Template talk:Updated

Unclear; doesn't work properly?

I've been trying this. Unless I'm making an obvious mistake, this template doesn't work properly, particularly if the date is omitted, and the format is unclear, {{updated|date|<ref>reference</ref>}}. I was expecting to enter "2015|11|8" or "date=2015|11|8" or "date=November 2015" or the like, but it seems to accept and display almost any text, which could be "8 November 2015", without any processing. And an empty date doesn't seem to work, either as {{updated||<ref>reference</ref>}} or {{updated|<ref>reference</ref>}}

{{updated|2015|11|8|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of 201511

{{updated|date=2015|11|8|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of 118

{{updated|Any old text|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of Any old text

{{updated||<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of

{{updated|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of

{{updated|date=November 2015|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of

{{updated|date=1995}} (!!!)

As of (!!!)

This form obviously works, trivially:
{{updated|8 November 2015|<ref>reference</ref>}} ==>

As of 8 November 2015

The template works for the current timestamp with no arguments (neither date nor ref):
{{updated}} ==>

As of

I don't see any advantage to using this template instead of {{As of|2015|11|8}}<ref>reference</ref> ==> As of 8 November 2015 ("As of" will mark the article as needing future updating, bjut that seems to make sense.)

So either I don't understand this, or it is rather useless; it needs either correcting or documenting.

Ignore

Pol098 (talk) 19:54, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Space between the punctuation and ref tag

As you can see in the examples above there is in some cases a space between the punctuation and ref tag. According to Help:Footnotes#Footnotes: the basics, this should not happen. Could anyone who knows more about template code than I please fix that? --Jaellee (talk) 08:26, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

The example above (using |date=, which is invalid) puts the reference in the first unnamed parameter, which is supposed to contain the date. Using the template incorrectly will result in incorrect formatting.

That said, the examples above show the fundamental problem with using unnamed parameters; if one is missing, everything goes sideways. – Jonesey95 (talk) 08:16, 23 October 2018 (UTC)