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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by RossPatterson (talk | contribs) at 20:21, 30 November 2008 (→Translator: Good idea.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Access date

Someone has pointed out that the template includes the access date, but I can't see whether it does or, if so, how to remove it. Can someone advise, please? Knowing when someone has looked at a book would never be relevant to a citation. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made the field only show when the url field is entered, per that comment as well as the existing documentation. -- tariqabjotu 19:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Tariq. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please contribute to this discussion at Citing sources: Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again --EnOreg (talk) 16:12, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus: We have a consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. Could somebody who is competent to adapt the citation templates please do so? The idea is to keep the access date as a template parameter but remove the code that displays it. Thanks, --EnOreg (talk) 09:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And also modify the information page on cite book. Snowman (talk) 09:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I'll be happy to do that once the code has been updated. --EnOreg (talk) 09:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I expect a lot of editors will wonder why it is not displaying, but it will help to give a clear description of the concept. Snowman (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}} All it takes is to comment out these lines: 

}}{{
 #if: {{{url|}}}{{{chapterurl|}}} | {{
 #if: {{{accessdate|}}} | 
 . Retrieved on [[{{{accessdate}}}]]
 | {{
   #if: {{{accessyear|}}}
   | . Retrieved {{
     #if: {{{accessmonth|}}}
     | on [[{{{accessmonth}}} {{{accessyear}}}]]
     | during [[{{{accessyear}}}]]
 }}}}
 }}

--EnOreg (talk) 11:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commenting code out is poor form in my mind. Do you simply want that section removed? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wrapped the "retrieved on..." phrase in a CSS class (reference-accessdate) like the other cite templates with this request, so it can be hidden in personal or sitewide CSS while still being visible to those who want to see it. See the centralised discussion linked to above for more details. Happy‑melon 18:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Dutch template problems

The template http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Citeer_boek is not working properly. 1. The parameters 'UITGEVER' and 'PLAATS' do not appear. 2. The parameter 'TAAL' appears in the beginning. This should be replaced by: , to make it the same as in http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Voetnoot_web. I tried this, but it did not work. 3. There should be a parameter 'MEDEAUTEURS', which means 'co-authours'. Can anyone help? On the Dutch site I don't get a reaction. At the moment the template is only used on the pages about G.W. Bush, and those about the Bahá'í Faith. Once it will work properly, I hope other users will follow... Wiki-uk

PLAATS and UITGEVER are not displaying because you forgot a |. Instead of {{#if:{{{Plaats|}}} {{{Plaats}}}: }} it should be {{#if:{{{Plaats|}}}|{{{Plaats}}}: }} The same applies to UITGEVER. I moved the Taal parameter after the URL. Check how it is looking now. The MEDEAUTEURS should be easy to add, just copy the PLAATS or UITGEVER parameter (with the |) wherever you want the coauthors to be. -- ReyBrujo 01:21, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot for your help! It's perfect now. Wiki-uk 10:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed just now that parameters "Auteurlink" and "Medeauteurs" don't work. Could someone check this? Wiki-uk (talk) 14:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Code lacks an HTML comment

{{editprotected}} The code lacks an HTML comment and generates a title="..." containing a newline. Fix by inserting HTML comment as follows: 

  -->{{#if: {{{date|}}} 
       |&rft.date={{urlencode:{{{date}}}}}<!--
       -->|
Wikiborg 17:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Also, if anyone's ever really bored, the code in Cite book could use some major cleanup... Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like this change broke the template. It does not recognize the "year" field any more. — Omegatron (talk) 18:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See template error: editor for background on this. The "hidden" link is not hidden at all for users of JAWS, the most widely-used Windows screen reader, in at least the two most recent versions. When there is no image and a link text is a space or is non-existent, JAWS will say the link title, which in MediaWiki is the page name that is linked to. For example, in the article hyrax, where I first found this problem, JAWS reads citation 1 as: "Hoeck, Hendrik (1984). in Macdonald, D.:, link Template:Cite book/editor, The Encyclopedia of Mammals ...". I have tested this out at User:Graham87/sandbox3 and the non-breaking space also does the same thing. I plan to undo the edit by tomorrow morning my time (in the next 12 hours or so), if there are no objections or another admin hasn't gotten to it before me. There are at least 5,000 links to Template:Cite book/editor so sorting them out would be difficult ... I suppose all instances of the edit parameter have been caught by now. Graham87 12:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have undone the edit and made a list of pages using the editor field at User:Graham87/Editor field. Graham87 01:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Author and Titles in alphabets other than Latin

