Template talk:Book reference

Started a new regression test page under user space
I just started User:Adrian Buehlmann/Book reference regression tests (talk) in the hope that might be useful. Please feel free to contribute there (edits on the page and its talk are welcome). It's intended as an "open house" user page. Maybe we could move that out of user space someday (if the community consents so). – Adrian | Talk 10:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I moved it to to Template talk:Book reference/regression tests. – Adrian | Talk 22:48, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Logic templates on WP:AUM
See the discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_using_meta-templates. – Adrian | Talk 15:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Can I use this template for press releases?
Can I use this template for press releases? Is it good practice to use a template for a purpose other than it was orginally intended? I don't see a template specifically for press releases. See the press release example. If I set ID = Press release and Publisher = file format (if not HTML), then this template is in the correct format. --Tiger Marc ROAR! 19:55, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay. Hope you've noticed press release reference by now. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:25, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Location / publisher
Currently, location only shows up if publisher is defined also. For a lot of older works, one often finds the location cited, but not the actual publisher. It would be nice if location showed up even if publisher isn't defined. For example, see Arsène Roux, where I had to add "Publisher=?" because all that is known is that some of his works were published in Rabat. &mdash; mark &#9998; 08:37, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * May I ask you to wait on this (some days at least). At the moment the further existence of this template here is in danger, because this here has been said to violate WP:AUM, which has recently been elevated to a policy. The exact effects from this has not yet been decided by the lead on this (David Gerard), though the killing of template:qif (which breaks book reference) has been announced with an escape chance that the functionality of qif can be moved into MediaWiki code (the software that delivers this text to you, see proposal). – Adrian | Talk 18:12, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of hyperlink
Does book reference include the appropriate hypertext to allow for linking the notes (at the end) with the reference (in the text)? Does it include the variables for linking? Here is a portion of the markup from note label  Making this addition (or change) would eliminate the need to have both note label and book reference. Thanks, Steven McCrary 15:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Just guessing, but a book reference can and often is cited more than once in an article; possibly in very different contexts. A footnote is always cited only once.  —Michael Z. 2005-12-28 17:22 Z 


 * Yes I agree with that, but the ref harvard template (used in the text) includes a link to the notes at the bottom of the page. That way the user can link to the note from the text.  It would be simple enough to include that hypertext in book reference.  A back link (from note to text) is not needed.  Sorry for the confusion (I deleted the  from my original question above.) [[User:Stevenwmccrary58|Steven McCrary 17:30, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite due to WP:AUM
Hi all. Based on work by Netoholic and CBD I prepared a version of the template code for book reference that uses Netoholic's CSS trick. The code is at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/b-ref/1. Test cases are at User talk:Adrian Buehlmann/work/b-ref/1. If template:qif really gets removed without a replacement in WikiCode (see Tfd) we could probably use said b-ref/1 which does not include any other template and would thus be compliant with that accursed WP:AUM (See also the lengthy discussions there). Please provide ideas and opinions on how to proceed. Many thanks in advance. Adrian Buehlmann 23:34, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer to think of it as the "beloved" WP:AUM :D. I'm sure I'm not the only one that will continue to look into less ugly alternatives as we go forward . -- Netoholic @ 10:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Do you still prefer to remove inclusions of template:book reference from articles (as I think you once hinted) or would you find it acceptable that book reference is used in articles given that we use that proposed new implementation (or any better one as soon as available or invented)? --Adrian Buehlmann 10:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I support development of a bot that will replace (but not directly subst:) the occasions where this and other such templates are used. Providing a handy shortcut for creating references is tolerable, but depending on them long-term is burdensome. -- Netoholic @ 17:12, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * So this is where we still disagree. I think using a template:book reference (in a version that complies with WP:AUM)) to add citations to articles clearly outweighs its costs. One benefit is that book data is clearly identified with metadata which can later be used to migrate references to something better (possibly database entries). Another benefit of using such a template is that even newbies are able to create consistent and correct book references. Given that you were willing to further discuss here, could you further specify what makes the new version of book reference so burdensome (from your point of view) that you prefer to rather not use this template at all? Would there be anything we could do such that you would tolerate the insertion of calls to the WP:AUM-compliant book reference template into articles, or do we face the threat that you are actively going to remove such calls? --Adrian Buehlmann 20:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I would like to add my voice to Adrian Buehlmann's - The potential and actual benefits of reference templates far outweigh their cost (from an editorial point of view). Furthermore, the implementation possibilities will presumably only increase and improve. Even if there is some cost at present, it is likely to decrease as software improvements are made, especially if they are directed towards this particular problem. "depending on them long-term is burdensome" needs to be elaborated. PAR 20:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Rather than replacing/deprecating templates in general, we should focus on replacing/deprecating meta-templates. Book references, like series boxes, are to me a plausible and useful way of using templates. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 17:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * But that's the point, Book reference is a meta-template. I've been removing it in every article where I've encountered it over the past week or so, after becoming aware of the full ramifications of WP:AUM. Angr ( tɔk ) 21:59, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Please note carefully that my proposal to change (which is nearly 100% made by Netoholic) is not a metatemplate. May I ask you to reconsider your removals given that my new proposed version of book reference (see on start of this thread) would be used (instead of the actual revision). Thank you. --Adrian Buehlmann 23:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * But at the moment, book reference is still a meta-template, right, until it gets replaced by your version? I'll stop removing the template if it's going to be replaced by your non-mt version in the immediate future. There must be some good reason I don't understand why it hasn't already been replaced. --Angr ( tɔk ) 06:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The reason is that WP:AUM is difficult to implement and thus takes some time. Second, Book reference is a high use template (WP:HRT) and thus should be changed with caution in order not to stress the servers and the users/wikipedians needlessly. We just cannot do our template-surgery "in situ", reverting back-and forth because every save ripples instantly through to all affected articles. There was also some disagreement how to do that surgery. And last, book reference is protected (due to its high-volume status, see also WP:HRT) and thus it can only be edited by admins. Thank you for giving us time to adapt to WP:AUM. --Adrian Buehlmann 08:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The proposed replacement is a "css hack" version of the template, right? Has someone created a "weeble" version? —Michael Z. 2006-01-18 00:49 Z 
 * Yes, see User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox4. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 01:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Comparing html output of CSS-trick:




