Template talk:Cite book.html
 
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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Template:Cite book page.
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Template:Cite book is permanently protected from editing, as it is a heavily used or visible template.

Substantial changes should be proposed here, and made by administrators if the proposal is uncontroversial, or has been discussed and is supported by consensus. Use {{editprotected}} to attract the attention of an administrator in such cases.

Any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes, categories or interwiki links.


Contents

Curly quotes “like this” around quotations

I've spotted this before and never really got to the bottom of it. The MOS recommends straight quotes "like this" and not curly quotes “like this”. Yet this template uses the curly version for quotations. Is there a reason for this? Example: A Cleverman (2000). The Best Book. "This book will show you how to be top.".  Mr Stephen (talk) 17:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

what's really crazy is that the chapter name will be placed in straight quotes while the quote is in curly ones.  —Chris Capoccia T⁄C 14:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
{{editprotected}}
Will an admin please change the line that reads 
}}.{{ #if: {{{quote|}}} |  “{{{quote}}}”
to use the double-quote character (") instead of the typographic (curly) quote charcters (“ and ”) as per WP:MOS#Punctuation? RossPatterson (talk) 23:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Y Done. Thanks for catching this. Cheers! J.delanoygabsadds 07:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Default ref

I wonder if the default cite id could be changed to CITEREF{{{last}}}{{{year}}}, so that {{cite book}} and {{citation}} have the same default. Does any article use the current (undocumented) default? This is the default, by the way: #Reference-Tom-2006

  • Tom (2006). Tom's book. 

--- CharlesGillingham (talk) 07:29, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

See #name anchor and #Changing the value for "cite id=" --Adoniscik(t, c) 15:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Format for chapterurl

{{editprotected}}

Hi,

If a URL is provided for a CHAPTER url, there is no way to specify its format. Therefore please add the following code

{{
  #if: {{{chapterformat|}}} |  ({{{chapterformat}}})
}}

immediately after the code

{{
  #if: {{{chapter|}}}
  |  "{{
    #if: {{{chapterurl|}}}
    | [{{{chapterurl}}} {{{chapter}}}]
    | {{{chapter}}}
}}",}}


Once this has been done, could someone update the documentation accordingly, please?

Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. Please use a template sandbox to make the change, then rerequest editprotected and an admin will copy the sandbox into the template itself. Stifle (talk) 10:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Reactivated, this request is clear enough. —Ms2ger (talk) 16:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

That can't be right - it would result in a comma, then the parentheses, but no additional comma. I'm not sure what the citation should look like, but I know it should not look like this:

author. "chapter", (format) title.

I agree with the suggestion to make the change in a sandbox, so that the output can be previewed here, and people can decide what the output should be. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Need to unlink dates in the accessdate parameter

See Template talk:Cite news#Need to unlink dates. Punkmorten (talk) 20:40, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't it have been more helpful for readers if instead of simply unlinking the accessdate, the template would use {{Date|param}}? That would avoid the ugly display of ISO dates, wouldn't it? (I know that {{Date}} only works for dates later than 31-Dec-1969, but that can't possibly be a problem for "accessdate" — although it might be for dates after 19-Jan-2038.) Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:51, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Note that {{date}} will give inappropriate output on articles not using DMY date ordering. Anomie⚔ 17:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Displaying "2 November 2008" is always better than "2008-11-02", even if the rest of the article uses "November 2, 2008". Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
So says you. I happen to prefer YMD format dates outside of running prose and possibly infoboxes, the other formats are needlessly verbose. There is absolutely no reason for an article to have MDY format and the references to have DMY format, and the reference templates should not dictate the article format. Anomie⚔ 14:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Parallel activity

Editors here may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Merging the zillions citation templates out there and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Comments (templates merger) on a new Citation template that would putatively replace all the Cite family.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:05, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

"Wiki-magic"?

Plasticup has been removing links from dates in {{Citation}} and {{Cite xxx}} templates, with the edit summary "fixing the "date=" fields to allow wiki-magic using AWB". I've asked a question about this on the {{Citation}} talk page; do leave your comments there. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 14:52, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Output consistency with Template:Cite journal and Template:Citation

Hi all,

An issue that has just been resolved at Template:Cite journal is that of consistency with other citation templates. The consensus, as I read it, is that the "Cite xxx" should produce equivalent format, and that unless there is a strong reason to the contrary this should be as similar as possible to Template:Citation. Both Cite Journal and Citation now use a common "core" template, the benefits being that any changes made only need making in one place, keeping the formatting consistent and meaning that both templates are always "up to date". I've put together an early draft of Cite book that will also use this centralised "core" template, but there are a couple of issues that need to be addressed before it becomes fully fledged. If there is any opposition to these changes, I would appreciate it if the compelling reasons behind it could be laid out under the appropriate heading below. Please note that aesthetic concerns are insubstantial; there should be a solid editorial reason for opposing any changes. Also be aware that changes to source code of multiple pages are easily performed by bot.

