Template talk:Cite book/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
← Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 →

Contents

Series names, volumes, editors

How can I add a reference such as this:

  • Altenmüller, Hartwig. 2001. “Die Mumienhülle des Chonsu-maacheru”. In Alt-Ägypten, edited by Wulf Köpke and Bernd Schmelz. Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg 30 (new series). Bonn: Holos Verlag. 21–72.

The best I can get now (using the template) is:

  • Altenmüller, Hartwig (2001). “Die Mumienhülle des Chonsu-maacheru”, Wulf Köpke and Bernd Schmelz Alt-Ägypten. Bonn: Holos Verlag, 21–72. ISBN 3-86097-540-4.

I need the editors' names to be after the book title. There is no way to add the series and series volume number. Page numbers are in the middle of the reference for some very strange reason instead of at the end of the citation where they belong. And there is the issue with the periods (or lack thereof) in the reference. Klompje7 07:10, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You could create a proposal for a changed version of the template. Best under your user space. Maybe at User:Klompje7/cite book/1? Just copy the current version of the template to there first, so that your proposed changes can be diff'ed. You could then insert test inclusions at User talk:Klompje7/cite book/1. I have done this several times that way. Just use {{User:Klompje7/cite book/1}} instead of {{cite book}} when calling your test template. --Ligulem 09:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Possible solutions for double-dot problem

I'd suggest three possible solutions for problem described in #Note:

  1. Instruct the users to not enter a dot if there is one
  2. Introduce new parameter, say dotinname which would be set to true if the name is an initial
  3. Test the name against "A.", "B."... "Z." which should solve most if not all cases
  4. Both 2 and 3.

Nikola 07:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

None of those are practical. 1 & 2 make the documentation even more complex - people have enough trouble following it as it is. 3 would hugely increase the server-load. ··gracefool |☺ 02:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

quote param

I disagree with Nikola who reverted my revert of his adding of a quote param. He want's to have a new quote parameter. I do not think this is good. It adds needless complexity to the template. This is a very bad way to work on this template. This is a high volume template. If everybody just adds what he personally thinks he needs at the moment in one or two articles (and even without discussing it here in advance), this here will soon get more monstrous as it already is. As I personnally follow a one revert rule, I will not revert again.

I fear I have come to the conclusion that the wiki model of working on articles doesn't fit for templates. It may work for low volume templates to some extent. But if everyone just fiddles around on a high profile templates like this here without even discussing in advance then we will fall soon on our noses with templates like this here. The only save solution that seems to fit the behaviour of this community is to not use templates like this here. Sadly, Netoholic was right, but not for technical reasons. Yes, I am diasappointed and annoyed. Probably I shouldn't. Best thing for me seems to to step back on the citation templates. I will try to do so. Best regards, --Ligulem 08:29, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