 * with html output of weeble:


 * --Adrian Buehlmann 12:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * --Adrian Buehlmann 12:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The weeble style call for that would be:


 * --Adrian Buehlmann 12:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If we can get a license from Netoholic and Phil Boswell to use that (or at least a promise not to revert us), I would agree to take the weeble solution, given that strong CSS-hack opposition we now have (see MediaWiki talk:Common.css). BTW we can add some newlines to the weeble code so that it doesn't look so ugly (an example of a weeble template with newlines can be seen at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/Infobox TV channel/2006-01-02). --Adrian Buehlmann 12:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Couple of things. First, I've seen some indication that Netoholic is working on ways to reduce/remove the non-CSS browser problems... still using CSS to hide data, but stripping out any extraneous 'junk' from the final rendering. I'd like to see more about this and get thoughts on whether it is viable. There are a couple of minor things where CSS coding is tricky or doesn't work right (parameters with line breaks in them & conditionally setting styles), but there are similar issues with Weeble (problems with anything that uses '|' as a separator - including table markup), but those can be worked around. The biggest issue is the browser compatibility problem. Second, is it worth exploring 'dual calls' for things like Book reference if we go the Weeble route? That is, change the current 'Book reference' template so that it contains nothing except, and then put the 'Weeble' version at a 'Book ref2' template. This would allow all of the existing 'Book reference' calls to continue working without adjustment (the '|if=' gets inserted prior to the call to the second function) while future calls could go directly to 'Book ref2' by including the '|if=' in the new calls. It is double transclusion, but would result in a seamless transition. A bot could then later be set up to change the older calls to the new format or this could be done manually to eventually remove the intermediate step. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 13:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Used newest idea from Netoholic as per User talk:Adrian Buehlmann: The code (CSS variant) is at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/b-ref/2 (diff). Test cases are at User talk:Adrian Buehlmann/work/b-ref/2 --Adrian Buehlmann 14:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * html output of b-ref/2 is:
 * Certainly an improvement. --Adrian Buehlmann 14:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Certainly an improvement. --Adrian Buehlmann 14:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Documentation for Netoholic's CSS trick
I have started a detailed documentation of Netoholic's CSS trick under my user space at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/Conditional expressions with CSS. --Adrian Buehlmann 16:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

CSS hack reduces accessibility
I just learned about the CSS hack being added to a number of templates, to compensate for a changed policy on template transclusion. I understand that there is an alternative, but this is being implemented because its easier.

This hack injects junk code into the body of the page, then hides it from most visual browsers using CSS. This makes Wikipedia less accessible for users of assistive technologies, like web page readers for the handicapped, and text readers. This is sloppy programming and bad practice from the point of view of usability and accessibility. Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia; please lets not start treating the minority who has the most difficult time reading like second-class citizens. —Michael Z. 2006-01-16 17:50 Z 

EVERYONE - in order to quash this ForestFire, please follow-up discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. -- Netoholic @ 19:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Locked
Why is this page locked? Please add sk:Šablóna:Knižná_referencia into the section. I don't know if that is common practice but sounds reasonable to me and it's practical. helix84 21:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Done, and thank you. —Phil | Talk 11:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Request to change
I hereby request to exchange to contents of template:Book reference with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/b-ref/2&oldid=35708984. The actual content of template:Book reference violates WP:AUM. The replacement conforms to WP:AUM and is a full replacement for the existing template. All features are kept. It is a good replacement for now. See also discussion above. --Adrian Buehlmann 19:14, 18 January 2006 (UTC) Withdrawn. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've used a modified version of that replacement template to replace Template:Conference reference, which wasn't protected since hardly anyone uses it. It works. Thanks, Adrian! Melchoir 21:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Credits should go first-hand to Netoholic, who is the original inventor of this CSS trick and to CBD. I've just tested and formatted/commented a bit. Please note that this might not be the definitive solution for all times but at least we have something that works and is compliant with WP:AUM. Very best thing would be to have a conditional feature in MediaWiki but unfortunately we cannot wait until that happens. BTW thanks for helping on Template:Conference reference. --Adrian Buehlmann 22:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ya! Melchoir 22:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I oppose this change (as you may have expected). The proposed template may be compliant with WP:AUM, but it's not at all compliant with controlling the basic content of pages. Although hidden from visual browsers using the CSS hack, the blank template contains the following literal content:

 |,,  . ""  [ ], , , , : . .. 

