Template talk:Citation/core

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[edit] Fields needed

There is no provision for naming a translator (using "editor" or "author" doesn't work).

Also, in mathematics we often cite Springer-Verlag's notorious series of "yellow books", the Graduate Texts in Mathematics. To do this (and other such) properly, we need a series and number capability.

An example of an attempt to do both of these is

• Remmert, Reinhold (1991), Theory of Complex Functions, vol. 122 of Graduate Texts in Mathematics (Readings in Mathematics), New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-97195-7, translated by Robert B. Burckel from Remmert, Reinhold (1989), Funktionentheorie I (2nd ed.), Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-51238-7

The idea of a universal citation template is appealing, but in terms of results the only major advantage today over the competition is link compatibility with Harvard style. --KSmrq^T 14:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I had thought of including a translator function, but I wasn't sure the best way to cite the translator. Your example seems a bit redundant, because the author is repeated twice. I'm not sure how valuable it is to incorporate full bibliographical information on the source of the translation into the template. If the full info about the original book is important, it would probably be better to just use two templates, as in your example. In normal cases, I think the important information would likely be the translator's name (e.g., new parameters called translator-last, translator-first, etc.), the original language (original-language), the date of the original work (probably re-use year and date) and the date of publication in translated form (probably re-use publication-date).

As to the other issue, I think series and volume would be the best parameter names to use for this. Adding a new series parameter along the lines of your example would be easy. COGDEN 20:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response.

Yes, normally a full citation of the original work is excessive. I did it here for two reasons: (1) I did not know how to include the name of the translator in the main citation, and (1) many international Wikipedia readers may find it more convenient to consult the German-language original.

I wonder if you have tracked developments of {{cite book}} and friends; those support two dates, one of which is the original. Also, it would be nice if we could have universal agreement on (or parameters for) the formatting.

The syntax for templates is baroque; how do you recommend experimenting without breaking thousands of pages? Or would you prefer to do all the edits yourself? --KSmrq^T 22:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the template syntax being baroque. It might have been okay a couple of years ago when templates were small, but it scales very poorly. As far as I'm aware, the {{citation}} set of templates are the most complicated on Wikipedia. I've tried to make it as easy as possible for other editors to change and experiment, however. For each of the templates, there is a "/testing" subpage for testing, and that's how I've been testing things. I then have a subpage on my userpage that references the testing templates.

I haven't been following {{cite book}} for a while. I was involved in the basic design a long time ago, but it has been vastly changed. I've tried to make things as compatible as possible with the other templates, but the {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite chapter}} and all the other myriad templates aren't always consistent with each other. I've been fairly conservative about adding parameters, because once a parameter is added, we're pretty much stuck with it, because removing it from the template would cause problems with lots of pages. COGDEN 22:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)