What does one do with book titles and author's names that are originally in alphabets other than English? I have just cleaned up a reference in Nanuchka class corvette by adding the Cite book template (the reference is the book written by Berezhnoy, S.S). The previous edit included the book title and author's name in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Using Cite book, I added the title of the book in Cyrillic in brackets after the Latin version in the title field, where it would seem to logically fit. Not quite sure as to where to put the author's name in Cyrillic. I used the co-author field and used italics. Any suggestions welcomed. papageno (talk) 18:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

year after publisher, please, again

i also would like the "year" parm to show up after "publisher", as previously discussed here.
--Jerome Potts (talk) 20:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that is easily done. It's there primarily because author/year short cites are very common in WP, and thus this location for the date makes matching them to a full citation far easier. Circeus (talk) 00:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The current style facilitates (author,year) references. The most important information about a reference is the author and year, since very often that is enough for the reader to deduce the publication. If it isn't, the title should be enough extra information. The publisher, on the other hand, is a very minor detail. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are {{Harv}} and {{Harvnb}} for that. --Jerome Potts (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Those templates are for the inline references; full references still need to appear at the end, and it's much easier to match the inline to the full reference if they look similar. Even apart from Harvard references, there are articles that put author,year,page in footnotes and put full citations in a references section. I can't see any particular advantage to putting the year at the end of the citation. It is used in some style guides, but we don't claim that these templates match any particular style guide, and we do have an established style already. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, Harv is for inline ref., whereas Harvnb is well suited for footnotes. Look at note 28 in History of Venezuela#Notes, which will take you to the corresponding entry in the bibliography section if you click on it. --Jerome Potts (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to cite

Can someone tell me how to convince this template to cite the paper given in the BibTeX below? I can't figure it out. I may have to do it by hand, but it would be nice if I could do it with a template. Any ideas would be appreciated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply] 

@incollection {MR0054922,
    AUTHOR = {Gale, David and Stewart, F. M.},
     TITLE = {Infinite games with perfect information},
 BOOKTITLE = {Contributions to the theory of games, vol. 2},
    SERIES = {Annals of Mathematics Studies, no. 28},
     PAGES = {245--266},
 PUBLISHER = {Princeton University Press},
   ADDRESS = {Princeton, N. J.},
      YEAR = {1953},
   MRCLASS = {90.0X},
  MRNUMBER = {MR0054922 (14,999b)},
MRREVIEWER = {S. Sherman},
}
Something like this? {{cite book | author= Gale, David | coauthors= Stewart, F. M. | chapter= Infinite games with perfect information | title= Contributions to the theory of games, vol. 2 | series= Annals of Mathematics Studies, no. 28 | pages= pp 245–266 | publisher = Princeton University Press | location= Princeton | year= 1953}}
Gale, David (1953). "Infinite games with perfect information". Contributions to the theory of games, vol. 2. Annals of Mathematics Studies, no. 28. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. pp 245–266. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) Mr Stephen (talk) 18:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that the series and volume numbers can't be in the metadata for the series and (especially!) title fields. Otherwise, it won't be possible to match this against other citations from the same series or book. It's less bad in BibTeX, because that is not intended to create metadata in the same way that our templates do. But really the AMS is already doing it wrong in the BibTeX above, and my question is how to do it less wrong than they do. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
AIUI. As things stand I think you'll have to decide between machine-friendly and human-friendly. I think you're asking for fields to (a) identify one book of a multiple-volume set, and (b) separate out the number in a series, where given. I don't see them, so either use the format as above, or throw out the offending data (ugh!). Personally I'd go for human-friendly, but I'm open to be persuaded that metadata is useful. You could always make a case for more fields in the template. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