As mentioned elsewhere, this technique breaks accessibility (including a WCAG priority 1 checkpoint), and adds arbitrary classes to HTML elements on the page risking page layout breakage. —Michael Z. 2006-01-19 00:21 Z 


 * Applying the blank template violates its semantics as the title paramter is required. So you will never find the blank temlate applied regularly to any article. The minimum required parameter is title. If its value is gieven as "TITLE" the html code of my withdrawn proposal would have been:
 * . :--Adrian Buehlmann 09:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * With due respect: Per "and adds arbitrary classes to HTML elements" you are plain wrong. By carefully reading you will notice that I have integrated a very good idea from Netoholic that ensures that only the class "hiddenStructure" is used (exactly written as this). There are no more "arbitrary" classes. Please note that there has been a significant update to the CSS trick. The core element of the newest version of the CSS trick now looks like this:  .   is then removed by HTML Tidy so you will never find things like "classXXX" in the html. --Adrian Buehlmann 10:03, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If I understand correctly, Netoholic's adjustments greatly reduce the amount of extraneous text which would be passed in non-CSS browsers, but (as above) don't eliminate it entirely. I think Neto's changes hide the CSS structure and unset parameters (by just always defaulting them blank) but leave hardcoded text (in this case the punctuation) triggered by the conditions in place. Is that correct? There also seems to be some concern about not complying with accessibility standards. Does the Weeble example above comply with those standards? Since Weeble is entirely based on Wiki logic I'd assume it doesn't break any standards, but may not be any more portable than CSS. If CSS only has a problem with unsuppressed conditional text (non-parameters) then I'd think it is ok to use it on templates which don't have such text - of which I can think of a few. I'm still wondering what people think of double transclusion Weeble... existing calls stay the same and the existing templates are changed to just call weeblecode versions by inserting the '|if=' (as outlined above). I'm pondering a 'Reference' template in Weeble which is called by 'Book reference', 'Journal reference', et cetera and just passes in the relevant parameters for each (along with the 'if'). --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 00:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I withdraw my request to change. I think it would have been a viable temporary solution. If anybody can agree with CBD's proposal above (weeble plus an additional level of template call) I agree with that. I would also be willing to add the necessary |if= directly to all calls of book reference such that there is no additional call level. If there is clear consensus to do this, I would offer to do this with my bot account. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I object to your bot doing this task. This "if=|" statement will be confusing to new editors, and there is still an option on the table to make it standard practice that reference templates be replaced with their wikitext equivalents on a regular basis. -- Netoholic @ 09:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Objection accepted. I will not run my bot to add this. So there remains the additional call level option. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think '|if=' is any more confusing than templates in general. If it is used people will learn to understand it. That said, the best option may be text replacement with some sort of marker template that never gets updated. The reason I say this is the frequent use of book references. No matter how a template for them is implemented they will still run afoul of the primary concern driving WP:AUM. It really doesn't matter whether there are several thousand meta book references or several thousand simple book references... every time the formatting template is updated every page which calls it gets purged from the cache and then needs to be rebuilt the next time it is called. So how about this idea. We have a template which does nothing except attach the anchor point to the text; . This passes in the text and the id name for the anchor point (in this case you could link to the text with  ). Since the template has no conditional behaviour CSS & weeble become irrelevant. All references are still linked to a template, but since that template does very little updates to it should rarely be needed. The only drawback is that you can't quickly change the format of all references to a new standard... but you could have a bot which goes through and updates the parameters passed to this simple reference template to put them in whatever new format. Thoughts? --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 12:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Now it's me who strongly objects. The calls to the template now designates the book info. It is meta-information that should be kept ("Which string is the title?", for example). This can later be converted to citations supported by MediaWiki. Compare:




 * with
 * I cannot see what a bot could do to book references if that meta information is removed. bref's will quickly detoriate without any chance for a bot to extract the book data. The general idea isn't that bad, but why for god's sake do you all try to fix each and every problem that might possibly emerge in this one step? CSS trick gets added all around and is now in thousands of articles. Why do you folks make an example here. I think some people simply use WP:AUM as a lever to shoot book reference. Why can we not keep the status quo and use the CSS trick for now (in its newest form) as a temporary solution to implement WP:AUM? We could then look in all calm for a better approach to handle all issues brought up. Qif is up for immediate shooting, guys! --Adrian Buehlmann 12:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm just enumerating options. To me any of them are acceptable as a temporary solution. I believe the objections are;
 * I'm just enumerating options. To me any of them are acceptable as a temporary solution. I believe the objections are;


