Template talk:Sep entry

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[edit] Why?

Hi. What is it good for? trespassers william (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Uhhh...Absolutely Nuthin! No seriously, it links to relevant entries at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (optionally) listing their authors and the date the entry was written, for referencing use. Skomorokh 20:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not stupid (though I don't know Brown). How is it better than a normal link? trespassers william (talk) 21:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry if my initial reply seemed obvious; if you wanted a nuanced answer, it may have been a better use of your time to phrase your question more concisely. A typical link I would find pre-template would be this hypothetical addition to our article on Perception: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Note that the entry is actually on the philosophical Problem of Perception, that it was written by Tim Crane, a leading scholar in the field, and that it has not been updated with recent scholarship in the last three years. None of this information is included by the bare link. A reader uninterested in learning about epistemological uncertainties surrounding hallucination and illusion etc. will not discover that that is the content of the linked entry until they click the link; a browsing scholar may not be interested in what she imagines to be a mediocre summation of the topic and will not click the link (oblivious to the fact that it is written by the highly respected Crane); a research student looking for responses to recent work in the field will have to visit the entry before noting to his disappointment that it has not covered any of the controversy of the past few years. This template solves all those issues by listing the link as The Problem of Perception entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Tim Crane, 2005-03-08.

Now you might ask that is all well and good, but how is the template superior from just writing "The Problem of Perception entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Tim Crane, March 8, 2005." One possible response is that most users will use their own style ("article" instead of "entry" perhaps, or Crane, Tim (2005) instead of the other format) - and that consistency and standardisation is expected from an encyclopedia written to professional standards. But let's image for the sake of argument that users add links to the SEP in the exact same manner as the template; why then, bother with the template? Firstly, it makes it very easy to format links, especially for users unfamiliar with HTML markup.{{sep entry|perception-problem|The Problem of Perception|Tim Crane|2005-03-08}} is far easier to master than "[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/ The Problem of Perception] entry at the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] by Tim Crane, [[March 8]], [[2005]]." (separations vs datelinks, wikilinks and ex links). Secondly, it is less effort to type (79 characters vs 173 in this example, so a 90+ characters extra to type in general). Thirdly, using template makes it very easy to change something across all articles that link to the SEP; for example, if the SEP were to change its name to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, it would take less than a minute to make this change across every linked article - as opposed to manually altering hundreds of articles. A more likely example of this might be if the SEP were to overhaul its website so that entries were moved to a different subdomain; this would instantly render all Wikipedia's links to the SEP dead. A minor alteration to the template would solve that problem immediately, whereas manually updating a) probably would not be done b) would take hours even for the most dedicated editors if it was done. Finally, templates are much more friendly to bots and to Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates, who have the capability and motivation necessary to monitor usage/update/standardise/correct the template, where otherwise ex links to the SEP would go unchecked. This template makes it easy to form a policy amongst interested editors on how and when it is appropriate to link to the SEP. Hope this addresses your concern, Skomorokh 22:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the detailed response. I still have some questions, for tomorrow. trespassers william (talk) 23:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

SEP has a preferred citation style, referring to archived entry versions. If we decide to standardize things, why not accept it? The situation in wikipedia is a mess, and anything else is a little arbitrary. Even if the link is not used to support anything in particular, but as further reading, the SEP editors do seem to deem the archive as their publication's core. Is linking to it enabled?
Relatedly, the date stamp in the template is misleading. Entries undergo revisions, including "substantive" ones. However, there is no indication on the site as to what counts as such, and what is a minor revision. Is there a parameter for substantive revisions?
Some links to SEP are part of a footnote (see in Hilary Putnam). Setting the appearance of links in the template might interfere with a footnote's style. We might wish to present links differently in othercases as well (See for example Isaac_Newton#External_links, where I added links to three entries, preceded by one SEP wikilink). Generally, if you will press that some parameters are optional (I don't get exactly which ones), it must be asked what will be kept of the uniformity you are looking for.
How are people supposed to learn about the template? I saw edits by a dedicated user on my watchlist, which, by the way, weren't completely uniform. Don't you imagine the work with the template like running after good intentioned gnomes who use it in their own way, and users who don't at all? It doesn't look more useful than consenting on citation conventions on WP:PHILO. Anyway, it is appropriate to start a discussion there before using it throughout the all site.
Do pages using the template appear on Special:Linksearch? If not, this shows most clearly that the initiative is only of illusory organizational merit.
The template code is more strict and obscure, and thus harder to use. Brackets and double brackets are probably the common items of wiki markup, urls encountered everywhere (and copy-pasted). In the template, every misunderstanding, misplacement or typing (more appealing the shorter the text is) is fatal.
Your closing point is important. I wonder whether there is a way to recruit the citation templates, philosophy portal pointer or Article Talk-Page Philosophy-Wikiproject Assessment Box^[1] to list SEP links without determining their presentation, but I don't really know about these things.