Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists of works

This is part of a standardisation proposal for lists of works. It is open to discussion about its relevance, the ways in which it could be implemented and the layout and format to be chosen.

Useful links to years-in-xxxxx and piping the links

If we're going to tell readers that T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, then why not link to 1922 in poetry on that line of the T.S. Eliot#Bibliography section? And if we're going to link to 1922 in poetry or literature, the unpiped links would overwhelm the look of the list, making it more difficult to read (please follow the link and look at it). It seems most useful to readers to allow them to follow the links to the topical year articles where appropriate. So long as the readers are informed (that can easily be done very briefly at the top of a list), then a piped year-in link shouldn't be confusing to anyone. The idea of not piping year-in/topical year links seems to have been meant for prose passages, not lists, as far as I can tell. I've proposed this kind of exception for year linking at Wikipedia talk:Only make links that are relevant to the context#Chronological articles: exception and the section below it. No one has objected so far, or responded to the idea. Please take a look. Reconsideration (talk) 23:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date Linking RFC. Very disputed still. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:EGG, I agree with you that the MoS on this topic does not apply to size-constrained areas such as lists or tables, but is limited to prose.--2008Olympian^chitchat 10:15, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No book or published works box?

I've been finding the awards boxes very helpful in articles I've been working on & wonder if a 'published works' box exists, as I'm now working on a subject who has published books, DVDs and audio recordings. Thanks in advance for any help.--Tyranny Sue (talk) 03:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Not that I know of. I'd suggest searching the WP:FAs and WP:FLs for guidance/ideas. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:20, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Articles in compilations, editorships

Forgive me if this info is somewhere, but I can't seem to find it.

Firstly, what is the correct way of formatting a subject's contribution to a multi-author compilation? A couple of alternatives for a fictional example:

• Reagan and Gorbachev, chapter in The Life Of Ronald Reagan, John Doe (ed). Publisher, Date, ISBN.
• The Life Of Ronald Reagan, ed. John Doe. Publisher, Date, ISBN. Subject wrote the chapter Reagan and Gorbachev.

I can see pros and cons for both these approaches.

Secondly, when the subject was the editor of a work, how should this be listed? Should it even be included in a list of works?

Sidefall (talk) 07:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I just found someone else asked basically the same question at Template_talk:Cite_book#Citing_chapter_written_by_authors_in_a_book_with_editors.Sidefall (talk) 07:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

This is sorted now - the Cite book template does have the facility. I've added an example to the documentation - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book Sidefall (talk) 16:59, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

order of works

The MOS says to list earliest works first. This is certainly appropriate for literary authors. It is not for academics, where the almost universal convention, for currently active people, is to list the later works first, as in a a sense superseding the earlier ones. I invite discussion. DGG (talk) 17:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

My feeling is that earliest works first is also appropriate for academics. First, print encyclopedias mostly use this convention, even for academics. Second, I think the latest-first convention for academics has partly arisen from CVs: though these may be an increasingly important genre of academic self-description, it's rather important to keep wikibios distinct from résumés. In an encyclopedic survey of an academic life, an overall survey of activity is wanted rather than presentist demonstration of research activity. (I also think cut-and-paste lists of works by academics often need pruning if they are not to unbalance an article.) Dsp13 (talk) 10:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Stand-alone bibliographies

The contributors to this talk page seem to have some strong views about bibliographies on wikipedia so I thought I'd ask my questions here. Among the views on this page I find some agreement with my own view that in some cases very long bibliographies should be moved into a separate stand-alone articles. I feel that they are useful sources of information for people looking for thorough, detailed references on a topic that don't clutter up the main article page.

During my time on wikipedia, however, I've come across other users who feel very strongly the opposite way on this - they feel that stand-alone bibliographies are "unencyclopedic" and should be merged into "Further reading" sections in other articles. My most recent encounter was with User:Cybercobra who hacked apart a bibliography I'd been working on and spread the entries across a variety of different articles. To appease them I merged the bibliography into the main article but looking at their "To do" list it seems they're intent on doing a similar job on a host of other bibliographies. I feel I should warn other people that this might happen and also to ask the following question:

Are there any "official" guidelines about stand-alone bibliographies or is it a case-by-case basis where every stand-alone bibliography has to fight to survive? StevenJohnston (talk) 15:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Porn star filmographies

There is consensus at WP:WikiProject Pornography‎ that porn star articles shouldn't include full filmographies, yet MOS:WORKS states "Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship (WP:V), are encouraged". Should porn stars be made an exception to this, or is WikiProject Pornography‎ wrong to discourage the inclusion of full filmographies? Epbr123 (talk) 14:06, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Personally I think the wikiproject is wrong. If you have a filmography in the first place, then I prefer a full one over a selected one. Also, despite the criteria I just read on the project's page I think it goes against NPOV to say which film should be listed and which film should not. Garion96 (talk) 15:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think an encyclopedia would intentionally limit a list of works in an article about a creative artist or a performer, except for space considerations. Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, for example, includes complete lists of works for even some lower-tier composers. Not all composers have complete lists-- presumably because it's a print encyclopedia with limited space. (This may have changed with the move to online access-- I don't know.) With Wikipedia being neither paper nor censored, I see no reason to put an arbitrary limitation of six on these filmographies. Also, I agree with Garion96 that NPOV issues are involved. Who says which six are to be listed? Dekkappai (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

IMO, porn star filmographies shouldn't be listed except for those films that are significant or notable. So many actors have been in a number of series titles (e.g. Cum Dumpster #1, Cum Dumpster #4, etc.). To the average reader, these are simply trivia. It's cruft. Additionally, there's the question of whether we should list only original films or should we list compilations as well that were cheaply put together by the production company without any original material (e.g. Best of Cum Dumpsters #1-10). Dismas|^(talk) 14:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

All I'm seeing above is "I don't like it." All articles and statistics on sports figures are pure trivia and "cruft" as far as I'm concerned, but I would expect an encyclopedic article on the subjects to include this information-- not that I'm ever going to even look at it, much less read it. Sure, a lot of people sneer at the subject area of pornography-- and you've done a good job above-- but performer's list of works is an integral part of any biography of them. If we're going to cover the subject area, we should write encyclopedic articles on them. Unless you are proposing that all filmographies should be limited to four or five works, you are advocating censorship which is against policy. Dekkappai (talk) 16:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

What about television?

Are their any established guides for listing television episodes? (In particular, for a short series of no more than eight episodes.) 82.15.17.129 (talk) 11:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

See Category:Lists of television series episodes and Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Episode coverage. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Should episode counts be included in actor's filmographies?

IMO, episode counts should be completely eliminated from filmographies. We are not IMDb and listing of episode counts is largely trivial except to die hard fans of an actor or show. Furthermore, episode counts of shows in current production require daily/weekly/monthly maintenance. All that maintenance leads to inaccuracies. If the counts are to be included, do we count those episodes where a dead character appears in a flashback using old footage? Dismas|^(talk) 14:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Full description of a performer's body of work is encyclopedic: "comprehending a wide variety of information; comprehensive" Dekkappai (talk) 17:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

filmographies for actors and filmmakers

Hi. There has been a lengthy RfC concerning the presentation of filmographies at:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers#Filmography RFC

I would have pinged this page during the now-closed discussion, had I been aware of it. There is ongoing discussion at:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers#Implementation discussion

The core issues addressed are font-size (in tables), bulleted list or a table (when to use what), template use (vs. hard-coded styling), and color.