Some test cases have appeared at Template:Cite book/testcases; please be aware that there are some issues there that I haven't fixed yet, but it may be helpful to refer to this page to if you don't understand my summaries below.

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:39, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation

Current template ({{cite book}})
Author (Year). Title, Publisher. pp. Pages. 
Sandbox template ({{cite book/sandbox}})
Author (Year). Title, Publisher. pp.Pages. 
Citation ({{citation}})
Author (Year), Title, Publisher, pp. Pages 
Current cite journal ({{cite journal}})
Author (Year). Title, Publisher. pp. Pages. 
Sandbox cite journal ({{cite journal/sandbox}})
Author (Year). Title, Publisher. pp. Pages. 
Synopsis
The current template mixes and matches punctuation throughout, and includes a terminating period. This is in contrast to Citation and Cite journal, which use the same separator throughout. The terminating period of the latter three examples can be toggled using a "seperator=" parameter, and a terminating period can be added using the "PS=" parameter (so it appears before any CoiNS-generated content.
Solution
To my mind the best solution is to standardise the output to that of the other templates, using a single separator throughout and no terminal period, but giving the editor control over these with the use of parameters. Doing otherwise seems to introduce inconsistency without a strong reason for doing so.
Discussion
If you have any strong reasons to maintain inconsistency across templates, please list them here.
As I seem to recall, the reason for the non-inclusion of "p." or "pp." in {{cite book}} was so that front matter and the like could be cited. Examples:
Current template: Author (Year). Title, Publisher. pp. title page. 
Sandbox template: Author (Year). Title, Publisher. title page. 
Perhaps an optional parameter ("nopp"? "nopagesymbol"?) to allow for those sorts of cases could be included. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Y Done with nopp parameter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Punctuation should default to current behavior (period separator, terminal full stop). This also happens to be the most popular behavior for reference lists outside of Wikipedia. I know of no popular style that does not have a terminal full stop in the reference list. Ideally, the less popular {{Citation}} would eventually mirror the style used by {{Cite XXX}}, but this would require discussion. --Karnesky (talk) 14:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
N.B. {{cite journal}} has the same punctuation as {{cite book}} & there seems to be consensus to keep this punctuation, rather than to use the proposed {{cite journal/sandbox}} punctuation. Also note that "publisher" is more-often-than-not included in book citations & excluded in journal citations. --Karnesky (talk) 15:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Sandbox now uses the same punctuation as Cite Journal. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Edition

Current template
Title (1st edition ed.). 
Sandbox template
Title (1st edition ed.). 
Citation
Title (1st edition ed.) 
Synopsis
In the current template, the word "edition" or "ed." must be specified by the editor, creating the potential for inconsistency within an article (unless the editor adding a citation checks all existing references first) and increasing the amount of typing required by a referencing editor. This is also inconsistent with other templates, adding to the amount a template user must remember - "which template did I have to use the word 'edition' in, and which didn't I?".
Proposed solution
Automatically including "ed." in the template seems preferable, as it makes editors' lives easier and means that all output will be standardised. Existing templates could have the additional "edition" removed by a bot; I have a bot ready that is capable of undertaking that task.
Discussion
Again, if you have any strong reasons to maintain inconsistency across templates, please list them here. It's possible that there are arguments against including "ed." as standard but I can't think of any; feel free to enlighten me.

Pages

Synopsis
The same arguments as above apply to the "page" and "pages" parameters being prefixed by a "p." and "pp." respectively.
Discussion

Parentheses around edition

Current template
Title (1st edition ed.). 
Sandbox template
Title (1st edition ed.). 
Citation
Title (1st edition ed.) 
Synopsis
A decision needs making on whether or not to encase the "edition" field in parentheses. This seems to be a purely stylistic choice, as far as I can see.
Proposed solution and discussion
I'll point this one to the floor.

Order of year and title when only those two parameters are specified

Current template
Title. Year. 
Sandbox template
Title. Year. 
Citation
Title, Year 
Cite journal
Title. Year. 
Cite journal/sandbox
Title. Year. 
Synopsis
To me, the "Title, Year" output makes more sense than the "(year) Title". It's also consistent with other templates.
Discussion
Again, any strong reasons to break from the format of other templates?
I have no problem with rearranging the output so as not to lead with a date, even though a book with no author (even Anonymous) is not all that common. But the {{cite N}} family should format consistently and I note that {{cite web}} still uses parentheses around the date.
Cite web:"Title" (Year).
I would hate to see a break with that template's style since it's very widely used. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
A change to use parentheses (which I too would prefer) would have to affect Template:Citation too and should probably be brought up there. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:36, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow you. {{Cite book}} already uses parentheses around the year. It looks like the current sandbox version removes the parentheses. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

For {{Citation}} I beleive that the argument for Author (Date) Title is that it works better with Harvard references. In the text you will have (Blogs 2008), so its easier for the reader to spot the corresponding item in the references. --Salix (talk): 02:16, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Parentheses are only absent when there is no author paramter. Compare:
  • author (date). title. 
  • title. date. 
Presumably the reasons for this have been hashed out at Template:Citation, because the template code has a specific section to detect this case. Is this an acceptable format? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Other issues

