Template talk:Cite isbn

Standard formatting

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Shouldn't this template have a standard for formatting for names like {{cite doi}} does.

Authors of different articles in same book

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How does one handle citing different articles/essays/etc from the same book? They'd all have the same ISBN, but they should be separate citations. Curly Turkey (gobble) 01:56, 21 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that can be done with this template. You may have to use {{citation}} using editor= and title= for the book, and author= (or last= and first=) and chapter= for the article. Hope this helps. Regards, Illia Connell (talk) 04:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Basically it's undocumented but the citation can be edited with any of the citation parameters. But you might need to extend the template so the invocation allows other parameters, e.g. volume, as with page/pages and ref now. Alternatively you could add {{rp}} after the citation.

John of Cromer in Philippines (talk) mytime= Thu 11:34, wikitime= 03:34, 18 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

oclc

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Is there any possibility of cloning this mechanism to do a similar job with OCLCs? That's basically for books too old to have any isbn but notable enough to be in worldcat.org

i.e. create {{cite oclc}}. I don't know if oclc has any validation, ones I've seen are 9 digits.

John of Cromer in Philippines (talk) mytime= Thu 10:44, wikitime= 02:44, 18 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Is this 'legal' abuse of this template?

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Please look at User:Revent/UID/ISBNs/Oxford_Reference/EncycOfEnlight. The way I'm producing the effect shown in the examples is inside the ISBN templates themselves, like this.... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_isbn/978019510430&action=edit

I need to know if what I'm doing here is okay, or if it's going to break something. The way it 'looks' is cribbed from things like the odnb templates.

I've asked about this on irc and such, and basically gotten 'uh, I think it's ok', and I don't know of another 'logical' place to ask.

Also, I've explained how to use these to be more specific down at the bottom, by substituting the actual 'ISBN template' into the article, and then editing it to add the article and author names. I need to know if this is okay.

Or, alternatively, kick me upside the head and point me the right direction. :)

Revent (talk) 06:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

so what is the reason for substituting it? Frietjes (talk) 17:44, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Template:Cite isbn/978480531098 up for deletion---appears they don't know about Cite isbn

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Does anyone want to weigh in on the deletion discussion for Template:Cite isbn/978480531098? It appears that those who want to delete it are not aware of {{cite isbn}}. Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:07, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hyphens

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Can't we replace {{{1}}} with {{replace|{{{1}}}|-|}} in the template so that any hyphens included by editors are ignored automatically instead of bothering the editors about it? —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

In the absence of comments, I created a test copy of the template, successfully tested it, and made the change (reflected in the documentation). —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:27, 20 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Pages

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Could this template have |page= and |pages= parameters? Suppose I want to cite page 42 of a book on one article, and page 99 on another; I could use:

  • {{cite isbn|1590593243|42}}
  • {{cite isbn|1590593243|99}}

We'd have to think of a way to control the display if both were used on the same article. perhaps

  • {{cite isbn|1590593243|99|ibid-yes}}

could generate the necessary output. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:59, 13 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

This would be quite a good idea for when this template is used just once in an article, though: there's quite a few books which are used across multiple articles but with different pages being referenced, so this template cannot be used.
The way I prefer to handle the multiple instance case is to move the {{cite isbn}} under a "Sources" sub-heading and use {{harvnb}} in each reference to link to the generated citation. I have been pondering an addition to the cite extension to allow an extra parameter ( ibid?) which would allow for two-level stacking of references, but I haven't got very far doing anything about it…
HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Pagenumbers are not working yet? That's sad - I can hardly use the template then. In the german wikipedia Template:BibISBN is used in this purpose and working very well. However, this template is not activated yet and nothing is done about since september 2013. --Minihaa (talk) 15:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Minihaa: try {{cite isbn|1590593243|page=99}}. if it doesn't work, you just need to add it to the template. Frietjes (talk) 21:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
As I envision it, this should explicitly work across multiple articles - the target page holds details of the book; the individual instances of the template indicate the pages referred to. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:25, 19 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Vandalism

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Are there measures in place to prevent silent vandalism? It seems to me that by removing the bibliographic information from the article, this template puts it off everyone's watch list, making it vulnerable to vandalism. --Srleffler (talk) 07:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Is there really a consensus not to use this template?

