Template talk:Shakespeare sonnets bibliography

What is this for?

Currently, this template is used in Shakespeare's sonnets, and in each of the individual sonnet articles (Sonnet 1 to Sonnet 154). Naturally, I do not own it, but as I originated it and placed it on quite possibly every article it will ever be appropriate for... and since it's a little unusual... I felt it would be germane to state my rationales for it.

Having reviewed the first 36 sonnet articles, I saw that there had been some attempt to provide a standardized bibliography of editions across articles. Good. The list seemed scattershot, presumably based on what one editor happened to have to hand. Bad. This template was my solution. The goal was to construct a minimal bibliography appropriate to be placed on all the above-mentioned articles. I attempted relatively objective criteria for inclusion:

• for First... the actual first edition + Lee, a quality public domain facsimile (mostly because the currently available scan of the first edition is not very good).
• for Variorum editions: Alden, referenced in some articles and the most recent variorum I found available at Internet Archive + Rollins, which I take to be the current standard variorum;
• for Modern editions: Atkins + all editions collated by Atkins (p. 379), going back to Booth who seemed to be the earliest modern edition referenced in the actual articles with any frequency; this covers, I think, all the major players: Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and Harvard; Arden, Penguin, Pelican, and Folger. And Atkins.

As I placed the template, when any of these books already appeared in a bibliography on the given page, I deleted the independent reference. I also deleted references to any earlier editions which had no corresponding inline citations. Articles of course may require additional references, but these should be added to the article in question, not to this template.

A potential weakness of using this template is that if a short citation references a source in this template — e.g. <ref>Atkins 2007, p. 379.</ref>, and this does occur in some articles — and the template is altered, then the short citation may be rendered incomplete. Should this occur the necessary source can always be added individually to the article in question. In my view, the benefits of the template outweigh the drawbacks. Phil wink (talk) 06:09, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, and note

@Xover: Thanks for your recent updates to this template. I'm not totally sure about equating the Folger print and online versions. I'm thinking chiefly of (potential) citations: not only would page numbers have no meaning online, but the elements most likely to be cited (the notes) don't exist online -- it's just the texts. But I'll defer to you as you seem to know what you're doing more than I. What do you think of a 4th section, Online editions, which would presumably contain Open Source Shakespeare and the Folger Digital Text? In my view, we would then remove the print Folger from Modern critical editions altogether. This might be justified both in principle and practically because (I'm about 99% sure) no Sonnet article cites it. If desired, other sites like Project Gutenberg or Librivox could also be added to this new 4th section. Just a thought. Phil wink (talk) 20:56, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

@Phil wink: Hey Phil. The Folger Digital Texts edition link was… I'm significantly torn on how to best handle that. What I landed on, for now, is that it's worse kept outside the cite template as a dangling link, and I didn't want to simply delete it. However, the right answer might have actually been to delete it. On the other hand, your idea of a section for Online editions is a good idea, especially if you subscribe to my position on the next issue.

I also have serious reservations about this template overall (which was why I started looking at it more closely). Don't get me wrong, it's great work; useful; and clearly laid out. There is however a strong consensus on the project that article content should be in the article and not in a template. Having a default set of cites that can be changed from underneath you with no warning is not tenable for authors of each individual article. I understand the urge, even for a set of articles on the same topic, never mind the 155 more or less identically structured and overlapping Sonnets articles; but the problems with the approach are just too great.

Where it might work, though, is as a standardised and quality-checked bibliography for Further reading, akin to the other Navbox templates we have on the articles. Since works in Further reading are, ipso facto, not cited in the article, you avoid the problems of a cite changing out from under you, or someone else deciding which sources to cite for a given article. In that role you're left with possible duplication between editions in this template and any work actually cited in the article, which is usually a no-no, but I think that would fall within WP:IAR in this instance. In this case we'd simply set |ref=none to avoid clashing with ref links in the article.

Oh, and since I'm offering critique above, let me also be explicit with the kudos: this was very nice work, and much appreciated, as all your other efforts to bring the Sonnets articles up to a decent level are. In this particular instance, it would have been a very valuable contribution if it was done for just one of the Sonnets articles, and you've done it for all 155 of them. Speaking as someone who has a far greater ambitions for these articles than time and skill to implement it, that is very much appreciated!

PS. Since they made the offer, and because I appreciate their opinion, let me go ahead and summon Bertaut here. More eyeballs are usually good for figuring out the best approach in these cases. --Xover (talk) 04:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)