[This is mostly me blowing off steam, but there's an actual serious proposal in here too...]
On 20/03/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Why do ISBNs and ISSNs have check digits? Wikipedia's citations needs to be verified because there is no other way to visually differentiate between
Jean Justice. "Le Crime de la Route A6". Laffont, 1968.
and
Jean Justic. "Le Crime". Laffont, 1968.
Having the ability to verify works means volunteers can chase down the ones that look a little sketchy. And rapidly double check the ones that do have the linkies.
But the thing is, once we've verified the bibliographic data is correct, we're done. End of story. We no longer need the catalogue reference, in the same way we wouldn't need a note saying "this book is borrowed by Sally, remember to add the publication details when she brings it back".
Basically, this is my objection. The Amazon link, or the LoC link, or any other link, is *not a source*; I mean, really, what are we verifying? That a work by this name and with this metadata appears in an online catalogue. Nothing more. It does not verify the assertion that this is a relevant work, or that it is one we used. It is simply what we use to sanity-check the metadata in our own list of sources. Once we've done that check, we've confirmed we've spelled the name right and got the year correct, we don't need to keep that link or that catalogue code; it's an internal editorial reference, and it can be kept on the talk page or junked, but it's unneccesary and somewhat misleading to keep it with the citation.
ISBNs are a special case - we keep them around because MediaWiki can do cunning magic with them, and we faintly hope we can hack something similar together later for LCCNs. But it would not materially harm the intellectual integrity of our listed references to quietly lose every ISBN overnight, because they're icing and not cake.
While I do find the link to Amazon useful, my reasoning for using ASIN for works without another identifier is simply that it is useful to add catalogue identifiers to every citation and reference work in order to assist others that use the raw wikipedia data as input to other projects (e.g. librarything). The reality is that most people dont know about WorldCat, wont bother trying to use the LOC search, and definitely will be confused by our LOC templates. They will on the other hand add an ISBN or ASIN if it is sitting right in front of them, and our newer contributors will be mighty chuffed with themselves when they manage to add an Amazon link correctly. Learn to love the bomb.
But *what does it matter*? As above, once we have the bibliographic data, we don't need a link or a code to another place listing that data - it just seems futile. Our readers are going to follow that link and find, er, nothing of any use to them.
As for reuse, I think a much more effective solution would be to start writing something to parse {{cite book}} templates for their bib data...
...which prompts a thought. Could we expand the citation templates and have default-non-displaying fields, like the hack we have with persondata? This would allow us to silently include all the catalogue identifiers we could wish for, BNB codes or BNF references or LCCNs or OCLC codes or, hell, even LibraryThing work IDs - without the objectionable issues of including and displaying unhelpful links (or the limitation of only including one ID number). We could then fiddle it with different div IDs so that people can select in CSS to display ISBNs or ESTC numbers or whatever their little heart desires...
(ESTC is probably one of the rare counterexamples to "no comprehensive identifiers before 1960s", but I don't see us citing too many of its works...)
I see the ASIN template primarily as a way of classifying citations and the articles they sit on. I would expect that the [[WP:FACT]] project would endeavour to remove any ASIN from an article before it hit the front page. If {{ASIN}} become over-used (its been hovering between 50-100 for a while), they could plough through them in a clean-up exercise.
I did :-) About August 2005 I killed almost every ASIN listed on Wikipedia, as unneccesary and unhelpful. I am utterly astonished to find people encouraging their use, as may be apparent...
If we end up with a large number of ASINs that cant be replaced with a better identifier, a repository like WorldCat may come along and create verified records for them all, simply because they are used on Wikipedia.
This isn't how cataloguing works, sad to say. You can't create a verified record without the book in your hand; if they had the book in their hand (well, stock), it would have been catalogued eventually regardless...
(WorldCat isn't a repository. It's a union catalogue of thousands of libraries. I suspect none of them are the Institute for Philanthropic Bibliography...)
As an aside, this ASIN entry on amazon.fr is definitely not primarily for the purpose of generating revenue; it may not be philanthropic, but it is a public service.
I fear you jest! It's there because someone wanted to sell a copy and has now sold it, or because amazon.fr picked up the details from one of their databases and put it up in the hope someone would list one... Amazon.com certainly prune old ASIN pages; I've known them vanish. There's no guarantee the code will ever be reused; if the same work reappears it may well get a new code, or the old code may be recycled for a different work. There is no "standard" to it, no published information on how it works or guidance on using it; it's not intended for external use.
WorldCat also has problems.
I have strong views against WorldCat as well, but that's another rant - vast quanties of very sloppy cataloguing, and a misleading presentation as being substantially more comprehensive than it is. (Remember, you have to pay to join the consortium...) I would argue (almost) as strongly against arguing we should routinely include OCLC id codes, or whatever it is they use; I got very het up recently when someone wanted to spam the Worldcat "author pages" across Wikipedia.
Also, I feel the need to make a slightly odd objection here - why are we citing an English work *and* citing its French translation? Does the latter contain more information?
My guess is it has been put on the enwiki to ensure all works about the subject are listed, or perhaps in preparation for a French translation of the English article.
I would discourage calling it a "source", then... "further reading" can cover a multitude of sins.