Xenobot will be taking a pass across the pages to deal with a lot of this.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Listing of individual articles, short stories or poems

I have hunted around the place and can't see a guideline, but I believe that 'works' refers to whole books, albums, anthologies etc and should not list individual articles, short stories or poems. It would not be possible or desirable to list every article a journalist has written or every poem a poet has published. There are certain 19th century poets' articles I have seen that attempt to list their every individual work. I would hope to curtail them to volumes published. Your thoughts and/or MOS links welcome. Ta. Span (talk) 03:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about MOS links, but for poems and books I can provide a few examples from one perspective: See Wikipedia:Featured lists#Literature and theatre for a few bibliographies that include exhaustive listings. I would guess similar lists can be found in Wikipedia:Featured lists#Music, but I'm not particularly familiar with any of them.

A list of articles by a journalist would be a somewhat different matter. It would probably boil down to whether a RS listing could be found. I.E. The works by Edgar Allen Poe have been collated elsewhere previously, but the articles written by small-town-editor/writer-X are only being collated by himself (and his mother). Or something along those lines ;)

The only general MOS-sy recommendation I can think of, is to spin out the list from the main article when it gets too large (per WP:SUMMARY). HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your pointers. Span (talk) 03:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

i would agree that anthologies for someone like E. E. Cummings would be overkill, however for Major Jackson, or Larissa Szporluk, or Nicholas Christopher, the only example of the poets work may be the anthology in the local library (or google books online).Accotink2 talk 16:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi again, Accotink2. I would note that all of these three poets have substantial collections behind them, which are listed. Span (talk) 17:13, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion of lists for scientists and academics

I have created a proposed guideline specific to scientists and academics, here. It's possible that it should be merged here or that it should remain as a daughter guideline. In any case, community discussion is highly sought after and appreciated. Basket of Puppies 05:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It would appear this is unresolved. Either this article should be amended to make it clear scientists are not excluded, or a separate guidance should be provided. I note the above editor has left WP. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style

Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:

Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?

It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica^Tea? 00:43, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Instrumentation

In the case of lists of works by instrumentation, are there any rules as to how such lists should be ordered? --Toccata quarta (talk) 06:56, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Putting bibliographies into collapsible tables

I would like to propose long lists of works be put into collapsible tables, as they in some cases can become so bloated that navigating the articles containing them is daunting. I give the proposal in more detail here. 134.71.140.129 (talk) 07:39, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Discographies

Hi. I'm interested in the Discography section of this guideline. The current wording of the guideline that interest me is "Vital information is the title and year; label and notes are optional." This is fine wording, but I've been hearing from an editor that it's good reason to exclude said optional information from a discography merely because it states here that it is not required. I think that (in particular) record label information is quite important, especially for musical artists which do not have separate discography pages, and while I think the recommendation here is fine for an article about a group or musician with a separate discog article, such an interpretation could be restrictive for shorter articles. I'd like to try and bring this guideline into harmony with the wording at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines#Discography section, which states:

"The discography section of the musician's primary article should also provide a summary of the musician's major works. In most cases this is done using a simple list of their studio albums, leaving a complete listing of releases to the discography article. For example:

• Mariah Carey (1990)

...For artists without separate discography pages, relevant discographical information, such as record labels, date(s) of release, chart positions, and sales certifications, may be included in the discography section. The use of a table may be advisable to keep the information readable and organized."

The latter sentences were a wording I advocated for, and I think something a bit more robust might be helpful here, as well, in encouraging discographies to be more fleshed out while still well-organized. Chubbles (talk) 15:55, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Not particularly concerned or surprised that there were no responses to this; the editor I referred to was blocked for editwarring and sockpuppeteering, and no one rose to defend his more restrictive style of presentation in discussion. In other matters, would there be any objections to my offering a few other style suggestions, or changing the existing ones? The suggestions from Sloan (band) are well and good, but Sloan's discography doesn't look like that anymore, and I rarely see discographies formatted in the latter two ways suggested. Generally, I've been using the format Album Name (Label, Year), or Album Name Format (Label, Month/Day Year) if more information is given - e.g. Fred Astaire EP (Ginger Records, January 1, 1930), or Fred Astaire (Ginger Records, 1930). This has been a fairly common format for years, and one I've been using for several years myself on thousands of articles. I think this is slightly more streamlined and presentable than what's currently given, though I'm not strongly wedded one way or the other. Any thoughts? Chubbles (talk) 22:45, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Leaving aside the format, this would mock up as:

• ''[[Title]]'' (label, year)nbsp;– notes
• Fred Astaire (Ginger Records, 1933)
• Fred Astaire II (Ginger Records, January 1, 1935)
• Fred Astaire UK (Ginger Records, 1 January 1937) - with Joseph Cotton and Jimmy Stewart

Obviously I can replace these with real album names, but maybe using a dummy album title will avoid pegging the style to a changing article. Chubbles (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Updating the examples, to use the layout/format that is currently preferred in Featured Lists/Articles, would be great. Please do! -- Quiddity (talk) 01:25, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Added a few things. First, changed the formatting but kept the Sloan examples instead of the fake ones proposed above; less of a shock. Also changed the wording a bit to make it clearer that these are suggestions for good practice, rather than requirements. Added some verbiage directly from other pages - the first two bits are lifted verbatim from Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines, about when to split off a new discography, and what is good to include in a discography not split off. The last bit is paraphrased from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Discographies/style#Ignore_all_rules, about the format following from the needs of the article rather than the other way around. Chubbles (talk) 07:14, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Looks good, and the explanation of sources is appreciated. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:06, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Given that we've had Title (year), Label here for years, I don't see the advantage in changing this to Title (Label, year). We will just get inconsistency between older and newer articles, and there's no real consensus for changing a long-standing style guideline. --Michig (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I never really saw that format standardized anywhere except on pages that already had separate discographies, where people seemed to want as little information as possible presented on the artist page and most of it moved to the discography page. Since discographies vary so much, there wasn't really a standard format (or a desire for one, for that matter, so far as I could tell). I felt mostly forced into these proceedings by a discography troll who ended up being banned for sockpuppetry. The main advantage to this format, I think, is that it makes clear the case for notability per WP:MUSIC bullet 5. Lots of articles get A7'ed even though they meet this requirement, simply because it is not made clear in the discography that the artist meets this criterion, and so as a practical matter I always preferred that format. In any case, I support the inclusion of more information in discographies simply as being user-friendly; that's where I go to find information (I almost never read prose sections of biographies, even though I write them frequently for others). Chubbles (talk) 14:52, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

but we already had a 'standard' format of 'Title (year), label' that many have followed for years - all of the articles that I have created have used this format, basically because I referred to the manual of style to see how they should be formatted. I agree totally that labels should be included, particularly as it highlights that in many cases an artist satisfies the notability criteria, but I don't see how having the label in brackets before the year is better than having it after the year, which is what we had before. A couple of people discussing this isn't really going to provide sufficient consensus to change a style guideline that has stood for several years. --Michig (talk) 15:00, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Six years, in fact. --Michig (talk) 15:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I looked for a consensus, actually, and couldn't really find one, at least not here. It looks like the page was just formulated and this became the format because it was how it was written by the original author. To be honest with you, it doesn't matter to me at all where the label is placed, and nothing in this guideline prevents people from putting it before rather than after; certainly there's no reason to change every page, and given how varied discographies are, I don't really see a need to standardize the format in the first place. This is really just a suggestion, right? Chubbles (talk) 16:33, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd be fine with reverting to the prior/original version, with our examples placing label after the year.

