Template talk:Cite book/Archive 3

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Series

How to fit in the template the name of the series in which a book is published? In usual math references, for instance, some series are cited explicitely. As like

  • Smith J., Advanced hypermathematics for aliens, Lectures notes in Mathematics m55, Springer-Verlag.

Thanks. --gala.martin (what?) 17:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Quite often, these should be treated with {{cite journal}} instead. Circeus 19:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


I have the same problem as gala.martin. I am looking at particular books - hundreds of pages long - that are published in regular series such as Perspectives in Mathematical Logic, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, and many more. There are similar series in other scientific fields as well. {{cite journal}} would put double-quotes around the book title, which is incorrect. The series can be merged with the publisher, but this makes automatic parsing of the templates incorrect. A series field in {{cite book}} would be very helpful for citing these books. CMummert 16:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

A couple of issues with order

Entering 

{{cite book | 
last = Pharr | 
first = Susan | 
coauthors = Krauss, Ellis | 
editor = (eds.) | 
title = Media and Politics in Japan | 
year = 1996 | 
publisher = University of Hawaii Press | 
pages = p.5
}}

Yields: Pharr, Susan; Krauss, Ellis (1996). (eds.) Media and Politics in Japan, p.5, University of Hawaii Press.

Now two things strike me as odd here. First, the date before the (eds.) field. Surely (ed.) or (eds.) should go immediately after the names? Secondly whenever I've referenced using footnotes I've always put the page number last. Perhaps I've been misled but the current position, between title and publisher, just seems odd to me.--Daduzi talk 13:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The "editor" field is expected only to contain a name if you are citing a specific article contained within the book. Said article would then be used to fill the first/last fields. You want to cut the "editor" field completely, though you can, if you want, add it at the end of "coauthors". I think the "pages" field might be for total number of pages, and you are expected to provide the page number separately (for example by listing the book not in the note but in the references and using "Pharr and Kraus, p.5" as the note). Circeus 22:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Uh oh. The pages is not the total number of pages. It is meant to be used to refer to a single page, or a range of pages, or a list of single pages or whatever combination of that. --Ligulem 22:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing up the confusion on my part regarding the editor field. I changed the descrption to make it less confusing for people like me (by making it clear the field was for editor names, at the moment it reads like it's for editor suffixes), but it got lost in the post-spam revert. I'll put it back in when (if?) the page gets unprotected. Regarding the page issue, I still think it's a strange place to put it, is the current position some standard I'm unfamiliar with or is there a decent case for moving it to the end of the template? --Daduzi talk 11:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Somthing awfully broken...i need help with this

Something has gone wrong with this template.

Look at NeXT. Look at the References section of this article, all of the <noinclude> syntax is appearing in the article !!!

— Wackymacs 10:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed the same thing in Asiatic lion! Can somebody fix it! I don't know how! Peter Maas 10:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, someone needs to fix this fast...its a big problem. — Wackymacs 10:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Done and vandal warned. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 10:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Someone decided to use the template for spam-purposes; I've full-protected it for the minute, and intend to full-protect other high-use templates. The job queue was somewhere in the region of 50,000 pages--though it's down to 34,000 now--when I noticed. Jude (talk) 10:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I see, well its fixed on the NeXT article now . Thanks! — Wackymacs 11:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I believe the job queue just flushed the last page. Everything should be back to normal now... Jude (talk) 11:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Weee. Thanks for looking, Jude. Too bad we need full protection now :(. BTW, how can I see the jobque? --Ligulem 11:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
It's surprising the template wasn't protected aarlier. All the citation template should probably be protected. I remember a case of subtle vandalism involving one of the many subtemplates of {{infobox}}. That one was hard to track down. Circeus 12:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Special:Statistics shows the length of the job queue. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 13:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. We had 8 edits in a time span of 11 minutes. This template is included on 14,114 pages at the moment. 8 x 14,114 = 112,912. So 50,000 entries in the job queue seems reasonable to me. This template here, {{cite web}} and {{cite journal}} are obviously now protected. Previously they were semi-protected. Seems like this was not enough. I would appreciate if some admin could move the usage documentation from the template pages back to the talk pages again, so we can at least edit the usage without asking for admin help. --Ligulem 13:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
To Jude: You probably should not be too concerned about server load things like the job queue length (currently over 200'000 and rising, despite cite book, cite web and cite journal being fully protected). See a statement from Brion on this [1]. The job queue currently is at a higher level for apparently in the order of hours. And nothing is hurt. We don't need light speed updates from template changes to articles! The devs can handle the server load. As Brion already said during that qif debacle, they either fix it or will shut down unfixable features (which is very unlikely). We should concentrate on editorial issues here and not invoke the server load mantra every once and again. --Ligulem 08:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Finding this template

