On Monday 23 January 2006 09:51, Phil Boswell wrote:
Take for example the classic {{book reference}}. The
simplest possible
instance is just the title of the book. This can later be embellished with
the name of the author, possibly with a link to an appropriate article.
Later additions can include the publisher and ISBN, to distinguish between
different editions and to enable a reader to find an actual copy.
If you fork this template (and this was actually done before the advent of
condition "tricksiness"), you have to use a different template every time
you incrementally improve the accuracy of your citation. Your choice can
even be affected by the order in which your embellishments are added!
This is exactly the example I wanted to put forward. I try to cite sources
whenever I can, but I haven't used appropriate templates because of this
(there exist/have existed multiple book reference templates: with page
number, without page number, with ISBN, without ISBN...). With one template,
it is much easier and I will likely use it now.