(Personally, I'm irritated by most mentions of "publisher" or "distributor" or "label". It's a useful additional context in some cases (eg. "oh, this book is from a vanity-press publishing house, sigh", or "huh, an album distributed by Puffin Books, nifty"), but is often irrelevant. The name of the editor that an author worked with (in a publishing house), or the name of the sound board technicians (that a band worked with in a studio provided by the label) would often be more informative. It all boils down to Completism (include everything) vs Selectivism (only include the highly-pertinent details), and "label" or "publisher" is just the easy/cheap answer. muttermutterrant ;) —Quiddity (talk) 20:17, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, record labels work much differently than book publishers do in terms of distribution and cultural impact, so I'd try and discourage thinking of them in similar terms. Certainly, I'd like to see bands associated more in terms of, say, common producers, but that's a lot rarer in the literature than label association (though common in promotional blurbs). Well, Michig wrote a few thousand articles one way, and I wrote a few thousand articles another way, and we're only two people who have probably written .000000001% of all band articles. I have no intention of going through and standardizing my own articles, and I'd consider a fool anyone who did that for either of our articles (it would be an incredible waste of resources on information that, in either case, is already well-organized and presented). So I guess I'm arguing it doesn't matter to me how this page reads, as long as it doesn't result in some puritanical streamlining campaign. Chubbles (talk) 23:59, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I've replaced the other style, in addition to the your preferred style, so hopefully that covers the meat of the matter, and prevents future quibbles.

Re: labels, just out of personal curiosity, could you link me to something, or give a super-condensed explanation (I happily extrapolate bullet points :) for how labels are different from publishers? They both handle PR (sending out review copies, organizing book/band tours), design work (cover art), technical assistance (editors/advisors, studio/producers), distribution, and legal hoopjumping. All of which will vary considerably based on the size of the company, and what the musicians/author can provide for themselves. (Semi-relatedly to film studios [or executive producers, aka the bankrollers] which we don't usually mention in filmographies). What aspects am I overlooking/forgetting? —Quiddity (talk) 01:35, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, functionally, in the broadest sense, they do the same things, especially at the major-label level in the past couple of decades (EMI, Sony BMG, and Warner are your Random House/Penguin/what-have-you), but independent labels often carve out niches that are very important culturally in terms of what styles, genres, and subcultures they are associated with. People seek out music by label, and expect certain sounds or subcultural signifiers, in terms of labels more than they do with books (this may be closer to some boutique publishers like McSweeney's, or even specialized genre publishers in scifi, harlequin romance, theological fiction, and such). Review sites review by label, and associate the music critically, more than with books, at least so far as I am aware (while I read a moderate number of book reviews, I'm not as familiar with them as I am music reviews). Chubbles (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, ok. That's where I thought you might be headed. Eg. I'm happy to sample most anything from Thrill Jockey, Ninja Tune, Matador Records, etc. And yes, similarly, will follow certain publishers, like Phaidon, Taschen, Fantagraphics Books, etc. Film studios aren't quite in the same ballpark, but I guess entities like Fox Searchlight Pictures could be considered semi-equivalent - it's a form of demographic indicator, so I guess "entry in a particular film festival" might also be equivalent. Anyway, thanks for the reply :) —Quiddity (talk) 07:47, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Consistency is certainly something we should aim for, and the fact that we have not yet achieved it is not, in my view, a reason not to try. From the reader's point of view, moving from one article to another, having discographies in a consistent format is likely to aid their understanding compared to finding a different format at every article. My preference would be (for discographies within an artist article at least) to have one recommended plain list format and one recommended table format, but I would agree that there are better ways to use our time than trying to change all of the existing articles. --Michig (talk) 17:18, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I kinda feel like I got dragged here in the first place, and the reason I got dragged here is now an SPI case rather than a real editing issue, so I'm happy to bow out and let others take the reins on the final wording here. Chubbles (talk) 22:54, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Variation in Filmography Styles

Every time I look at the page of an actor, director or writer (film or TV), I see a different formatting. Sometimes TV and movies are kept together (like on IMDb), sometimes they are two separate categories. Works can be put into a table format or listed (I've even seen colored tables). Oldest>Newest, Newest>Oldest, there doesn't seem to be a set standard. While I'm not all about the rules, it's hard to know which entries to tidy up when I'm not sure which format of the various ones I'm seeing is the best or correct one.

It's also a problem with some musicians and their discography but it seems to be more of an issue with filmographies. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 23:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Ordering

This section seems to be based on literary works or the visual arts, rather than music. In the music world, catalogue and opus numbers are used to order works. (Dating can often be problematic.) Can we amend this section to reflect this? Kleinzach 03:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. I gave the page a complete overhaul in late 2006, mostly just making it match our guidance elsewhere (that I could find) and our actual in-use practices (based on FAs/FLs that I looked at). I.e. It follows the old dictum of "Descriptive, not prescriptive". My overhaul was instigated by discovering far too many bibliographies/discographies/filmographies that were in reverse-chronological order (usually copied from amazon/allmusic/IMDB, who have an understandable bias towards recent products).

Please do update it, to include missing information, or to correct outdated information. The shorter the better. –Quiddity (talk) 19:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I've added a sentence. Looking at other sections, it seems we could add examples of music list. These are complex pages, typically sortable tables, something that is not mentioned here. I'll try to come back to this. --Kleinzach 02:54, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

An example of untranslated books under "Books in languages other than English"?

Under "Bibliographies", Could we get an example in "Books in languages other than English" of how an untranslated book should be formatted? The example only gives three books that have been translated, while the guideline says, "Add an English translation of the title where helpful", but with no example how to format it. It seems to me "English translation:" would imply a translation is available. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

The only example I can think of immediately (having written most of it) is Italo Calvino#Selected bibliography, but I'm not sure if that's a good example...

When in doubt, look at the Featured examples! Would something out of Wikipedia:Featured lists#Literature and theatre fit what you're looking for? Add freely to this page, it does need love and work (but avoid instruction-creep - simplicity is good). :) –Quiddity (talk) 05:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but I was looking for something that was not in a table. I'll look around at some FAs. Thanks again! Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I have a similar question regarding books/sources written in Japanese with no official English titles so I am adding it here instead of creating a new section. As pointed out above by Curly Turkey, adding an English translation is apparently OK where doing so would be helpful. I can translate the titles of the books, etc. I am interested in using as sources, but that would be my translation. Another Japanese-speaking editor may prefer a different choice of words. Would a personal translation be considered WP:OR? WP:TRANSCRIPTION seems to say no, but says refer to WP:NONENG for citations which says that translations by Wikipedians are acceptable for quotes, but mentions nothing about translations of the titles of cited sources. Is it simply preferable to leave the "trans_title" parameter in WP:citation templates empty when no official translation exists? In my opinion, an unofficial translation would be helpful for non Japanese-speaking readers, but it might also be mistaken as being "official" when it is nothing of the sort. If anybody is aware of any specific policy, guideline or discussion that covers this particular matter, then please let me know. The closest I could find was MOS:J#Titles of media, but it discusses something other than translations. Anyway, thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 05:43, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Iconography

It seems there are style guides for literary, audio, and video works, but none for a large number of media in the visual arts including painting or drawing. Some artists have separate articles for lists of their works such as in these pages, but a majority have none listed or only a few mentioned in their article. An encyclopedic article on an artist should list his works as thoroughly as it does any director or musician. Many pages include galleries and I understand the fair use limitations for displaying an artist's works, however much as bibliographies and filmographies don't display the works they list, I don't see why an iconography needs to display the art it lists. I think this would be very helpful, especially for historical artists with works that have entered public domain. JonRudnick (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

lists of all non-notable works

I'm surprised to find this line here: "Lists of published works should be included for authors, illustrators, photographers and other artists. The individual items in the list do not have to be sufficiently notable to merit their own separate articles."

