Author: andrussm

Description:
There are various ways that a Cite template could end up with the same parameter name coded more than once. I don't know of a legitimate reason for doing this, so as far as I know any such duplication would be unintentional and would produce undesirable results.

I have tested multiple first= and last= parameters, and the software ignores all but the last occurrence and does not throw an error. I may be wrong, but I assume that the same would be true for all Cite parameters.

I have been cleaning up refs, starting each ref by copy-and-pasting an empty Cite template from Notepad. This contained "|first= |last=", which I filled in with the author's name. If there were multiple authors, I first copy-and-pasted the "|first= |last=" string to duplicate it as many times as needed. Then, due to ADD, I sometimes neglected to change the added parameter names to first2, last2, etc.

I don't know of a legitimate reason for duplicate parameter names, so as far as I know any such duplication would be unintentional and would yield undesirable results. So it would seem that principles of good software design would suggest throwing an error. Yes, I was negligent in forgetting to change the parameter names, but people will make mistakes and the software could tell them that they did rather than allowing the error to remain.

Version: 1.25-git
Severity: enhancement