That sucks. These citation templates really need to be protected once they are publicly released. --Rikurzhen 08:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Had the template been protected, had I wanted to add something that might break existing functionality, or even had the talk page simply ask to discuss any changes, I would have done so. Nikola 20:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok. Another try. Nikola, you say in [1] "revert. I need it, and it doesn't break anything". The first claim is (1) "you need it", the second claim is (2) "it doesn't break anything". I agree with (2), but it increases the complexity. So claim (1): you need it. After taking a closer look I can't see why this is needed. On my talk (User talk:Adrian Buehlmann#Quote parameter) you say you need it in Mehmed-paša Sokolović ([2]). On that page I find the following wiki source:
<ref>{{cite book
|author=Alberi Erg
|title=Relazioni de gli ambasciatori veneti, Serie II, vol. I
|pages=364
|quote=di nazione serviano
}}</ref>
To the template you added at the end the following:
{{qif
  |test={{{quote|}}}
  |then=&nbsp;"{{{quote}}}"
}}
The very same effect could have been achieved without that new quote parameter by writing in Mehmed-paša Sokolović:
<ref>{{cite book
|author=Alberi Erg
|title=Relazioni de gli ambasciatori veneti, Serie II, vol. I
|pages=364
}}&nbsp;"di nazione serviano"</ref>
Do we really need that quote parameter at the end of cite book? There are lot's of appendices to cite book calls in articles (comments and whatever). But we do not go and add them all as parameters to the template. Especially for that quote param there is technically spoken no need to do so. Ok, you could say we could leave away that template entirely. So that argument might not be so strong. But do we really need to add that quote param here? We have one request on one article by one user here. We have more than 5,000 articles calling this template and no use request for this feature. What have I overlooked? Is there anyone other requesting this quote param? --Ligulem 12:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, OK, it's not just that I need it, and not just for a single article:
  • While I was referencing some things in unrelated articles, I realised that sometimes having a quote would improve drastically authority of the references I used.
  • If quote parameter exists, it will be used more than if it doesn't. And, especially for a book that exists on-line (or for a web reference), its existence eases reference-checking a lot.
  • I believe that it is good to have one format for quotes, and if they would be left out of the template, different people would enter them in different way. If it is in the template it could be changed from "quote" to — "quote" or quote or something else.
So, in short, I needed it several times, believe that others might need it too, and that it is a good idea in general, and I didn't want to put it outside of the template because there is necessity for uniform style.
Regarding other thing that people surround this template with, I believe that they too might go in in similar circumstances, that is, if it is possible and desirable to standardise them. Someone asked for volume, and I needed it too for that article (but I haven't noticed until actually writing it ;) and believe it should go in.
Regarding complexity, the template had 30 qifs, and I added 31st, and that was at the very end. I don't think that there could have been anything done to it which would increase its complexity less than I did. Nikola 20:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
This is a good point (only adding one qif to 30 preexisting). But that can be applied incrementally until there are 60 of them. Well then. Yet another qif. Who's next :-)? --Ligulem 21:16, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, it would be nice if these templates were released once, protected, and never changed again (save bug fixes), till they are completely replaced with a new version under a new name. Count that as a vote for removing the quote param and protecting the template. --Rikurzhen 00:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I was once thinking about doing something like {{cite book/1}}, {{cite book/2}}, {{cite book/3}}.... I would then protect these forwever. We would have an address (a name) for older versions of the template with that. This would also preserve the history or articles. Now we have a push up system into articles. Every change in each template ripples through to the articles and old versions of articles are destroyed. This also makes reversions per articles impossible (see for example this old broken version of G.W. Bush which is now incompatble with the current template:Infobox President). A new name for a template is at least needed if the signature changes (the name or the semantics of parameters are changed). Think about that: Microsoft brings out a new version of Windows and you get that pushed onto your computer without being asked. If your programs are incompatible with the new version you immediately fall on your nose then. It is quite normal that people decide themselves when they want to upgrade in such a case. This corresponds to the ability to decide what version of a template is used in an article. --Ligulem 11:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds like a very good idea for this kind of template. --Rikurzhen 06:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Author parameters

I fear that we are suffering instruction creep over the various author-related parameters. The situation is quite simple:

  • author is available for simply dropping a single author into:
    • it performs no magic formatting
    • it is suitable for those authors with names which cannot be shown as "last, first"
    • it is also suitable for an editor if there is no explicit author in which case appending something like "(ed.)" is suitable
  • first & last are available for a single author whose name can be shown as "last, first":
    • they automatically arrange the name components in the correct order and insert the comma
    • last overrides author
    • first is optional
  • authorlink allows the correct article link to be specified
    • it is only activated if either author or last is present
    • the brackets are provided ([[]])
  • coauthors allows specification of further authors after the first
    • it is only activated if either author or last is present

There is no point in over-prescribing what should and should not be done with these parameters: it is perfectly simple for later editors to rearrange as necessary. For example, it would be perfectly acceptable to drop a whole series of names into the author parameter: this could then be split up at a later date, and possibly linked. (It might also be possible, at a later date, to provide more than one set of author parameters e.g. first_2+last_2+authorlink_2 and split coauthors but this is not considered necessary right now.) For the time being, the most important thing is to record the information available and display it to best advantage. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Punctuation edit request/Comma after title?