Greetings - Could someone who's able please add this template to Category:Book templates? It would be terribly useful for people looking for book resources. Thanks. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 02:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that made my head spin. <g> Thanks again. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 03:09, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:Cite book -- page number problem

From today's featured article, Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, footnote 36:

Michael Burleigh (1997). Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide, 210-211, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521588162.

This was produced by Template:Cite book, which apparently puts the page number(s) before the publisher, in contradiction to every footnote ever written. IMHO, it should go before the ISBN. --zenohockey 02:13, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I moved this from WP:AN.[2] I believe it fits here better to be able to discuss this change where contributors to this template can give their opinions. -- ReyBrujo 04:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
That is a pertinent request, and I've updated the template accordingly. Circeus 12:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Documentation back on talk page

I've copied the documentation back to the talk page. Please remove it from the template page. I don't want do ask an admin for every tweak to the docu. If you disagree, update the template page docu yourself accordingly whenever needed. Thanks. --Ligulem 11:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. older ≠ wiser 11:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. That was fast. The same should be done on {{cite web}} [3] and {{cite journal}} [4]. --Ligulem 11:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Couple of questions

First, how should we seperate two different systems of ID if both are used in the template? In Ant-fungus mutualism I have given both the ISBN and LCC in a citation to maximise the its usefulness. Second question, should any other wikilinking be used in this template apart from author? The book I reference is particularly famous (such that it has its own article), am I right to link the title of the book to its article? I suppose the publisher could be linked but I wouldn't say this is appropriate, any opinions? --Oldak Quill 17:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

  1. It is perfectly fine to give more than one ID (I do that regularly myself for medical articles with DOI and PMIDs), I'd suggest separating them with a comma.
  2. Links for authors, coauthors and title should ideally only be used if there is already an article, or you plan on writing one shortly. If it has an article, and is not linked separately in the article, then by all mean, do link!
  3. generally, publishing companies should not be linked, websites, journal or newspapers that do have articles can be linked, though. (this is the interpretation I go by, and is not in any way binding). Circeus 17:09, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. --Oldak Quill 17:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


Citing poetry

Could somebody please add a "verses" field to the template? Eg. so Homer. Iliad. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |verses= ignored (help) shows up correctly.

Links in footnotes

Is there a reason why this template doesn't make links around publishers and book titles? Or is this stuff way over my head, and I don't know that people who know how to use this template can put links around whatever info they may or may not be able to include. But, if Statism and Anarchy is a book referenced by two different articles, maybe it warrants an article of it's own. It would appear redlinked in a footnote, so I would hope there would be a way of looking at the template to see how many (and which) articles pass a given string for each field of info. Xaxafrad 04:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Because we ideally want to only link wher ethere are already articles. Most publishes and individual books arenot notable. Also, wikilinks (especially redlinks) in footnotes tend to be distracting. Circeus 17:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikilinking authors

If I want to wikilink the name of the author using this template, it does not quite work. See Pactum Warmundi, where I want to link Steven Runciman. Can we fix that? Adam Bishop 15:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem was that you'd wikilinked the name in the authorlink field. Taking out the square brackets fixed the issue. --Daduzi talk 16:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh yeah, and it was alredy linked because of that. That's embarrassing...sorry :) Adam Bishop 16:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
If you dont want to bother with three fields, you can always use author=[[Steven Runciman]] or author=[[Steven Runciman|Runciman, Steven]]. Circeus 17:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Fix up the demo

Browser disjuncture across columns makes it uncertain to me at all that I know what the hell the center column of 'supposed to be helpful data' in the big grey graphic,
   A) applies too,
   B) means (A being a pre-requisite of sorts! <g>).

Can someone clarify it so it's really helpful and above all clear... submit repeating the left column with it's application note would be ideal.

