Template talk:Book reference

Documentation

Usage

Copy these blank versions to use:

Using First and Last for name of author	Using older option Author for name of author
{{Book reference | First = | Last = | Authorlink = | Coauthors = | Year = | Month = | Title = '''REQUIRED''' | Chapter = | Editor = | Others = | Edition = | Pages = | Publisher = | Location = | ID = | URL = }}	{{Book reference | Author = | Authorlink = | Coauthors = | Year = | Month = | Title = '''REQUIRED''' | Chapter = | Editor = | Others = | Edition = | Pages = | Publisher = | Location = | ID = | URL = }}

Description of parameters

• Author: Last name, First name. The First, Last parameters are preferred.
  • First: First name of author (ignored if Author field is used).
  • Last: Surname of author (ignored if Author field is used).
  • Authorlink: Title of Wikipedia article about author. Article must already exist.
  • Coauthors: Additional author or authors (Firstname Lastname is the standard format for the most common citation styles), separated by ", " (comma space).
• Date: January 1, 2006. Full date of publication.
  • Year: Year of publication (ignored if the Date field is used).
    • Month: Month of publication (ignored if the Date field is used, or if the Year field is not used).
• Chapter: Produces:"Chapter" ahead of Title. Punctuation other than quotes should be included in the value passed to the parameter (e.g., Chapter = Meet Dick and Jane.)
• Editor: No text is added, so labels such as "(ed.)" has to be supplied by user.
• Title: Title of book. This is the only required parameter.
• Others: For uses such as "illustrated by Smith" or "trans. Smith".
• Edition: When the book has more than one edition. eg: "2nd edition".
• Pages: 1–2: first page, and optional last page.
• Publisher: Publisher should not include corporate designation such is "Ltd" or "Inc".
  • Location: Place of publication. Produces Location: Publisher (ignored if the Publisher field is not used).
• ID: Identifier such as ISBN 1-111-22222-9 or {{LCC|Z253.U69}}
• URL: URL of an online book.

Testing

See Template:Book reference/regression tests.

Examples

*{{Book reference
 | First = Andrew Gladding
 | Last = Whiteside
 | Year = 1975
 | Title = The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer
and Austrian Pan-Germanism
 | Publisher = University of California Press
 | Location = Berkeley
 | ID = ISBN 0-520-02434-6
}}

• . ISBN 0-520-02434-6. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Location= ignored (|location= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)

*{{Book reference
 | First = Martin
 | Last = Fowler
 | Authorlink = Martin Fowler
 | Coauthors = [[Kent Beck]], John Brant, [[William Opdyke]], and Don Roberts
 | Year = 1999
 | Title = Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
 | Publisher = Addison-Wesley
 | ID = ISBN 0-201-48567-2
}}

• . ISBN 0-201-48567-2. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |Authorlink= ignored (|authorlink= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Last= ignored (|last= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Publisher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Title= ignored (|title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help)

Citation styles

Established citation styles for coauthors:

MLA style

Last, First and First Last. "If there are more than three authors, you may list only the first author followed by the phrase et al."

APA style

Last, F. & Last, F.

Chicago Manual of Style

Last, First, and First Last.

Turabian

same as Chicago Reference List, above.

Harvard

Last, F., Last, F. & Last, F.

See also

• Wikipedia:Cite sources: Style guide
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations: Related templates
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite

Discussion

archive01

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#Logic_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. — mark ✎ 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}} <cite id="endnote_{{{1}}}{{{3}}}"> 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 [[#ref_{{{1}}}{{{3}}}| from my original question above.) 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_>|< 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 _☎ ^✉ 01:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Comparing html output of CSS-trick:

<cite style="font-style:normal" id="Reference-Fowler-1999"><span class="hiddenStructureMartin Fowler"><a href="/wiki/Martin_Fowler" title="Martin Fowler"><span class="hiddenStructureFowler">Fowler</span><span class="hiddenStructureMartin">, Martin</span></a></span><span class="hiddenStructure[[Kent Beck]], John Brant, [[William Opdyke]], and Don Roberts">, <a href="/wiki/Kent_Beck" title="Kent Beck">Kent Beck</a>, John Brant, <a href="/wiki/William_Opdyke" title="William Opdyke">William Opdyke</a>, and Don Roberts</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ()</span><span class="hiddenStructure1999"> (<span class="hiddenStructure"> </span>1999)</span><span class="hiddenStructureFowler1999">.</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ""</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> </span><i><span class="hiddenStructure"> [</span> Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code<span class="hiddenStructure">]</span></i><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructureAddison-Wesley">, <span class="hiddenStructure">: </span>Addison-Wesley.</span><span class="hiddenStructureISBN 0-201-48567-2"> <a href="/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0201485672" class="internal">ISBN 0-201-48567-2</a>.</span><span class="hiddenStructure">.</span></cite>

with html output of weeble:

<cite style="font-style:normal" id="Reference-Fowler-1999"><a href="/wiki/Martin_Fowler" title="Martin Fowler">Fowler, Martin</a>, <a href="/wiki/Kent_Beck" title="Kent Beck">Kent Beck</a>, John Brant, <a href="/wiki/William_Opdyke" title="William Opdyke">William Opdyke</a>, and Don Roberts (1999). <i>Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code</i>, Addison-Wesley. <a href="/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0201485672" class="internal">ISBN 0-201-48567-2</a>.</cite>

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

The weeble style call for that would be:

{{Book reference|if=
 | First = Martin
 | Last = Fowler
 | Authorlink = Martin Fowler
 | Coauthors = [[Kent Beck]], John Brant, [[William Opdyke]], and Don Roberts
 | Year = 1999
 | Title = Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
 | Publisher = Addison-Wesley
 | ID = ISBN 0-201-48567-2
}}

--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, {{Book ref2 |if=|First={{{First|}}}|Last={{{Last|}}}|Year={{{Year|}}}... et cetera}} 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 _☎ ^✉ 13:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Used newest idea from Netoholic as per User talk:Adrian Buehlmann#pipes: 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:

<cite style="font-style:normal" id="Reference-Fowler-1999"><span><a href="/wiki/Martin_Fowler" title="Martin Fowler"><span>Fowler</span><span>, Martin</span></a></span><span>, <a href="/wiki/Kent_Beck" title="Kent Beck">Kent Beck</a>, John Brant, <a href="/wiki/William_Opdyke" title="William Opdyke">William Opdyke</a>, and Don Roberts</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ()</span><span> (<span class="hiddenStructure"> </span>1999)</span><span>.</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ""</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> </span><i><span class="hiddenStructure"> [</span> Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code<span class="hiddenStructure">]</span></i><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span>, <span class="hiddenStructure">: </span>Addison-Wesley.</span><span> <a href="/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0201485672" class="internal">ISBN 0-201-48567-2</a>.</span><span class="hiddenStructure">.</span></cite>

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#CSS hack reduces accessibility. -- Netoholic @ 19:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Locked

Why is this page locked? Please add [[sk:Šablóna:Knižná_referencia]] into the <noinclude></noinclude> 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:

 [[|, ]],  () ( ). ""  [ {{{Title}}}], , , , : . ..

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:

<cite style="font-style:normal" id="Reference-Title-"><span class="hiddenStructure">[[|</span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">]]</span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ()</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> (<span class="hiddenStructure"> </span>)</span><span class="hiddenStructure">.</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> ""</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> </span><i><span class="hiddenStructure"> [</span> TITLE<span class="hiddenStructure">]</span></i><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, </span><span class="hiddenStructure">, <span class="hiddenStructure">: </span>.</span><span class="hiddenStructure"> .</span><span>.</span></cite> . :--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 [1] 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: <span class{{{param1|}}}="hiddenStructure">param1: {{{param1|}}}</span>. "class*" 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 _☎ ^✉ 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; {{Reference |id=Reference-Dunkerson-2006|<full text of reference>}}. This passes in the text and the id name for the anchor point (in this case you could link to the text with [[#Reference-Dunkerson-2006]]). 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 _☎ ^✉ 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:

*{{Book reference
 | First = Martin
 | Last = Fowler
 | Authorlink = Martin Fowler
 | Coauthors = [[Kent Beck]], John Brant, [[William Opdyke]], and Don Roberts
 | Year = 1999
 | Title = Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
 | Publisher = Addison-Wesley
 | ID = ISBN 0-201-48567-2
}}

with

*[[Martin Fowler|Fowler, Martin]], [[Kent Beck]], John Brant, [[William Opdyke]], and Don Roberts (1999). ''Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code'', Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-48567-2.

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;

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 _☎ ^✉ 12:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)