Could someone who knows how to edit this please correct the punctuation; it should be:

Title. Publisher
not
Title, Publisher

Thanks - MPF 10:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


The code

{{cite book|last=Gaukroger|first=Stephen|title=Descartes: an intellectual biography|location=Oxford|publisher=Clarendon|year=1995}}

yields

Gaukroger, Stephen (1995). Descartes: an intellectual biography. Oxford: Clarendon.

with a comma between the title and the publisher. Bibliographical styles I'm familiar with would have a period (full stop) after the title. Is there a rationale for the comma, or could it be changed to a period?

I guess I got it right without screwing the whole thing up :) —Barbatus 12:28, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I believe I found a problem. I don't know how to solve that:
  • Mumford, David (1999). The Red Book of Varieties and Schemes, 2nd ed., Springer-Verlag.
See the doubled point after the abbreviated "ed.". And in this case there is no point after the title. --Ligulem 12:34, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes I do. As a palliative, one can spell out 'edition' ... but there should not be a need for that word at all, like there's no need for 'page(s)': just edition=2nd. Don't you think? —Barbatus 12:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
We currently have the problem that there are articles out there which do abbreviate this. I just happended to find Music of Alaska a few minutes ago. There are others too. So those do not look so optimal right now. --Ligulem 12:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
You're right. But may be it will compel people to change either the template or the references? If you just drop that period after the 'ed', would that solve the problem? (Because comma separating title and publisher is just as wrong.) —Barbatus 13:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
At the moment, I'm rather compelled to revert your edit to the template (But I'll leave it for now). This double period thing is a nasty one. We have it on other situations too. For example there is this well known unsolved problem "author without year":
Miller, J.. How to include a period in a wiki template.
If we had a function that could filter out the second point if there is already one, this would solve these problems. Unfortunately we don't have such a thing, because lot's of people don't want to turn Mediawiki template language into a programming language. Sigh. --Ligulem 13:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm ... how 'bout that:

Miller Light, J. How to include a period in a wiki template.

Besides, don't you think that there are much more books without editions mentioned than with? (I really don't like that comma after the title.) Even there are probably numerous 'ed..' now, they could easily be eliminated by editors who monitor their pages. No?

—Barbatus 14:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've hacked up something: [3]. Are you lucky with that? --Ligulem 16:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Like that:
Ivan, Ivanov (2006). My Favourite F-Word, 3rd ed., Moscow: Muscovite Publishers.?
... There should be no comma before Moscow at all. Just period. Or am I doing something wrong here?
Oh, is it possible to insert 'ed.' or 'edition' automatically, if 'edition =' isn't empty? Just curious. —Barbatus 16:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
"There should be no comma before Moscow at all. Just period. Or am I doing something wrong here?" Yes, you are asking for something that's definitely impossible to hack with the current wiki capabilities. And I disagree with the automatic insertion of "edition" or "ed". Calls in articles already include that. There is now way doing that on this template here. If you add that on this template here, you break the articles in an unacceptable way. --Ligulem 17:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
That's fine. As I said, I was just curious. As for the period, why not just omit it after 'ed'? Place of publication, in essence, starts a new sentence here, that's why it should be separated from the title by a period. (Actually, there's no need for a comma between title and edition number either.) But you're trying to avoid double period in existing bibliographical references, if I understand you correctly. It looks better than before, that's for sure, so it is probably a good compromise. —Barbatus 17:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Problem with author name

I'm having trouble with the following cite book reference:

{{cite book | author=Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami | authorlink=http://www.himalayanacademy.com/satgurus/gurudeva/ | title=Dancing with Śiva, Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism | origyear=1979 | url=http://www.himalayanacademy.com/resources/books/dws/ | accessdate=2006-03-06 | edition=Sixth Edition | year=2003 | month=11 | publisher=Himalayan Academy | location=Kapaa, HI | id=ISBN 0-945497-96-2 | pages=491-515 | chapter=Six Schools of Saivism | chapterurl=http://www.himalayanacademy.com/resources/books/dws/dws_r2_six-schools.html}}

produces this:

[Sivaya Subramuniyaswami] [1979] (11 2003). “Six Schools of Saivism”, Dancing with Śiva, Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism, Sixth Edition, Kapaa, HI: Himalayan Academy, 491-515. ISBN 0-945497-96-2. Retrieved on 2006-03-06.