I'm sure the author knew what he/she was meaning, but some of that is very unclear. An actual example just below of the full field version as both a nowikied example and outcome example would be a good improvement!

Then add it to the template page itself... following links the old way and taking side trips into talk pages is simply old fashioned, obfusicating, poor self-documentation practices, and certainly not necessary any more, and the talk detail can be mentioned as a see also. // FrankB 17:20, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I would appreciate to having the documentation on the top of the talk page here (as it is), because the template page can only be edited by admins and changing the template page causes cache invalidation of all pages including it (currently >15,000). Otherwise I don't quite understand what your problem is (this might be part of your problem ;). I've removed the {{editprotected}} for now, until we have consensus for editing the template page. --Ligulem 18:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Eu InterWiki

Please, add the next interwiki if it is possible: eu:Txantiloi:Liburu erreferentzia. Thanks.--Berria · (talk) 17:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. --CBD 22:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

PL interwiki

Please add Polish interwiki: pl:Szablon:Cytuj książkę. Thanks. Hołek ҉ 11:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. —Ruud 15:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


Please fix DATE in Examples

Example 1 under Usage has date= 2001 but the description of DATE indicates it should be YYYY-MM-DD. It appears that both examples 1 and 2 should use year= rather than date=. MabryTyson 01:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, my check shows that date= 2001 does result in the parsed example. If you do add the full YYYY-MM-DD then you get 2001-09-15 in the parenthesis, but the month and day tags aren't nessecary. However, we can change the examples if you wish. Syrthiss 02:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I changed the examples to use "year". For future reference, you can edit them yourself because this page (the talk page) isn't protected. Evil saltine 13:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Dashes

Is it recommended to put dashes in the ISBN? SmackBot has been putting dashes like x-xxxxx-xxx-x (see [5]) while examples on this page shows x-xxxx-xxxx-x. --Chochopk 03:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with that. Some books give a format, others another, depending on the year they were published. In example, check the last five references at Lord Soth#References, they are using 4 different formats. -- ReyBrujo 03:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
True, and I just found Pound sterling#References. If I sold my old edition where I cited my source, is there a place where I can look up the proper dashing by ISBN? --Chochopk 03:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
The places to put the dashes depend on the size of the publisher. Large English language publishers issuing many books have an ISBN beginning with a language field, followed by a two-digit number, allowing six digits to designate each book that publisher issues; the second field gets larger, and the remaining digits decrease, for smaller publishers. There are further complications for less widely used languages and there is a specification in the ISBN code somewhere. --SteveMcCluskey 19:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Page numbers

Is this template formatting page numbers correctly? It is just putting the numbers at the end of the citation when surely they should be in the format p. 48 or pp. 48-51? Mark83 11:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

You can add the p. or pp. on the call side, like a lot of calls already do it. Otherwise we would need yet another parameter to distinguish between (possibly) myriads of variants. Example: "pages=pp 23, 45-89, 145" for a single reference. --Ligulem 09:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, one thing it definitely shouldn't be doing is putting them at the very end of the citation in any case. Right now it's putting them after the ISBN, resulting in things like "Publisher Name. ISBN 2327346232 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum, 23-55.", which makes it look like 23-55 is part of the ISBN or something. --Delirium 02:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Fixed; page numbers now go after the publisher but before the doi/isbn/etc. --Delirium 02:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Coauthors without authors

Recently I needed to cite a book which has three authors, of whom neither one is singled out in any special way; so I decided to list all three of them as coauthors. However, they don't appear the citation. To fix this, the part of the template 

{{
  #if: {{{author|{{{last|}}}}}}
  | {{ #if: {{{coauthors|}}} | <nowiki>;</nowiki> {{{coauthors}}} }}
}}

should be changed to 

{{
  #if: {{{coauthors|}}}
  | {{ #if: {{{author|{{{last|}}}}}} | <nowiki>;</nowiki> }}{{{coauthors}}}
}}

I'd also want to ask why the template doesn't show its documentation when viewed, which would speed up its use? Other cite templates simply use 

