User talk:JMF/Archives/2020/April

Disambiguation link notification for April 8

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Stantonbury, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bradwell (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:48, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

List-defined reference?

{{help-me}} Sorry to have to ask such a noobie question after so many years but I don't understand why I have got this error at History of Milton Keynes: Cite error: A list-defined reference with group name "" is not used in the content (see the help page). as I don't see any such group (and I have simplified all refs of the style <ref name="quotes-not-needed"> to drop the quotes. Also, AFAICS, there is no use of the horrible <ref group = note> (template:efn is easier to use and easier on the eye). It is not a technique that I have ever used so I don't know what I should be looking for. Advice please? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:33, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you fixed it yourself. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 18:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh:, I wish! No, it is still there, at the end of the References section, just above History of Milton Keynes#Sources and bibliography. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:36, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Sorry, I saw the "fix" edit summary and didn't see the error. Let me take another look... — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:11, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Looks like the error first appeared after this edit. Nothing obvious to me just now. Let's turn the {{help me}} batsignal back on and I'll aim to look at it later, when I have more time, if nobody else has found the issue before then. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 20:37, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh:, thank you, that was the clue I needed and should have thought of first. My prejudice against quoted ref names blocked my lateral thinking. The issue (which has zero to do with the error message) is that I used a {{sfn}} inside another ref, thus creating a nested reference. Taking that out fixed the problem. I have switched off the bat-light. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The help page associated with the error says: "The message appears if you mistakenly embed {{sfn}} or {{sfnp}} (rather than {{harv}}, {{harvnb}}, or {{harvp}}) inside <ref></ref>. The page indeed used {{sfn}} within <ref></ref> tags; you removed it, I put {{harv}} instead. That works. Huon (talk) 22:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@Huon: <blush>. I did a knee-jerk "I never used no ^*(&"%£ quoted references" so OF COURSE the help page was going to be TOTALLY irrelevant. My apologies to you both for time wasting, I'll go stand in the corner. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:12, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited 1659 in science, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Division (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 15:14, 18 April 2020 (UTC)