So if a baseball player wrote a couple articles for his/her college newspaper, include them? Turn every academic's article into a 10-page CV? This does not jibe with the rest of my experience on Wikipedia. I was brought here through a discussion over at Abby Martin (journalist) in which someone has added a list of "Selected work" including not just the TV roles that make her notable, but also a documentary she appeared in, articles in edited collections, and even a section "Artwork" to list a film poster she designed. Since she did these things, she's technically an author, illustrator, etc. and this line seems to back this kind of WP:UNDUE detail. Is there a reason this is so unlimited? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:40, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Numbering in bibliographies

How do you recommend handling lists of works that are part of a numbered series where the number is a half number? See Carolyn_Crane#Bibliography for an example. They're numbered, but the spacing doesn't nicely match up with the other numbered list. Thank you for any assistance! plange (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Plange: I don't think there's a technically accurate way to do this (per no pertinent information at MOS:NUMLIST). It's probably best to just add ":" before each line. I've done so at Carolyn_Crane#Bibliography. It isn't ideal, but is hopefully a bit clearer than it was with the <br>s. Quiddity (talk) 02:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikifying research

Individual works by academics are normally not notable by itself, yet their subject matters usually are. Is there any common opinion on if is is a good idea to wikify lists of publications by linking the keywords of their titles? As in e.g. this diff. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 10:23, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Citing translations by including the translator's name, please

I appreciate Wikipedia's intent observation of copyright aspects very much (though sometimes they cause more work) but please extend the concept of author to include translators as well (who in fact are the authors of the target language text, all the more so in the case of literature) -- and therefore please change the instruction to mention "English translation" to say something like "English translation by XY", maybe with an addendum that the former variant is appropriate when no name is given (known). As you may have guessed, I am a literature translator. --WernR (talk) 16:02, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Single book

If a person has published a single book, e.g. their autobiography, does this warrant a section on "Books", or should it be added to "Further reading" or should it just be mentioned in the text with a reference? I can't find any firm guideline. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:13, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Referencing the items in the Bibliography and Further reading sections

I know this is not usual, but I think I've seen articles, where, some of the books/works in the "Bibliography" section were followed by a reference. My question is if such exceptions exist and if they are acceptable. Thanks —  Ark25  (talk) 14:23, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Discography formatting

The way discography formatting is now, it's "Title (year)" but I always see "Year: title". It looks a little neater. I wonder if we should change it? --Jennica✿ / ^talk 11:48, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Years before title

Hi, So apparently having been on here for 5 years I've only just found out for singles etc Years apparently go after Titles - Wouldn't it make sense to change this back so it coincides with the Filmography table ?

It also seems silly to have Title before Year - The year column just looks out of place..... –Davey2010^Talk 21:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

When to use non-breaking space

Hello, I see that Filmographies recommends a non-breaking space (nbsp) before the hyphen for lines that have notes:

• ''[[Title]]'' (year), role&nbsp;– notes

The Discographies section seems to use regular spaces for lines that have notes.

If both sections appear in an article, should I use non-breaking spaces for both Filmography and Discography sections to keep them consistent? Or is each intentionally different?

Thanks! --Culix (talk) 06:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but that shouldn't be a hyphen, it should be an en dash, per MOS:DASH.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:23, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Aha! Thank you. I will fix both. --Culix (talk) 12:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Scientific Publications

I've been looking around and I can't seem to find any guideline on lists of works for scientists. As seen on Helene Langevin , it's possible for almost any scientist to have a huge list of peer reviewed publications, but I'd argue that they probably don't constitute "works" as intended by this guideline. Articles on more prominent scientists don't seem to contain anything similar (usually mostly limiting themselves to actual books), possibly because they are scientific papers rather than artistic works, but it might be good to have some actual guidance to that effect somewhere rather than having to rely on individual page consensus on a case by case basis. --tronvillain (talk) 20:27, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

tronvillain: Has this actually been a contentious issue? I've been tweaking scientific biographies (geologists), and I think a lot of the most important work of scientists is in peer-reviewed articles (the books are often summaries of the articles, or books for a popular audience, or textbooks, not the ground-breaking work). I apologize if this is an issue, because I actually just changed this section to explicitly reference articles, just thinking it was something that had been overlooked, not an explicit decision. Finney1234 (talk) 16:03, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I will add that it is true that a *complete* list of articles by a significant scientist would be overwhelming, so perhaps there does need to be some adjustment. My own personal approach (not having read this page in detail before) is to create a "Selected Publications" page for a scientist and include their most significant articles (a judgment call, obviously), which I think is a good approach, but is not in line with "complete". Finney1234 (talk) 16:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Podcasts

More and more, performers (actors, directors, etc...) are either guest starring, appearing, or actually starring or creating podcasts. Are there any MOS guidelines on how they should be listed?--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 01:47, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Before we discuss how they should be listed, perhaps we should discuss whether they should be listed (or not). Blueboar (talk) 17:38, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@Esprit15d: Short version: the medium is irrelevant. However, the question is unclear, so there are multiple possible longer answers.:

• Do you mean, how should the titles of podcasts be styled? See MOS:TITLES; podcasts are not magically different because they're on the Internet; they have essentially the same the character as a radio show or TV talk show, so they'd be styled the same, in italics, with specific episode or segment titles in quotation marks.
• If you mean, how should people be listed, credits-wise, with regard to such productions, again they are not strangely apart from the rest of humanity's works, and would be treated exactly as in crediting a TV show, documentary film, or other production.
• If you mean, in lists of a notable subject's works (or in-prose coverage of them), should their podcast(s) be included, then the answer is (again) not different for this than for anything else: if reliable sources address the work, then include it, but if we can't find any RS that talk about it, then it's unencyclopedic trivia – just like any bio subject's books, or film appearances, or published editorials and articles and essay, songs and albums released, etc., etc., etc. E.g., you will not find that Steve Buscemi's article here mentions the then-young actor's appearance in an MTV short film (in which he delivers a monologue of pick-up lines all drawn from song lyrics), because RS do not with any frequency mention it much less go into detail about it, no matter how memorable it might be to some TV viewers. By contrast, the Dave Winer article has entire sections on various of his early blogging and podcasting projects, since they're socially significant (at least within the context of online media history), deeply entwined with his notability, and frequently covered by RS.

In short, there is no universal "always/never include" rule to found, about this or about any type or medium of publication/production. If something's included, treat it consistently with other publications regardless of its format or it method of distribution.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:01, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Examples not clear

The guideline says: "Basic lists are used in the majority of articles, e.g. Henry James or The Illuminatus! Trilogy or The KLF." Personally, I don't find the links to the latter articles particularly clear -- would it make sense to link directly to the applicable section, e.g. The KLF#Discography, if that's what the reader is being directed to? NE Ent 14:57, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

@NE Ent: Yes, that would clearly be helpful (and would help identify examples that need to be replace eventually, e.g. if the section in broken out into a side article and is no longer where were said it was).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:00, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Put most recent items first

I'm pleased to see that "Items should normally be listed in chronological order of production, earliest first." Chronologically is much more useful than alphabetically.

However it's more helpful to put items in reverse chronological order, most recent first. Other things being equal, a user will want most the latest, not the earliest information. deisenbe (talk) 14:06, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, except in a biography, where it is often more useful to have the publications list mirror the chronological development of the biographical subject. Finney1234 (talk) 14:19, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

When are citations needed within the discography?

