Template talk:Book reference url

This template is borrowed substantially from Template:Book reference and Template:Book reference link url. The text below must comes from the first template above.

The template doesn't follow Wikipedia standard (such as they are) and fits only the very simplest cases.

Check Wikipedia:Cite_sources.

The template does not follow the recommendations there which are the ones I have been using. MLA style and similar styles are now very widely used in both literary and scientific articles.

Also, I again and again cite material from books that have editors rather than authors. Translators sometimes need to be mentioned (and translators of sections of a book are sometimes different from the editors of a book). Illustrators are also important (sometimes the reason that the work is being cited is the illustrator). Then there is the matter of noting particular editions or providing reprint information. There is the matter of ISBN numbers. There are sometimes re-releases of a book under a different title or even contemporary release of the same work under different titles. Some academic books are part of a continuing series and the series name should be mentioned.

See for example the references I recently added to Norse mythology which contain entry after entry that just won't fit this template. And that bibliography contains no individual articles. Individual articles within a book or periodical add futher difficulties.

The idea of a list of templates for every reference likely to be cited numerous times is a very good one, but such a template needs to be far more flexible and complete than this one is (or there needs to be a set of templates for various uses). And templates should agree with the suggested formats in Wikipedia:Cite_sources or the suggestions there should be changed. I don't think they should be changed.

Sorting material by author and date and using author name and date as the in-text reference is the most reader-friendly method for in-text reference which is why it has caught on so widely for academic use.

The idea of having bibilographic information in one place for a reference is a good one, but needs much more work before it is practical for anything but the very simplest cases. Probably someone with a lot of bibliographic and library cataloguing experience should work on this.

A template containing only the minimum BibTeX fields is not suitable for real world use.

Jallan 15:50, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have a little more time now to attempt to address specific issues. I have left your text intact above but will butcher a copy below in order to try to address all points:

The template does not follow the recommendations there which are the ones I have been using. MLA style and similar styles are now very widely used in both literary and scientific articles.

I have now updated the template to get it close to MLA. Note that it still requires the authors string to be input precisely to get the right author layout. To get round this issue we would have to have templates Template:Book_ref_1_author ... Template:Book_ref_5_authors. On the face of it, this would be reasonable - however when combined with the need for other templates outlined below, it cause the number of required templates to grow exponentially.

Also, I again and again cite material from books that have editors rather than authors. Translators sometimes need to be mentioned (and translators of sections of a book are sometimes different from the editors of a book). Illustrators are also important (sometimes the reason that the work is being cited is the illustrator). Then there is the matter of noting particular editions or providing reprint information. There is the matter of ISBN numbers. There are somtimes re-releases of a book under a different title or even contemporary release of the same work under different titles. Some academic books are part of a continuing series and the series name should be mentioned.

This is all good stuff. The "editors" case is extremely common, and I think we should proliferate the templates to allow for that. I think perhaps we should also allow a "further information" parameter which can be populated with illustrator, translator information as required. There is a question of whether "close to MLA" is good enough of course in that case.

Sorting material by author and date and using author name and date as the in-text reference is the most reader-friendly method for in-text reference which is why it has caught on so widely for academic use.

No problems with this, though it is a matter for article-writers.

The idea of having bibilographic information in one place for a reference is a good one, but needs much more work before it is practical for anything but the very simplest cases. Probably someone with a lot of bibliographic and library cataloguing experience should work on this.

I would definitely welcome professional input! Pcb21| Pete 09:04, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Other initial feedback

This is a good start! I've had in mind a scheme to make Bib:xyz entries recorded in a separate table in the database, so the bibliography could be searchable and shareable a la images, but that's a lot of hacking... a set of templates like this is a good bridge. Stan 20:53, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

While still simple, I think this is a great big step in the right direction. Not only will it make citations easier, which encourages adding them, but more importantly it creates a standardized format which can be changed easily. I would recommend retrofitting all existing book references with such a template once it's stabilized. Derrick Coetzee 03:37, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bibliography Creator

If we can create a single dynamic template, I have the makings of an open-source Bibliography Creator on my website, found here. (I didn't code it, but the original author's website is down). It's javascript, so presumably a developer could just embed it into something like Wikipedia:Bibliography creator.