As you can see, the author's name is Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, and I have the attribute author=Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami in the tag, but it is only showing Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, missing Satguru and sticking it over on the end of the authorlink URL as http://www.himalayanacademy.com/satgurus/gurudeva/|Satguru. You have to hover over the author name and look at your browser's interpretation of the URL to see what I'm talking about. Help? --Japendranatha 00:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

authorlink is not meant for external links, so your use of this template is wrong. On authorlink, you can specify the name of a wikipedia article. Nothing else. The documentation above says "authorlink: Title of Wikipedia article about author." --Ligulem 08:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Translation of a foreign-language title

I've just made a tweak to the first book reference on Die Ärzte, which is the band's official biography (Ein überdimensionales Meerschwein frisst die Erde auf). It included a translation of the title, which I moved from the title param (in italics it looked like it was part of the title) to the language param. It now says "in German: A Colossal Guinea Pig Devours the Earth", which also looks odd, as the translation isn't German. It would look better without the "in".

Would it be possible to either

  • remove the "in"; or
  • change the template to add a translation param, so it inserts the translation after the language and omits the "in"?

Hairy Dude 06:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

How about doing the guinea pig like this? --Ligulem 08:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That seems very awkward to me, having to refer explicitly to "the title". I'd prefer it to be part of the reference. Hairy Dude 09:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
How about not using this template for this case? We cannot cover all possible uses with this template anyway. There is no need to use this template everywhere. Stuffing each and every gimmick into this template here is not a good idea. --Ligulem 09:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

accessmonth and accessyear

I would like to propose to eliminate the accessmonth and accessyear params and instead require to specify the accessdate exclusively in ISO YYYY-MM-DD format. I think we can risk removing these without doing a thorough walk through the more than 5,000 articles using this template. These two params were added recently. The likelihood that they have been used is rather small. So I think that try would be worth the risk. --Ligulem 08:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. —Serein 12:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I've talked with Phil on IRC about this. Seems like he's not such a big fan of removing accessmonth and accessyear. If I recall his speech correctly he thought about possibly using that info for links to internet archive services. So my proposal to remove accessmonth and accessyear would then be somewhat in the wrong direction regarding Phil's line of thinking. Also gracefool added them. So we have at least two brains that seem to like accessmonth and accessyear in one or other another way. My own reasoning was that I have seen that editors fill in date info in such great varieties in params like year, month and date that I fear we will not be able to find that much of worthy info in the triple accessdate, accessmonth and accessyear that could be useful for automatic processing. I also fear that presenting too much options to editors complicates this template. In the case of the accessdate I think this date should be known fully (all date components: year, month and day), as this is the date when the editor accessed the URL's in that cite book call. Well, I'm a bit in doubt now what to do. So in situations like this here it is probably best to leave it as it is for now. --Ligulem 09:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Bolding of title?

