a look at it soon, but I just had to wade through The Return of the RfC of Unholy Doom and Living Death: Episode XXVIII, so my patience for WP today is already exhausted (and it's not even 8am my time yet).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:46, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Huh. I thought there were only so many times you could re-animate dead flesh. Guess mad science is advancing. Herostratus (talk) 16:10, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some params don't work, documentation says otherwise -- fix one or the other please[edit]

"bgcolor" for instance doesn't seem to do anything. "qcolor" is entirely obsolete. Don't know about the other params (beyond the basic params, which work), but they probably don't and anyway used very seldom and maybe never.

The extra params (beyond "quote", "author", and "source") can probably be removed from the documentation. Or, fix the code to match the documentation -- I think that's useless and possibly negative, but anyway one or the other, your choice.

Also applies to {{Rquote}}, as always. Herostratus (talk) 21:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Done – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Enhancement for mobile view[edit]

The mobile view generally inject display: block property to tables make them scrollable on your phone screen, this is especially gives benefits to larger one. However, if this template include very short phrase, the template would be shortened, and shift to left. To fix the display issue, I used display: table property in the sandbox page, after submit my change, the template is properly displayed on the test cases. You can open the test cases on your phone to reproduce, or alternatively you can open mobile version of the test cases in this Responsive Website Tester. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 04:17, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done for now: @Great Brightstar: Not sure about display:table. Due to some gross "width: 100% !important" CSS in Minerva, it still takes up the whole page width, instead of small and center, like the desktop skins. I've been meaning to get rid of the table layout altogether, and I think what I'm doing will accomplish what you're looking for as well. See testcases for what I have so far. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 02:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good idea, thank you. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 03:42, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Author versus speaker: need a parameter for both[edit]

Author versus speaker: need a parameter for both. As follows:

Representative example:

"I killed a man in Reno" — speaker, in Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line"

… and obviously not …

"I killed a man in Reno" — Johnny Cash

Anticipating any casual objection that "the text constituting the value of the parameter can simply explain the relationship [to sentients, such as humans], so why bother?": Answer: The distinction really should be properly parameterized for machine-readability for ontologic purposes. Johnny Cash is indeed the author of the quote, so "author=Johnny Cash" is true, but he is obviously not the speaker. One can just imagine the machine learning datasets that might miseducate machines (for example, things such as a Google Answer Box, perhaps) into misapprehending that "Johnny Cash is an example of a murderer" and that "James Hetfield is the one who lost all his limbs". Can someone fix this? Thanks, Quercus solaris (talk) 21:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

{cq} isn't isn't supposed to be used in article space so such nuances aren't worth bothering with. EEng 10:00, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is used about 36,000 times in article space, but I agree with EEng that this is a distinction that is not worth noting. Where do we draw the line? When we display a quotation from a fiction book in the voice of the author, we do not imply or assume that the author necessarily believes or practices what is in the quotation, and any reasonable AI would not draw that conclusion either. Or when we quote Corey Lewandowski as saying "Trump is self-financing his campaign, so we don't have any donors", no reasonable person or AI would assume that Trump actually self-financed his campaign. A quotation is just a quotation (unless it's not, exactly), and brains are still needed to understand them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, sloppy of me: I meant it's not supposed to be used in article space. Those uses should be purged. EEng 18:09, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is a talk page discussion that addressed that, and the result was to hide the decorative quote marks in article space. I don't think the template is objectionable in article space at this point. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Who says it's not supposed to used in article space? I use it all the time. I mean the documentation starts right off with "The template appears as follows in article space: Lorem ipsum dolor sit...", why would it say that if it's not OK to use in article space? Later on down in the documentation it does say the MOS recommends -- recommends -- to to use the HTML <blockquote> tag or the {{blockquote}} template instead. I only do the former when I'm writing in 1993, and {{blockquote}} is not an improvement I don't think, so for my part it's not suggestion worth following. Herostratus (talk) 13:50, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Should I mention that the actual lyric is "I shot a man in Reno"?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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