Please provide an example of any other problems you spot to the Template:Cite book/testcases page so I can address them. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:39, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

  • The present sandbox template adds two terminal full stops when an access date is used.
    Fixed Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Present sandbox used the "Journal" class span. I don't know if we need to continue using the "book" class span or would use a common class to all references using the same back end. If the latter, the common class should be more generic than "journal."
    Fixed (Typo) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Current sandbox has a bug in COinS that outputs an inaccurate 'aulast' when only a single author is provided. --Karnesky (talk) 14:46, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
    Could you confirm whether this is still an issue, please? Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 01:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
    It seems to be. Template:cite book/testcases#Some general examples to get started. aulast in the sandboxed reference is rendered as "Buckland%2C+W" instead of just "Buckland".--Karnesky (talk) 19:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
This is tricky to deal with, the input is {{cite book/sandbox|author = Buckland, W.|year = 1841|title = ...}} and there is no way to extract just the surname from this input. Ideally the CoiNS data should have an au=Buckland,%20 W. field and not have an aulast field.
I've changed {{Citation/core/sandbox}} to only output aulast and aufirst if a first name is given. However this may miss cases where a last but no first parameter is specified. Not convinced if this a good change as the author parameter only gets a brief mention in the documentation.
I've now deprecated the author parameter in {{Cite book/doc}}. --Salix (talk): 22:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


Ready to go

From the points raised above, it seems that there are no disadvantages to making this template use Template:citation/core to format its output. The output style will not change, but by using a central template we can be sure that future changes will be consistent with cite journal, citation, and other cite templates. There are other reasons for using one central template in the archives of Template talk:Cite journal for those who are interested.

I think that Salix has fixed the COinS output as best as possible given the variety of things that could be put into the 'authors' field.

As there are no outstanding objections, therefore, I'd like to request the following edit:

{{editprotected}}

Note: the first line of the sandbox will need changing from {{Citation/core/sandbox to {{Citation/core

It would be useful if whoever implements this also sees to the edit request at template:citation/core. Thanks a lot, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Hang on, please. If I followed the discussion above correctly, this change will cause many currently good citations to get ugly. I'm thinking specifically of the automatic insertion of "p." and "pp." into page= and pages=, but I'm not convinced (yet) that this is the only case. Since the documentation has said "pages or page: pp. 5–7: first page and optional last page." for some time, I'd like to know how these now-bad citations will be repaired. RossPatterson (talk) 23:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
The sandbox version has two new parameters with names that don't match the style of this or any other {{cite whatever}} template: use mixture of punctuation marks= and use ampersand before last author=. The former also feeds a non-existant {{Citation/core}} parameter (msm=), and should probably be removed from this template. I know the latter is undocumented, but it obviously will be used (or it shouldn't exist), so I'd rather a names that is moderately short, all lower case, and doesn't contain embedded spaces, for consistency with everything that has come before. RossPatterson (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
It also introduces several all-upper-case parameters, which are also inconsitent. They duplicate their all-lower-case equivalents, but the should still be removed - all {{cite whatever}} parameters are all-lower-case, and are documented to be so. RossPatterson (talk) 00:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
The sandbox has several parameters that make no sense for a replacement to {{cite book}}: journal=, periodical=, newspaper=, magazine=, issn=, and if I understand them correctly, pmid= and pmc=. There may be others, these are what I can easily recognize. They should, of course, be removed. RossPatterson (talk) 00:10, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments, Ross. I've removed redundant parameters (journal= etc). The removal of pp. from articles can be performed by Citation bot, which I'll run once the change has been made. Upper case parameter names are not to be encouraged, but exist so edits made by inexperienced editors display correctly. I don't see that they do any harm. Citation bot will continue to lowercase-ify parameters as it comes across them to keep pages' code consistent. Feel free to rename the 'use ampersand before last author' parameter as you see fit; this was necessary to allow editors who had good reason to break from convention to do so. This probably isn't the time to get into a debate about whether such a good reason exists; the fact that some editors believe that it does seems sufficient to warrant including the parameter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Good news about "pp." and Citation bot, I was hoping for an answer like that. As to non-lowercase parameters, by your argument we should accept URL= as well. I still think they're a bad idea, especially if Citation bot will continue its yeoman service downcasing them, but that's small potatoes. I've renamed "use ampersand before last author" to "lastauthoramp" - it isn't beautiful, but it's consistent with the rest of the template parameters. If someone has a better name, I'm not wedded to this one. And no, despite my own beliefs about formatting citations, I'm not interesting in starting a debate either. Thanks for all the good work, and for the swift and collegial response to my last-minute meddling. If you're looking for concensus to install the template, I'm on board. RossPatterson (talk) 03:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I've never encountered an accidentally uppercase URL= parameter, whereas DOI= and PMID= are more common. As that seems to be everything addressed, I've reinstated the editprotected request above. I'll run the bot as soon as I can after the change has been made; to remain within its edit rate limitations, it will probably take a few days to work through all the pages. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected|See request above}}