Greetings! There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Discographies#When are citations needed within the discography?

Your contributions would be highly welcome! Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 16:14, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Bibliographies/Publications

I would like to edit the title of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lists_of_works#Bibliographies to "Publications/Bibliographies". "Publications" appears to be a more common use in Biographies, and it would be nice for the information in this section to be more accessible to people researching "Publications" sections. Any objections? Finney1234 (talk) 14:17, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Complete list of works vs. NOTDIR/NOTCV

This page currently recommends Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship (WP:V), are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet. Doesn't this conflict with WP:NOTDIR/WP:NOTCV? I have seen articles where editors try to compile a list of articles a journalist has written or all articles written by an academic, and to me this wording encourages that behavior even when (as you can guess) the result resembles a CV. buidhe 04:14, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

television films listed as Television, Film, or both?

Couldn't find any earlier discussion of this: Should television films be listed in a filmography's section for Television, Film, or both?

i imagine many actor articles have this problem; the one that inspired me to come here was David_Keith#Filmography, which includes both David_Keith#Film and David_Keith#Television, with quite a few Television movies listed under the latter but not the former. While redundancy is redundant, i feel like listing TV films in both places is the only way not to have at least one of the lists incomplete.

Maybe a dedicated section for TV films, with both of the existing sections saying "See also: [[#Television films]]"?

--96.244.220.178 (talk) 08:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I have read this text and still do not know how to format a list of works

I came to MOS:WORKS to learn how to format a list of works in an article and I still do not know what is right after having read this page. Please allow me some comments.

(1) The first thing I learned (top of the talk page) is that I expose myself to discretionary sanctions by writing here. Sanctions might be needed to protect the MOS against wanton edits, but I feel that even novices like me should be allowed to discuss the MOS on the talk page without being threatened with disciplinary action.

(2). The lead is too short. I first thought the page discusses how to write the section called "Works", which is one of the standard sections of an article (MOS:LAYOUT), but then I realised that the subject is wider and tries to give rules for all lists of works whether they be stand-alone pages or embedded in articles, such as the Works section or Bibliography section.

(3) The section called "Basic list style - examples" seems to be a misnomer. There is no corresponding section "Advanced list style" and the section is not mainly about examples.

(4) The essential formatting instruction seems to be: "The standard form is: 'Place: Publisher, Year'". This statement is hidden away in a parenthesis in the middle of the section "Books in English". It would merit to be exposed more prominently and to be explained by an example given in full. This Standard Form probably also applies to books in other languages.

(5) The section "Template" says that {{Cite Book}} may be used in lists of works, with the author-mask parameter set if it is a list of works of a single author, like in the Works section of a biography. Should this format be preferred over the Standard Form described above? If {{Cite Book}} is fine, why not also {{Citation}}? One problem with both of these is that author-mask=0 suppresses the author name but not the author link. With many thanks Johannes Schade (talk) 15:25, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Johannes Schade Although your interpretation makes sense, I would think (and strongly hope) that the "sanctions" clause above refers to editing the MOS itself (an important guideline that shouldn't be trashed), not the talk page. It is ambiguous.

In much of Wikipedia, there is a fair amount of flexibility in how things are done; that is, there is not a single sanctioned format. Looking at various articles that have been given the official classification of "good article" would provide you with a guideline for some acceptable ways to make a list of works. And when editing an existing article, it is probably best to follow the existing format (there's probably a supporting citation for that claim, but I'm not going to look for it). It is also the case that guidelines for something are often spread over multiple sections or documents.

I have made some small changes to the MOS (related to the use of external links in "Lists of Works"), but it was either based on guidelines documented elsewhere, or on a solicitation of consensus (Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment). On the other, clarification of something in the MOS that is unclear (without changing meaning) probably doesn't require that (although, based on personal experience, I'd tread carefully as a newbie, because sometimes long-timers may jump on you). Finney1234 (talk) 16:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Johannes Schade I actually haven't looked at the text you're referring to, but if you think the content could be clarified (e.g., your description of the "essential formatting instruction" being hidden), one option is to post your suggested changes here and ask if anyone objects (as I did above a few items above at "Bibliography/Publications"), and then do the change in a week or so. This is *not* an official suggestion, but strikes me as a reasonable approach. Things in Wikipedia only get fixed if someone cares about them, and sometimes someone new has a better perspective than someone who's been around for years.Finney1234 (talk) 14:47, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

The page started with a simple and logic structure: Discography, Filmography and Bibliography and then developed into something much less coherent and understandable - This seems to become a dialogue and should perhaps stop here. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Request for comment on television filmography

Hello, if anyone has a few spare moments, I think we are close to concluding on how to handle a television filmography on the article on Ishirō Honda. If anyone could weigh in with discussion on it here, it would be greatly appreciated. :) Andrzejbanas (talk) 19:23, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Including advise related to more verbose writers (journalists/academics) as related to a NOTBIBLOGRAPHIC redirect

There is an active discussion about a WP:NOTBIBLOGRAPHY redirect that was added to WP:NOT that really doesn't fit there, but better suited on this page, though this should apply to the types of writers that produce volumes of works that we don't normally document in full: that being mostly journalists (particularly those that specialize in a weekly long-form style article) and academics that may have hundreds of papers to their names. Normally we only include selected articles that have gained attention as a representative bibliography here, but this type of advice is not really reflected on this page (it speaks directly to those we do document in full, the more creative work types, but not these), and I would suggest some type of advice related to these types of bibliographies here. --Masem (t) 17:01, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Bibliography: multiple editions

With a revised edition with or without a new preface or foreword, do I list publication information for the original as well as the new edition?

If there have been several editions with the latest not being as significant as, say, a 30th anniversary edition with another edition coming later, do I only list the original and the anniversary edition?

What should I do when there's a later edition with the original no longer in print: do I list both ISBNs; do I list publishing information for each edition?

Bottom line concern--if this is standard practice: I'm wanting to keep the list in chronological order by original publication date so people can easily see which works came first. --PaulThePony (talk) 04:42, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@PaulThePony, we usually list only the first edition for books. Other editions are normally listed instead of (not in addition to) the first edition if editors haven't been able to find the information for the first edition yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for that clarification, WhatamIdoing. I appreciate it. --PaulThePony (talk) 20:50, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

You're welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies has an RFC

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies has an RFC for a possible alternative format for singles discography tables. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Heartfox (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Discographies of classical compositions

See current discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Recordings lists in articles on individual compositions, which may affect the guidance given here (please discuss there, not here). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:45, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Acceptable sources for discography entries

What is our threshold for inclusion of self-released albums? I assumed a discography should not include items that are non-notable self-published releases. Apparently this is incorrect? But are we allowing an independent artist's Spotify release schedule as a reliable source for discography entries? Is an album self-released on a digital streaming platform a "publication" proper? It's self-published yes, but are these items worth listing in a discography? An example is Andrew Huang. If yes, are we not lower the bar here for discography inclusions? Acousmana 09:10, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

• A discography should include an artist's releases, self-published or not. Per WP:NNC, the notability status of a release is not the threshold of inclusion in an artist's discography - if the artist is notable, we should provide a full discography (albums, EPs, and singles) as basic encyclopedic content. A Spotify entry is not ideal sourcing, but it is permissible per WP:SELFSOURCE when there is no physical release to refer to. A physical release is a publication, and does not need its own independent sourcing, any more than a book needs an independent source for its own bibliographic data. If a release is Spotify-only (or Bandcamp-only, etc.), then that is a publication, as well. Chubbles (talk) 02:38, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

