User talk:Sunwin1960

A barnstar for you!

The Minor barnstar

For updating bibliographies over and over and over again with very little recognition for the amazing work you are doing! We definitely need people to help expand our reference lists together and up to date! Wikipedia has become one of the most used reference bibliographies in the world, and without people like you improving those bibliographies and lists, we wouldn't have such a wide ranging impact on research! Sadads (talk) 15:27, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve seen you’ve been updating writers bibliography sections: it’s a commendable task, but they don’t need to contain every published article by a writer. The bibliography section is for major published works (ie. Books which have ISBN numbers) not for individual articles. A good example of someone who wrote a lot of articles is the bibliography on Susan Sontag’s wiki page. Sarcastathon (talk) 22:57, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, ideally authors with more than ten works should have a separate bibliography article, as per the guidelines at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Bibliographies#Author_bibliographies. The Bibliography section in their main article can then be used to list only the major works.

Time and energy permitting, such bibliography articles will be created. An example is the Paul Theroux_bibliography. Sunwin1960 (talk) 10:05, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I know, but you’ve been listing things like every New Yorker article someone has written. That’s not what a wiki bibliography needs to contain. Sarcastathon (talk) 20:57, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to clarify: Paul Theroux is a very note worthy writer who has had a hefty influence. It is rare a writer deserves a whole seperate bibliography page, and even more rare that their every published article makes it to that page. I have Susan Sontag as an example as she is very influential and was a prolific writer but even she does not need every published article listed. Sarcastathon (talk) 20:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One solution I came up with was to create a detailed bibliography on an external website and then list it in the External Links section. However even that solution was unacceptable as the bibliography was hosted on a site I own, so it was seen as a form of self-promotion! An example was a link I put on the Hilton Als page - see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hilton_Als&oldid=917140592#Bibliography which linked to https://unwin.net.au/biblios/als.xml but it was removed Sunwin1960 (talk) 06:25, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s admirable but the thing is that Wiki doesn’t need a detailed list of everything an author ever wrote. That’s the job of archivists, the estates of writers, librarians, historians etc. Sarcastathon (talk) 13:08, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Paul Theroux's bibliography

I recently made a number of edits to Paul Theroux's bibliography. However, this is my first time doing something like this. I noticed that you started the page and, in general, work on a lot of pages like this. Do you have time to respond to some questions?

Regards,

Chief disambiguator (talk) 20:26, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK, will try to respond in a timely fashion. Sunwin1960 (talk) 00:55, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your response. I have two issues. I noticed we have included a table of Theroux's stories as well as a bullet point of critical literature about him. It all seems a little too complete though. Incidentally, I noticed in your conversation with Sarcastathon above that he notes that we can't include everything. Lastly, I wasn't sure if I should include ISBN (or ASIN) information. I did for a lot of his works but not everything. What is the standard?

Regards,

Chief disambiguator (talk) 06:38, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Chief disambiguator[reply]

1. I think that a separate bibliography article should be as complete as possible. Many Wikipedia editors disagree, arguing that an encyclopaedia should be more of a summary. They have a horror of listing journal articles, short stories, poems etc., regarding such entries as belonging in a CV rather than a Wikipedia article. As Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Goals notes, a bibliography is a "systematic list of books and other works such as journal articles", so I tend to go for more rather than less. Of course, a Bibliography section in an author article can list just the main works if there is also a link to a specific bibliography article.

2. I deprecate ISBNs and ASINs because Wikipedia links these to commercial bookselling sites via their ISBN lookup tool. I tend to leave them in a citation, but comment them out, as I do with the access date. ISBNs are useful when identifying a specific instance of a publication (such as a paperback reprint, or parallel releases in Australia, the UK or the US) but clutter up bibliographic entries.

Like most things Wikipedian, opinions on bibliographic standards vary. Unfortunately the citation templates are not as flexible as they could be, tending towards the look and feel of traditional academic citations, rather than the more elegant library catalogue standards.

Anyhow, thank you for your bibliographic endeavours! Sunwin1960 (talk) 08:20, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the detailed reply. Reading the WikiProject article, I feel like I came upon contradictory advice. At one end it states, "Within Wikipedia, bibliographies are specialized lists of books, journals and other references important to the topic of the bibliography." And when I look at the George Orwell bibliography page or List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein things are quite detailed. However, within the Goals section it also states: "Bibliographies differ from library catalogs by including only relevant items rather than all items present in a particular library." I actually don't really know what library catalogs are but this sentence emphasizes concision for bibliographies, not breadth. In additon, the rules WP:NOTDIR and WP:Indiscriminate are referenced later on the page.

That being said, you note that bibliographies can be quite detailed and given the precedent established on some pages, I think I will maintain Theroux's page as it is. Also, I'm pretty new to this and don't feel comfortable making big changes. Once again, thank you for your advice.

Lastly, I will integrate the ISBN and ASIN numbers into the citations soon.

Chief disambiguator (talk) 00:12, 6 June 2025 (UTC)Chief disambiguator[reply]