Disabled pending clarification. (a) Please use an oldid to link to the sandbox; (b) there seems to be an extraneous period coming from somewhere that should be removed or suppressed. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
The current version is the one to use: permalink with oldid here. The extra period only appears when no parameters are passed to the template; it also appears in a blank {{cite book}}. As such it doesn't represent either a change or a problem. I'd be grateful if the edit could be made soon, while I have the time to run the Citation bot to fix the pp issue. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll get the bot working on removing superfluous pp.s today. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

More to clean up

It looks like there is another case of irrelevant parameters still need to be removed. I think:

  |At = {{
          #if: {{{journal|{{{periodical|{{{newspaper|{{{magazine|}}}}}}}}}}}}
          |{{{pages|{{{page|{{{at|}}}}}}}}}
          |{{
             #if: {{{page|}}}
             |{{#if:{{{nopp|}}}||p. }}{{{page}}}
             |{{
                #if: {{{pages|}}}
                |{{#if:{{{nopp|}}}||pp. }}{{{pages}}}
                |{{{at|}}}
              }}
           }}
        }}

should become:

  |At = {{
          #if: {{{page|}}}
          |{{#if:{{{nopp|}}}||p. }}{{{page}}}
          |{{
             #if: {{{pages|}}}
             |{{#if:{{{nopp|}}}||pp. }}{{{pages}}}
             |{{{at|}}}
           }}
        }}

Speaking of which, do you intend to move that particular piece of logic into {{Citation/core}} eventually? It would seem to make sense, along with the "|Year=... <!-- attempt to derive year from date, if possible --> ..." thing. RossPatterson (talk) 20:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

In addition to the above, there is support in the new template for a bunch of synonyms that haven't been used here in the past, and that I think may not be appropriate to introduce:
Parameter Purpose Suggested disposition
|access-date= synonm for |accessdate= remove
|author1= synonym for |author= remove
|author2= through |author9= full names for co-authors remove - |firstn= and |lastn= are a better idea
|authorlink1= synonym for |authorlink= keep for consistency with other |authorlinkn=
|authorlink2= through |authorlink9= links for co-authors keep
|author1-link= through |author9-link= synonyms for |authorlinkn= remove
|editor-first= given name for editor keep
|editor-given= synonm for |editor-first= remove
|editor-last= surname for editor keep
|editor-link= link for editor keep
|editor-surname= synonm for |editor-last= remove
|editor1-first= synonym for *|editor-first= keep for consistency with other |editorn-first=
|editor2-first= through |editor4-first= given names for co-editors keep
|editor1-given= through |editor4-given= synonms for |editorn-first= remove
|editor1-last= synonym for *|editor-last= keep for consistency with other |editorn-last=
|editor2-last= through |editor4-last= surnames for co-editors keep
|editor1-link= synonym for *|editor-link= keep for consistency with other |editorn-link=
|editor2-link= through |editor4-link= links for co-editors keep
|editor1-surname= through |editor4-surname= synonyms for |editorn-last= remove
|first1= synonym for |first= keep for consistency with other |firstn=
|first2= through |first9= given names for co-authors document as preferred over |coauthors=
|given1= through |given9= synonyms for |firstn= remove
|in= synonm for |language= remove
|last1= synonym for *|last= keep for consistency with other |lastn=
|last2= through |last9= surnames for co-authors document as preferred over |coauthors=
|laydate= Date of laysummary document?
|laysummary= Link to a summary suitable for a layman document?
|surname= synonym for *|last= remove
|surname1= through |surname9= synonyms for |lastn= remove
And we lost:
Parameter Purpose Suggested disposition
|access-month= access month, as an alternative to |accessdate= leave dead
|access-year= access year, as an alternative to |accessdate= leave dead
|origdate= original publication date leave dead
|origyear= original publication year leave dead
|others= translators, illustrators, etc. revive in a more |editorn-whatever=-like form
I think that's everything. I've begun updating the documentation, but I'm stumped by a few of these. RossPatterson (talk) 03:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I was going to remove the newspaper/magazine option as you suggest at the top of your post, but think that perhaps they should stay in case someone accidentally uses this template to refer to a newspaper. They don't seem to do any harm. What do you think?
I also think it is good to leave 'others' flexible like it was; the metadata isn't useful as far as I know, and the list of etc. could be quite long. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Author separators

I don't recall seeing any precedents for the mixed semicolon-colon separators for authors. It is inconsistent. It should just be commas.

  • Smith, John, Bill Brown (2008).
  • Smith, John, Bill Brown, Jane Doe (2008).

Better yet, add and for the last one.

  • Smith, John, and Bill Brown (2008).
  • Smith, John, Bill Brown, and Jane Doe (2008).

 —Michael Z. 2008-10-29 03:02 z

Request for edit

DOI is wikilinked in the first section but goes to a disambiguation page. Can an admin please direct link it to Digital object identifier? ~ Wadester16 (talk) 12:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Done The documentation subpage Template:Cite book/doc is not protected. Anomie⚔ 12:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Citing a catalog?

