Talk:Phage monographs

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History of list

Scientific disciplines often are not defined by their books but, rather, are reflected by them: A book is an author's or editor's sense of what is important in one subdiscipline, or an entire field, at one particular moment — within the constraints of whatever limitations have been placed on content, typically as by the publisher. Important limitations include such things as space, color plates, merit, etc. With the advent of the World Wide Web, many of these old limits no longer exist, though potentially at the cost of permanence. An author (or authors) today (as of September, 2006) can write anything they want, and reach a wide audience. But they will stay in "print" only so long as their web host stays in business and/or appropriate fees are paid. Wikipedia suggests a compromise, where, contrasting to one's own web page, content, in principle, may last "forever". Of course "forever" will be in a mutable form, but that also means that both error correction and updating are possible. Indeed, are encouraged!

Within this context, this article consists of a list of phage monographs (as loosely defined) dating back to 1921 (phage are viruses of bacteria). The list was created — because of the space limitations of traditional print — during the writing of the first chapter of the edited monograph Bacteriophage Ecology and in order to be cited by that chapter. A forerunner of this list can be found in the 1 January 2005 issue of the Bacteriophage Ecology Group News, an online newsletter of the Bacteriophage Ecology Group. See phage ecology for more on that subdiscipline of phage biology and ecology.

Editing list

An approximation of ASM (American Society for Microbiology) conventions are used throughout. Titles (or English translations) have been presented in bold to allow for rapid scanning, and italics have been avoided both to improve readability and as consistent with ASM conventions. OCLC refers to a monograph's WorldCat accession number. ASIN is the Amazon Standard Identification Number (shown if ISBN is not known).

• Bullets indicate uncertainty about the appropriateness of an entry for this list. If you feel that a monograph should be removed from this list then please indicate why in brackets at the end of the entry (in italics), e.g., [this entry should be removed from this list because... ]

Help with cyrillic lettering, transliterations, translations, missing information, uncited monographs, etc. is much appreciated. Please contact Dr. Stephen T. Abedon (through www.phage.org) with suggested changes or, of course, feel free to make changes (including updating) as appropriate.

--- ends ---

Rich Farmbrough, 22:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC).

References

Chapters

Burnet wrote a chapter on phage for the Medical Research Council's "System of Bacteriology" (around 1928). Is this relevant?--Peta 23:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that all phage-associated material should be archived in a manner that is as readily available to all individuals as possible. However, the Phage monographs list should be limited to volumes which are somewhat or fully dedicated to aspects of phage biology. Therefore, a monograph containing a single chapter on phages is without question relevant but at the same time does not qualify the so-containing monograph for this list. Thanks! Sabedon (talk) 18:22, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

where this goes

The books written by notable authors with WP articles can be appropriately listed as part of these articles. I have just oved the listings for d'Herelle and Stent, though they need some further formatting. DGG (talk) 18:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that books written by notable authors should/could also be placed on the appropriate WP pages, just so long as the Phage monographs list remains intact (that is, just so long as the Phage monographs list survives me as a complete listing of phage and phage-related monographs). Sabedon (talk) 18:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

To put my card on the table, I consider that WP is not intended as a bibliography. I am moving the items to more appropriate pages in preparation to asking for the deletion of this page, and the similar pages. I do not think there is any case where article such as this have been challenged at AfD, and kept. You have a perfectly good university website for them. I agree that they are intrinsically not suited for permanent publication, so if you want a more stable place, there are several other alternatives with the sister projects: Wikibooks, primarily, though I think they would go better there with some degree of annotation. Or Wikiversity, where you could easily do an appropriate "module" as they call it there.

I & others have in the past suggested a project called "Wikidata" , and there could perfectly well be a dedicated one called something like "Wikibibliography". The problem is that the Foundation (quite reasonably) considers itself over-extended, and absolutely not able to support new projects--there is serious question about the funding for all the existing ones.