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The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus to Deprecate. AlbinoFerret 23:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

An editor has added a template informing users that the {{cite isbn}} template has been deprecated, linking to a discussion at {{cite doi}}, where {{cite isbn}} is not discussed and the closer explicitly states "there is not clear numerical majority consensus"; further, many of the arguments there don't apply to {{cite isbn}}.

Now there are editors subst-ing out {{cite isbn}}s (about a thousand). It doesn't appear to me that there is anything like a consensus in support of such a move. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:13, 27 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Consensus is not based on majority opinion, but rather strength of argument. The main argument in favor of substituting {{cite doi}} is that templates should not contain article content. This argument applies equally to {{cite pmid}} and {{cite isbn}}. Boghog (talk) 02:59, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Nobody said anything about a majority. The discussion was not about {{cite isbn}}, and some of the arguments in the discussion didn't apply to this template. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:45, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Second that. In addition, having the content in a template makes editing more difficult (difficult to see which reference you're dealing with) and also risks vandalism, because hardly anyone watches these templates. --Randykitty (talk) 06:10, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
The question was whether there was a consensus to subst this template, not whether you agree or disagree with the result of the RfC at {{cite doi}}. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 07:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
You're right, I should not rehash arguments. I you read the discussion that you link to above, you'll see that you can seamlessly substitute "ibns" or "pmid" for "doi" and the same arguments apply. So, yes, I think that closure also applies to the cite pmid and cite ibns templates. --Randykitty (talk) 08:27, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Right, you have an opinion, and I have mine. Unfortunately, I never got to voice my opinion because the discussion happened at {{cite doi}} with no notice here. I don't use {{cite doi}} because the types of sources that it serves are typically too narrow to be worth the overhead. {{cite isbn}}, on the other hand, I use when I know I'm going to use a particular book for a number of articles, which makes it worth the overhead. If I've used a book in a dozen articles, and I notice a year later that there's an error in it, how likely will I remember the dozen articles I used it in? Worse, if I discover an error in an article by someone else who has used the source in a dozen articles, I'm not even going to know about those other articles, am I? Leaving the templates as they were gives us the opportunity for a better solution than keeping the data in template space. The data can be moved seemlessly to Wikidata without having to update the thousand pages that use the template. Now that's impossible—when and if the source data is moved to WikiData, every article will have to be updated, one by one (even if by a bot).
Now we productive editors are burdened with more maintenance chores, and we didn't even get a say in it. Some "consensus". Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:50, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
The question heading this section is "Is there really a consensus not to use this template?" I gave you my opinion on this and I'm sorry that you are unhappy with it, but that's what you asked for. --Randykitty (talk) 12:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
It is just as easy to move templates that have been substituted as templates that have not into Wikidata. Also precisely which arguments don't apply to {{cite isbn}} that did apply to {{cite doi}}? Boghog (talk) 15:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Here are a few:
  1. Issues with the bot—{{Cite isbn}} entries are not bot-generated.
  2. "a large number of unwatched pages that could be subject to vandalism"—as {{cite isbn}} entries are hand-created, they go on their users' watchpages.
  3. "Each citation is of very low (or no) usage"; "DOI templates are so specific that they often wind up being used only once": the precise reason I use {{cite isbn}} is to allow me to use the same source on many pages (otherwise the overhead of setting it up by hand is not worth it).
Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 19:23, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
It is irrelevant if the pages are bot generated or not. Templates should not contain article content regardless if it was created by an editor or a bot. The vandalism issue was not one of the main arguments in favor of deprecating the "cite identifier" templates. DOI templates are not necessarily less often used that ISBN templates. There are some classic journal article that are highly cited. Boghog (talk) 20:02, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Those were arguments cited by the closer. Would you like to tell the closer their arguments were irrelevant? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Extended discussion
Those were not the main arguments made by the closer and in fact were discounted by the closer. Boghog (talk) 20:21, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
No, the closer did not discount a single one of those points. Why are you claiming they did? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:29, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
Yes they did, no they didn't. This argument is becoming quite silly. Boghog (talk) 20:38, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
So cite where they discounted these arguments, or admit you're simply making things up. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:53, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
The closer did indicate which were the main arguments and therefore by inference other arguments were less important. Boghog (talk) 09:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
You said they "in fact were discounted by the closer". Are you changing your story? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