I've been documenting some old (1970s) software titles, some of which are described in printed software catalogs. Would this template be suitable to use when citing information from a retail catalog, or is there another template that would be better? Thanks for any suggestions! Huwmanbeing ☀★ 16:13, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

That's a perfectly good use of this template. Don't forget to specifically identify the version of the catalog (using |edition=), since they change frequently. RossPatterson (talk) 17:54, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Editor perimeter messed up

It says in for the output field of the editor.

Ex: <ref>{{cite book|last=Brinkley|first=Alan|title=American History, A Survey|edition=Twelfth Edition|chapter=Chapter 15: Reconstruction and the New South|page=425|isbn=978-0-07-325718-1|publisher=McGraw Hill|language=United States English|location=Los Angeles, CA|editor=Barrosse, Emily}}</ref> Gives (I bolded the editor part so its easy to spot, other than that, no change from copy+paste):

Brinkley, Alan. "Chapter 15: Reconstruction and the New South", in Barrosse, Emily: American History, A Survey, Twelfth Edition (in United States English), Los Angeles, CA: McGraw Hill, 425. ISBN 978-0-07-325718-1.

Can someone please fix this? ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 05:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what it's supposed to say. I'm unfamiliar with the book, but maybe coauthors= fits your bill? Mr Stephen (talk) 08:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Google book id

Does it make sense to link the title of books that have complete text available at Google Books. Perhaps a gid parameter for the google books id? see Template:Google books. (John User:Jwy talk) 17:59, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure! As long as it's not temporary. Archive.org hosts some books too. --Adoniscik(t, c) 18:28, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Why not just put the URL in the existing url parameter? Anomie⚔ 22:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess that works since they are very unlikely to change the base of the URL. If we decide we want to do something different with it (link it like the isbn, for example), we have the flexibility. I've tried it out in any event:

With gid:

Without:

  • Henry Stedman Nourse (1894). "History of the Town of Harvard, Massachusetts: 1732-1893". W. Hapgood. 

(John User:Jwy talk) 18:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the URL field serves our needs well enough. I am against the overt usage of commercial fields. If Yahoo were to release a similar feature would we introduce a "yid" field? --Adoniscik(t, c) 18:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm sensitive to that, but its unlikely that another company is going to provide such extensive coverage. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Anomie and Adoniscik - this is best done with the existing |url= parameter. Unlike |isbn= and |doi=, the base part of the URL isn't variable. Of course, |oclc= provides a counter-example, but I'd argue that it should never have been added to this template in the first place. RossPatterson (talk) 19:37, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input. At least I learned more about the template language! (John User:Jwy talk) 17:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

WorldCat URL format change

I noticed that this template creates links to WorldCat using http://worldcat.org/... rather than http://www.worldcat.org/... Given that http://worldcat.org/... redirects to the http://www.worldcat.org/... version and is now the recomended format: [1], could this template please be changed to point to the www.worldcat.org version in the first place? :) -Paul1337 (talk) 01:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Translator

I think it would be very useful to have a |translator= parameter field in this template for citing books translated from other languages. For important books there is often more than one translation (same author, different translators). Chris Fynn (talk) 13:22, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Since this template now uses the somewhat-shared {{Citation/core}} engine, you might want to move the suggestion to Template talk:Citation, where it will be seen by those who will want to discuss such a change. RossPatterson (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
The documentation suggests that you use the "others=" parameter for this purpose. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:24, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
We apparently lost |others= in the conversion to {{Citation/core}}. RossPatterson (talk) 02:20, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh dear, that was unintentional. This will restore it:
{{editprotected}}
The edits will not affect any other parameters or behaviour. (You may wish to double-check the code before implementing the edit) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Explanation of change to requested edit: The other version will also remove redundant parameters and hard-code the space between pp. and page no (so it appears as intended). 03:51, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Another update to fix the invisible 'language' parameter. 13:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) So, I did the first part (Template:Cite book), but when I went to do the second part, I'm almost positive you're going to break something. I clicked "Show changes" and it looks like you're closing certain brackets early (perhaps this is intentional?) and you're hardcoding "{{{Sep}}}" into the template. Could you re-verify that all of this is correct? I don't want to break thousands of pages. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Single "authors" field as alternative to "author"and "coauthors"

The current practice of having separate fields for "author" (the first author) and "coauthors" (all the other authors) is somewhat cumbersome, and conceptually awkward since it implies that the second and later authors are "mere collaborators". Would you consider adding an alternative field "authors", so that one could write any of the following

| authors = John Smith, Peter K. Brown, and Max Von Sydow
| authors = John Smith, Peter K. Brown and Max Von Sydow
| authors = John Smith, Peter K. Brown, Max Von Sydow
| authors = Smith, John; Brown, Peter; Von Sydow, Max
| authors = Cummings, E. E.; Poe, A.; Dupont, J.-P.