@Chubbles: "A physical release is a publication, and does not need its own independent sourcing": OK, but to clarify, it still needs to fulfill WP:VER? else we could have strings of fictional releases entered in our discographies, some reliable sourcing concerning the item's existence is surely required? Acousmana 13:23, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

"Does this album exist" is substantiated per WP:V by a physical copy of the album. (Treat it just as we would a book.) It is also substantiated by a digital download or streaming link. We rarely have to deal with people populating discographies with fictional entries; it's WP:SKYISBLUE and only needs exceptional/independent sourcing when there is a good-faith question as to existence (a recently resolved example was All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling). Chubbles (talk) 02:12, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

NNC doesn't trump WP:NOTAWEBHOST and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. Wikipedia is not a repository of everything verifiable nor is it one of the social media outlets to include things to the liking of article subject's public relations effort. Graywalls (talk) 01:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

To respond to this in series, top to bottom:

• "Non-notable" has nothing to do with inclusion inside a broader article like a discography or the discography section of a band article; WP:Notability determines what may have its own article. Whether material should be included in an article is governed by WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE (and sometimes other parts of WP:NOT#EVERYTHING, depending on the nature of the material). The only exception is when some list that could have very broad scope, like List of veterinarians, has an explicit "notable entries only" scope criterion, per WP:LISTCRITERIA. A discography of a particular artist would pretty much never be limited in that way, since the number of possible entries is finite and short and the reader strongly expects it to be complete.
• An album being self-issued is basically irrelevant, since for many performers, early rare demos are legendary and thus the subject of encyclopedic interest, while in the modern music market, more and more material is entirely self-produced at home studios or rented studio-time with no label involvement, then self-released exclusively online through venues like Bandcamp and Spotify and YouTube, so again of encyclopedic interest. (The days when it required a commercial record label to become musically notable are long over.) And WP:SELFSOURCE in WP:RS (a copy-paste of the actual policy, WP:ABOUTSELF in WP:V, and now slated for merging) does make it clear that it applies to online self-published source material, not just works on paper or vinyl.
• Yes, an album (that is not totally lost, like one of Tim Rose's 1970s albums which was black-holed by the record label and then the masters lost) is like a book or other published work: its own primary source for what it contains. Being hard to find or costly to obtain/access is not an exception, per WP:SOURCEACCESS. (I recently cited a book that only exists in 40 copies. It is a valid citation, as the work be can accessed at various, mostly European, libraries, and once in a blue moon copies become available for sale on eBay or some other site, which is how I got it, for significant cost, but less than the cost of trans-Atlantic plane ticket, heh.)
• Graywalls's idea that WP:NCC is somehow in conflict with WP:NOTAWEBHOST and WP:NOTEVERYTHING is not sustainable, since including a self-released album in a discography (like a self-published book in an author's bibliography) is not social networking, treating WP as a game, hosting a résumé, acting as file storage, self-publishing by an editor of promotional or opinional material, being a personals ad, serving as a memorial, or hosting content unrelated to the encyclopedia. More broadly in that policy section: it is not a dictionary-style definition of something, forum or original-research material by an editor, spam, advocacy/propaganda, scandal-mongering, a mirror of off-site writing, a directory-style entry with no encyclopedic context, attempting to conduct business, serving as a textbook or guide, trying to predict the future, reporting news-style on current events, acting as a "who's who" listing of non-notable people, acting as a summary-only review, being a lyrics republication, presenting unexplained statistics, or publishing a changes log, nor censoring anything.
  In short, you need to actually read the content of a policy page and be certain of its applicability before thumping its shortcut like a bible verse. And it is entirely wrongheaded to try to pit a guideline against a policy or against another guideline to begin with; WP:P&G, WP:LAWYER, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, WP:GAMING, and many other pages make it abundantly clear that our P&G material should always be interpreted as a working synergistic system, never a legal-system style set of hard rules that can be manipulated to find loopholes and escape clauses to produce results that are contrary to their intent or to the project's interest. (In the rare event of an actual, objectively definable conflict between two P&G pages, a WP:POLICYFORK, this needs to be raised on the talk pages of the P&G in question and resolved as soon as possible).
  Anyway, what an album's entry in a discography is doing is presenting a line-item of pertinent encyclopedic information in a list of works that would be incomplete without that citation.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on Village pump: Authors' works lists

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Authors' works lists. Welcome to join if you have something to say. 151.177.58.208 (talk) 16:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

"WP:DISCOGSTYLE is dormant"

To: PerfectSoundWhatever
Dear colleague,
I was intrigued by your recent edit, here, because the fact that WikiProject WP:DISCOGSTYLE is currently dormant might simply result from the guideline itself being stable enough not to warrant any more discussions amongst the community of editors participating in the project. It therefore seemed strange to me to have removed the advice by which personalised discography articles "should follow the guidelines given by WikiProject Discographies", since it seems better to keep advising editors to follow that guideline than not.
However, as it is quite possible that I might be missing something subtle about the continued validity of guidelines issued by a WikiProject that has become dormant, please kindly let me know, whenever convenient. Otherwise, thank you for reconsidering your edit, on the basis of the guideline's continued usefulness, regardless of the WikiProject's dormant status resulting from the current lack of activity by its editors. Thank you.
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(become old-fashioned!)} 16:23, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I assumed, based on the notice at WP:DISCOGSTYLE, that the page no longer reflects current styling consensus, because that page is listed as dormant / inactive. If this isn't the case, please revert my edit. I don't strongly believe it should be removed, it just felt misleading to point to a page that doesn't seem to still be maintained. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 21:14, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I have retargeted the shortcut to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works#Discographies, since it's an actual guideline not a years-dead proposal with no consensus. MOS:DISCOGSTYLE also goes to the guideline section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Request for input on a discussion about a list of Selected works

At Talk:Divya Dwivedi#Proposal for Selected works section, there is agreement to include books in a list of Selected works, but disagreement about whether to include articles, essays, and interviews that have received secondary and scholarly coverage. Additional participation is welcome and appreciated. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 05:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Should director names be excluded from the filmography?

An edit war

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Minami_Hamabe&curid=54776267&action=history

Should director names be excluded from the filmography? I believe it's worthwhile to include information about which directors the actor has collaborated with. Please share your thoughts. --55go (talk) 08:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

In lists of works, yes. That information is good in prose discussion, but in a filmography it places undue weight on the importance of the director, which implicitly creates a bias toward the theory of auteurism. It would be equally worthwhile to include information about other actors or which studios the actor has collaborated with, but that clutters filmographies in a way that makes them less useful. Director information is available on the film's article page, a mere one click away. Chubbles (talk) 08:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your kind assistance. I will comply. --55go (talk) 08:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Chubble's rationale, other than "In lists of works, yes. ... but in a filmography [no]", since a filmography is a list of works.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:08, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I think we are actually in complete agreement; the sentence reads in shorthand, "In lists of works, yes. In prose, no, but in a filmography, yes." (responding to the question "should they be excluded?") Chubbles (talk) 03:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Got it now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:33, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Second-round RfC on titles of TV season articles

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:54, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

{{Lang}}

{{Lang}} does not work on the Chapter parameter of the Cite book template. RodRabelo7 (talk) 02:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Are references required for lists of works?