<noinclude>
{{/doc}}
</noinclude>

to achieve it. Nikola 21:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

The template was originally used with an adressing mechanism to identify a book reference in a article. Such an "address" consists of a the last name of "the author" and the year (Example: Smith, 2003). For this to work, we need one of the "coauthors" serving as that address element. You can see this addressing mechanism in the template code in this part (marked with ^^^):
<includeonly><cite class="book" style="font-style:normal" {{
  #if: {{{ref|}}}
  |{{#ifeq:{{{ref}}}|none||id="{{{ref}}}"}}
  |{{#if:{{{last|}}} | {{#if:{{{year|}}} | id="Reference-{{{last}}}-{{{year}}}" }} }}
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I once thought we could remove this relic, but Michael promptly complained that this is in use on some articles [6].
Also it is normal in books to say "Smith et al". So for my part I would rather say no to your "all coauthors" feature. Just pick one author. There is no stronger credit to give for that "author". However, other Wikipedians might weigh in here.
The doc page pattern has been applied (see also section below). --Ligulem 23:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
But how does this clash with with my request? If I don't specify author's last name the id can't be made, regardless of whether coauthors are displayed or not. Nikola 07:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Technically, it doesn't clash with your request. It was a try to give you a bit background information to convince you that there is no point in stuffing all authors into coauthors. I short, I see no point in encouraging users of this template to add all authors into coauthors. To bring it to the point: you didn't provide a convincing explanation why it should be good to stuff all authors into coauthors. "neither one is singled out in any special way" doesn't count as I tried to lay out above here. But I'm open to read other arguments. --Ligulem 09:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I actually agree that it is bad, but in reality there are books which don't single out any of their authors, so the only reasonable thing to say is that all authors are each others' coauthors. For example, books of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (fiction, but illustrates the point). I could easily, say, use alphabetically first of the authors as the author and others as coauthors, but I don't think I should do that as there is no reason to single out any of them. Nikola 21:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
It's only a semi-colon, so it's hardly a massive singling out. Having said that, I see no reason why the semi-colon can't be changed to a comma, thus solving the issue. --Daduzi talk 00:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Good idea. I didn't think about the semicolon issue. I'm in favor of giving this a try. Let's change that semi-colon to a comma (unless somone knows of reason not to do that). --Ligulem 08:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I tried this approach, but I see that this isn't applied still. Any reason? Nikola 11:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I had a similar problem with a book listing only an editor (which is a common thing). Using the editor parameter without an author causes the date to appear first in the citation. I worked around it by doing "last = Smith | first = Bob, ed.". I don't know if this is recommended, but it suffices. It strikes me that these parameter names are more important for their formatting intent than true semantic value (as long as we don't stray so far from the meaning that we start hammering screws or screwing nails, I guess). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

If you can come up with a new version of the template code that satifies all formatting requirements plus a perfect sematic then I think we all would be more than happy. As a hint I can tell you that we usually are shot here by our customers firstly due to formatting problems. A good semantic is always our goal here. But if the formatting requirements by Wikipedians are not met, then nobody cares about semantic (note that I really am in the semantic camp, too). Your workaround ("last = Smith | first = Bob, ed.") is perfectly fine, because it still delivers the last name of an "author", which is used by the template for addressing/identification purposes. --Ligulem 08:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I seemed critical. My intent, however inadequately worded, was to suggest that the balance of semantics and comprehensive formatting capability was actually quite useful, as long as we "customers" don't get overly concerned about either extreme. Keep up the good, hard work! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
No need to say sorry here. You're perfectly fine. <meta gabble mode on> And these templates here *are* a joint effort. In fact, I hate being so omnipresent on the citation templates. But for some strange reasons which are beond my cognitive abilities, my brain structure seems to fit well for tweaking these templates and my wiki-soul can't sit calm and silent if I do see a problem on the citation templates. Apologies to all to which this might have caused stress and frustration. The citation templates are just a strange beast and I'm still not sure if they are the perfect solution for all times. But I feel they are worth a try. And they are astonishingly popular. And if something should ever show signs of a site wide cracking, I do have the means (software+bot account+Special:ExpandTemplates) to replace them with their wiki-output. But hopefully, this will be never needed (also it can't be reverted once done). --Ligulem 11:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit request: template doc page pattern

I've prepared template:cite book/doc to apply Wikipedia:template doc page pattern for cite book. Please replace the content of template:cite book with this code. Thanks. --Ligulem 17:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Done --  Netsnipe  ►  19:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That was fast! Thanks very much! --Ligulem 19:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Wee. You made an error. You should copy the whole content of [7] into the template page! The cats and the interwikis come from the doc page. --Ligulem 19:31, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Done --  Netsnipe  ►  19:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Everything fine now. --Ligulem 23:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Two main authors and one co-author?