 * 1) CSS - Doesn't comply with accessibility standards and generates extraneous text on some browsers (though not as much as it used to)
 * 2) Weeble - '|if=' is confusing (I disagree) and requires alot of existing calls to be updated (though that can cause zero disruption if done with a doule template and bot)
 * 3) Ref template/No template - difficult to update format of references in the future
 * The first two seem like the best temporary (until MediaWiki incorporates conditionals) solutions to me. At which point it really comes down to whether we prefer to have the accessibility problems or the extra work. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 12:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Summing up Request to Change voices
Summing up the actual state of voices: I do have support to change template:book reference to the newest CSS trick version:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/b-ref/2&oldid=35708984

(at least as a temporary solution) from: Opposing:
 * Netoholic
 * Phil Boswell ,
 * Sam Korn ,
 * Radiant!
 * PAR
 * angr
 * CBDunkerson
 * Mzajac
 * Mike Dillon (use qif)
 * Xolatron use qif or if (see bottom of page below - Changing qifs to ifs)

--Adrian Buehlmann 13:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Done, as a temporary solution. —Phil | Talk 16:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not entirely clear to me after skimming this page if this whole thing is the result of trying to avoid meta-templates, but if it is, please go read what lead Mediawiki developer Brion VIBBER wrote on that page about the realities of using meta-templates (a breath of fresh air after the constant FUD about them). Mike Dillon 16:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice. But it is still not clear what we should do. Brion wrote "I'd like to ask that anyone fighting against ugly, fragile meta templates at this time do so based on their ugliness and fragility". This still leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Qif, CSS, weeble - alle are ugly and fragile. Qif was up for immediate shooting. I have no clue wheter this still holds true. But I doubt if we gain much by replacing one ugliness with another. Lot of clarification is needed. I've asked Brion at WP:AUM. No answer yet. --Adrian Buehlmann 16:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Brion also said (at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Questions re server load from images in userspace):
 * Generally, you should not worry much about little things like templates and "server load" at a policy level. If they're expensive, we'll either fix it or restrict it at a technical level; that's our [the developers] responsibility.
 * To me, this seems to make the accessibility issues created by the CSS hack trump any supposed "server load" argument. This is why qif should be used, despite its "ugliness", since it is no more "ugly" that the CSS thing and doesn't break accessibility. Mike Dillon 19:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Me too. But there are lots of strong prominent opponents of qif (Snowspinner, David Gerard, Netoholic, Sam Korn, others?). We should wait upon this is clarified. Ugliness and fragility are not helpful without clarification. There is a lot of confusion ATM. --Adrian Buehlmann 19:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the CSS trick for this template. It breaks pages in browsers that don't support CSS, e.g. lynx. (Perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to make MediaWiki strip out the contents of &lt;div class="hiddenStructure"> tags. I know MediaWiki already uses some HTML tidying program.  That would solve the problem.)  dbenbenn | talk 22:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia CTO Brion VIBBER is with you. He has indicated that he would consider adding something to the MediaWiki software. See Wikipedia talk:Avoid using meta-templates. I propose to be nice to him and not asking more than needed. Maybe we can keep qif until we have that in MediaWiki. I would propose to watch closely what Brion says. The future looks bright... --Adrian Buehlmann 22:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If MediaWiki had the equivalent of Qif implemented natively (e.g. as new wikitext syntax), this whole thing would be pretty much moot. I've seen at least one prototype implementation floating around at m:User:AzaToth/Logic. Mike Dillon 22:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Better to add qif or whatever is necessary to make the template work right, than implement another after-the-fact fix. An extra text filter to strip junk template output is still a hack, but not nearly as bad as extra CSS classes to hide it from some browsers.  —Michael Z. 2006-01-23 21:05 Z 

Removing this template is easy
Since the CSS hack has been added, I've replaced book reference and journal reference with literal text in the references section of "T-34". The change was pretty easy, although to approximate the template's previous output I added something like  to each item on the page.

Removing the template actually allowed me to improve the format slightly, adding quotation marks around article titles, avoiding double punctuation after an article title ending with a question mark, and avoiding an undesirable space between the issue and page numbers.

This could be made even easier by using a simple template that wrapped the citation tag around the literal content and added a backlink, but it's not necessary. —Michael Z. 2006-01-23 21:19 Z 


 * I've created wikicite and wikiref to make this easier. Example of use: T-34.  —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 04:19 Z 
 * No, please don't remove the template. Changing to use the CSS hack is a temporary measure to stave off the deletionist hordes: there is every possibility that we can revert to some version of the conditional syntax at some future stage, and we need to have the template in place to take advantage of the change. —Phil | Talk 12:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Request to switch back to using qif
The policy tag on WP:AUM has been removed by CTO Brion VIBBER, it's not even a guideline. So I see no longer enough reason to use the CSS hack on book reference or on any other citation template. I hereby request to switch back to using the qif variant (11:42, January 18, 2006 UTC by Phil Boswell) and keep that until the minute we have conditionals in MediaWiki, which Brion indicated that he would be willing to do. --Adrian Buehlmann 21:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Brion said that meta-templates have not been proven to have a impact on the server level, though he still says meta-templates should be avoided.  Let's stop touching this template, and start removing it from active use by replacing with wikitext and Cite mark-up. -- Netoholic @ 22:08, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If you're referring to Cite/Cite.php, which would make rather more sense, that is actually a replacement for the footnotes system, which should actually be used in conjunction with the citation templates. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. Actually Brion said that meta-templates should not be used if they are ugly/confusing to users. Qif isn't confusing... and unlike 'hiddenStructure' it has the advantage of working in all browsers and other language Wikipedias. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 22:33, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Support fixing the broken output of this template. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 00:54 Z 