The usage description above currently displays the following line:

 | title = '''REQUIRED'''

It's not clear to me whether this is meant to say that the title should be bold (by just replacing REQUIRED with the title) or that we should really be sure to include the title, and the person trying to bold this text didn't realize that wiki bolding markup doesn't work within a PRE prefomatted-text element. If the latter, we should remove the surrounding triple apostrophes because it's misleading. If titles should be bolded in citations, we should include the markup in the template, not require each and every instance to include that markup. Assuming that the apparent bolding is a mistake, I plan to remove the apostrophes in 1 week unless someone provides a reasonable counterargument (or someone beats me to it). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:01, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

This is only the usage instructions. I think you could go ahread ahead and remove in the next 1 hour. -Splashtalk 02:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I for one was misled. I thought it was directing me to bold the title. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I've already removed that misleading '''REQUIRED''' from the doc. Thanks for reporting this. --Ligulem 10:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Coauthors

It appears that I can't use the coauthors field without an authors field as well, right? I have a book that has five coauthors, none of which are credited in any way over the others. Is there a way around this? Or am I supposed to do something else? Tuf-Kat 05:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting the first named author in the author field, and the rest in coauthors. It doesn't matter that they're equally credited for the book: one of them is still named first. (In the library world, we'd not usually name the other four authors at all here!) —Serein 07:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Removing annotation on "pages"

Someone added "p." to the "pages" parameter. This is all very fine if no-one ever puts anything but a raw page range into that field (if technically inaccurate for any thing but a single page). However if, as I have just found, someone wants to say how many pages the book being cited has, this is totally borked: "p. 179 pages" just looks stupid. So I have removed it. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I think specifiying "pages=179 pages" is incorrect use anyway, as this param either specifies a single page or a page range. It is not the number of pages in the book. I have seen that addition of said "p." to the template code. As nobody reverted that, I have already started removing things like "p." from calls like "pages=p. 23" in order not to have "p.p. 23" in the articles. So what now? --Ligulem 17:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
It is not correct to use "pages" to list the number of pages in the book. The Cite book template is for referencing citations, not for describing trivia about the book. No one cares how many pages the book has, any more than how tall it is or what color it is. What people care about is what page the citation is on. Proper referecing style is to use pages for listing only the pages relevant to the citation. Look at any MLA or writing guide. Kaldari 02:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
You should not alter template behaviour without fixing those articles which use it first. Your change means that thousands of articles now display in the bizarre manner I describe above. We are not conforming to any particular style guide here, because there are so many that it would spark endless editing wars as proponents of different systems argued it out. Stop fiddling with the template, please. —Phil | Talk 10:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The template documentation has always been as Kaldari said. Clearly the template has been used incorrectly in the past, but that's not a good reason to change it. ··gracefool |☺ 02:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
There are two problems with summarily fiddling with the template in this manner:
  1. The annotation as added has no way of distinguishing between a single-page reference, which should use "p.", and a multi-page reference, which should use "pp.". Indeed there is no way of telling whether the person using the template has used a complex set of pages such as "pp.31 et seq, 41–50". In the same way as the editor field leaves it to the user to insert "editor(s)", this field should leave it to the user to annotate the data as appropriate.
  2. The change takes no account of the fact that many uses of this template already have this annotation included, and therefore will look extremely stupid. Any change like this should be accompanied by careful scrutiny of existing cases and suitable adjustment.
You might gather that I am extremely irritated by this high-handed approach to this issue. You would not be far wrong. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Phil. The insertion of "p." severely restricts the use of the parameter. As has been noted: "p." traditionally denotes a single page and "pp." denotes a range of pages. For example, "p. 31" or "pp. 674–9".
    -,-~R'lyehRising~-,- 04:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I've removed that hard coded "p. " in front of the {{{pages}}} param. Breaking thousands of existing inclusions is a bad idea. --Ligulem 07:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Postscript: I think that the most important thing about this parameter is that the page reference appears in the correct place in the citation, sans superfluous text. It should be left up to individual editors to decide what sort of page citation style they want to use. Hence, leaving out "p." gives them more flexibility. Some editors may even wish to spell out the word page or include additional specifics (as in: "pages=section B, p. 321").
    -,-~R'lyehRising~-,- 04:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/AIDS/archive1

The article on AIDS has been nominated for FA status, yet the first comment in place is about the wikitext. It is called a perfect example of what best practice isn't. AIDS extensively uses this template along with the cite journal and cite web templates within the text. This makes for better reading and better referencing. Just thought people should know. --Bob 00:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

It is not the templates' fault. It is the fault of the <ref> system (see m:Cite/Cite.php) which requires that references be inline in the text rather than collected together at the end of the article. -Splashtalk 01:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

citing an article/chapter in an edited/compiled book.

