Memory Alpha talk:Template for Book

Publication Date
I have noticed that people, Sulfur especially, have been using a publication date format   different to that shown on the template  DAY Month YEAR or DATE .

Is this because the template hasn't been updated after a change in policy? My main reason for questioning the change is that none of the books I own have a date given for their production, they simply have month and year given. I have seen amazon use the first of the month for most of their listed books as well but figured that was a database limitation they had. I also just had a quick look at half a dozen of the books I own and there was indications that upcoming books were to be available mid-month. I don't want to get into any sort of edit war by changing things unneccesarily so some clarification would be appreciated. -- Avron 04:31, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * A lot of books actually do have publication dates listed, just very rarely in the book. I've not only been using Amazon to get dates, but also 2-3 other booksellers, and for some the library of congress db.  That's why you see a lot of mid-month dates as you walk through them (especially the more recent stuff) :)  Now, admittedly, most everything before 1989 (or 1990 in some cases) seems to be defaulting to the 1st of the month, but "historically", that's been the date of release for books by publishers.  They'll often state that they're releasing books in May on the 1st, but they do trickle out over the course of the next 2-3 weeks.  The same holds true now in that you'll see a publishing date of the 24th of the month (for example), but the book might be available in the first week of that month, or it might not be available until the following month.  The book industry (as you can guess) is far more lax in terms of publishing/release dates than the CD and DVD industries.  Not entirely sure why, it just is that way.
 * But to further answer the question, yes, we introduced the individual day pages, and not all of the templates around have been updated to date. -- Sulfur 12:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining all of that Sulfur. I really had no idea. -- Avron 13:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It brings up an interesting problem, though - the template referring to a specific date should of course not be used if there is no specific day to refer to... ;) In that case, keep using the old one. -- Cid Highwind 13:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

New Templates

 * Maybe we need the template m then which only takes month and year ... a consequence would be to create y too for years only. -- Kobi 14:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, really for those, we can just use Month Year . The year ones would go straight to Year productions .   No?  No real need for more templates I'd think there -- Sulfur 14:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, the suggested templates would make some sense. With a year template ( ) we would avoid the longer construct  2006 , and while a month template wouldn't be any shorter than the actual link, it (like the year template) would make clear the fact that the day (or month&day) is probably missing for a reason. Also, it would further help to "collect" all date references... -- Cid Highwind 14:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, that logic I can see. The year one would definitely be useful though.  Anything to shorten that stuff out is always nice.  :)  Logically, they can also follow the same logic as the born template (for example) so that anything before a certain date points straight to the Early production history page. -- Sulfur 14:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, that would be another nice side effect of having those templates. born already relies on d, so other templates should be similar to that one. I have to leave now for a while, so if someone wants to create those already, looking at "d" would be a good start ;) -- Cid Highwind 15:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll take a peek at those and try to get them working this afternoon then. Lunch first though.  Hungry now. -- Sulfur 15:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * And they've been created now, and seem to work "as expected". Yay. -- Sulfur 17:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)