name anchor

{{editprotected}}

Could someone please figure out how to add an anchor to this template so that it can be linked from Template:harvnb. Currently Template:Citation does it correctly but I can't see from the code how it works. It has something to do with using CITEREF as a name. If you can figure it out, it would be helpful on all of the cite templates. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 22:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editprotected requests are intended for immediate edits, not hypothetical changes. In this case, the change would need to be investigated and tested, and then coordinated with all the other cite_xxx templates. When all of that is done, and you need an admin to copy the code to the templates, please put up another editprotected request. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK I did it myself. I'm pretty certain this will fix the problem.
replace this
|{{#if:{{{last|}}} | {{#if:{{{year|}}} | id="Reference-{{{last}}}-{{{year}}}" }} }}
with this
|{{#if:{{{last|}}} | {{#if:{{{year|}}} | id="CITEREF{{{last}}}{{{year}}}" }} }}
It's currently the 4th line down in the source. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anybody alive out there? Cuñado ☼ - Talk 01:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Disabled. This isn't a problem. If you want to use Harvard referencing, use {{Citation}}. —Ms2ger (talk) 11:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why? Is there a reason we need the anchor in the format "Reference-last-year" instead of "CITEREFlastyear"? Why not allow all of the citation templates to have the same link ability? {{Citation}} doesn't work the same as the others. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 17:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand why the change is not made to this template, as to make it more useful. There is nothing lost in making the change, but making it more accessible all forms of different citing. Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 07:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done This template is used on 86,000 pages - no one is going to make this change as long as you're only "pretty certain" that this is going to work. Is there a reason why we need the anchor in that format? Find out, make a userspace copy, test it, test it again, make sure it really does work with the harvard reference template when it's supposed to, and also when it isn't (I would not be surprised to learn that the different formats are deliberate to prevent unintended clashes with harvard references). Once you're absolutely certain that this will do what you want it to when you use it, and not screw up 85,999 other articles in the process, then add the {{editprotected}} tag again. Happy‑melon 16:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're looking for confidence and testing? OK I'm certain it will work except for one thing that I can't be certain about. If the anchor used to be in the form "reference-last-year", I don't know what other things will link to that form. As far as I can tell, nothing. The name anchor code was probably added as a formality with nothing actually linking to it. The only situation I know of would be in Harvard Referencing. The absence of any other form of linking to the references is why I'm trying to make the change here.
As for testing, I did that at User talk:Cuñado/archive1 using User:Cuñado/template:cite book, and it works fine. The anchor is very simple and if you understand how it works then there's nothing much to it. I am 100% sure that the 86 thousand would not be negatively affected.
And can I get help with changing the other cite x templates? Cuñado ☼ - Talk 18:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What's holding us up? --Adoniscik(t, c) 21:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki add

You can add it yourself - they go on Template:Cite book/doc and that's not protected. RossPatterson (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Done —Ms2ger (talk) 11:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
{{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)[reply]
 Done. Thanks for catching this. Cheers! J.delanoygabsadds 07:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A question to which I should probably already know the answer

If a book's being cited many times in the same article, with the only information that changes from cite to cite being the page number, is there another template that produces "Smith - 87" or something to that effect for uses after the first? When I try to create that effect with this template, by leaving everything except the "last name" and "pages" fields blank, it still shows up with a spot for the title field. Are we just supposed to fill out the template completely for every use of the book? It's not that it would be much work to do, but it seems to me that it makes the references section unnecessarily unwieldy. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 12:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What I usually do is in that situation is use {{cite book}} for the entry in a "References" section, and for individual notes — which are in a separate "Notes" section — use "Smith, p. 87." If an author has several works listed in the references section, I use something like "Jones, Dogs, p. 94." or "Jones, Cats, p. 49." — Bellhalla (talk) 13:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Volume parameter, again