I am having trouble converting the following citation into the new format, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Harel, Idit & Papert, Seymour (1991). Software design as a learning environment. In Idit Harel & Seymour Papert (Ed.), Constructionism, pp. 51-52. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0-89391-785-0.

Cheers. youngamerican (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I got it. youngamerican (talk) 17:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Books in series

I've been dealing with some academic books, and those are often in a series of related books or monographs. I've been trying to learn how to use this template, and I'm holding Volume 10 of the "IAS/Park City Mathematics Series". Could entries for the place in a series of books be added to this template? I don't know much about template editing. The book is a standalone (hardback) book that has its own title, authors, etc., it just also has the additional information that it's Volume such-and-such in such-and-such a series. Thanks! -- Creidieki 23:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

ISBN

Why is there no ISBN field? People should be able to click on something to quickly locate the book in a nearby library. AxelBoldt 15:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

You put it in the "id" field. e.g. id=ISBN 012345678. This will produce a link: ISBN 12345678, which takes the clicker to Special:Booksources, a page of the kind you describe.
Nice, thanks. AxelBoldt 16:16, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Reverted adding of ID param

I have reverted the addition of an optional ID param. We use only lower case params here. There is already an id param. The reason for this is, that maintenance of inclusions is more complex if we have all params in lower and upper case variants (especially a migration to using another template). This is one of the reasons why we created this new template as a replacement for the old {{book reference}} and migrated in hard work more than 5,000 inclusions. Also the template code is more complex when having upper and lower case params. Please don't add upper case variants for existing lower case params. Thanks. --Ligulem 21:10, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

btw, do you lot know about {{Harvard reference}}, which uses upper-case, apparently? Septentrionalis 21:28, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I know. So, what do you want to say with that? Some explanation: We had a request for lower case parameters on the old {{book reference}}, which had only upper case params. Instead of having a hydra with upper and lower case params I proposed to do {{cite book}} here with only lower case and deprecating {{book reference}}. In a joint effort we then migrated all inclusions from book reference to cite book. --Ligulem 21:43, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Do you want to deprecate {{Harvard reference}} (or, alternatively, direct users who prefer caps to it? Septentrionalis 21:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't know. {{Harvard reference}} was made by COGDEN. He seems not to be so active any more on the citation templates. Book reference comes from SEWilco. And I don't know how many fans of Harward reference exist. This might be a bee's nest. The philosophy of Harward reference is a bit different than cite book. It's not just the upper/lowercase thing. I wouldn't say that fans of uppercase params should go using Harward reference instead of cite book. Please also note that all these more complex citation templates depend on that heavilly debated {{qif}}. In light of this, there are some damn good reasons to have the citation templates as simple as possible. Harward reference looks quite complicated. At least it cannot be converted to Weeble method (a possible stop gap measure method if qif should break). Although this pressure has been further lifted recently (see talk on qif, introduction of native conditional function}. --Ligulem 22:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Title main entry

I'm unsure about the format the template produces for works that (in library terms) have a title main entry (unknown or uncredited authorship). I don't know of any established citation style that puts date first in such a case. Here is an example of what the template produces:

{{cite book
 | title = The Book of a Thousand Poems
 | edition = 1st American ed.
 | year = 1986
 | publisher = New York: P. Bedrick Books
 | id = ISBN 0872260844
 }}

(1986) The Book of a Thousand Poems, 1st American ed., New York: P. Bedrick Books. ISBN 0872260844.

