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Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Archive/"cite book" ISBN database

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"cite book" ISBN database

NoN Functionality exists

  • Problem: Frequently in editing one article and having to enter all the details for a "cite book", one finds that related articles already have a "cite book" for the same book. Not only does this seem unnecessary duplication of detail, but it introduces the possibility of errors, either new or cloned.
  • Who would benefit: Anyone creating, using or maintaining a "cite book" type of entry in an article
  • Proposed solution: (Note: I'm considering this from a top-down perspective.) User interface could be, for instance, an enhanced "cite book" template or perhaps a "cite isbn" template or similar. Implementation would involve some sort of database, or perhaps an API to an external ISBN database.
  • More comments: This proposal is something like a database of books, so that the extended book information can be in a single place, referenced by multiple articles.
Instead of a user interface of:
  • "{{cite book |isbn=<ISBN> |lots... |of... |these}}" with lots of long details of authors (potentially many), authorlinks, title, publisher, year, place, etc.
one would imagine using:
  • "{{cite isbn |isbn=<ISBN> |...}}", supplemented only with this-instance details
as a higher-level version that fills in most of the details from that database-like entity.
It would, of course, still need some flexibility for details such as page numbers in particular usage-instance. For example, imagine two articles referencing the same simple book. One article might reference page 'p', another page 'q'. The first article would reference "{{cite isbn |isbn=<ISBN> |page=p}}"; the second "{{cite isbn |isbn=<ISBN> |page=q}}". Note how simple this is compared to each instance having to flesh out lots of additional detail.

Discussion

@SWilson (WMF): That {{Cite Q|Q15625490|page=42}} simplicity of style looks great. But most casual editors, however, would come along with an ISBN as the desired database key. I suspect few would come with even a vague notion of a Wikidata "Q". The ready familiarity of ISBN to almost all editors would be a major advantage. Does that database offer some sort of secondary index based on ISBN? Feline Hymnic (talk) 18:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Feline Hymnic: I guess it depends on how they'd be inserting the citation. If it were via the Citoid-based automatic process, then perhaps it could find a unique ID (e.g. ISBN) and check to see if there's a matching item on Wikidata, and if there's also an appropriate citation template parameter — so, yeah, maybe there's a bit of complexity there and different options! But I'm sure we could figure out some sort of helpful thing. There are lots of discussions about this topic, of course, and they go back quite a few years. As it stands, I'd say that this proposal should be archived because we do have a database of citable works (Wikidata). Could you rewrite it a bit to focus more on some smaller part of the process? Thanks! SWilson (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SWilson (WMF): Thanks for the reply. What further rewrite is needed? My proposal is from the top down. The editor-focussed interface would be something like {{cite book |isbn=978-1-23-456789-0}} or {{cite isbn |978-1-23-456789-0}} Behind the scenes it would get the data from a central database. (Perhaps, but not necessarily, this might be Wikidata. That's an implementation decision, admittedly a big one, by those who have captured the vision and are in a position to implement it.) It would probably also allow some additional data, such as page numbers, and perhaps some overrides. I hope my proposed solution and more comments above are sufficient, clear and concise; but if not, could you explain what you would like me to provide, and where, please? Thanks. Feline Hymnic (talk) 17:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Feline Hymnic: The reason this was archived this is that it looks like the crux of the problem you describe is already fixed: we do have a database of books, and a means of citing them multiple times without repeating the bulk of the information. The remaining part of this looks to be to have a way to cite via the ISBN rather than Wikidata ID, and that's what I was referring to when I said to focus on a smaller part of this. That said, there is another proposal (Accessing items with particular statements via Lua) which would enable the ISBN-lookup process to work as you describe. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 02:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that link. I have just added my support there. Feline Hymnic (talk) 17:45, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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