I would like to echo several comments and sections above and request that a Volume parameter be added to {{cite book}}. I am aware that {{cite encyclopedia}} is often proffered as a replacement, but feel that several useful parameters — "origdate"/"origmonth"/"origyear", "format", "language", "isbn", "oclc", and "ref" — are lacking from it. So it seems easier to add one "volume" parameter here than several over there. Are there any editors experienced with {{cite book}} code that can come up with an implementation? — Bellhalla (talk) 14:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}}
I just came here to make the same request.
Here is the code:
Insert:
{{
    #if: {{{volume|{{{number|}}}}}} |  {{{volume|{{{number}}}}}}
}}
After:
{{
    #if: {{{series|}}} | , {{{series}}}
}}

Here's a "before and after": Bond, G.C., Showers, W., Elliot, M., Evans, M., Lotti, R., Hajdas, I., Bonani, G., Johnson, S., (1999). "The North Atlantic's 1–2 kyr climate rhythm: relation to Heinrich events, Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles and the little ice age". In Clark, P.U., Webb, R.S., Keigwin, L.D. (ed.). Mechanisms of Global Change at Millennial Time Scales. Geophysical Monograph. American Geophysical Union, Washington DC. pp. 59–76. ISBN 0-87590-033-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Bond, G.C., Showers, W., Elliot, M., Evans, M., Lotti, R., Hajdas, I., Bonani, G., Johnson, S., (1999). "The North Atlantic's 1–2 kyr climate rhythm: relation to Heinrich events, Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles and the little ice age", in Clark, P.U., Webb, R.S., Keigwin, L.D.: Mechanisms of Global Change at Millennial Time Scales, Geophysical Monograph 112. American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, 59–76. ISBN 0-87590-033-X. 

The bold type is used in the same fashion as {{cite journal}}.
Thanks. Verisimilus T 13:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for figuring out the code for a volume parameter. One small note, however, {{cite journal}} no longer makes its volume parameter bold in the output. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Edit request has been appropriately modified. Thanks for pointing that out! Verisimilus T 19:38, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Done Any ideas how to build it into the COinS tag? Happy‑melon 18:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My example

For people questioning the "volume" parameter, this (ISBN 3805576404) is the book I'm trying to cite, for example.

{{cite book | author = Simopoulos, A.P.; Cleland, L.G. (eds.) | title = Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence | series = World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics | volume = 92 | pages = 1–174 | year = 2003 | month = September | isbn = 3805576404}}

It consists of articles like in a journal, each written by different authors, but the book itself is a cohesive unit with its own editors, and is part of a larger series with different editors by the same publisher. I'm citing the whole book; if I was citing a certain article I'd use the "chapter" parameter. —Werson (talk) 01:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Publisher

I was doing some dabbing, and someone pointed out to me that the pipe trick doesn't work in the Publisher field of this template. For example, what should ordinarily be rendered as Doubleday instead shows up as Doubleday (publisher)|.

Anybody have any idea how to fix this? Mlaffs (talk) 14:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's the "ref" tags, not the template, see WP:pipe trick. {{cite book | title= foo | author= Smith, John | publisher= [[Doubleday (publisher)|]]}} comes out as Smith, John. foo. Doubleday., which is fine, but wrap it in tags and it fails. Mr Stephen (talk) 15:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
See it - thanks! I'll keep that in mind. Mlaffs (talk) 00:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Accessdate for chapter URLs

The accessdate parameter ought to be displayed if the chapterurl is specified, even if url is not specified, shouldn't it? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to update /doc.

{{editprotected}} Please put <!--Please edit the /doc and save at the same time as adding/removing parameters.--> at the top of the template. -- Jeandré, 2008-03-16t19:58z

this should have a smiliar effect without adding 89,000 pages to the job queue. Happy‑melon 20:19, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Volume (again)

{{editprotected}} Volume is missing a space (and should maybe be boldface now that the other templates have been updated).