Could you write here what it should look like in this case so we know what you want to have? --Ligulem 07:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Harvard IIRC would be something like:
The Book of a Thousand Poems. (1986). 1st American ed. New York: P. Bedrick Books.
Which is logical enough. I'm prepared to be corrected, though – it's late in the evening and I don't have my referencing references to hand. :) —Serein 22:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Phil made a similar proposal here. There is also a corresponding question from Splash here. I think I have once tried to do it like you and Phil propose on the old template:book reference. If I correctly remember, I had some troubles avoiding two points in a row (I felt like hitting the edge of what's possible with the template "programming language"). But I'm not sure anymore. It's sure worth a retry. As a side note, there is some hot stuff at m:ParserFunctions (see also [4] and [5]). So a major rewrite will presumably happen in the near future on the implementation side of the citation templates (replacing qif with #if). So I would propose to postpone this here for later. --Ligulem 22:56, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I've done it. See User:Ligulem/work/cite book 1. Tests at User talk:Ligulem/work/cite book 1. Evil as ever, I've introduced another level of meta-templates (according to the rule of constant harassment for the mediawiki dev's, which says: "the level of meta on cite book shall be constant" :-). Shall I copy the content of User:Ligulem/work/cite book 1 to {{cite book}}? --Ligulem 09:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)--Ligulem 23:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not competent to talk about the level of meta, but the output looks fine! —Serein 21:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
The code looks horrible without metatemplates, because the dates have now to appear on two different locations depending on whether there is an author or not. This would mean the duplication of template code, which is a maintenance problem. I have thus created a few meta template at category:citation meta templates, which are called from my new cite book proposal. I would propose to semi-protect them before installing my proposal into cite book (we have a use load of more than 10'000 inclusions on cite book). I have asked admin Phil to semi-protect them. --Ligulem 22:12, 2 May 2006 (UTC)--Ligulem 23:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Without semi-protection, this makes no sense. I've thus stroken out my poposal above. Seems like it's not wanted this way. --Ligulem 23:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Electronic reprints of old books

Just wondering what is the best way to cite an old publication that has been scanned and made available as part of an online collection. For example, the paper version of [6] was published in 1918. It was then scanned and made available online by the U of Michigan Libraries. They provide this link as a linkable citation. The first of these lists the library under publication info while the second does not. As a more concrete illustration, Chester Township, Ottawa County, Michigan has my stab at using the template to cite this. older ≠ wiser 14:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I see your dilemma! I think either of the following would be acceptable:
  1. Fisher, Ernest B. (1918). “Sparta Township”, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Michigan: Historical Account of Their Progress from First Settlement to the Present Time. Chicago, Ill.: Robert O. Law, pp. 267-271. Retrieved on 2006-04-18.
  2. Fisher, Ernest B. [1918] (2005). “Sparta Township”, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Michigan: Historical Account of Their Progress from First Settlement to the Present Time. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Library, pp. 267-271. Retrieved on 2006-04-18.
—Serein 18:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I like the second. Thanks. older ≠ wiser 00:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

New parameter doi

User:Tob added a new parameter "doi" and used it on Scheme (mathematics). I have manually substed the template call to {{doi}} to avoid Meta-template complaints. --Ligulem 16:51, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

First name last name

Hi,

Can someone fix this template so that it shows firstname lastname, instead of lastname, firstname? The lastname, firstname style is rather old-fashioned and non-standard. (And personally, I was glad when the style manuals banished it; I thought it was rather akwardly ugly all along). linas 04:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi. To my knowledge, current consensus on the en Wikipedia is to have it as it is. So it will stay as it is until there is evidence of consensus to change that. So if you want to change this, the right thing would be to try to gather consensus first. "old-fashioned and non-standard" is not very convincing. Which style manuals are you referring to? Wikipedia:Citing sources hints otherwise. --Ligulem 09:24, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
The main reason for this is to facilitate sorting a list of entries into alphabetical order, which is overwhelming done by "lastname, firstname". BTW, if you really don't like it, there is always the "author" parameter which is also useful for names which do not fit the "lastname, firstname" paradigm, but don't be surprised if your choice is overruled by subsequent editors. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:28, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

List of years in literature

Why not link the publication years to list in List of years in literature. The year 2006 would link to 2006 in literature. -- Petri Krohn 01:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

For me, because:
  1. not all references are necessarily "literature";
  2. not all dates will be simple years;
  3. it overlinks dates (although I accept that's controversial!). —Serein 20:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Foreword writer.