Needless to say, the current fields (author, first, last, coauthors) should still be accepted. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Separating the "Author" and "co-authors" allows metadata to be handled better (but is still inferior to using last= and first=). An authors= field would be a step backwards. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:59, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't get it. If a book has three authors, all equally important, how could it be "better" to treat the first author differently from the other two? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Because that's the author it will be indexed under and whose name will appear in card catalogs. -Nunh-huh 01:50, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
It also makes it easier for users using plugins issued by their libraries to locate the book, as those plugins often require a single author in the "author" field. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 02:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
However, nowadays the library "card catalog" is all digital, so that books can be searched by any author, not just the first. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:59, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
The latest version of this template can now handle all authors in a peer-like fashion. The documentation hasn't been updated yet, but there are now {|firstn=, {|lastn=, and {|authorlinkn= parameters, allowing you to do something like:
  • {{cite book ... |first1=John |last1=Smith |first2=Peter K. |last2=Brown |first3= Max |last3=von Sydow | authorlink3=[[Max von Sydow]] | ...}}
and have it display as
RossPatterson (talk) 03:26, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
This improves the semantics, thanks. However, the syntax is even more cumbersome. Please note that wikipedia is supposed to be an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Entering references already requires some commitment from editors; forcing them to enter three separate fields (first, last, and authorlink) for each author is a real pain. Automatic parsing of a single "authors" string like "[[Peter Brown|Brown, Peter]]; Smith, John" into 3*n separate fields is easy (even BibTeX does it!) and would be a great help to editors.Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Yup, it sure is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", as evidenced by the amount of vandalism I undo every day :-) Seriously though, if you can find a way to parse a string and maniupulate its contents using the template parser functions, you're welcome to suggest it. I think you'll find that TeX is a much more powerful programming environment than what we have available, and that BibTeX benefits greatly from the comparison. RossPatterson (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Invalid fields should be visible

The current template code silently omits any field whose key is undefined or not appropriate for the publication class. For instance,

{{cite book | authro = P. Brown | title = Square Pegs | cover = hard | note = missing | year = 1950}}

yields

Square Pegs. 1950. 

Thus, accidental errors in the citation are not visible in the typeset article, and are therefore unlikely to be noticed and fixed. Would you consider changing the template so that any undefined or inappropriate fields are displayed with some glaring markup. For instance:

  • (1950) Square Pegs | authro = P. Brown | cover = hard | note = missing

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Templates don't work that way in MediaWiki; there is no way to determine if any particular parameter is specified besides actually testing it specifically. So while we could add detection of "authro" if we really wanted to, the space of "wrong" parameters is unbounded and thus we cannot list them all in finite time or space. Anomie⚔ 04:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I see. That is rather unfortunate. So my suggestion above is actually about the general Wikipedia template mechanism. For instance, all parameters that are otherwise unreferenced by the template code could be automatically concatenated and made available as a special "leftovers" parameter. The "cite" template code then could display this string (properly un-wikified and quoted).
Is there a page where I could make that suggestion? Thanks, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Bugzilla. Anomie⚔ 12:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

A request for the <ref> markup tag

(This is actually a suggestion for the <ref>...</ref> markup construct; where should I make it?)

The <ref> markup tag should accept an optional "note" parameter, so that

<ref note="page 3 (twice)">P. Miau, ''Cats''</ref>

would be equivalent to <ref>P. Miau, ''Cats''</ref> except that the link would be typeset as [17, page 3 (twice)]. Ditto for named references like

<ref name="miau" note="page 3 (twice)"/>

This would be a clean solution to the problem of multiple single-page references. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:02, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

My inclination would be to put that simply in the reference below - <ref>P. Miau, ''Cats'', p. 3.</ref> Any reader interested in the actual citation would have to click on the citation template anyway to see what the book was, so that sort of information would seem to be better placed in the references/footnotes section. Put another way, adding a page number without the actual reference to the citation in the main body doesn't seem that useful to me, since they don't know what book or article to look in to verify the page number. But I might be missing your overall point.
The point is that one may want to reference the same book several times in the same article, but each time with a different page number. See, for example, Mu (lost continent). Thus the page number cannot be inside the <ref>...<ref>. My solution, for now, is to write (<ref name="thebook"/>, page 3), which yields "([17], page 3)" . Not very pretty.... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
{{rp}} --Adoniscik(t, c) 22:16, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:24, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
If you are sure it'd be better placed in the body like that, you're best bet for getting feedback would probably be either Wikipedia talk:Footnotes or Help talk:Footnotes. Possibly the village pump? I looked a bit, but HTML tags don't seem to have a help page... WLU (t) (c) (rules - simple rules) 18:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
That's a Mediawiki problem, not {{cite book}}. This issue has been raised many times, but not yet implemented. I remember seeing a draft implementation recently. Someone might have a URL handy. --Adoniscik(t, c) 20:19, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
If you have several references to the same book but different pages then the current convention is to cite the full book details once in the Reference section (which becomes a list of sources) and direct the individual citations which have abbreviated book detail + page numbers to a Note section. If more than one citation is to be made to the same page then the name= parameter can be used in the <ref>. An example of this can be found at Battle of Gazala where a further sensible separation between footnote comments and citations has been made within the Note section. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 11:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Also, if you really want to link a citation to the full book details you can use the ref parameter in the cite book template (see Wikipedia:Citing sources#Wikilinks_to_full_references). This can be useful in an article with many sources but normally if citations are identified by author and the Referenced books listed alphabetically by author, it's not really necessary and its not often used. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 11:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, but I think that the {{rp}} template above solves the problem for most of the cases, in a cleaner way. For one thing, it creates a single entry in the "References" section that points to all uses of that reference, with or without detail. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Trouble is, using the {{rp}} template looks horrid on the page. It clutters up the text and so negates the intention of footnotes which is to remove cluttering explanatory text from the main body text. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:09, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Google books - citing specific pages