I discuss this here now instead of simply going ahead with the nomination for deletion to provide an opportunity for discussion. I don;t intend to be prematurely dogmatic. DGG (talk) 00:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Bibliography articles

The deletion discussion for this article closed with no consensus. The closing administrator, Sandstein, stated that there was "no consensus to just delete this page outright, but all agree that this content should not remain in article space in this form." Sandstein furthermore suggested that "interested editors continue to develop ideas about what to do with this type of content in general" on an RfC. This is what I am initiating. The deletion discussion ended with the last four contributors to the discussion in favour of the creation of a bibliography space. Such a step obviously goes beyond the scope of this one particular article. There are a few bibliography articles in existence and no one seems to be arguing in favour of leaving them as they are. I do believe that the creation of a bibliography space would be a positive step for Wikipedia and welcome further discussion on the subject. Neelix (talk) 14:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I wish I had just said delete with less elaboration. I just don't see the value in this sort of thing as part of wikipedia. Kingdon (talk) 15:07, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Neelix for calling me! I think adding bibliographies in a consistent manner would be a wonderful asset for WP. I think in most cases it could be simply solved, without even passing through RfC: a simple show-on-click template in the opportune pages would be enough in many cases. Separate pages could be useful for particularly complex cases, where a same bibliography can be called by more articles? --Cycl^opia - ^talk 15:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• First of all, thanks to Neelix for dropping me a line and getting this started. In the discussion started by DGG I did not propose project or something like that because I simply don't know enough about WP and the various projects. The idea of a subpage was proposed; I was unaware of that possibility. But now that I've read some other editors' comments, I'm kind of excited about a bibliography project (in whatever shape or form). I had a look at Bibliography of the War in Darfur and that sort of a page, in WP mainspace or somewhere else, would be an asset. I tell my students NEVER to cite from Wikipedia but to look at and use the notes and references, and a bibliography would be a great tool for students and scholars. Speaking off students: gotta run off and teach some sonnets. I look forward to more contributions here. Drmies (talk) 15:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

An encyclopedia should contain this sort of information. Encyclopedias usually have contained this sort of information in the past--it's clearly valuable to the reader. There are two questions: First, Should it be a selected bibliography, or should it be complete, within reasonable limitations. (The present article was attempting to be complete, including some quite minor material & this was part of the problem with it. ) Second, how to organize it.

A. Many articles here, already contain very extensive bibliographies, some in my opinion not very selective at all, as sections in the article. We could continue doing this '

B. A separate space is a possibility, but that's would involve a good deal of discussion. One advantage of doing this would be that we could also deal with a similar proposal for a data space. The software would probably accommodate any number of spaces, but it would take a little work, and is quite a major change.

C. What we could implement with less discussion is subpages for them in article space. There's good precedent for them in Citizendium. At present such subpages are not permitted--probably to prevent content forks: se [1] But this is just our choice--they could easily enough be turned on if there were consensus.

D Templates is another--collapsable sections. At present there is a good deal of dislike for collapsable sections as such in articles, but templates have the same effect. A new use of templates liker this would have to be discussed. I think templates of this sort might haver problems about usability.

I think we should probably move towards one or the other, but perhaps it would be better now to concentrate on suitable articles.

As for this particular article, an interim solution is to take some of the series and write separate articles for them--many key series in molecular biology are independently notable. A few of the books probably are also. DGG ( talk ) 15:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Another possibility is to create the bibliography at WikiBooks. There is (limited) precedent for doing so, and to the extent that a bibliography is original research (especially an annotated one) it would be less problematic there than in articlespace on WP. Existing bibliographies could be transwikied to minimize procedural fuss. (We should work out the how and why once, in general terms, rather than slug it out over every bibliography.) Before getting too far down that path, input should be sought from those who regularly work on the many different citation templates and the related bots to help ensure it goes smoothly. It seems to me, however, that this talkpage is too obscure for the more general topics. At a minimum I'd you notify WP:VPT and WP:VPP (both are applicable) that the discussion is going on and requesting comments. The most basic question in my mind is whether a cited work should be catalogued once for use on all wikis (much as the commons: catalogues images), once on each wiki, or once for each referencing article. Economy of effort urges the former choice, while realpolitik urges the latter.LeadSongDog come howl 20:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I have left notices on both the VPT and the VPP as suggested. Of the options presented thus far, DGG's suggestion B (the creation of a bibliography space) and LeadSongDog's suggestion (transwiki to WikiBooks) seem like the only ones that will prove to be improvements to Wikipedia in the long run. I think DGG's suggestion C would be problematic as a permanent fix, but it could be implemented while the logistics of one of the other two options are worked out. Neelix (talk) 21:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I think bibliographies such as this are a great idea. Their value increases the more they are inclusive of relevant sources, and the better they are organized, preferably by multiple/sortable criteria. I think Wikipedia is more than capable of handling these internally rather than scuttling them off to WikiBooks or elsewhere. They should not be lumped in with articles, because they are not articles, they are aids to writing and expanding articles. DGG's suggestion to make them subpages is probably the most sensible; this particular article would then be moved to Bacteriophage/Bibliography, and then a link to that subpage should then appear in the Bacteriophage article itself, perhaps under a further reading section. I really don't see any drawbacks to this; how would subpages be problematic? Postdlf (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