No I am not changing my story. I repeat, the closer did indicate which were the main arguments and therefore by inference other arguments were judged less important. You are too focused on words and not their underlying meaning. Also the edit summary "so prove you're not lying" diff is unacceptable as well the deletion my talk page comments (diff). Boghog (talk) 12:23, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
You're unbelievable. You've straight-up lied—reinforced with a YouTube video—and now you're pretending like it never happened. How could deprecating this template be possily so important to you that you'd resort to this? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 12:31, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
What part of the phrase "by inference" do you not understand? Also, please, no personal attacks. Boghog (talk) 13:02, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
There's no "by inference" about it. The arguments were not discounted—not directly, not by inference, and not by any other means. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:40, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Then will have to agree to disagree. Boghog (talk) 21:59, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
We'll "have to" do no such thing. This is as black and white as it gets—you've lied. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:12, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
This is as black and white as it gets—you are engaging in personal attacks. Boghog (talk) 22:38, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
I am doing no more than demonstrating what you are up to. If you dislike being pointed out for a liar, your option is to stop lying. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Attacking someone is not an effective means of persuasion. You are not winning any converts. Boghog (talk) 08:24, 2 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Deprecate I participated in the discussion to deprecate the similar cite doi template. My opinion is that this one should be deprecated for similar reasons. The last talk went on for years and I objected for the same reason that Curly Turkey raises - if there are centralized templates propagated out then they can all be corrected easily when mistakes are found. I was persuaded to change when I started looking at how bots and Wikidata will eventually aggregate all citations in all Wikimedia projects, and when I looked at the present real harm which keeping citation templates causes when information is copied in multiple articles and especially when it is translated from English to other languages. We could have this discussion again for cite ISBN but have not yet seen an argument for "cite ISBN" which would not also apply to "cite doi". Right now, both using and not using these templates cause lots of problems, and in the long run, all citations will be managed centrally, but for right now I think having full citations brings the fewest and smallest problems. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Deprecate Great to see this finally being carried out. This template should not be used. And we need a bot that goes around and replaces these cite doi / cite pmid / cite ISBN with cite journal / cite book whenever it finds them.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 28 April 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Deprecate. ISBN numbers are not unique. Multiple editions with same number is normal. Smaller publishers are known to reuse them with new books! Self-publishers often buy ISBN online and get ones that are sold again and again. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 04:39, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • This is a potential problem, but how common is it in Wikipedia? What percent of the cite_isbn templates currently in use in Wikipedia, involve non-unique ISBNs? --Erel Segal (talk) 07:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
      • I think the burden of proof lies with you to show that non-unique ISBNs are an insignificant problem. Regardless if there are any non-unique ISBNs currently in use in Wikipedia, the possibility that there are clearly shows that the {{cite isbn}} template system is fatally flawed this should be reason alone to deprecate. Boghog (talk) 09:43, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Continue to use cite_isbn. I totally agree with the OP. If someone wants to deprecate cite_isbn, the onus is on them to prove that there is indeed a consensus on deprecating cite_isbn. A consensus on something similar can, maybe, be used one of the evidences, but it is not in itself a consensus on cite_isbn. The "deprecate" template should be removed.
    • Imagine that a policeman catches you on the street and takes you to custody. When you ask "why?" he says "there is a verdict against you". You look at the verdict and see that it is about someone else! When you tell that to the policeman he says "yes, but I believe that you are similar to that person and so the verdict applies to you as well..." This is absurd. A verdict is a verdict only on the person/template on which it was given - not anything else.
    • In addition, even in cite_doi, the discussion closing message says that "there is not clear numerical majority consensus". Indeed, the majority is AGAINST deprecating cite_doi - there are 6 supporters vs. 11 opposers. So the supporters say that "it is not about a majority, it is about strength of arguments", but this is not the definition of consensus. There is no consensus on cite_doi, and clearly no consensus on cite_isbn. The template saying otherwise is plainly untrue.
    • This is not "consensus", this is dictatorship. Dictatorship should be deprecated.
    • One reason to use cite_isbn as much as possible, is that it allows us to see all articles that cite a certain book in a single click on the "what links here?" link. This is an interesting information that is lost when using cite_book. --Erel Segal (talk) 07:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
