Template talk:Cite DNBIE

what to do about this template?
Dictionary of National Biography, Index and Epitome does not exist. This template, somewhat clandestinely, links to the original (DNB00) Wikisource article when given wstitle.

According to Dictionary of National Biography, the DNB I&E has 'condensed versions of all previous DNB biographies'. What does that mean? Condensed as in abridged? Condensed as in unabridged but physically smaller to get more words on a page? If the latter, all biographies the same as DNB00, then editors should be using (or  – presuming that the 1901 supplement is also in the 1903 DNB I&E). If the former, this template should report an error when wstitle is set because DNBIE is not available at Wikisource.

So, what to do about this template?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:09, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Answering some of the above: DNB I&E is an abridgment of other work so linking to related articles in DNB00 without stating that we are linking to DNB00 and not to DNB I&E does a disservice to readers.
 * What to do? I propose to remove support for wstitle as a mechanism for linking into DNB00 and remove the wikisource icon.  Because wstitle will not be supported there will be no reason to support display (used to override the value in wstitle with some other text in the final rendering).  However, wstitle shall be retained for the time being as an alias of title so that there is always a proper entry title.  Its presence can serve as a locator for later cleanup.  Relatively few  and  (which uses ) templates use wstitle; see these insource searches:
 * – 40
 * – 2
 * The title of this portion of the DNB is Index and Epitome. This template should use entry to name the identifiable bits being cited.  Links to the individual pages when page(s) is present shall be linked from entry-url.
 * Support? Oppose?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:49, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Continuing to talk to myself ...
 * This template supports two categories:
 * Because Dictionary of National Biography, Index and Epitome does not exist, the second of those two categories is meaningless (assuming that links into DNB00 masquerading as links into DNB I&E are improper which I believe them to be), then that category should go away and has in the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Because I could not find it in myself to object to my own proposal, there being none other who cared to dispute, I have updated the live template to that from the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * This template supports two categories:
 * Because Dictionary of National Biography, Index and Epitome does not exist, the second of those two categories is meaningless (assuming that links into DNB00 masquerading as links into DNB I&E are improper which I believe them to be), then that category should go away and has in the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Because I could not find it in myself to object to my own proposal, there being none other who cared to dispute, I have updated the live template to that from the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Because I could not find it in myself to object to my own proposal, there being none other who cared to dispute, I have updated the live template to that from the sandbox.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)