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The Signpost: 18 July 2025

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Category:CS1 maint: date and year errors

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Hello Dominic Mayers! Your reversion of my edits (here & here) returned the Category:CS1 maint: date and year errors to the article. You would have seen the error listed on the page had you edited the article again after your reversions. I was alerted to the change quickly as the article came up again listed along with other articles with the same errors at Category:CS1 maint: date and year errors. That page describes the issue, |date= and |year= should not be used together or they result in the error. Cite Book also stress not to use the two together except in cases were the date format precludes moving the added letter to the date field. I'd even argue that case should also be avoided as it produces the error message & there are now better workarounds like a ref= for sfn. Anyway, this case was a simple fix & my original changes fixed the error without affecting the article. So not sure why you reverted them. Hopefully this explains the issue now. Take care, LooksGreatInATurtleNeck (talk) 15:46, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did check carefully and did not see any error message. If you are right that it does not change what the readers see, then there is no issue, but I was under the impression that the letter will show in the reference and it is nicer to avoid this. @LooksGreatInATurtleNeck:, I undid one of your edit and I still do not see any error message in the article. Are you looking elsewhere? I would check again, but from memory, it seems to me that years is to be used when there is a need to distinguish harvard citations with same authors and date. So it would be weird, perhaps a bug elsewhere, if that creates an error. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:31, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@LooksGreatInATurtleNeck:, OK I see that it gets listed in Category:CS1 maint: date and year errors, but it creates no error in the article. If it gets only listed, but it creates no error whatsoever in practice, then it's the listing that is incorrect. I will read again how the field "year" is documented, because it was a long time ago and maybe the instructions when it is OK to use it have changed. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:37, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, it says what you say. So, thanks. I will undo my undo. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:44, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Dominic Mayers! The error message also gets listed on the article, it would be visible to whoever edits the page & uses Preview (will show in green). Errors like that can be off putting to people editing articles as they may assume their edit caused it, so they are best cleared. In regards to the visible added letter on years, that's a normal visual quirk that goes along with sfn usage. The addition of an extra character on the year is actually a bit of a kludgy workaround, however you can work around even that by using a ref= instead. However the added character is an accepted practice so I don't like to change it unless it is causing an error. Thank-you kindly for your understanding on this! Take care, LooksGreatInATurtleNeck (talk) 22:39, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will check what you say. Just to be sure. There is a warning from some maintenance script, not really an error. Perhaps, the same script that puts the article in the list Category:CS1 maint: date and year errors. It is very much possible that there is no issue at all, except a check made by that script. Anyway, I just checked and it is standard in Harvard citation style to use a letter after the year. (Now, I remember that I have seen it a lot in papers I have read in physics, computer science or related fields. Just did not put much attention to it at the time.) So, that must be the reason why the use of "year" is discouraged. Thanks a lot for your work. It is useful and much appreciated. Dominic Mayers (talk) 00:02, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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