{{cite book | author = Simopoulos, A.P.; Cleland, L.G. (eds.) | title = Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence | series = World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics | volume = 92 | pages = 1–174 | year = 2003 | month = September | isbn = 3805576404}}

appears as

Simopoulos, A.P.; Cleland, L.G. (eds.) (September 2003). Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence, World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics92, 1–174. ISBN 3805576404. 

and should probably appear as

Simopoulos, A.P.; Cleland, L.G. (eds.) (September 2003). Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence, World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics 92, 1–174. ISBN 3805576404.

Thanks. —Werson (talk) 01:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 07:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pages

Much to my embarrassment I have been assuming pages means the number of pages in the book. Perhaps it would be harder for people (who do not read the content page fully) to make this mistake if the parameter was renamed 'page(s)'. The old parameter would still work as well (i.e. |pages), but the new one would be shown here and available for copy-pasting into the article when adding a reference. Richard001 (talk) 03:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of pages, what if I do want to include the number of pages? This is always featured in journal citations (though here it is necessary to find the article), but is also useful in that it gives the potential reader an idea of how long the article is. I think it would be useful here as well, but would have to be a distinct parameter from the one above. When not using this template for a citation, but as a way of standardizing the appearance of the listing under something like Further reading, giving the length of a book is especially important, as the potential reader will want to know how much information the book can provide, and how much reading will be required. But because this encyclopedia cites its own references (unlike many), further reading sections can at times be redundant; the reader can often work out what would be a good set of further readings from the citations in the references section. So even here giving the number of pages can be useful. I suppose they're not part of a 'standard' citation though, so that's one possible mark against this. Still, most citations don't include internal links to authors and journals either, do they? Richard001 (talk) 08:15, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could always do something like this:
{{cite book|author= … (fill in parameters here) … }} (237 pages).
Not perfect, but certainly workable. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the whole point of using cite book is to make things look standardized across articles. If people did this manually they would often look different. Richard001 (talk) 06:30, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if the point were standardization, then {{cite book}} would be mandatory on all articles. As it is, there are several acceptable way of citing sources—some involving templates, some not. The goal is for a consistent style of referencing within each article. Good luck with your edits. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the point weren't standardization, we could delete cite book right now. It's certainly a lot easier to cite things manually than to fill in the fields of a detailed template like this, which requires a long time just to memorize. Just because the template isn't mandatory, it's still desirable. Richard001 (talk) 05:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Richard001. I usually only cite to one page and "pages"usually is used in the publishing business to mean number of pages in the book. Cite news uses pages= and page=. Suntag (talk) 15:12, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strange year behviour when there is no author

When {{Cite book}} doesn't include an author (or has an editor instead of an author) the year appears first, for examples see Channel_Tunnel#References. This looks a bit odd to me, is there a work around?--Commander Keane (talk) 07:25, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The way I understand it, the template expects (even if it doesn't require) an author, and assumes one in its output. In your example, I would put Kirkland in the "author" field like this "Kirkland, Colin J., ed.". For the other two missing authors, I would use "Institution of Civil Engineers" and "European Commission. Directorate-General for Regional Policy and Cohesion.", respectively, in the "author" field. (In cases like this, I usually figure the authorship by looking at http://www.worldcat.org/; the links for the three books in question are here, here, and here .) — Bellhalla (talk) 11:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that works nicely.--Commander Keane (talk) 12:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this is when you're providing a list of books of a single author. Repeating the same name over and over again becomes cluttered and hard to read pretty fast. The {{Cite journal}} work around this by placing the date field after the article name when no author name is provided. See Wolfgang Smith#Bibliography for an example of how differently both templates behave when no author is provided. I'd love for the cite book template to do the same. (And if it also included the "quotes = no" option provided by the cite journal's it would be even better!) -- alexgieg (talk) 16:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Chapter format