My only concern with enabling article subpages permanently is the proliferation of such subpages. The creation of a bibliography space can be easily regulated by appropriate guidelines. If users are able to create subpages of articles, however, it could easily be used to pass off a lot of non-encyclopaedic information in the article space. Neelix (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Can't the software be patched to provide creation of a subpage called "Bibliography" only? --Cycl^opia - ^talk 22:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Bibliographies of works whose inclusion criteria is authorship by certain people/organizations (e.g. Bibliography of Ayn Rand) are fine. It is extremely and objectively clear what belongs and what does not. But bibliographies of books merely about or related to a topic are problematic for several reasons:

• Listcruft & Indiscriminateness - Essentially, editors will, in good faith, add their pet works to the list of works in a bibliography, and since stand-alone bibliography articles aren't trafficked/watched by many, this process often continues until the list is of inordinate length and arguably becomes indiscriminate. The sheer length of some bibliographies makes it questionable whether any or what criteria were applied (i.e. how can these sources be considered "select" when there are so darn many of them?). Which leads into the next problem:
• Original Research - On articles, bibliographies are "Further reading" sections and are typically kept short as they don't duplicate the References or Notes sections and regular article-articles have much more traffic and questionable additions much more likely to be scrutinized. Without these moderating effects, the lists become too long and their content becomes somewhat arbitrary original research (i.e. why book A and not book B?). This could be dealt with in certain cases by citing books that are themselves bibliographies on the topic (yes, such books exist), but then we'd be more or less reproducing primary sources, and that's what Wikisource is for, not Wikipedia; equivalently, why not instead direct people to said bibliography-book rather than duplicating it on Wikipedia?
• External links - It is well-known that Wikipedia is not collections of external links; if one construes "external links" broadly to mean pointers to external works, then that's all a stand-alone bibliography article is.
• Directories - Wikipedia is not a directory, and to me a bibliography is a directory of related reading materials.

Wikipedia is not the Dewey Decimal System, it's not here to list books by topic. Non-authorial bibliographies are not appropriate. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the concerns above. More entries added to a bibliography, if related (obviously) and properly organized, the better. WP:NOTLINK and WP:NOTDIR should be put a bit aside in this case, because the scope of a bibliography is strictly encyclopedic and related to articles/article subjects -these guidelines are born to exclude other kinds of things. I don't understand what OR problem can possibly arise -how can be elencating books and articles being considered "OR"? --Cycl^opia - ^talk 09:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree some of my concerns are more practical ones than philosophical ones and could be fixed with enough active editing, but original research / POV is the main problem: how is it consistently, objectively, and non-arbitrarily decided which works to include and which to exclude from bibliographies of "selected" works? --Cybercobra (talk) 22:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Why should they be "selected"? Why can't we just include as much material as possible, so to present the most comprehensive bibliographic coverage possible? I agree however a problem remains, because of course some "major" sources have to be selected and presented as such to avoid needle-in-a-haystack problem. For scientific academic articles, one can look at the number of citations or use review on top journals; not sure how does it work about books and non-scientific stuff however. --Cycl^opia - ^talk 00:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I say "selected" (i.e. non-exhaustive) because that's at least what I personally commonly think of as a bibliography, and I think the authors of many of our bibliography articles are of the same understanding, looking at some of the articles. Also, an exhaustive listing seems a bit contrary to the summary style of encyclopedias. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:35, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that Wikipedia policy already allows for bibliographies as a form of list (see Wikipedia:Lists). As long as the bibliography conforms to the style guidelines given there, and I think that would answer most of the objections given here, there shouldn't be a problem with them.--RDBury (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with RDBury. However, it seems like this article should be moved to List of bacteriophage monographs, or Bibliography of bacteriophage monographs, that it should be changed to normal chronological order or to alphabetical order by author, and that the editorial comments should be deleted or merged into a paragraph on selection criteria. Rather than being on a subpage, it should just be linked to with a See also template from a brief Bibliography section in the article (which could identify seminal or otherwise important works, if references for such claims can be provided) or from another appropriate section. I've added this to Category:Lists of publications in science.--Hjal (talk) 06:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Cyclopia that WP:NOTLINK and WP:NOTDIR should not be construed to apply to subpages or a bibliography space. The information cannot stay in the article space, however. WP:NOTLINK and WP:NOTDIR are in full force in all articles and lists no matter what their title happens to be. Cybercobra's concern of indiscriminateness is a valid one in the article space, and Cybercobra's assertion that only bibliographies of particular authors are appropriate there is one that should be upheld. Neelix (talk) 14:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you RDBury for that policy link, it is very helpful to the discussion. I agree that it establishes clearly that there is no overal exclusion of bibliographies from article space. Where it falls short is that it does not clearly address the question of which types of bibliography are acceptable. It seems clear now that exhaustive (e.g. Library of Congress Catalogue) or enumerative bibliographies (e.g. all works on a topic or all by a specific writer) would be ok, but it is not clear to me how any annotated or selected bibliographies could be kept clear of selection bias and original research except by resort to a WP:RS to back the decision to include each entry and its descriptive annotation. Consequently we may need either a decision to loosen our standards in regard of WP:NPOV for such content or else to exclude it from articlespace. Neither option is very tasty. Is there a better way? LeadSongDog come howl 21:30, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me the unsourced non-author bibliographies may be better transwikied to a new wiki; start "WikiBib" or propose it on Meta. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

