Template talk:Cite DNBIE

what to do about this template?

s: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 s: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 {{cite DNB}} (or {{cite DNBSupp}} – 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 {{cite DNBIE}} and {{DNBIE}} (which uses {{cite DNBIE}}) templates use |wstitle=; see these insource searches:

{{DNBIE}} – 40

{{cite DNBIE}} – 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:

Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating information from the Dictionary of National Biography Index and Epitome

Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating information from the index volume of the DNB with no Wikisource DNB entry

Because s: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)