This is similar to a query mentioned above, but what should I do about a book like Hick'n'Dilley Circus? Despite the way it's laid out on the site linked to, the book itself is described on its title page as "Graeme Hick and Graham Dilley with Patrick Murphy". It takes a diary format, with Hick and Dilley (two cricketers) alternating in their entries; Murphy is a journalist who collaborated with the cricketers on the book.

As explained in the book's preface, the placing of Hick's name before Dilley's is purely for the sake of the punning title, not a sign that Hick should be regarded as the primary author. Both men are directly relevant to the passage I want to cite, and it is very clear that Hick and Dilley have equal status as authors, above that of Murphy. As for Murphy himself, I thought briefly about describing him as "editor", but (rather in the manner of autobiographical ghost-writers) he is listed very clearly as one of the authors, not as an editor.

I realise I may well have to either make a compromise, or give up and write out the citation manually. Does anyone have any thoughts on what would be the best course of action to take? Loganberry (Talk) 15:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Just some general comment (others might weigh in to adress the specific problem mentioned): You can always give up using this template. There is no requirement to use it. And it will probably never fullfill the ever increasing myriads of requests. If the requirements for a certain citation start to get more and more odd with what can be done reasonably with the template, then you might really be better served not using it at all. The template is an aid to do citations, but it is not a silver bullet. It can't be. It will never be. If you do have a special case that you want to have handled exceptionally, then consider simply doing it without this template. --Ligulem 18:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

editor, no author(s)

If a citation has one editor and no authors, the date shows up first. It looks pretty odd to have a reference line start with "(1996)." - how should this be addressed? I'm not up on my chicago/mla style. For the meantime I put the editor in the author field. ericg ✈ 18:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me (putting the editor into author in this case). --Ligulem 18:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit request: Comma instead of semicolon before coauthors

Please replace the ";" (semi-colon) with a "," (comma) in the following: 

  #if: {{{author|{{{last|}}}}}}
  | {{ #if: {{{coauthors|}}} | <nowiki>;</nowiki> {{{coauthors}}} }}

--Ligulem 11:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Relevant discussions (copied from above):

It's only a semi-colon, so it's hardly a massive singling out. Having said that, I see no reason why the semi-colon can't be changed to a comma, thus solving the issue. --Daduzi talk 00:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Good idea. I didn't think about the semicolon issue. I'm in favor of giving this a try. Let's change that semi-colon to a comma (unless somone knows of reason not to do that). --Ligulem 08:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I tried this approach, but I see that this isn't applied still. Any reason? Nikola 11:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Edit done. --Ligulem 10:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's a reason not to: {{cite book}} yields "Smith, John, Doe, Jane". This format is already used in a few score articles I'm aware of. Karl Dickman talk 03:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Or in the worst case... "Frank, Paul, Henry, Patrick"... heh. – flamurai (t) 03:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
The substitution of a comma for a semi-colon is a strange (and, I feel, unhelpful) request. A semi is the obvious punctuation to use when listing authors in conventional manner (surname, first name/initials; ...) as indicated by examples above. I absolutely cannot see any reason why the change was proposed, even if only for appearances sake. I'd really like to see this change reverted.
In addition, it now appears that coauthors, listed with no principal author no longer get listed, which was the method being used to list co-authors of equal standing in a number of articles. I'm sure this was working when first I added the references to various articles earlier this year, in which case the development of the template has actually broken existing use.
(Re-edit: I've just been back over the earlier discussion of the rationale.) The discussion suggests that the change was for a purpose I don't fully understand. If the author surname is to be used as some kind of selector (for a purpose I have to admit I don't understand), then surely, in cases where all authors are of equal standing, then any (or all) surnames should be part of the selector key, not just the one. Like it or not, to use just one for such a purpose is singling them out, by definition. -- Cain Mosni 02:13, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
How about the fact that quite a few articles have the format "Doe, John, Jane Doe"? The same issue applies to {{cite journal}} Circeus 03:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Field for distrubutor and distributor location