From what I understand, it is extremely unlikely that the WMF will approve of starting any new types of Wikis in the immediate future--this can be suggested I think for strategic planning, but I think we want something that could be done this year, not a year from now. (I would, btw, oppose any further splitting of projects & I think we should rather think of consolidating). The reason I suggested subpages is that we do have an model, which is Citizendium-- for some simple examples on their equivalent of FAs, see [2] or [3]; for longer ones, [ttp://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Chiropractic/Bibliography], [4], or [5] ; we could by the way simply copy this page to [6], since the licenses are compatible--compare their guidelines at [7] -- I see they do not in general intend to have comprehensive bibliographies. DGG ( talk ) 23:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd disfavor the subpage idea, it's rather contrary to current rules: WP:Subpages#Disallowed uses: "Using subpages for permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopedia." --Cybercobra (talk) 23:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that we cannot interpret the guideline RDBury quoted to contradict guidelines about what Wikipedia is not. The "List" guidelines make an allowance for bibliography pages in the article space, but aren't very specific about what kinds of bibliographies are appropriate for such pages. Since other guidelines make it clear that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information nor is it a directory or a collection of external links, we cannot take the ambiguity of the guideline about bibliographies in the article space to mean that all types of bibliographies are appropriate there. As far as I can tell, the only kind of bibliography that does not contradict what Wikipedia is not is a bibliography of a particular author. Neelix (talk) 01:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Right, since they're essentially just spin-offs from the author's article. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC) Rather stupid comment stricken upon rereading and reflection. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:21, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't this list be just the same, if it was a spin-off from the Bibliography or Additional reading section of Bacteriophage? It seems like either an open-ended or comprehensive bibiography like this would be a suitable list, as long as it wasn't too long. For a topic with more than 70K worth of citations, somebody would have to get out their knife and whittle it down to a "list of important works" or annotated bibliography, with appropriate RSs. Lists are good places for encyclopedic content that isn't individually notable or suitable for a stand-alone article.--Hjal (talk) 04:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It's been nearly two full days since there has been any development in this discussion. I believe that the issue of bibliography articles is an important one to resolve, so I don't want this to end with a declaration of no concensus like the AfD discussion. A lot has been said, but I don't think a reviewing administrator is going to get a clear sense of what the prevailing impressions are about what should be done. For this reason, I'm asking that people make their stances explicit; I don't want this issue to fade into limbo. Here are the options that have been put forward:

1. Keep all types of bibliography pages in the article space - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are valid as articles or lists and should be kept in the article space.
2. Move bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to subpages of the appropriate articles - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content to keep in the article space, but would be helpful to users for primary source information and should be located where any user can easily find them (ie. on subpages).
3. Move bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to a new bibliography space - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content to keep anywhere that random users are likely to look, but would be useful for editors in the creation of articles if moved to a bibliography space.
4. Move to bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to a sister project - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content and therefore have no place on Wikipedia, however the information would be acceptable on another project (possibly Wikibooks).
5. Delete bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography do not constitute appropriate content for any of the Wikimedia projects and should simply be removed.