 * Support - Cite markup does not help users format references consistently, whereas this template does. Mike Dillon 03:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Support - From an editors point of view, I am in favor of any technique which imposes a database-like standard on citations, so that:
 * new users can easily write properly formatted citations
 * certain operations such as gathering statistics on citations, collecting all citations by author, or some other database field, etc. can be done easily and reliably.
 * Massive changes by bots can be done reliably.
 * Anything that makes that work has my support, given that it is not a detriment to the big picture. If "qif" does it better than "hiddenStructure", then qif it is. User:PAR 03:35, January 24, 2006 (UTC)


 * Support a little late for the poll ;). QIF can do things that the CSS hack can't and the CSS hack has accessibility issues that others have raised. The accessibility issues are actually legal issues as they raise the spectre of Section 508 compliance. David Newton 16:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

At this stage, I would (surprisingly you might think) advise caution. Frobbing the template back-and-forth between the rival implementations simply hands over ammunition to those who want to make out that these templates are evil. As we know well, it's changing these templates which is likely to put most strain on the servers, so I think we ought to keep the changes to a minimum.

I am aware that there were various changes afoot just before this whole thing blew up: I reckon this would be as good time as any to buckle down and test those changes thoroughly before we put them into action. I have a thing I was working on, and you can see the small amount of progress I made here. Does anyone else have some changes they wanted to make? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I generally agree with you. But you were not that reluctant to do this. Didn't that lead to a cache invalidate of all articles which include book reference? If this was worth it, I would consider to just revert to the latest qif version because those Wikipedia users that are visually impaired are actually affected by the CSS hack. See also MediaWiki talk:Common.css. We also have editors that remove book references due to that. I agree that nedless switching back and forth should be avoided, but this switching back is caused by the switching back and forth of a policy and a group of prominent admins pushing it without understanding its consequenses. I think we have now seen enough of those consequenses. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You know full well why I made that change since you were the one who posted the request on my talk page to do it as a temporary stop-gap measure to stave off deletion. We need to tread carefully until the situation can be resolved one way or another, and avoid shooting ourselves in our collective feet. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:23, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Puzzled. But ok. No intention to shoot in anyone's feet. --Adrian Buehlmann 12:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Phil, you seem to be talking about the change to the CSS version... the link Adrian asked about above was actually a change to add a link to a foreign language version of the template. He was asking whether a change like that wouldn't have also invalidated the cache and suggesting that it thus wasn't really that big of a deal. As to what to do... well, these references are currently being converted to plain text to fix the CSS hack caused display problems. If you wait to replace it you'll have to rebuild more of them or leave them as simple text. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 12:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Still puzzling. Just to make shure that there is no misunderstanding: Phil, you are certainly not part of that "group of prominent admins pushing it" (the CSS hack). I thought you know who I mean. I was in fear of snowspinner blanking qif, that drove me to request the CSS here. Yes I was the one who asked you to put the CSS thing here, because I felt book ref was in danger and CSS was the best thing I had at that time (remember: evreybody was against nearly everthing and Neto still wearing his WP:AUM license). The removal of the policy tag on WP:AUM completely changed everything. Just to make shure, the diff I was referring to above was the addition of an interwiki link to give an example of a change. Hmm, seems I've gotten between the fronts now... sigh. --Adrian Buehlmann 12:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry, yes, I misunderstood which diff you were referring to: that was a minor alteration which would not have sparked any meta-template row, and I went ahead and did it because I couldn't think of any good reason not to. I'm obviously having a bad week [[Image:Cry.png|16px]]. My argument stands, however. We need to avoid bouncing straight back with a qif-based implantation which we then proceed to fiddle with, adding new features to and tweaking. This is an excellent opportunity to test out some additional features which we have been wanting to consider for a while but got distracted from, like adding a chapter-specific URL for instance. If there is the outside possibility that the conditional syntax might be added in any reasonable time-frame, it would also grant us a much higher moral ground if we were willing to wait a bit and cooperate with Brion at WT:AUM. FWIW I haven't seen anyone commenting on my thing yet: I was wondering if anyone had any better ideas? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:49, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks like Phil's answer wasn't good enough. Why are people in such a hurry? -- Netoholic @ 16:32, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * No wonder, what a fabulous statement. May I remind you that it was me who asked you to wait abolishing book ref until we have conditionals in MediaWiki (My "deal or no deal question" - remember?). When it comes to implement your agenda, it can't be fast enough. But when visually impaired users complain about lousy html and Wikipedia CTO Brion VIBBER says we shouldn't produce that kind of html then we are in a "hurry". Messing up things again? --Adrian Buehlmann 17:42, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Per 4/5 consensus above, I've reverted to the version of 05:42, 18 January 2006. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 15:22 Z 

New parameter ChapterURL
Phil Boswell wrote above:
 * "FWIW I haven't seen anyone commenting on my thing yet: I was wondering if anyone had any better ideas? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:49, 24 January 2006 (UTC)"