Is there an option where you can specify the format of a chapter when a "chapterurl" is provided? Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 01:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Open Library field

Please add a fields to accept Open Library IDs for the book and, possibly, the author. The format is simple: http://openlibrary.org/b/BOOK_ID. Thanks. --davidstrauss (talk) 21:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done: You can use {{OL}} it in the |id= field now. Since OL ids always start (as far as I've seen) with "OL", I've made two versions. If you use {{OL|OL7100655M}}, you'll get OL OL7100655M. If you use {{OL|id=7100655M}} instead, without those two letters, you'll get the much nicer looking OL 7100655M. The later has precedence, so mixing both, as in this incorrect usage: {{OL|OL7100655M|id=7100655M}}, still results in OL 7100655M. -- alexgieg (talk) 00:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
PS.: I've noticed you requested author too, so I've added another parameter, |author=yes. If added, it links to authors instead. Everything else remains the same. Examples: {{OL|OL18319A|author=yes}} results in OL OL18319A, {{OL|id=18319A|author=yes}} in OL 18319A, and the wrong {{OL|OL18319A|id=18319A|author=yes}} in OL 18319A too. -- alexgieg (talk) 00:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now I have to ask: where should I publish the existence of this new template so that others can start using it? -- alexgieg (talk) 01:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working directly with the Wikimedia Foundation to get Open Library support embedded in Wikipedia. --davidstrauss (talk) 19:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Seems interesting. How would it work? Wikipedia itself would host books? Or some kind of integration, like the ISBN magic word? -- alexgieg (talk) 20:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The 'date' field isn't automatically wikilinked

The help for the cite book template states that the date= tag should use ISO 8601 format. I agree with that, but if a date is entered in this format, it's not wikilinked when displayed, so the date displays in the ISO 8601 format, rather than according to the user's date preference or the more user-friendly Wikipedia default of 'Month DD YYYY'. Would it be possible to update the template to do this (cite web already does this for date and accessdate)? Thanks Rjwilmsi 22:23, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Same case for the origdate field too. Thanks Rjwilmsi 22:26, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]


To do this, change the following line:

| ({{{date}}})

To:

| ({{#ifeq:{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{date}}}}}|{{{date}}}|[[{{{date}}}]]|{{#ifeq:{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{date}}}}}|1970-01-01|[[{{{date}}}]]|{{{date}}}}}}})

This has been tested at Template:Cite book/sandbox. Gary King (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

 Done--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, thanks. Gary King (talk) 05:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Above does not work. I believe, in as much as ifeq can not apparently be used to test a user's date-preference, hence above coding, as far as I can see, ends up always showing the version of [[{{{date|}}}]] (this is always wikified according to user preference else as default ISO YYYY-MM-DD style)

Cite web option for editor-set date styles

See Template talk:Cite web#Working version and final discussion re proposed new parameter of datestyle. As a default it leaves date/accessdate/archive date as wikified dates as is the current case. However if specified it would show unlinked but formated dates as "=dmy" 23 October 2007 as "=mdy" October 23, 2007 or as "=ymd" 2007 October 23. Given ideally cite template should be consistant, should such a proposal be implemented here too ? Please discuss at the above link. David Ruben Talk 19:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the value for "cite id="

I suggest changing id="Reference-{{{last}}}-{{{year}}}" to id="CITEREF{{{last}}}{{{year}}}" so that it works with {{harvnb}}. {{harvnb}} only works with {{citation}} right now, but if {{citation}} is used in an article, then according to the Featured Article criteria at WP:FA?, templates beginning with {{cite such as {{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, and {{cite journal}} cannot be used because they produce a different result from {{citation}}. Gary King (talk) 18:43, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Currently I use the "ref" parameter to make harv-compatible citations (e.g., ref=CITEREFJohn2000). --Adoniscik(t, c) 21:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anomaly

For some reason 1969 (possibly other years, I have not checked) is linked when using this template. For example:

However if I simply change the year to any other year it is not linked:

Does anyone know why this is happening, and how it can be fixed? Domer48'fenian' 17:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For single years use the 'year' field instead of 'date':
The date field is only designed to take a full date, hence the problems. It is something that I will address soon as part of my template fixing effort. Thanks Rjwilmsi 18:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that, really helpful and appreciated. regards --Domer48'fenian' 20:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Volume and Edition

I think volume and edition are displayed wrong (or at least in wrong order).