I have run across a case where a book has a listed publisher and distributor. I would like to include both of these in the citation, since the publisher is a smaller company and the distributor is a nationally known corporation. Can fields be added for distributor and distributor location? – flamurai (t) 02:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Theoretically / technically: yes. However, I personally hate adding parameters (and probably some Wikipedians hate me for this :-). But if it's really really really wanted... Remember: adding new parameters is a road of no return and we will have to live with them on this template until — um, our wiki death? Seriously: could you give an example how this should look like (together with the theoretical template call example)? --Ligulem 18:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this is confusing me a bit how to cite this. But I see this being a fairly common situation with the number of niche publishing houses out there, where the publisher of the book would use a larger corporation to handle distribution and rights management. Here's what I've come up with based on a little research:

{{cite book |last=Carter |first=Elliot |authorlink=Elliot Carter |title=Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (one player) |publisher=Associated Music Publishers, Inc. |location=New York |distributor=Hal Leonard |distrloc=Milwaukee |origyear=1968 |date=1995 |ISBN=0-7935-4848-9}}

Carter, Elliot [1968] (1995). Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (one player). New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc. Milwaukee: Distributed by Hal Leonard. ISBN 0-7935-4848-9.

Carter, Elliot [1968] (1995). Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (one player). New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc. (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard). ISBN 0-7935-4848-9.

Let me do a little more research and figure out how this is typically done. It may be that only one of the companies is used in the citation. – flamurai (t) 07:05, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

As a followup, according to CMOS, only the publisher should be included in the biblio... not the distributor. – flamurai (t) 12:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

replicating CITE templates

How can I do this? I'm trying to set up a HTML related wiki for my place of work, but I'm struggling to create CITE templates such as CITE_BOOK and CITE_WEB. Does anyone have ANY idea where I can find GOOD examples of CITE templates to help me learn how to implement them on my WIKI. If I edit the WIKI pages here I just get non functioning code. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The problem is the templates uses of the (relatively) recently introduced ParserFunctions, which are an extension, but not a part of the usually distributed version, unless I am mistaken. Circeus 16:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Periods in titles

Take a look at Horatio Alger, Jr.#Resources, where you'll find

  • Scharnhorst, Gary, with Jack Bales (1985). The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253149150.

The name of the book is The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr., so it would be wrong to fix the doubled period by removing the first period from the "title" field of the cite_book template. However, the current presentation is both aesthetically ugly and technically wrong. Is it possible to have the template insert a period only if the title doesn't already end in a period, exclamation mark, or question mark? Or is that level of programmability still beyond reach of Mediawiki templates? --Quuxplusone 06:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree but I don't know how to solve this problem technically with the current capabilities of this site. So, yes, it is probably beyond reach of Mediawiki templates (and m:ParserFunctions extension). On another note, please don't subst cite book, as templates using parser functions cannot be substed without leaving an ugly pile of #if constructs behind. I've thus changed your post accordingly by using Special:ExpandTemplates. --Ligulem 09:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
The same thing happens when the "first" includes middle initials ending in a period, as in Schuker, Daniel J. T. (7 July 2006). "Summers Named Eliot Univ. Prof". The Harvard Crimson. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) from Lawrence Summers. Akriasas 09:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Language parameter

I noticed that {{cite web}} treats the language parameter differently than this template, and I think they ought to do the same thing. {{cite web}} mimics the {{Languageicon}} visual appearance with this code: 

<span style="font-size: 0.95em; font-weight: bold; color:#555; position: relative;">({{{language}}})</span>

Using "language=French" as an example, the result using {{cite web}} looks like (in French), whereas {{cite book}} just appends "(in French)" after the title. Could an admin please adopt the same appearance as used with {{cite web}}? Thanks, Andrwsc 23:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Done on a trial basis. --Ligulem 12:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Looks horrible especially since the language is place in the middle of the citation and not at the beginning or end. —Ruud 14:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I've reverted. --Ligulem 09:57, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Why revert? Because one person doesn't like it? Andrwsc 16:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes. That's no consensus any more in this particular case here. BTW, you are one person too :-). At least I think it needs some further discussion. --Ligulem 17:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed on both counts. But having the change up for less than 24 hours, with only two comments, is hardly a good "trial basis". Perhaps re-introduce the change, but put the language icon at the beginning of the citation, to see if that meets better approval. Andrwsc 21:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I hope this hasn't been forgotten. Can we please go back to the language icon visual appearance for another trial basis, this time for more than a few hours? An appropriate amount of time should be allowed for more feedback. Thanks, Andrwsc 19:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't matter to me so much about the location of the "language icon", but if this template is changed to put it at the beginning of the citation (as seems to be the standard convention for that template), then please also change {{cite web}} so that these have the same visual appearance. Andrwsc 16:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Order and the cite web template