If the forward, as listed in the contents, includes the name of its writer; should the foreword writer still be listed in "others="?

or

If there is only one foreword, and it doesn't include the name of its writer in the contents, does one credit the foreword writer in the "others=" with "Foreword by "?

  • Jackson, W.P.U. [1980] (1980). “Foreword”, Wild flowers of the Fairest Cape, Foreword by Douglas Hey, Howard Timmins publishers, 7. ISBN 0869781944.

Should the foreword writers be included in "others=" when not referencing something from the foreword themselves? -- Jeandré, 2006-05-20t08:15z

Hey, you're asking complicated things I'm not sure how to answer. Normally the authors go to first,last & coauthors. "others" is meant for special things like "illustrated/translated by", so it might not be too bad if you put "Forword by X and Y there" (If you feel urged to mention them, it's up to you). If the name of the author of the foreword is already specified by the chapter as "chapter=Foreword by Nelson Mandela" then I see not need to repeat Nelson Mandela again in the "others" parameter. Another thing I feel urged to ask/comment: why do you specify both origdate and date? If they are the same then just use date and leave origdate unspecified. And if you have a year as for Jackson 1980 above please use the year param (and not the date). The origyear/year is meant for republished books (as I understand it). So I would probably do it like this:
  • {{cite book |last=Kathrada |first=Ahmed | authorlink=Ahmed Kathrada |editor=Marlene Burger (Ed.) |title=Ahmed Kathrada memoirs |date=2004-08-06 |publisher=Zebra press |location=Paarl, South Africa |id=ISBN 1868729184 |pages=p. xiii |chapter=Foreword by [[Nelson Mandela]]}}
→ Kathrada, Ahmed (2004-08-06). “Foreword by Nelson Mandela”, Marlene Burger (Ed.) Ahmed Kathrada memoirs. Paarl, South Africa: Zebra press, p. xiii. ISBN 1868729184.
  • {{cite book | last=Jackson |first=W.P.U. |others=Foreword by Douglas Hey |title=Wild flowers of the Fairest Cape |year=1980| publisher=Howard Timmins publishers |id=ISBN 0869781944 |pages=p. 7 |chapter=Foreword }}
→ Jackson, W.P.U. (1980). “Foreword”, Wild flowers of the Fairest Cape, Foreword by Douglas Hey, Howard Timmins publishers, p. 7. ISBN 0869781944.
--Ligulem 09:08, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that makes sense.
I agree that the same "date" and "origdate" shouldn't be included, tho I think "origdate" is the better one to use - leaving out "date".
As for the 1980 "date" instead of "year" - that was just me being lazy and copying the Kathrada cite instead of starting from scratch. -- Jeandré, 2006-05-20t21:40z
The idea of origdate is specifically for republished works. For example, you can say "Darwin, C. [1859] (2004). The origin of species" to specify a particular edition while still giving the information of the date of first publication. This is particularly useful if you give page numbers; e.g. you can reference p.299 of a 2004 edition of the book, without (apparently) claiming that Darwin was alive and well in 2004!
Rule of thumb: use date only, unless there's a good reason, in which case, use both date and origdate together. —Serein 23:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

title of book

Some punctuation marks end a sentence, like ! and ?, so if a title ends with such a mark, there is a full stop too many!. Intangible 17:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but then don't use this template for that book. I know of no way to detect if the book title ends in ! or ? and then suppressing the emitted period in this special case. --Ligulem 17:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
We could add an optional parameter "titlepunct", so that if "titlepunct" is specified, then the period / full stop isn't added. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 06:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Technically, that would be possible. I would recommend to name the parameter "no-title-punct", though. --Ligulem 07:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)