Category:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list

Administrators: Please do not delete this category even if it is empty! This category may be empty occasionally or even most of the time.

This is a hidden tracking category for CS1 citations that use |author=, or its aliases.

Articles are listed in this category when Module:Citation/CS1 identifies cs1|2 citation templates that appear to use singular forms of author name-list parameters to list multiple authors' names. Doing so corrupts the citation's metadata.

The citation module code looks for multiple comma or semicolon separator characters in the value assigned to |author=, |last=, their aliases, and enumerated equivalents (e.g. |author2=, |last2=, etc.). This test displays an error message for multiple authors' names in a single parameter, as well as single author names that include a comma-separated list of post-nominals: |author=FC White, RN, MD, Ph.D.

To fix these errors in citations:

1. Remove post-nominals.
2. Provide enumerated author parameters (e.g. either |author2= or |last2= and |first2=) for each author of a cited work.
3. When multiple separator characters are legitimately present in a name (commonly a corporate, institutional, or governmental author), the name may be wrapped in two sets of parentheses (or ‎<nowiki>...‎</nowiki> tags) to suppress assignment to this category, like this: |author=((Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban Development)) or |author=<nowiki>Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban Development</nowiki>.

Editors should not simply replace |author= with |authors=. Using the plural |authors= parameter to replace a singular |author= or |last= parameter that holds multiple authors' names is discouraged because automatically decoding lists of human names is an extraordinarily difficult task. Because of this difficulty, names listed in |authors= are omitted from the template's COinS metadata. Enumerating the author list with |authorn=, or |lastn= / |firstn=, or, where appropriate, |vauthors=, preserves the associated metadata.

Pages in this category should only be added by Module:Citation/CS1.