Looks good to me (diff). I see not reason to be against that. I assume you have tested that. So, why not? --Adrian Buehlmann 15:39, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Added, following successful testing. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Changing qifs to ifs
Why not change the qifs that just test for the parameter's existence be replaced with ? It would help against meta-template arguments. -Xol 03:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * There are non such params. (You can see that a lot of them perhaps look like that, but adds a comma or a space also) → Aza Toth 03:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you; never mind, you are right - it was a hasty judgement, sorry. -Xol 03:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm a big advocate of that method, but it requires an 'if' parameter to be set blank in the call to the template. There are basically two ways to accomplish that:
 * Go through and change every single existing call to.
 * Change Template:Book reference to


 * The first is a huge amount of work. The second is exceedingly simply (it just adds '|if=' to the existing parameter list), but technically would make it a 'nested template'. Of course, it is currently making something like twenty 'nested' calls to qif and booland (which itself again calls qif)... as opposed to just one extra template call under the version above. I actually set up Template:Reference with the if parameter method above and tested it on User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox4... so we really could just change the template to the code above and all existing book reference calls should work with that one extra template call instead of the current twenty or so. Good idea? Of course, people could also just include the '|if=' in a direct call to 'reference' and then it isn't a 'nested' template at all. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 03:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Given the recent vaporization of WP:AUM I would recommend not to waste wikipedian-hours in another trip on premature optimization until the wiki gods know what they want in re conditionals in MediaWiki. --Adrian Buehlmann 17:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'm all for that vaporization. Limiting useage of qifs is/was a terrible idea. I'm sorry about posting this when looking at it for a longer time, it appears best how it is. -Xol 05:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Optional feature
It would be nice if there were an option for generating an unparenthesized date at the end, which is one standard reference style. This is not urgent; I'm keaving the year out and adding it by hand; but the template would be a more useful information store the other way. Septentrionalis 04:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

This is what I was afraid of
I knew it would eventually happen, but I'm very sad it did. An editor actually replaced a perfectly standard wikitext reference sections with this template. It's one thing to try and argue that this template is needed as a handy shortcut tool for new and old editors. It is another thing completely to take this tool beyond that point. It seems to me that editors that like these reference templates ought to first decide whether any "special markup" for references, beyond simple italics, is specifically necessary and desireable across the board. If so, then there is no way this template can even begin to be usable across more than a simple percentage of articles. Don't use template to take the place of making software feature requests, like Cite.php. If you expand the use of this template too far, you're only creating extra work for editors down the line. I'd encourage people to use this minimally and only for adding new references. Where possible, straightforward wikitext is better and complex meta-templates should be avoided, since they can be a barrier to new editors. -- Netoholic @ 21:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Noone complained besides you. BTW by using this kind of wiki source:


 * I actually increased the information compared to the original wiki source:

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, ISBN 0520089065
 * Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics,
 * As you can see the information is now tagged. We now know that "Ruth" is the first name of the author, and "Lewin Sime" is her last name. Something which is not deriveable by a computer from the original reference as there is such a wide range of formats. I would say this alone merits my edit on that article, which you reverted (there are other benefits too). The goal of wikipedia is not only to write good articles, the wikitext itself also represents a value. These kind of references can be easily gathered by any bot to be used for whatever we will have for book references in the future (best some support in MediaWiki, which is very likely to happen some day). In the mean time, I would recommend not going around and systematically remove these template calls. You had no valid reason to revert these book reference calls on Lise_Meitner. Please note that Netoholic is pushing againg his message on WP:AUM (despite it has been downgraded from policy to essay by Brion). He is the only person requesting not to add conditionals to MediaWiki. So he must be against templates like book reference. --Adrian Buehlmann 22:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If you want to add meta-data to articles, write a proposal for standard (see Persondata for a similar proposal, though still a little premature). Once you have a standard, then ask the developers to create a reference tool for you to use, then we editors can go out and make one single pass and implement it. -- Netoholic @ 22:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think this is the wrong way to do it. We need some initial use of things like Book reference to see what exactly is needed. If we do not start such activities, we will never have any progress. It is normal that wiki source capabilities lags behind actual need. Otherwise we all would write plain html. --Adrian Buehlmann 22:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but by all measures we're well past the "initial use" phase, and your edit shows you think this mechanism is ready for broader use... replacing perfectly fine wikitext. -- Netoholic @ 22:51, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes I think this is ready for broader use. Another question: do you say you remove book reference calls only if they were used to replace perfectly error free references? Does this mean that you do not remove calls, if they were inserted to replace erroneous references to books? (Just to know what kinds of reverts we will face from you in the future). --Adrian Buehlmann 23:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That is uncalled for. -- Netoholic @ 23:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * As a somewhat philosophical side note: I find it very interesting, that writing a bot that converts calls of book reference to plain old wiki source is easy. But the other way round is impossible. So I see not much danger in using book reference for Wikipedia. In fact it's rather the other way round. --Adrian Buehlmann 00:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Netoholic, I'm an editor that is very glad to use templates like Book reference whenever I can, instead of plain wikitext. The reason is that it helps me do a better job, more easily. It helps me gather all the relevant data, by giving me a list of parameters to fill out. It takes care of formatting, letting me concentrate on the content only. And I have confidence that in the future it will be easier for an automated mechanism to carry forward data from a structured template than plain wikitext. Templates as a mechanism have weaknesses, but I'm surprised that you seem to prefer no mechanism to this limited mechanism. What am I missing? --Jdlh | Talk 02:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Can I use this for papers & essays?
The only template I can see is Citepaper, which is most unsatisfactory. Is it okay to use this template instead? ··gracefool |&#9786; 10:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not? It's up to you. It's good not to fork a template if it isn't needed. BTW, there was once an attempt to merge the citation templates into one big thing (template:citation). But this has lost some momentum due to the recent WP:AUM hell. At the moment, there seems to be a little ceasefire though. But confusion and disagreement about WP:AUM is still eminent. --Adrian Buehlmann 11:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It's lacking a few attributes, however - eg. the Parent Publication & its details. ··gracefool |&#9786; 04:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * You may also want to look at Journal reference. Mike Dillon 05:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks Mike. ··gracefool |&#9786; 04:15, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Needs accessdate and accessyear attributes to go with URL
This template needs some date and year attributes to show when the URL was last accessed, in case the link dies (as they often do). See Template:Web reference. Any time you have a URL, a date of last access is handy because it often means the page can be recovered through the Internet Archive. ··gracefool |&#9786; 04:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've created which adds these. It also adds the format attribute from web reference. All-lowercase attributes are now allowed. Any objections to changing the template to this? ··gracefool |&#9786; 01:41, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Some preliminary comments (I have yet to think about your proposed new parameters "accessmonth", "accessyear" and "format"). First it would be good if you could put such proposals under your user space and not in the template namespace. I would recommend for example to move the contents of template:book reference test to User:gracefool/Book reference test (or whatever name you prefer after the "/"). Technically, there is no need to have test templates in template namespace. For the example I gave, you then can just call that template as . Please move template:Book reference test to under your user space and then edit the remaining redirect at template:book reference test and replace it if  . --Adrian Buehlmann 08:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I perfectly agree to switch over book reference to lower case parameters. But I would recommend not to do it as you are proposing. I think it is better to create a new template, for example under the name template:cite book which provides lower case parameters exclusively and then replace all calls to book reference with calls to "cite book", thereby adapting the paramaters call by call. I would volunteer to do this on all articles by using WP:AWB. book reference could then be deprecated and deleted when done with this. I made a similar proposal at template talk:Journal reference. --Adrian Buehlmann 08:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm. As per the proposed new parameters "accessmonth", "accessyear" and "format" I see a bit a problem with the recently added parameter ChapterURL (see Template talk:Book reference). Would that need an access date too then? (just some ruminating, your idea needs further thinking). --Adrian Buehlmann 09:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Moved. I don't see the benefit of having exclusively lower-case parameters - what's wrong with being able to do both, like with web reference? As for ChapterURL, I don't think that's a problem it should be at the same site as URL, and it's unlikely that one page would disappear without the other also disappearing. If ChapterURL does disappear, it should be easy to fix, so long as there is an accessdate for URL (which is less likely to break). ··gracefool |&#9786;


