Template talk:Bluebook journal

"Most commonly use parameters" section

Wugapodes, in the "most commonly used parameters" section at the top of the page, it includes parameters labelled "date" and "publisher." Should these be "year" and "journal" instead? When I tried using "date" and "publisher" instead of "year" and "journal," the formatting didn't appear to be correct. Also, if you make revisions to this, can you also add the "pin" parameter to the most commonly used section? Thanks so much for your help with this. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 23:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Notecardforfree: You're right, not sure how that got into the documentation but it is fixed now. Pin is also included, it's at the end after page. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 23:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks, Wugapodes. This template is a fantastic resource! Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 00:01, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Why no DOI?

@Wugapodes: Digital object identifiers are one of the most commonly used permanent identifiers of journal articles. This citation template should include them. --bender235 (talk) 22:56, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Most law-review articles don't seem to have them, yet. Daniel Case (talk) 17:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

What if there's no credited author?

I just added to a draft article a cite to a short law-review comment on the case shortly after it was decided. No author was credited, as is commonly the case for these comments. However, the reference is still showing "{{first}} and {{last}}" Is there a workaround for this? Daniel Case (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

The prevailing Bluebook practice in such cases seems to be to omit the author's name, as with most other citation styles. To this end, I think adding a |last=none option, or just assuming no author if no |last= is specified, would be reasonable. Does anyone have any thoughts on which to do? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 18:53, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I think printing no author info if |last= empty is a good option. The lack of an author still gives some indication of an error if you forgot the last name, but doesn't make the output look wonky for readers should that happen. It also addresses the issue of unsigned works. — Wug·a·po·des 20:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Incorporating supra links

@Wugapodes: It's been bugging me for a while that Bluebook cites lack a way to link back to the first reference to a given source. In print, this is accomplished by "supra 15" or such, but that's of course not an option here with ever-moving citations (absent a change to how the Cite extension works, or maybe some very costly Lua magic). Simply repeating a partial citation works, but is not very user-friendly, especially for anyone reading the article in a format where ctrl+f isn't an option (i.e., inaccessible). It also fails silently if the "head" citation is removed.

To that end, I have created two templates, {{supra}} and {{supra footnote}} (the latter with aliases {{suprafn}} and {{SupraFn}}). In terms of usage, they are analogous to {{harvnb}} and {{sfn}} respectively. In terms of display, they use standard Bluebook format, absent the number after "supra", and instead with that word linked to the appropriate citation. A harv-error highlighter will flag the same way on them as with the standard harv templates. Template:Bluebook journal/sandbox and Template:Bluebook website/sandbox contain the changes necessary to make this work, including adding a |hereinafter= parameter that adds "[Hereinafter X.]" and then sets the ID to {{BluebookRef|X}} (an {{SfnRef}} wrapper), which notches in to the {{supra}} logic. You can see all of this on display at Special:Permalink/1147079777. No changes will require anyone to change how they use these templates if they don't want to, and the only breaking change is to citation ID naming, which advanced searches suggest will cause no breakage.

Thoughts? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 19:18, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@Tamzin This is super cool (and thanks for the ping)! I vaguely remember when I rewrote these, seeing some guidance about the issues with supra and similar positional references. I can't seem to find it now, but if it turns up, I'd recommend editing that page to incorporate reference to these templates. These can also be added to the documentation of the Bluebook series. — Wug·a·po·des 19:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I might create a {{Bluebook meta}} and move some of the shared logic/features into it—not like a true base template, just a namespace to host some subpages for shared features. Not sure if I'll do that on this round of edits or a future one, but yeah. Anyways, I'll push the sandboxed changes. Please let me know if you see anything amiss. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 20:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)