(i) The major arguments in favor of deprecating these templates apply equally to {{cite doi}}, {{cite isbn}}, and {{cite pmid}}.(ii) Wikipedia is not a democracy. The discussion in question in turn cited this discussion where there was overwhelming support for substituting these templates. (iii) There are other ways to search for articles that cite a book. For example: ISBN 0-86381-897-8 search query. Boghog (talk) 09:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Boghog, you just finished saying above that ISBNs themselves are broken because they are not unique. Why are you contradicting yourself by promoting linking to ISBNs here? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:19, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Extended discussion
I was merely stating that there were other ways of searching articles for ISBNs, and if one does this, one should be aware that the ISBNs may not be unique. The problem of using a transcluded {{cite isbn}} template to store the citation information is that there is a chance that the entire bibliographic information could be incorrect for some transclusions. Contrast this with the in-line {{cite book}} template where this type of accidental error will not occur. Also be obvious that not everyone uses {{cite isbn}} templates so that a "what links here" search will not necessarily retrieve all the articles that cite a book. The type of search I proposed above will be more complete. Boghog (talk) 12:56, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
While still almost certainly being incomplete. There is no solution (yet) to finding all articles that cite a certain source, so we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking there is. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:48, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Good, then we both agree that "what links here" to a {{cite isbn}} is not a good way of finding articles that cite a book because it is very incomplete. Hence the original argument directly above in favor of not deprecating {{cite isbn}} because it made it easier to find these article is not a strong one. Boghog (talk) 22:13, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
That was never "the original argument"—it was a single argument by a single editor, and not one even mentioned in the RfC. It's very disturbing how persistent you are at trying to twist this situation. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:27, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Of course I was referring to the single argument made by this single editor. It is very disturbing how you try to twist everything I say. Boghog (talk) 22:35, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Then why do you refer to it as "the original argument"? Uh huh, for exactly the reason I stated. If you don't like being called out for a liar, you can always stop lying. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:33, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
(ii) Wikipedia is not a democracy but it is also not an oligarchy... Changes should be done by agreement, not by a minority imposing their opinion on the majority. A consensus in a single Wikiproject is by no means a consensus for all of Wikipedia, Just like a law in one Federated state does not become a law in the entire United states... (iii) Thanks for that. I think "what links here" is much easier and more natural to use, but this is not the main argument here. --Erel Segal (talk) 09:52, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • Another reason to keep cite_isbn is that it makes it easier for editors, especially new ones, to add citations. Instead of laboriously copying all the required details from the book cover to the {{cite book}}, they can simply copy the ISBN and let the bot do the rest. The easier it is to add citations, the more citations there will be.
      • I believe the latter argument is very strong, since it complies with one of the most important standards in Wikipedia, Verifiability, which is achieved mainly by adding citations. The more citations are added, the more Wikipedia achieves its primary goal of being a verifiable encyclopedia. We must make it as easy as possible for new editors to add citations. --Erel Segal (talk) 09:59, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Not necessary to do all this by hand. You can just write {{cite book |isbn=xxxxx}} and then run the citationbot, which will fill in everything for you (provided the ibns is unique of course, but if it isn't, cite isbn is unusable anyway). In any case, I doubt that many newbies will even know or find out about the cite doi/isbn/etc templates and use them much. By the time people find out about the existence of these templates, they are not newbies any more; this is not a newbie problem. --Randykitty (talk) 10:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • Whether they find it or not, is a matter of documentation. But once they find it, they are more likely to use it if it can be done easily (and this applies to veteran editors, too). --Erel Segal (talk) 10:48, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
    • Randykitty: The problem of drift remains—when fixes are made to one template, they are not propagated to the same citation in other articles. They will (and do) inevitably go out of synch—this is what convinced me to use the templates in the first place. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:23, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Keep it As mentioned above, deleting the cite doi templates was a non- or even anti-democratic decision, I am also not convinced that the reasons for deprecating it were stronger than for keeping it. But I accept this as something meritocratic, because I think some of the people having a lot to do with doi references complained (like the med guys), and they had the most trouble with the cite doi templates. I have the impression, it is the opposite in this case of cite isbn. I have the impression that nobody actually was troubled with cite isbn and that Curly Turkey would have the most trouble not having it anymore and should therefore be further able to use it, if he doesn´t break style consistency. In short: if it is inconsistent with the rest of the citation style, don´t use it, if it is consistent, it should be up to the author. --Saimondo (talk) 21:57, 17 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Deprecate These templates are deficient citations that break wp:V and simply beg for undetected vandalism. The longer they remain, the deeper the hole that needs to be filled in when they are eliminated. At minimum, we should cease creating new transclusions and new template subpages.LeadSongDog come howl! 07:45, 18 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