I will also shoot this idea over to the guy who is doing the coding for the Firefox Wikipedia extension and see if he could implement it there. --Alterego 21:32, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Have you noticed that if you do not complete all fields the template shows missing field in the reference. Also if you put field_name= it shows a redundant point. Example:

• Sussex, John (editor) (1990). Stamp World London 90, souvenir handbook, Stamp World Exhibitions.
• Sussex, John (editor) (1990). Stamp World London 90, souvenir handbook, Stamp World Exhibitions.

--AdrianMastronardi 15:34, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is an upgraded version called WikiBib that I released a couple days ago. Yes, it is static at the moment. After I get a little more comfortable with javascript I will insert some 'if field is empty, then do not enter field'. However, we should strive to include as much information as possible so it should not be a big deal in the meantime! --Alterego 19:58, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

The extlink in the above paragraph just displays a lump of XML. I havn't got Javascripting switched off. Why?. -- Chris j wood 12:18, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That was an issue with Internet Explorer, now fixed. --Alterego 15:08, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

WikiBib is nice, Alterego! I don't have much experience with templates (I'm learning, though). (1) How can we standardize the citations even further so that all types have links to the year and consistent punctuation (like the parenthesis and periods in the beginning of most references)? (2) Also, a Google Print template would probably be a good addition. --J. J. 15:53, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

Reverting User:Rdsmith4's changes

I reverted User:Rdsmith4's changes of today because they broke articles that use this template. This is a very commonly used template, and thus is a dependency of a lot of pages out there. We shouldn't break it lightly, and if we do break it by changing its interface in an incompatible manner, we must be willing to fix the articles that are broken by the change. Preferably, considering the wide-ranging consequences of breaking the interface to commonly used templates, these changes should be discussed first ... —Morven 06:32, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Change suggested

I think the format:

Author: Title. (Publisher, Year)

or

Author: Title. Publisher, Year.

is much more common. (I never saw the year in parentheses in between Author and Title.)

I don't know Templates well. Is there a possibility to check of absence of a value ? e.g., if one field is not given, the dot should not be put. MFH 23:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Personally I think Turabian style is the easiest and most pleasing on the eyes.:

Author, Title (Location: Publisher, Year).

Just an idea. --Fastfission 14:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That style is for a note, but in the bibliography the style is slightly different:

Author-last-name, Author-first-name. Title. Location: Publisher, Year.

I write my share of history articles in Wikipedia, and I would never use any template that didn't use this exact format; my God, anything else would be uncivilized. And in the field of history writing at least, other formats seem amateurish. :-) --Kevin Myers 15:46, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

The Chicago Manual of Style makes a difference between bibliography format and reference list format. In bibliography format, the year comes at the end, as above. In reference list format, the year comes between author and title. In theoretical linguistics publications, at least, we always always always use reference list format. The difference between a bibliography and reference list is that a reference list includes only works actually cited in the article; a bibliography contains all works that might be of interest. --Angr/탉 20:03, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

For those who think that "Author (Year) Title..." should be preferred to

Author, Title, (Publisher, Year).

I suggest to check at any moment the reference list of the most recently added article in any of the subjects (physics, mathematics, computer science, biology...) found at the world wide largest preprint server arxiv (15ooo connections/hour w/o counting mirrors; more than 100 new articles/day), e.g.

• recent math articles
• recent physics articles
• recent computer science articles

I have not the lightest fear in receiving an e-mail each time someone notices that the most recent submission prefers the first to the second format. — MFH: Talk 13:55, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

(Somehow my above reply slipped on the wrong page, on Wikipedia_talk:Cite_sources, and I got the reply below, which is maybe here no more needed, but I don't want to delete it by myself.) — MFH: Talk 23:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Um, with whom are you arguing? The article explicitly says that there are many citation formats, and that the one given is just an example for those people who aren't familiar with one, and that other styles are also acceptable. (For my part, I'm used to the style used in the hard sciences and engineering, which is neither the APA nor the MLA style and doesn't put last name first.) We don't really care what format people use, as long as they include the information. However, it is important that the present page remain as simple as possible to make it easy for people who aren't used to citations — an exhaustive list of many possible alternative styles is counter-productive here. —Steven G. Johnson 17:45, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