Since web pages rarely have authors listed, the title is usually listed first when using {{cite web}}. This makes the references section look bad because a long, well researched and cited article usually has both book and web citations. I gather that listing the author first is the standard style. Should we keep it that way or change it so that the title appears first and then the author? I'm for changing it, since almost everything has a title and it will look nicer (although most books do not have articles, so the book titles will not be linked like the web titles). -- Kjkolb 03:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Reliable websources usually do have an author. And yes, listing the author first is indeed very standard. —Ruud 16:54, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, plenty of reliable web sources do not have authors in my experience. Many government sites do not, for example. Also, San Francisco, California, which is featured on the main page right now, has lots of web sources with no author listed. I do not see why Wikipedia needs to follow a particular standard in this situation, as it does not provide any benefit besides going along with the group, and not having liberal arts teachers and journalists thinking that we do not know the "proper way" to cite sources (they're snobby bastards ;-) ). However, if people prefer it this way, it's fine with me. -- Kjkolb 09:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
When authorship is known, it is the author that takes precedence over the spcific article or work. It is more important to know who said something than where - for if they are reliable and consistent they may well have repeated it. I think it's perfectly reasonable to credit the author first, where known. This is, after all, a work of information. Or to put it another way cosmetics are secondary to substance. -- Cain Mosni 02:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Link to Wikipedia:ISBN

A minor edit, but I think it would be quite helpful if ISBN could be wikilinked to WP:ISBN in the Usage section of the main article, and maybe also in the demo. Perhaps also in the other cite template pages that reference ISBN? I wasted a good amount of time looking around for an {{ISBN}} template, before I stumbled upon WP:ISBN. Gotta luv those magic words! Thanks. --KeithB 05:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is, WP:ISBN is meta-data: it is not relevant to the general readership of the encyclopaedia; only to the encyclopaedists. Karl Dickman talk 11:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Seconded. Removed the editprotected. Please note that everybody can edit the docu at Template:Cite book/doc (just in case)... --Ligulem 12:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly, or I am not understanding your explanation. I was asking for a wikilink to WP:ISBN on the cite book page, NOT the article ISBN. This citation template is something used by editors, and I think it would be helpful if it were more explicitly stated on this page that ISBN is essentially a magic word, and no template is necessary when using it in a citation. I would have made the edit myself: I didn't realize that the documentation was editable elsewhere. I will make the edit myself, unless I am still misunderstanding the issue, and the edit is really inappropriate. Thanks. --KeithB 14:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
It just dawned on me. Perhaps you thought I was asking for a change to the ISBN link in the {cite book} template itself? I most definitely did not mean that. --KeithB 15:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Generally we don't link from the articles space to the Wikipedia space. See Avoid self references and Wikipedia:Namespace, so this needs to have wide support before going against the guideline --Trödel 15:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I understand that. But that's not what I am suggesting. I went ahead and made the edits. Please review them here, and here, and modify/delete as necessary. I can't see what the issue would be with these changes. I am simply trying to improve the template documentation, to keep someone else from wasting time looking for non-existent templates, as I did.
At base, I didn't know about the documentation being transcluded. Therein lies the problem. Sorry for the confusion. --KeithB 16:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Yup. Confusion was on all sides :-). Now you know how to edit the template documentation. That's mostly peanuts and normally doesn't need prior discussion. --Ligulem 17:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
My bad - I should have noticed you were proposing a change to the documentation --Trödel 18:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:CONTEXT

Looking on Gang Bing, I see the template redlinks the names of non-notable authors. This is in contradiction of WP:CONTEXT and makes the article look slovenly. Please fix. --Ghirla -трёп- 22:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The template does not link anything by default, with the exception of the accessdate parameter. The editor is at fault for these linkings, as is obvious when looking up the source. I've corrected this. Circeus 22:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
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