 * The benefit of having exclusively lower-case parameters is simplicity of the template code, and ease of maintenance on the template itself and on the call side. It seems to me that the users tend to prefer lower case params anyway and that there is some consensus to prefer that. On web reference the doc talks about upper case params as "obsolete". I would propose to deprecated upercase entirely. It is very hard to go back from a two-way template (upper- and lower case) to single way (lowercase only) template. Onother – maybe no longer so important – argument comes from that pressure originating from WP:AUM and the threat to template:qif. The reasoning behing this is that if qif should get abolished (which happend to if) before we have conditionals in MediaWiki (see my talk with Wikipedia CTO Brion Vibber at User talk:Brion VIBBER) it would be nearly impossible to convert book ref to using weeble code trick (example) or hiddenStructure (the only stop-gap alternatives of qif known today). WP:AUM lost some momentum (policy tag has been removed). But the battle on qif is not yet over. I think we have a ceasefire now. Wikilife is still dangerous and complicated here. --Adrian Buehlmann 11:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * No freakin' way. qif is so much better than the alternatives. hiddenStructure is not an option, since it breaks the site for many browsers. I'm in favour of a meta-template for references, since they are all almost the same. Eg. using a meta-template with Media=Book for books, Media=Journal for journals, etc. So I see my new as a temporary measure. Keeping the same name makes adoption faster and easier. Qif can't be deleted easily, since so many templates use it, so I don't think the added complexity of different casing matters much. ··gracefool |&#9786; 12:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * In re qif "No freakin' way" you might want to make yourself heard on WP:AUM. Another battleplace is here. I'm in favour of a meta-template for references too. But I recommend going low case params in the long run (but is not so important). Interim question: do you agree at least to deprecate the uppercase params in the doc on book ref like on web reference? --Adrian Buehlmann 14:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm entertained that you think of it as a "battleplace". This template is far more complex than the very simple wikitext it's trying to replace. Ugly. -- Netoholic @ 15:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Welcome back. This was just for the "No freakin' way" section. BTW, I strongly disagree with you (as most of the time). See the whole useless discussion at WP:AUM (at least we have a place to dump that there :-). --Adrian Buehlmann 16:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will. Yeah, lowercase in the doc is a better idea. ··gracefool |&#9786;
 * Actually, I now agree it should be only lowercase. Changed my template to only lowercase, and moved to User:gracefool/cite book. ··gracefool |&#9786; 06:57, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Looks much simpler now. It is good to keep it as simple as possibly (as per the ugliness). How about deprecating book reference and start a new one at template:cite book (with only lower case params)? I would volunteer to convert all calls to the new cite book. We are already doing the same on template:journal reference (see User:Adrian Buehlmann/AWB/migrate to cite journal), which I deprecated in favor for template:cite journal while talking with user:Splash on this. It is better to do the migration by the help of a new template. See also the discussion on my talk with Splash on this. --Adrian Buehlmann 08:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If you like. What would be really cool is to merge them all straight to citation and save ourselves a bunch of work. I suppose that may be a bit much for people to swallow though.
 * The other thing is, I'm not finished with it yet. I've just added a link field for when the referenced book has its own Wikipedia article. ··gracefool |&#9786; 10:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think a one big step into citation is a bit too much in one step, but we might keep that as a general goal in mind. I would propose to do a divide and conquer algorithm and move the reference templates first to lower case one by one. It is also a quite tough job to convert the calls. I'm doing this on journal ref with WP:AWB at the moment (see contribs). Though I have that great WP:AWB I still do have to check each diff carefully as there are some nasty cases that are difficult to catch with regexes. Proposals for better regexes are always welcome. --Adrian Buehlmann 12:03, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, cite book is now the stable version of . ··gracefool |&#9786; 23:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't start moving yet though, I'm still making changes to field names. ··gracefool |&#9786; 02:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I dont't think starting to move is a problem. As long as we can agree on the spelling of the preexisting parameters (all lowercase). Your new parameters aren't touched anyway, as they are inexistent in the old book reference. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:30, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've broken backwards compatability - most of the author fields are different, as well as one or two others. I think most uses of book reference would have been uncompliant anyway because the example template to copy was not lowercase. ··gracefool |&#9786; 10:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Deprecated
Someone please add the Tdeprecated tag to this template. The new version is cite book, which is easier to maintain because it only allows lowercase fields. It also adds a few necessary fields. ··gracefool |&#9786; 23:29, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Gracefool. Let's deprecate Book reference in favor of cite book. I will begin to convert calls of Book reference to cite book. This will take some time though (I suppose a few weeks). --Adrian Buehlmann 09:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you want to put the AWB settings somewhere convenient for when we've finished the journal reference&rarr;cite journal process? —Phil | Talk 11:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Shure yes. I will put a pointer here (or you? Feel free to edit my user space!). You are welcome to help improve as done on the settings for cite journal. I intend to use what we have developed on User:Adrian Buehlmann/AWB/migrate to cite journal as a starting point. I think this is quite strong now. --Adrian Buehlmann 11:20, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


 * There are currently some clitches about moving to cite book that need to be resolved first. See template talk:cite book. There is also some opposition from the TfD of Journal reference regarding the name "cite journal". So I do not intend to start moving to cite book right now. Put it on hold. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Oops. We are a bit too lame here. After looking at the whatlinkshere of cite book I must say that it already spreads into articles (it's used by editors!). So there is not much left for discussing then about breaking changes. I think I will launch my AWB now and start converting book references to the new cite book. --Adrian Buehlmann 12:45, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a shame the real problems I mention below are not worthy of your attention either. Pcb21 Pete 13:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I've seen them, but I do not understand them. That's why I haven't answered. The cite book template does the same as book reference. It's only a new name for the template and all parameters are in lowercase. Gracefool added some new stuff, which I partially reverted, because it is not compatible to the old book reference. While I was talking with him about these new proposed things, I noticed that the new cite book already spreads into articles. So what's that bad about cite book then that isn't already bad in book reference? Is it the name "cite book" you have problems with? We already have a bunch of cite xxx templates (see category:Citation templates). --Adrian Buehlmann 13:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Isn't there a difference between a specific citation of a book and listed a book as a reference? For example when citing, I habitually include (a) page number(s), but when referencing I generally don't. Won't the final scheme leaving us having to use the "wrong" template? Pcb21 Pete 14:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Further perusing the talk page, I see that the template has a complicated set of instructions for usage. I don't mind implementations being relatively complex (qif etc), as only a small subset of editors will be dabbling there. However almost every editor can be expected to give references, so the client templates need to simple - even if that meets we have to provide a suite of templates rather than one uber-template. Pcb21 Pete 14:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I've simplified the documentation. ··gracefool |&#9786; 03:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I was reciently looking at an old revision of an article which used this template. Which unfortunatly made it imposible to see the actual reference. Would it be possible to change the template so its posible to at least see the basic info, with a less obtrusive depreication notice. --Salix alba (talk) 10:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 3 February 2019
Please tag this redirect with. Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 23:57, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:26, 4 February 2019 (UTC)