Forum:SH:Book citation template

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This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. Tommy-Macaroni 09:20, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, I have to plans to expand the history section of the Lucasfilm Ltd. article. I have consulted two books including Chris Taylor's "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe" and B.J. Jones "George's Lucas: A Life." However, we don't have a citation template for books. I'm not sure what citation system we use as well. I have consulted Wookieepedia:Manual of Style and Wookieepedia:Layout Guide/Out-of-universe but there is no clear answer. Any advice? Have also posted on the Discord page but thought it would be easier to do it here. Andykatib 03:17, April 2, 2021 (UTC)

  • I want to work on a Cite_book template since some time now, something able to manage any kind of physical publication while maintaining proper formatting, and that could also feature web archive, as archive.org has a very interesting catalog, including numerous Starlog issues. That would help editors looking for using this kind of reference while reducing the hasle to find the proper format style. I will begin to work on the template during the Week-end, and keep this forum updated. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 10:06, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    • Hi NanoLuuke, thanks so much. Wish you all the best with this endeavor. Andykatib 00:07, April 3, 2021 (UTC)
      • A citation template for non-Lucasfilm books would be fantastic. Looking forward to the template, Nano! MasterFredCommerce Guild(talk) 00:14, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
    • Likewise, I love that idea! I know we suggest the MLA format when we don't already have a template, but having a template would be so great. I'm rusty on it myself after that part of my brain got taken up with APA, but I know where to look if you need some guidance on that. Hit me up if you'd like? :) —Immi Thrax (talk) 00:45, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
      • Agreed Immi Thrax, will be good to maintain consistency with Wikipedia. We will let you know if we need some input. Andykatib 06:29, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
    • Quick update: I started looking into it. But the coding gave me a bit of a headache to be honest, the WE was a handful for me. It's probably not that difficult, but I want to try it on my own before giving up ^^. I will give a status update soon, in a couple days maximum. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 12:04, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
  • The template is complete, it's still missing some more examples (like a ISBN), but it's running smoothly, thanks to miki, who pointed out my parser errors ^^. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 08:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Prototype

For the ongoing complete prototype, please see my workbench.

Before putting it to code, I want to make sure we agree on the formatting. The following is a MLA-inspired all-purpose "Cite_book template" pre-visualization (see linked workbench for full documentation): 

{{Cite_book|author=|container=|title=|version=|number=|publisher=|date=|month=|year=|language=|isbn=|issn=|quote=|link=}}

I aim for this:

Author. "Container". Title. Contributor, version, number, publisher, date. Language. ISBN/ISSN. Quote. (link)

I didn't include a location/pages parameters, per Sourcing, rule 9. This template also requires the creation of a ISSN template, mirroring our {{ISBN}}. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 15:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Forgot to add that I dumbed down author compared to Wikipedia Cite_book and our own Cite_web, as I find it defeat the purpose to have numerous parameters instead of just doing the formatting on author(s) ourselves. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 15:36, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
    • MLA-inspired not MLA-exactly works for me. It's looking really good, and I like how you're explaining what things mean! Some templates don't and leave me confused. I think the "container" and "title" explanations could be revised, though. I'll come back when I've through through a suggested revision, but basically, clarifying that container only applies to citing something published within a larger work. Quote shouldn't be in italics, I think, but in quotation marks instead (like in Cite_web). Definitely like how you streamlined the author(s)! Immi Thrax (talk) 04:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Final version

I'm done with the code (thanks to miki), and the template is online! If everyone seems satisfied with it (I know Immi wanted to tinker a bit in the documentation), we can officialy call it a go. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 18:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

For the record, here the log I kept on my workbench, regarding changes I made since the last message here:

  • First protoype previsualization completed. -06/04/2021
  • Quote changed from italic to quotation marks, per Immi. Template name changed from Cite_Book to BookCite, per Shayanomer. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 11:23, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Removed alternative parameters on date, on the same rationale than author: simplification. -- NanoLuukeCloning facility 09:16, 14 April 2021 (UTC)