Talk:Richard Dawkins bibliography

Reference list needed?

I'll keep adding away whenever I have spare time. One small point, though, I'm not actually sure that a reference list is needed if we are to explicitly use citation templates for every entry. --AC+79 3888 (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Certainly not! I mean, we don't have to get that anal, the citation template is sufficient by itself. If it's used for the reference list of a PhD thesis or scientific book, it will have to do here as well. Out of curiosity though, what search engine are you using? As I mentioned I tried google scholar but wasn't very effective: for example there were entries that could be attributed to him (subject-wise), but signed by a "R L Dawkins"... Errr? what does L stand for? 81.101.18.116 (talk) 00:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's always just R Dawkins. No middle initial. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 07:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think R.L. Dawkins refers to a different author; I've found a number of publications by said person and it seems to be totally unrelated to R.D.'s field of ethology/evolutionary study. All articles which Dawkins has actually written credit him as R. Dawkins or Dawkins, R. only, no L. Hope this helps. AC+79 3888 (talk) 12:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Dawkins name is Clinton Richard Dawkins, but he prefers his middle name. Richard001 (talk) 09:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

How best to structure the page

Because the Cite Book and Cite Journal templates are quite different, in my opinion it makes the page look very unorganised. I propose that under each decade we have different sections: "Journals" and "Books", then maybe even "Books as sole author/editor" and "Books as contributor". Any opinions on this? I'm not really sure if it's how Wikipedia recommends doing it, but if it doesn't go against guidelines I think it would improve the readability of the page. AC+79 3888 (talk) 12:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for adding to the disorganisation by just throwing some references in a few hours ago! I agree that it now needs to be organsed, but I'm not keen on separating books and journal articles etc. Too complicated and potentially confusing, and may even have too many grey areas and generate all sorts of additional categories (chapters in books as sole author, chapters as joint author, websites, etc). I think a single list would be best, with a single style imposed (pace both journal and book templates). I'd use a Harvard (author-date) style, and Harvard-style order. I'd sort by decade, then within each decade arrange by year, then A/Z by first author, then A/Z by subsequent author(s), then A/Z by title. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 12:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. I'll add a note to the page and try to reformat as many as possible when I have time. Regards, AC+79 3888 (talk) 13:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Greetings All - thanks for taking an interest in this page and sorting it out. I thought it was necessary to get it up & running and let the experts take over from there :) I'm inclined to agree with Snalwibma regarding not separating the articles from the books. Although publication dates don't necessarily coincide with/correspond to an author's views at the time of writing, s/he probably does have some global lines of thought which might be interesting for future generations to look back on. Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 22:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

AC+79, I too agree with what's been said: it's okay if the template for journal papers is different from that of books. Again, in almost every bibliography you'll find this, so people should be used to it. 81.101.18.116 (talk) 00:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

What about non-printed works?

Should his documentaries also be included here, perhaps with a name change to 'list of works...'? Richard001 (talk) 03:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Opinion pieces and letters should be separated from Academic Papers

The section of "academic papers" conists mostly of letters and opinion pieces printed in scientific publications, rather than actual "academic papers". We should try to separate these out. NBeale (talk) 15:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that might prove rather difficult. Where would you draw the line, and how would you determine which side of the line each publication falls? I smell WP:OR! SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 15:44, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

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ISBNs and author name

From the WP:MOS-BIBLIO:

ISBNs

"ISBNs are unlikely to be helpful for books that either have had or are to have many editions", which is precisely the case here.

Author

For now just for the books (but possibly also for the academic papers and articles), the author's name at the beginning of each bullet point is not needed. It hinders the reading, and the "vital information is the title and year of first publication." The MOS example doesn't list the author when the article is about one author.

I'll be making that edit. — zmm ~talk~ 13:18, 26 January 2023 (UTC)