So, summarizing the above, it appears that the answer to Curly Turkey's question is "Yes".--Srleffler (talk) 01:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

  • Keep it's clear that references are not "content". Having redundant references all over the shopis not helpful. All the best: Rich Farmbrough02:05, 2 June 2015 (UTC).
    • Too late, Mister Farmbrough—they've simply gone right ahead and subst-ed the templates into the articles, with no regard to the formatting mess it has left for those of us who actually maintain these articles. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 04:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

All of a sudden dozens of cite isbns start popping up as AfDs on my watchlist---oh, wait, no they couldn't be, because none of these things are watched ... Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 13:36, 19 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Template:Cite wdl RFC

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I started an RFC at Template_talk:Cite_wdl#RFC:_Should_template:cite_wdl_be_deprecated on deprecated template:cite wdl. There's some differences in its implementation but I figured that the same discussion will be here as there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Please take part in the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure challenge: Template talk:Cite doi#RfC: Should Template:cite doi cease creating a separate subpage for each DOI? Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:12, 8 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

RFC: is there really, really a consensus to deprecate this template?

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Block evading IP refusing to drop the stick. -- Orduin Discuss 19:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)Reply
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I mean, is there really a consensus to deprecate this template? I think the other discussions show that there's much to be discussed here. 166.176.59.107 (talk) 11:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

deprecate

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  • Deprecate. My hope is that this will close as unnecessary disruption, but in the event it doesn't, I support deprecation. As the past discussion shows, there was near unanimous support for deprecation, with most supporters not relying solely on the Cite DOI decision. There is no evidence it was based on that decision in any way. This IP is disruptively attempting to hold this discussion repeatedly until he or she gets the result they want. That's not how consensus works and I encourage the IP to drop the stick. With 3-4 discussions ongoing attempting to undo past deprecation of these templates and all of them leaning to uphold past results, starting yet another one where the consensus was overwhelmingly clear is just plain disruptive. ~ RobTalk 11:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

don't deprecate

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discussion

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It isn't clear that the last close was done properly. It was based on the cite doi close which is being questioned. 166.176.57.211 (talk) 23:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

The consensus was overwhelming to deprecate and no new arguments have been presented here not to deprecate. The {{pmid}}, {{doi}}, etc. templates rely on a unique identifier. PMIDs, DOIs, are unique identifers. ISBN is not. Publishers have been known to reuse an ISBN for different books. Hence the {{cite isbn}} template is fatally flawed because the ISBN number may misidentify a book. Boghog (talk) 03:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)Reply
those are automated subpages. ISBN ones are manually created so that's not an issue. We'll know if there's duplication. 166.176.59.108 (talk) 03:20, 9 September 2015 (UTC)Reply
Not necessarily. An editor might paste in a {{cite isbn}} template and not pay careful attention to the rendered citation. Contrast this with pasting in a {{cite book}} template where the contents of the full citation are immediately evident in the wiki text. Boghog (talk) 03:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)Reply