I find our policy/guidelines vs practice around sourcing lists of works confusing and contradictory. I am only referring to lists of work within an article rather than a stand-alone list of works. All I can I can find vaguely related to this topic is the following ragtag assortment of quotations:

Quotations

Complete lists of works, appropriately sourced to reliable scholarship (WP:V), are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet. from MOS:LISTSOFWORKS For the establishment of the general releases in a discography – that a certain release exists, was released in the first place, and is a part of the artist's body of work – general sources, as opposed to in-line citations, are sufficient. For additional non-contentious facts such as release date, record label, and catalog number, general sources are also acceptable...Any surprising or contentious notes beyond the aforementioned should be sourced using in-line citations. For data such as peak chart positions, sales, and certifications, in-line citations are preferred. from a dormant policy proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies/style statements are sourced where they appear, and they provide inline citations if they contain any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations. from WP:Featured list criteria Content should be sourced where it appears with inline citations if the content contains any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations...Reaching consensus on the talk page before editing the list itself not only saves time in the long run, but also helps make sure that each item on the list is well referenced and that the list as a whole represents a neutral point of view. Content should be sourced where it appears, and provide inline citations if it contains any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations. from WP:SOURCELIST Avoid original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources. In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed, it is especially important that inclusion be based on reliable sources given with inline citations for each item...When an inline citation is not required by a sourcing policy and editors choose to name more sources than strictly required, then either general references or inline citations may be used. It is generally presumed that obviously appropriate material, such as the inclusion of apple in the list of fruits, does not require an inline citation. from MOS:LIST

In other words, there is not an all encompassing guide on the level of sourcing required. Yet, at ITN and DYK there are routinely calls for articles to provide inline citations for their discography/filmography before it can be posted to the main page - a higher standard than is required for a featured list.

A recent instance of this tension is at Toumani Diabaté. Editors at ITN were requesting citations for the discography before it could be posted as an RD. I added sources to the discography but these were reverted twice by an editor claiming (perhaps not incorrectly) that discographies "do not require refs".

For my part, I am kind of agnostic on the direction we should go. I don't think it is a bad thing to source a list of works and certainly wouldn't remove these sources if I saw them in an article. I don't think we need a policy or guideline for every little thing but people often act in this area like they are doing so on the basis of a policy or guideline as oppose to just personal preference or being misinformed.

Seeking input from others and maybe a proposal to make this guideline clearer. Vladimir.copic (talk) 00:32, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Pinging those who have engaged in this before above or I referenced in my comment: @Acousmana, Chubbles, Graywalls, SMcCandlish, and Revirvlkodlaku: Vladimir.copic (talk) 00:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to know why Revirvlkodlaku does not think discographies should have references (especially in cases where the song/album does not have a Wikipedia article). To me, this seems contrary to verifiability. Curbon7 (talk) 00:58, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

@Curbon7, the only reason I feel that way is because I've edited hundreds of musical artist pages, and virtually none of them include refs in the discography. I imagine musical releases are relatively easy to look up, which would be why.

At the same time, I do acknowledge that if these releases are obscure, a ref would be required.

Out of curiosity, what is ITN and RD? Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 02:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:In the News, a section of the main page. Curbon7 (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

We then get to the question of what is obscure. A WP:BLUESKY is going to be difficult to make with 99% of articles. I often see bandied around the idea that you do not need a ref for blue-linked articles in a list of works but I don't think this is policy-based. Should it be? Vladimir.copic (talk) 03:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

If you have a blue link that is not a redirect, then there should easily be a source to bring over to the biography page. BLP requires this type of level of sourcing. — Masem (t) 04:15, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, some type of reference is needed; while major works a creative person has done may be easily sourced, we end up with things like short stories, acting cameos, and similar that don't get sourced and become a problem. Referencing doesn't need to be one ref per work - if you can find an RS that covers the whole list in one shot, great. For books and other material that have codes like ISBN numbers where their creation of the work is clearly part of the database record, that is also self-sufficient as long as the ISBN number is included. But like that article, there's a large number of works without any blue link (non-notable works) so we absolutely need some type of sourcing that is their work. --Masem (t) 00:59, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• There is no need to provide third-party references for catalog data of published works. A published work proves its own existence. This is true of bibliographies, discographies, filmographies, etc., as long as they include catalog/credits data in the published work. (Otherwise, we would have to provide references for the existence of our own references!) References may be needed for additional information that is not included in the published work, such as day-and-date of publication, sales data, etc. Chubbles (talk) 04:31, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  This is not true for all works, when we have uncredited cameos and things like Alan Smithee attempts to step away from some works. So we cannot just say that a published work proves existence, because that doesn't immediately affirm the credits exist in the way one expects. This is simple for books (you are either an author or editor, or not) but gets more complex for works that are group efforts, like music, movies, and television. Masem (t) 12:12, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with this for these examples (uncredited personnel is a good example), but these are edge cases. They really illustrate the principle, in my view. Chubbles (talk) 14:19, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  Those may be edge cases but they certainly dominate when it comes to RDs of many in acting over at ITN. — Masem (t) 14:34, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  Just relying on the primary source seems like a common sense approach in many cases. However, you can easily imagine this introducing errors in the discographies of Air, Air, Air and Air (you see mistakes like this often on Spotify). You also have cases of pen names or where books/albums/singles are published using different titles or formats in different jurisdictions. Then there's the more obscure publications that may be hard to verify. This probably accounts for slightly more than just the edge cases but is it worth covering this in guidelines? Vladimir.copic (talk) 23:00, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• Not required per Chubbles who correctly explains that published works are usually self-referencing. Additional reasons include:

1. Customary practice. For example, see the recent featured article, Ernest Hemingway, whose Selected works section does not have inline citations. Its main spinoff is Ernest Hemingway bibliography which likewise does not have inline citations for most entries. As FA-level work is our highest standard, other main page sections should not try to be "holier than the Pope".
2. The template {{authority control}} is commonly used to provide a general bibliographic reference using the catalogs of major libraries. Additional citations would be duplicate effort.
3. The long-standing principle of WP:V is that inline citations are only required for controversial facts which are contested (and quotations). If we insisted on an inline citation for every single separate fact then substantial articles would require thousands of citations contrary to WP:OVERCITE.
4. Most readers only read the lead of our articles and, by convention, these don't usually have inline citations. Fewer readers read the body and very few click through to the references. We should put most effort into the parts that are most read.
5. Citations don't actually verify the facts because there's no mechanical connection. The process of verification always has to be done by the reader by searching and reading the various sources and texts which often vary or are inaccurate.
6. To see how fact-checking does not depend on citations, consider the current case of Bob Newhart. This article has had over a million readers recently because he died recently. The article has been tag bombed because it was nominated as an ITN RD but the editor who added all those tags hasn't added a single citation themself and the tags seem to have been dropped indiscriminately. Now, I did some work on the article and noticed a dubious fact in the lead, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart ... remains the 20th-best-selling album in history." That fact had a citation and I checked it out which wasn't easy as I had to listen through an audio file. The claim appears in that source but now another editor has still removed the claim saying "unreliable citation. no other source says this." This demonstrates how fact-checking depends upon editor investigation and discrimination rather than the mere presence of citations. Such work requires considerable effort and so should be reserved for such red flag details, not demanded in every case. See the Pareto principle...

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:24, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

1) The Hemingway only appleis the FA to the bio, the unsourced bibliography has no quality, so we cannot presume that that article is considered acceptable. And for the selected works, those are all works mentioned in the body with sources, so a source there isn't really necessary.

3) BLP is stronger than V in terms of the expectation for sourcing.

