Last modified: 2006-08-30 11:10:40 UTC
While adding new citations to the above article, the citation numbering has doubled. I have 37 citations (ref tag elements) and under the references tag, 74 footnotes appear (doubled the footnotes). If one goes to the article history page and click on the latest article item in the history, then the numbering of the citations appear fine (the true 37 footnotes appear). I tried reverting to earlier versions of the article when the citation numbering worked fine, thinking that it was due to a error on my side, but the earlier versions also appear with doubled footnote numbering. It seems to be a problem on the server side.
I found the source of the problem. An XML comment that is normally in the Footnotes section is no longer parsed correctly. The old comment that was placed there is <!--See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags--> I edited the comment suspecting that the problem is the parsing of the brackets within the comment. I removed the brackets. The new comment is <!--See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the ref(erences tags--> It is now fixed for my article, but for all the other wiki pages that used the suggested comment, the inline citations are still broken. I would suggest fixing the parser.
I'm not able to reproduce any apparent problem with this. 1) What *is* the problem? What does it actually look like? 2) What are the *exact* set of circumstances under which you can produce the problem? Please be very detailed, for instance the manner in which you edit and every click you make on the way.
I can reproduce the doubling on page edit when logged out. It has no relation to the comment mentioned above, and can be reproduced even after removing the mentioned bit. Most likely this is due to reference data not being properly cleared when the parser is reused during save. The damaged result may end up in the parser cache, which is then showed afterwards. action=purge clears it.
*** Bug 7166 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
From bug 7166 comment #0 (Dragons flight): > It appears that recent changes to the way that parser caching is handled are causing > unexpected behavior from Cite when references are present. > > I believe the change creating the problem is r16211 to OutputPage.php that tstarling > made on the 24th. > > For examples of the problem see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cite_php_broken.png > (showing a large number of "blank" references at the start) > > Or simply edit any page employing Cite. (If section editting, the bug will occur if the > section has references or if the whole page is editted.)
I should say I think it is related to that revision because I can't find any other caching changes recent enough to be consistent with the onset of the problem (and Cite hasn't changed), but I haven't tested the code to verify that it actually is the source of the problem.
*** Bug 7167 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I've had this same issue a couple times. It was odd. It seemed like the cite worked fine using ref & /ref, but then I added a comma and the citations doubled. But I may have also added titles with colons to the innards of the cite links. And I don't know if the colons screwed up the parsing? See Bug 7167 marked as duplicate above for more on my issue. This happened on a couple pages I recently edited. I tihnk they all used commas as separators. And may have used colons in the title of link to a citation site. So, I figure it's one or the other. And taking out the commas didn't seem to fix the issue. Didn't try taking out the colons though... So, maybe that has somethign to do with it, since I know colons are used in parsing WP : BITE and such. I ended up just moving the links wholesale to the References section and taking out the ref tags. But I didn't change the titles, now that I think of it, and they work okay there, so it seems to be something with the ref tags specific to either adding a comma between bracketed citations or using colons in the citations themselves...? And changing things back to the way they were before didn't seem to "fix" the issue. But I may have overlooked something...
Ohh, and it wasn't ALL citation links just the ones in that particular line. Others remained unaffected in one ofthe articles I edited, making me think that it was specific to the exact ref's and formatting used in that particular set of ref tags.
Without claiming to be an expert that change mentioned above looks like it could be the porblem. That hook to pass extension data seems to me to be the only change recently that could have caused this problem. Also to note it is now popping up as other issues (ie just some of the refs appearing twice and the ordering has messed up a few times).
So, as an example, perhaps the "NOAA: What is lightning?" portion of the citation title confused the parse into thinking that extra data was being passed or something, thus made it go screwy? I was kind of wondering that myself... Anyone care to test that theory and then try taking out the ':' from the title and seeing if the problem corrects itself or it's still screwed up? IE, does it go back to 1 citation line for everythign between the ref & /ref tags, or are there still duplicated lines? Perhaps someone can play in the wikipedia sandbox and find out? I'd do it, but I have to get going home from work. So basically, it would just go LINE OF TEXT < ref > [ citation title: subject] [ citation title: subject ] < /ref >. = = References = = < references/ > And then see if the References section picks up two duplicates of the same line out of the reference? And of course take out all the extranneous spaces and insert some dummy text... Cheers!
Might evene have this solved before supper time... ;o] OF course, as I type this, I'm sure someone somewhere just finished supper. So, maybe not... ;o]
Michael, it has nothing to do with the format of the refs. The parser is registering the same reference information more than once (and sometimes handling it incorrectly). Ref tags add persistent information to the parser stream by design (clearState = False) so that the references section can correctly identify all of the refs, which are parsed first. Somehow the parser data generated by ref appears to have become persistent from one run to another, causing bogus refs and duplication to be added to subsequent runs. I assume this means that Cite->clearState is for some reason not being called when the parser exits.
I've noticed a few people having troubles with this, and using {{helpme}}. I have noticed on some (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keane&diff=next&oldid=72503642 ) that people use: <div class="references-small"> <references/> </div> which creates double. When i removed everything but the <references> (and added the <small> tags), everything was fine :) -Deon [[en:User:Deon555]]
(In reply to comment #14) > I've noticed a few people having troubles with this, and using {{helpme}}. I have noticed on some (eg. > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keane&diff=next&oldid=72503642 ) that people use: > <div class="references-small"> > <references/> > </div> > > which creates double. When i removed everything but the <references> (and added the <small> tags), everything was > fine :) > > -Deon > [[en:User:Deon555]] I'm seeing this bug when only <references /> is involved though. Likely what Deon is seeing it fixed because the article was edited. This bug disappears whenever the page is purged (via ?action=purge), so I don't think it has to do with the surrounding <div> tag.
Just to create some more noise, I've just had this occur. What's interesting is: a) it's a brand new article [[Vulture Bee]] at en (the second edit to the article added this ref) b) I used exactly the same formatting I always use: <ref>http://url.com</ref> The problem appeared the very first time I saved the page with the new reference. However, on clicking "edit", it disappeared in the very first preview.
I can consistently reproduce the error now. Testpage: User:Ligulem/work/bug7162-test-1 If the page doesn't show the doubled references, do a null edit to the page (click on edit, then click on save). After that, the references are doubled (this is wrong). Then enter User:Ligulem/work/bug7162-test-1?action=purge. After that, the references are ok. Doing a null edit again doubles the references (this is wrong). Warning: another user might do that use case on my testpage. So I recommend doing the test in your own sandbox for consistent results (copy the contents of the page I noted above).
(In reply to comment #17) Sorry. TestpageURL is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ligulem/work/bug7162-test-1
Fixed in r16283, which requires a fix in r16282.