I recently noticed that playing with the google books URL allows linking to speicific pages - for instance:

{{cite book |author=Kraemer, William J.; Zatsiorsky, Vladimir M. |title=Science and practice of strength training |publisher=Human Kinetics |location=Champaign, IL |year=2006 |pages= |isbn=0-7360-5628-9 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=QWSn4iKgNo8C&printsec=frontcover}}

will take me to the front cover. However, if I adjust the URL to include &pg=PA[page number] at the end instead of &printsec=frontcover, I can link to a specific page. Would it be possible to expand the template to include this? If we had a | googlebookspageno = parameter, would it be possible to put a number in there (say, 7) and have it append &pg=PA7 to the google books url (i.e. produce both a url linking the book's title to the google books page via the url parameter, and have a second URL link to the specific page of the preview (if available)? Something like "pg. 7" within a citation? One solution that I've hit on is to replace a simple page number with a url (see here for instance). Something else I've tried with "wikilinks to full references" is <ref>[[#TITLE|Author, YEAR]]: [http://books.google.com/books?id=3HNkMkJ9XOwC&pg=PA7 pg 7]</ref>, but it just seems rather tedious, inelegant and ugly. It would be nice to have a relatively easy option to work with for articles that contains either one-off links that could be linked when a book is cited once and the citation appears in the references, and another option to use when multiple pages from the same book are cited several times as footnotes and the full reference is in the references section that is linked to the footnote via Author, Year references. Google books is so handy for verification of specific sources, referencing for readers and settling content disputes, an easier way to link directly to the page would seem an excellent idea.

And while I'm asking for miracles, any elegant way to link to amazon previews? WLU (t) (c) (rules - simple rules) 18:41, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

See the discussion above about having a gid specific link. The discussion there probably applies here. and one can add the page number to the url directly. (John User:Jwy talk) 20:10, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Just put the whole URL in the URL field. --Adoniscik(t, c) 20:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
That works so long as the book and page is cited only once; thinking my point through a bit more, with multiple citations of the same book it you'd run into the same issues since you'd only use the citation template once anyway. The sole advantage of my suggested field would be easier linking to the specific page, but once you know the trick it's not that big a deal. Would anyone see any advantage in including instructions on linking directly to the Gbooks link on the main page? Or does everyone see the same issues (preferential treatment of one company's resources)? WLU (t) (c) (rules - simple rules) 22:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Changes I don't like

In the previous version, one could elect to set |page=p. 10 or |page=Chapter 1 In the new version, the insert "p." is automatic, so this now cannot be done. Instead one can use |chapter=Chapter 1. However, that moves the url link from the book title to the chapter listing, so the various citations are no longer uniform, with those referred to by page having the url attached to the tile and those with a chapter listing url-ed to the chapter. This non-uniformity of format is disconcerting. Brews ohare (talk) 18:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Isn't there a chapterurl field ? --Adoniscik(t, c) 19:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
You can use "nopp" to hide the pp. But you should be using "chapterurl" to preserve metadata. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:36, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
P.S. a bot is currently going round doing this automatically where necessary. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
When was this page thing changed and where is the discussion about it? It seems messed up, since its doing p.x and pp.x-y with no space. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 03:42, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Discussion is in the section entitled "Output consistency with Template:Cite journal and Template:Citation". I'll change the current editrequest to restore the space. The space will re-appear when the edit requested above is implemented. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't seem like there was really much discussion, but long as its fixed and can be turned off, okay. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 04:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
The discussion was up there for over a month, so no discussion is a good thing in my books - no-one had problems with it! Anyway, if you do spot any other problems, do post them up here so they can be fixed promptly. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Origyear

Previously the template had an origyear parameter that would allow for an original publication date that was different than the edition, such as

Marx, Karl [1867] (1967) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I. Edited by Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers.