4) WP:LEDECITE is based on the standard that all material in the lede otherwise unsourced is in the body of the article. Like the Hemingway one, this would reasonably apply to a bibliography, but it is extremely rare that the body of a creative person is going to extensively list all works they were in within prose, so referencing is still required.

6) is a behavior problem unrelated to this specific issue. Masem (t) 12:17, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Ernest Hemingway is not a good example because I think the most famous figures like him get into WP:BLUESKY territory. We have to think about figures who are not as famous, including those whose works don't have their own articles and may never have them, and/or those who are not the primary creators of works. Examples may be film editors and cinematographers whose earlier works may be red links.

We need to consider how knowledge should survive. Like consider musicians and actors and filmmakers from one hundred years ago (1924), do we really want to trust that an unreferenced list for one of them has been fully validated? What if the works were cribbed from IMDb (an unreliable source) or elsewhere? And how should people in 2124 consider unreferenced lists they see about figures today?

Wikipedia is summarizing what is in the real world, and I think it's a proper step to get data points. If a person is notable, then their works have been mentioned somewhere that can be referenced. One example I've done is Polly Morgan (cinematographer) whose credits get less obvious when we go back in time. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:01, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

IMDB is much the same as Wikipedia; it is formally "unreliable" but is extensively used and treated by its readership as if it is fine. I just compared its entries for Polly Morgan and it seems more up-to-date in that it includes Legend of the Lizard which seems to be her most recent work. So, if you're a professional and want the best info, you'd go to IMDB, right? 13:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC) Andrew🐉(talk) 13:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Interesting example, and Discogs is an even more vivid one; we routinely remove links to it as UGC, but it is in practice the most scrupulously correct place to find publication data on records I've ever seen in my life, and it usually includes photographs of published albums, which end any debates over what catalog and personnel data are on the record itself. Chubbles (talk) 14:19, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

The thing that makes such sites accurate is not the presence of citations but the meticulous nature of its power users. Fans are quite fussy and so I'd expect articles like John Mayall and John Mayall discography to be quite accurate, regardless of citations. I was just looking at those because he's another RD and quite famous in his day. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:02, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that some pages at USERG sites like IMDB and Discogs are fanatically maintained accurately for some artists and actors, it is definitely not true that all such pages have that level if commitment, and knowing when such a page falls into this area is not easily determined. It's part of why USERG sites are not considered reliable because you can't extend the effort to keep a few pages correct to the entire site. — Masem (t) 15:53, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

So you're treating IMDb as a reliable source, basically? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:51, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't use IMDB much myself but it has an article on Wikipedia and I see from that that it's a subsidiary of Amazon. This gives it good credibility at a technical level as I suppose they ensure that it's not full of malware and scams. I'd rather be using that than a site like African Music Library, as noted below. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:12, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

In certain cases I would say we would not need citations, such as when the article mentions the work somewhere in the body. In other cases, we should either try to find a self-reference, or some RS. In any case, each work in the list of works needs to have some citation, though whether that be a self-reference or an RS I don't think is that important. Gödel2200 (talk) 14:33, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• Original example I was just looking at Toumani Diabaté which was the OP's original example and is now posted at RD. Looking at the discography in this article, I recognise the album In the Heart of the Moon as I bought it myself. There's a source for this which is African Music Library. This has zero credibility for me and I don't want to be dealing with such sites as they may be spammy or otherwise suspect. I don't think we should be encouraging editors to fill articles with links to such sites just to get an RD listed. I'd much rather we just cited the work itself. I just located the album in my CD rack and Diabaté's name appears on the album cover alongside Ali Farka Touré. It doesn't get any more reliable than that.

Andrew🐉(talk) 15:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

In that specific album, one of thd first refs is a review by the Guardian, which could have easily been used instead. Assuming the blue linked work is notable alone for the stand alone article there should easily be one source that could be grabbed for that on a bibliography or similar list. The concern is over the non notable albums which still need sourcing. — Masem (t) 16:13, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know much about African Music Library, but it is a staffed organization with a librarian, aiming to catalogue African music and become a reference work. It doesn't seem "spammy" and is not user-generated like Discogs, which you praise above. This is a very weak argument against inline citation and above all biased.

An editor is unlikely to have an artist like Toumani Diabaté's entire discography at hand, so other sources are used to verify information for the list of works. These sources are then not cited as we only cite the primary work. Thus, we rely on, say, a user-uploaded Discogs photograph to verify the existence of a work. And perhaps we are ok with this? Vladimir.copic (talk) 23:36, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

The African Music Library is not notable and so we only seem to know what they choose to tell us. It seems that they are based in Lagos which is not a good sign as Nigeria hosts numerous scammers. They seem to be a small operation and their president also seems to work as a freelance journalist. They don't appear to have a physical library and so it seems likely that the source of their information is the Internet. So, just like us, they will be scraping Discogs, Wikipedia and anything else they can find. There's no evidence that they add any value to the data.

Now there are more notable and respectable operations such as the International Library of African Music but their focus seems to be folk music rather than commercial music.

In the case of Toumani Diabaté, it doesn't appear that any change was made to the discography in the recent edit war -- we still have exactly the same list of works in exactly the same order. All that Vladimir did was add citations which were mostly to the uncertain source of African Music Library. I'm not seeing any value in this and reckon that there are significant risks in adding such URLs to our articles. We should not be required to do this, especially to report the artist's death, which is a different fact not related to their list of works.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

"A published work proves its own existence." This is generally true, but it should still be cited as the work itself, with sufficient identifying information to find it and verify that it does exist and does say what is claimed. (Or cite a reliable independent source that provides information about the release in question.) Just a bare claim that a book or album by a particular title exists by a particular author/artist is not really sufficient. We need to know at least the year and publisher/label, and preferably also have an identifier like an ISBN, a record catalogue number, etc., if such exists for the item in question. If it's a really old manuscript item (Plutarch, etc.), then cite a modern, published edition; WP does not cite manuscripts, only published works. That may also have implications for modern subjects; e.g. a claim that a band released a demo tape in 1983 in a quantity of 50 is not a claim that can be made without a reliable source, even if you claim to own a copy of the original, since no one can verify it (a virtually extinct legendary demo tape is essentially an unpublished manuscript). Such a claim would have be found published in some work about the band (either an independent one or, per WP:ABOUTSELF, something like their official website).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:42, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Special items like demo tapes obviously require special consideration. But what about the main bulk of regular published work? For books we have ISBN and, for journal articles, there's the digital object identifier (DOI). But what about music? Looking at the CD for In the Heart of the Moon, the best identifier seems to be the barcode, which in this case is 769233007223 (and that's formally a Universal Product Code (UPC) which is a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)). But, now that everything is going online, perhaps we should use something like the International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) or Global Release Identifier (GRId). Do we have some specific guidance for this? Andrew🐉(talk) 09:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

If there was a resource like WorldCat, which is a non-user-generated database of ISBNs that has gained sufficient traction to be reputable, that we could use for other product labeling, that would be something, but as best I know for things like music and other works there is no equivalent that uses UPCs or other codes. — Masem (t) 12:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

It took me about a minute to find a good database of ISRC codes. This lists 9,155 entries for Toumani Diabate and so is obviously quite comprehensive. It is an official resource of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and is run by SoundExchange. It is therefore much more reputable and reliable than startups like the African Music Library. The main problem with using it is that we will have too much data for such established artists. Perhaps there's a standard way of citing or linking to this, like {{authority control}}. If there isn't yet then we should create one. In any case, this seems to be a good generic resource for discographies which will eliminate the need for individual citations. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)