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 /info/en/?search=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/?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