Template talk:Cite EB15

Changed target redirect

Thanks to Mathglot for creating this. After exercising it I modified the WL's target to redirect directly to the relevant description: Encyclopædia Britannica#1974–1994. David Brooks (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

David, thanks. I had one question for you (and other EB project members, who I hope will provide additional feedback) about the |year= parameter. Originally, I set it up with a default value of 1989, so you could use the template without any parameters at all, and probably because it was the 1989 edition I found at my local library, and I wasn't even sure if there were other printed ones for the 15th, or if there were, maybe 1989 was the most common one. But on the flip side, this could encourage users to leave out the year, when they are really using a different one, so I'm thinking it's better to force them to enter it. What do you think?

The other issue, is concerning the term Micropaedia or Macropaedia, which is currently inserted automatically, based on the |volume= parameter they enter. But actually, this doesn't really specify the result more fully if they provide both volume and page number, so I'm thinking either:

• drop the terms Micropaedia and Macropaedia entirely; or:
• add a new param (maybe, "|pedia=" ?) and if they add |pedia=Micropaedia, then it adds it.

What do you think? Also, feel free to alter the template directly based on your knowledge of how references to EB15 have been written previously, or more to the point, ought to be written. Mathglot (talk) 19:11, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: to be honest, I have nothing to offer, because I've never referenced the 15th edition, and all I know about it is what I just read at the link. But I think the division into Micro, Macro and Pro presents difficulties: are the volumes numbered as a group, in the same way that 1922 is numbered as volumes 30-32 of 1911? Or would you have to specify which of the three is referenced? And, as "...the 15th edition continued to be published and revised until the 2010 print version" it would be hard to nail down a year. More problems than solutions, I fear. On the upside, creating that redirect showed me another bug in the Vector-2022 skin, so there's that. David Brooks (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

@DavidBrooks: it's not necessary to reference it; specifying volume + page number provides a complete specification; adding "Micropaedia" or "Maropaedia" is kind of window dressing. (Click the image, which takes you directly to Commons, then click "2,592 × 1,456 pixels" below the image, and you should just about be able to see the words "Micro-" or "Macropedia" on the spines; also, the Micropaedia volume spines are duotone.) On the other hand, the Index, and the "Propaedia" (a single volume, which is usually shelved *before" volume 1, as sort of a "volume 0"—although it's not called that; although in this image, Propaedia is shelved after volume 29) are outside the volume numbering system. But Micropaedia applies strictly to volumes 1 to 12, and Macropaedia applies strictly to volumes 13 to 29, so displaying the Micro/Macro term with the citation doesn't really provide additional verifiability, so I think we could probably just drop it. We can always add it back later, if anyone wants it. What do you think? Mathglot (talk) 20:22, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think you're well ahead of me. Yes, drop it. David Brooks (talk) 20:34, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

 Done. In addition, I've made |year= a required parameter. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:54, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The "missing title" issue

I'm looking at different ways of handling the "missing title" issue. Here's a description of the problem: if you leave out the |title= parameter, the wrapped template will issue a CS1 missing title error. Normally the |title= parameter specifies the name of the work: the book title in the case of {{cite book}}, the web page title in the case of {{cite web}}, the article title in an academic journal (for {{cite journal}}), and so on. A book citation which fails to cite the title of the book would be a fatal flaw; and indeed, that generates the CS1 "missing title" error.

However, in the case of {{cite EB15}} (which wraps {{cite encyclopedia}}), the name of the work (The New Encyclopedia Britannica) is baked in to the template, passed to {{cite encyclopedia}} as |encyclopedia=, and is always displayed; it can neither be changed nor removed when using {{EB15}}. The |title= parameter is used for the name of the article in the encyclopedia (e.g, "Buddhism"), not the name of the encyclopedia. The point here being, that for encyclopedia Britannica, you can still have 100% WP:Verifiability by quoting the encyclopedia name (built in), the volume (from |volume=), and page number (from |page=) alone, unlike for a book which requires a title.

The reason this is an issue, is that the |title= provides the text that is displayed for whatever url is provided in the |url= field (the default being, https://books.google.com/books?id=VdH4sgEACAAJ) and if there is no title, how do we link to the google books page (or to whatever url is selected) if there is no title?

Since year plus volume plus page provides a complete specification for verifiability purposes, one approach would be to provide another string to underlie the url. The sandbox has a version that does this; it is in revision 1117159187, and provides a string consisting of the concatenation of volume number and page number. The basic logic is contained in {{Cite EB15/title check}}, which returns the concatenated string, if title is absent, but volume and page are both present. Another approach, is to just supply a neutral string like "Encyclopaedia Britannica" as the display test for the external link. Finally, we could designate |title= as a required parameter, although it seems unnecessarily restrictive to me; why shouldn't volume + page number be sufficient? Currently, the code doesn't handle it, and a missing title generates a CS1 error, and I don't think that's the best choice for this template. There may be other approaches, as well. Comments, proposals, ideas, thoughts, would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 22:55, 20 October 2022 (UTC)