Currently the origyear parameter is no longer available. Is it possible to bring it back? Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 22:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I could quite easily construct a fix that would display it as:
Marx, Karl (1867) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I. Edited by Frederick Engels (1967). New York: International Publishers.
That seems more intuitive to me (and is much easier to code!). Does that meet your needs?
Sorry that the parameter got overlooked in the conversion, I don't think it was listed in the 'full version' in the doc. Thanks for being so civil about it, I'd have got my head chomped off if I'd made the same mistake on {Cite journal}!
Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
That works, but what about in the case that there is no separate editor? Would that appear as:
Marx, Karl (1867) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I. (1967). New York: International Publishers.
I tried finding where the original style of the square brackets came from, but I can't find any good source for it, so any format is fine by me. Thanks for your help. Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 04:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Hm, that's a good point. Perhaps the year should come after the publishers? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Why not just put it back the same way it was: with the brackets after the author? That way it's apparent from a glance (no need to even read the whole citation) that it's coming from a later version? Since there was apparently no stylistic controversy over its display before, that implies a de facto consensus for the way it was. — Bellhalla (talk) 06:08, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Just wanted to lend support for the reinstating of origyear field in its original form. Readers are used to the old format and juxtaposing the two dates next to each other makes more sense. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 09:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
My solution is to use "| year = 1867; reprinted 1967" or "| year = 1967; original 1867". An "origyear" field would be nice, but the output "[1867] (1967)" is not meaningful to the ordinary reader; it should be more explicit, e.g. (1967; originally 1867)" --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
May I just argue that origyear is not just "nice" but very important particularly in the context of historical articles. The publication date of the edition used ("year") is important for identifying the edition in order to follow up citations (page numbers can vary from edition to edition). "origyear" is important because it tells the reader whether the book was contemporary or near contemporary to the events described or written more recently with a modern perspective. As to format, I tend to agree with User:Jorge Stolfi that "[1869](1969)" is a bit obscure but is hardly rocket science to work out. Perhaps "(1969; first published 1869)" would be better. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 17:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Stephen, if something like "(1969; first published 1869)" can be done easily that's great, otherwise let's just have it the way it was with the brackets. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
It seems like there is a general agreement that the origyear parameter should output as "; first published <year>". Can the change be added to the template. Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 23:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

It is requested that an edit should be made to this fully protected page (see protection log).

This template should be followed by a specific description of the request.

This template should only be used to request edits, to fully protected pages, that are uncontroversial or supported by consensus. If you believe the proposed edit might be controversial, please discuss it on the protected page's talk page before using this template. To request that Template:Cite book itself be protected or unprotected, please make a request at requests for page protection.

It is requested that the origyear parameter be restored. If it is possible, the output should be modified so that rather than appearing in square brackets next to the year (or date) value it should appear after the year value but within the same parenthesis as the year value with the text "; 1st publ. " or "; first published " between the year and origyear values. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:18, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like to see origyear back, and even on {{cite web}} too - partly for simple consistency, partly for citing old pre-web internet resources that are now accessible by web-hosting. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:28, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

language

The language parameter seems to be broken. Can anyone help? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I've made this fix and added it to the requested edit above. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 14:01, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Still broken ? Racconish (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, still broken. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 09:56, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Page numbers

I noticed changes to this template on page numbers being implemented by a bot. My question is should the automatic inclusion of p. or pp. be followed by a non-breaking space rather than a space to keep the page number with the prefix? Keith D (talk) 12:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, I was also disappointed to see that this new template behaviour isn't smart enough to use p. / pp. correctly and automatically.
This is also an incompatible API change that affects a huge number of pages, but it's justifiable as a goal. If the template is going to do this, then having a 'bot fix the content seems sensible. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
After this edit, a featured article has now one citation "pp.69" while all other references use "p429" or some such. I wonder what single page references are supposed to look like now (use nopp and add "p." manually?). Rl (talk) 12:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately there is no way to automatically add 'pp' using the template functions available. We can't discriminate based on whether or not the first digit is a number, as page ranges such as i-iv are possible. Taking the pp out of the parameter specification was essential for uniformity and metadata parsing (for users using library-provided plugins to find references, etc).
In the meantime, Citation bot is going around removing duplicate pp.s from articles as fast as its edit rate will let it. There are a couple of permutations that I missed when I coded such as "p429" and "Pg 24". I'm going to accumulate a comprehensive list of these, then run the bot on all pages again to catch anything left behind. If anyone spots any others, I'd be grateful if they'd note them here.
This doesn't come back to the original question, which I think is a matter of personal preference - I don't see that it matters either way, except that I (and apparently other editors, see above) think that the space looks a bit neater, and is consistent with common grammar. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Your new version has separate "page" and "pages" parameters, the bot should change the template use the correct one when it removes the "p." or "pp."; you could also probably detect which to use based on the presence of certain punctuation in the value (unfortunately, there is no way for the template to do the detection automatically). Also, you're going to need to do the same thing for the "edition" field, we now have references claiming "First edition ed.". Anomie⚔ 18:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

@Martin: Why would the first character be significant for setting "pp" (as opposed to "p")? I thought the presence of a dash mark could be a fairly reliable indicator. But maybe it's better not to be too clever. ... Anyhow, one special case I know about are references to footnotes (along the lines of "p 32 fn 4"). Rl (talk) 08:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Parserfunctions cannot tell whether there's a dash in the parameter; they can