{{cite book |last= Cordell |first= Bruce R. |coauthors= Jeff Grubb, David Yu |title= Manual of the Planes |volume=Vol. 2 |edition=2nd edition |publisher= Wizards of the Coast |year= 2001 |isbn= 0786918508 }}

appears as:

Cordell, Bruce R.; Jeff Grubb, David Yu (2001). Manual of the Planes, 2nd edition Vol. 2, Wizards of the Coast. ISBN 0786918508.

but should be:

Cordell, Bruce R.; Jeff Grubb, David Yu (2001). Manual of the Planes Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Wizards of the Coast. ISBN 0786918508.

––Bender235 (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page parameter

{{editprotected}} Please modify cite book to include a page= parameter in addition to its pages= parameter similar to that of Template:Cite news, where "The page(s) on which the article is found. page inserts the abbreviation "p." before the number; pages inserts "pp." Use only one of these parameters. If numbers are entered for both, pages overrides page." Suntag (talk) 15:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose this: Existing uses of this template insert the "p." or "pp." manually. If you make this change, you're going to end up with many references saying things like "pp. pp. 5–6". Before making a change like this, come up with a workable plan to avoid this problem. Anomie⚔ 15:37, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Not done per Anomie. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:07, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take for example:

Balakian, Peter (2004). [[The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response|The Burning Tigris]]. HarperCollins. p. 375. ISBN 9780060558703. {{cite book}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)

It would look much better if the easy-to-miss external link was associated with the page number. Perhaps we need a new parameter, "booklink" for the internal one? --Adoniscik(t, c) 22:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. 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)[reply]
Reactivated, this request is clear enough. —Ms2ger (talk) 16:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

 Done Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Note that {{date}} will give inappropriate output on articles not using DMY date ordering. Anomie⚔ 17:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

"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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Punctuation

Current template ({{cite book}})
Author (Year). Title. Publisher. pp. Pages. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Sandbox template ({{cite book/sandbox}})
Author (Year). Title. Publisher. pp. Pages. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Citation ({{citation}})
Author (Year), Title, Publisher, pp. Pages {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Current cite journal ({{cite journal}})
Author (Year). "Title". Publisher: Pages. {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Sandbox cite journal ({{cite journal/sandbox}})
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. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Sandbox template: Author (Year). Title. Publisher. pp. title page. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help); Invalid |nopp=nope (help); Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Perhaps an optional parameter ("nopp"? "nopagesymbol"?) to allow for those sorts of cases could be included. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Done with nopp parameter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Sandbox now uses the same punctuation as Cite Journal. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edition

Current template
Title (1st edition ed.). {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
Sandbox template
Title (1st edition ed.). {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
Citation
Title (1st edition ed.) {{citation}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
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.). {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
Sandbox template
Title (1st edition ed.). {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
Citation
Title (1st edition ed.) {{citation}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
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. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Sandbox template
Title. Year. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Citation
Title, Year {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Cite journal
"Title". Year. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
Cite journal/sandbox
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. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Parentheses are only absent when there is no author paramter. Compare:
  • author (date). title. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • title. date. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]


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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

{{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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'll get the bot working on removing superfluous pp.s today. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authro= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |cover= ignored (help)

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Bugzilla. Anomie⚔ 12:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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.
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
Just put the whole URL in the URL field. --Adoniscik(t, c) 20:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Isn't there a chapterurl field ? --Adoniscik(t, c) 19:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
P.S. a bot is currently going round doing this automatically where necessary. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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