For visibility, it might be best to start comments in support of one of the above options with one of the following corresponding breviations: Keep all, Move to sub, Move to space, Move to sister, or Delete. Of course, feel free to make alternate suggestions if I have left out any possible options. Neelix (talk) 17:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Continued discussion

I've refactored Neelix' above post from 17:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC) in order to start off individual entry subsections below.LeadSongDog come howl 18:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep all

• Keep all types of bibliography pages in the article space - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are valid as articles or lists and should be kept in the article space.
  • Observation: All three examples fall are lists by topic without annotation, and are extensive but not all-inclusive. Any discussions on what to include or exclude would have to reside on their respective talkpages.LeadSongDog come howl 20:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose See above, previous post for reasoning. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Concur All bibliographies are valuable, relevant parts of WP, as are etymologies and discographies. The WP:LIST guidelines allow bibliographiies as list of books on a relevant subject, not just authors-A Bibliography page presents a list of relevant books, journal or other references for a subject area. This discussion, if it continues should take place there, not here on a single article. This is a slippery slope.--Mike Cline (talk) 10:09, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Note I have left a notification of this discussion on the talk page of WP:Lists. Neelix (talk) 12:59, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose For the reasons given in the previous discussion. Neelix (talk) 14:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose per previous reasons and WP:NOT. Verbal chat 13:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep some

• Where there is a definitive scholarly purpose. Apparatus pages are useful, where they reside is detail. See also glossaries, indices, categories etc. For example a bibliography of facsimiles of Cotton Ms would be useful, an indiscriminate bibliography of books about John Lennon less so. Rich Farmbrough, 21:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC).
  • Concur - Bibliographies grouping literary sources for reasons other than subject matter are often encyclopaedic. Bibliographies of a particular author, bibliographies of a particular historical handpress, and bibliographies of a particular book collector's collection all fall into this category. Neelix (talk) 17:01, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support if Neelix's interpretation of this option is correct. --Cybercobra (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Move to sub

• Move bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to subpages of the appropriate articles - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content to keep in the article space, but would be helpful to users for primary source information and should be located where any user can easily find them (ie. on subpages).
  • Sub pages of what? Sub-pages are not permitted in article space. They were once; but that facility was deliberately withdrawn some time ago. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:Subpages#Disallowed uses --Cybercobra (talk) 21:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Move to space

• Move bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to a new bibliography space - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content to keep anywhere that random users are likely to look, but would be useful for editors in the creation of articles if moved to a bibliography space.
  • observation: This is similar in concept to how {{cite doi}} uses subpages in template space for bibliographic data on journal citations orgainized by [[[DOI]], creating transcludable templates for each citation. It's a clever technical answer, but by keeping it in template space, I believe it has been doomed to fail. That space really shouldn't be full of data. A separate data space would be much cleaner. LeadSongDog come howl 20:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Trim & merge into related articles

• Merge topical (non-author-specific) bibliography pages into their respective parent articles on the same topic - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content as their own independent articles, but would be helpful to users for primary source information and should be located where any user can easily find them (i.e. on the articles for that topic as "Further reading" sections). Some trimming would be necessary to keep the resulting new sections from overwhelming the articles. Works specific to sub-topics would be moved to the respective articles (if they exist), rather than the most main/general article on the topic.
  • Propose as a more moderate option that has been previously pursued with a fair amount of success. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Thematic bibliographies are not specific to one detailled topic. An entry in List of books on World War I is not just of interest in World War I but also in many articles on combatant units and on specific places, campaigns, leaders, or battles. LeadSongDog come howl 19:44, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Move to sister

• Move to bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) to a sister project - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography are not valid encyclopaedic content and therefore have no place on Wikipedia, however the information would be acceptable on another project (possibly Wikibooks).

Delete

• Delete bibliography pages (other than author-specific bibliographies) - Pages like Phage monographs, Bibliography of the War in Darfur, and Irish Railway bibliography do not constitute appropriate content for any of the Wikimedia projects and should simply be removed.

Alert: lists of publications in Articles for deletion

Some lists of books have been added to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. You can find the discussions here. RockMagnetist (talk) 22:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)