I checked one CS article from arxiv and noticed that the citation form is also different from what is standard in linguistics. Linguistics papers always cite the reference thus: (Smith 2005), whereas the paper I checked (and I know from experience a lot of papers in hard sciences) cite the reference thus: [1]. In the first method the references list is then listed in alphabetical order by author's last name, which is immediately followed by the date. In the second menthod the references list is listed in order of first mention. Since I mostly edit linguistics articles here I like to follow the conventions linguists are accustomed to. People who write on other sciences will presumably also prefer to follow the conventions their colleagues are accustomed to. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 15:22, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

That's really the core issue: Wikipedia articles encompass a great variety of disciplines, and adherents of the various disciplines will advocate their preferred citation style over others. (I've already reverted this template when it appears in history articles, and probably will continue to do so, since it seems so "wrong".) A single Wikipedia "house style" seems unlikely to emerge anytime soon. I've considered making a "history book" reference template; perhaps a variety of citation/reference templates would be helpful, with advice on which one to use for the various disciplines. This approach might create a bit more consistency, while keeping the anal retentive types (i.e. me) happy. --Kevin Myers 17:33, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The logical decision is to support every single citation style there is and let the editor use their discretion as to which is the most appropriate. If done properly, this means that it is something that only has to be done one time, because citation formats are nearly permanent. --Alterego 02:00, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

No ISBN

I have created Template:Book reference no ISBN. On an unrelated note, can someone fill me in on why Music of the United States#References has a problem? Note the works by Gillett and Malone, where the ISBN doesn't display as a link. Tuf-Kat 02:23, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

And in the Music of the United States#Further reading section. Tuf-Kat 02:29, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

• Ah so, grasshopper, this would be because whoever inserted the ISBNs failed to prepend the magic "ISBN " koan. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:06, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • I have no idea who that could have been... It must have been the mysterious one-armed man. Thanks! Tuf-Kat 17:30, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Why?

Why do we need this template (or similar ones for news sources and even web references)? What purpose does it serve? It's more time-consuming to create and much harder to read (in edit view) and edit. This would be OK if I could see an advantage over just doing the formatting manually in whatever way seems best (following various developing wiki conventions unless there's reason not to). I can't. From where I'm standing, this looks like an enormous waste of time! Am I missing something? Rd232 2 July 2005 15:22 (UTC)

Keep in Sync

Please keep this in sync with Template:Book reference link, Template:Chapter reference Template:Chapter reference link. (Probably we should use some sub-templates to automatically keep some parts in sync. Benwing 07:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

extraction out into subparts

I'd like to extract some parts of these as subparts. For example, if we ever were to change the Year, as I tried before, I'd want the change automatically propagated to the other similar templates. Similarly for the "publisher ID", which could be a subpart. This is even more important in the new things I created: Chapter Reference, Book Reference Link, and Chapter Reference Link. There is a large amount of code duplicated among these three, and I really want to subpart it.

Is there a standard for creating subtemplates (i.e. subparts)? Do we just go ahead and create a Template and use it, and pick some reasonable name? At the very least we need to pick a standard for naming subpart templates.

Benwing 08:39, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, I went ahead and created a demo of this. I have a few templates named 'Section:...' and I'm using them for common template parts that are shared among one or more templates, so that changes need be made only once rather than propagated. I've done similar things for the following templates: 'Book reference link', 'Chapter reference', 'Chapter reference link'. It's true that it typically doesn't save space in the template definitions, at least for simple ones like these; but it saves a good deal of headache, esp. over a larger tree of templates, as it allows for consistent propagation of changes.

Benwing 12:46, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

BTW do not revert simply because the formatted result of this template page "looks" wrong. This is a bug in Wikipedia; the actual definition in the Edit box is correct, and calls to these templates look correct with the new definition (actually, they no different from before). Benwing 12:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Obsolete

This template has been made obsolete by the new {{book reference}} template. (SEWilco 21:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC))