Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 188

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Should the format of ISBNs be standardized (or be subject to a rule to not change format without consensus)?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

We have an ongoing problem that ISBNs are not subject to a formatting standard here, with the predictable result that different editors are going around normalizing them to one format and then again to another, at cross-purposes to each other, and without a clear consensus for any particular format. This is apt to continue unabated unless we settle on one format (or on a new rule to not change the format without consensus). Someone has created a {{Format ISBN}} template that forces hyphens into ISBNs, and AnomieBOT then goes around substituting this template, which makes undiscussed changes to the format difficult to undo (any intervening edits may necessitate tediously removing every hyphen from every ISBN manually since the edits to insert them can't be reverted without also reverting unrelated changes by other editors). A similar complaint could be made about manually going around and changing all ISBNs in random articles to use the hyphen-less format.

Background

ISBNs are often divided up by hyphens (or spaces), e.g. 978-1-7238-1802-8 or 978-1723818028 or 978 1 7238 1802 8, but this is not standardized and is entirely optional; the more concise form 9781723818028 is perfectly valid. From our

1. Option 1: Standardize on 9781723818028 format, and change {{Format ISBN}} to use it.
2. Option 2: Standardize on 978-1-7238-1802-8 format, and do nothing to {{Format ISBN}}.
3. Option 3: Standardize on 978-1723818028 format, and change {{Format ISBN}} to use it (this would have no effect on the short ISBN-10 format, only ISBN-13).
4. Option 4: Standardize on 978 1 7238 1802 8 format, and change {{Format ISBN}} to use it.
5. Option 5: Standardize on nothing; change {{Format ISBN}} to have parameter options for each of these formats; and add an instruction (probably at
   WP:CITE
   ) to use a single format consistently in any given article, but not change from one consistent format to another without consensus (maybe shortcut this as MOS:ISBNVAR).

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Summary of known arguments

Feel free to add more.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

For concision:

• Hyphen-less (and space-less) ISBNs offer much more utility to the reader: a Google search on ISBN 9781723818028 immediately produces a wealth of useful results [4], but very often a search on the hyphenated form, ISBN 978-1-7238-1802-8, does not [5]; same with spaced format [6] (in both cases, often just a
  circular link back to one or more Wikipedia articles using that string). Not quotation-marking the spaced format yields wildly wrong false-positives [7]. The one-hyphen format may produce some very minimal correct results [8], but they have more to do with shopping than with finding a source in bibliographic databases, libraries, free-text archives, etc. Doing such a search is faster and easier than trying to use WP's built-in Special:BookSources/9781723818028
  functionality, so readers will do it.

  Counter-argument: search engine behavior changes over time for reasons we don't know and have no control over, so optimizing to that target is a fool's errand; the built-in functionality relies on the same click-to-learn-more interface that the rest of the encyclopedia does, so readers will do it.

  Furthermore, Google does not consistently prefer the unhyphenated form. A GBooks search for ISBN 978-1-137-43098-4 brings up the correct result [9], while ISBN 9781137430984 does not [10]. A Google web search for the same ISBN gives better results for the hyphenated than the unhyphenated form [11][12]. Our policies should not be based on our predictions of what Google will do.

  Rebuttal: A test of this did not prove true; both searches brought up Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, c.1100–1500 by Kathryn Hurlock, and the version without hyphens brought up more [correct] results than the version with them.

  Google searches with and without hyphenation create different results -- some overlapping, some unique. A person pasting the hyphenated version can easily create the non-hyphenated version to search as well. The converse is not true - it is not a trivial effort to create the hyphenated version from the non-hyphenated one. The example chosen above is poor; when searching for a hyphenated ISBN, one should not include the term "ISBN" in the search as false positives for the hyphenated version are unlikely and ones that display the ISBN without the term "ISBN" are common. (For example, this search for a 10-digit hyphenated ISBN without the word ISBN produces 8 web results, all on point; the same search with ISBN included in the search produces only three.) The example hyphenless search posted above is claimed to generate "a wealth of useful results:" in contrast to one which generates results that "have more to do with shopping than with finding a source in bibliographic databases, libraries, free-text archives"... when the hyphenless one also generates zero "bibliographic databases, libraries, free-text archives" but almost solely results to do with shopping (the exceptions being one blog and a Wikipedia page where it is used as a source). This result is unsurprising, as the book used as an example is a thin volume published using Amazon's self-publishing tools.

• The hyphens (or spaces) are extraneous and less concise. None of our tools (e.g. {{ISBN}}, and the |isbn= parameter of citation templates, and the Special:BookSources system they use, etc.) need them, and ISBN usage in independent sources demonstrates no widely accepted standard for how to do it.

  Counter-argument: Not every kind of concision is best for our end readers, and the fully hyphenated form is common enough on book colophons that we should adopt it, especially since International ISBN Agency advises it.

For hyphens:

• A hyphenated form is easier to read.

  Counter-argument: ISBNs are not encyclopedic content in the usual sense but functional identifiers; only under unusual circumstances would a reader of our article have a need to type or read one aloud character-by-character like reciting one's phone number, while the hyphenless form provably produces better utility. And there is no single hyphenated form, but conflicting ones.

  Counter-counter-argument: Checking whether the book that one is reading is the same book cited in an article is not an "unusual circumstance".

• We already have a template, {{Format ISBN}}, that is normalizing these to a hyphenated format.

  Counter-argument: The fact that someone created a template doesn't indicate community consensus that it is doing the right thing and should be "enforced". This doesn't seem to have end-user utility or other encyclopedic purpose.

• Both the hyphenated and spaced formats convey a bit of extra information for those who are ISBN aware. For example, the early digits indicate the country. The length of the last segment before the checksum strongly suggests information about the size of the publisher. For example, if that segment is two digits long, it means the publisher is buying their ISBNs in blocks of 100, so probably not a simple self-publisher who will buy them in 1s or 10s, but a very small publisher.

For spaces:

• It's another way to make an ISBN more readable.

  Counter-argument: See above about "readable", and using spaces makes it more difficult to recognize as a single identifier. Also poor searchability.

For no standard:

• We don't need to standardize something like this, and should just leave everything to editorial consensus on a page-by-page basis.

  Counter-argument: We need to, and do, standardize many things (especially when it comes to

  numeric formatting

  ), both for consistent presentation to the reader and for ending editorial conflict, which is happening on this matter.

Survey (ISBNs)

• Option 1, both for utility to the end reader and for concision. Fall back to option 5 as a second choice. I'm strongly opposed to all of 2–4 because they are inimical to actual usability, and are an inappropriate attempt to force the preferences of a third-party organization (either Intl. ISBN Agency or Amazon), that the real world has not adopted, onto to Wikipedia. There is simply no question that [13] is a better result for readers than [14] or [15] or [16] or the wildly wrong [17] (brings up incorrect books). And none of our tools require any hypenation or spaces in ISBNs (even if one did, it could be fixed easily). If someone copy-pastes in an ISBN in one of the other formats, it's a trivial matter for a bot to clean it up later. Settling on the no-hyphens-no-spaces format in no way would impose a requirement on any particular editor to input it in that form. It's the same situation as someone pasting in <ref>https://BareURL.com/here</ref> – we tolerate it and clean it up later. (Remember that no editor is actually expected to read any of our MOS:NUM, WP:CITE, or other guidelines before editing here, just comply with
  core content policies.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢
   😼  07:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 clearly the best option, as pointed out a large amount of organisations don't use hyphens, especially Worldcat, Trove and most libraries. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:19, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Uncertain about hyphens, but object to spaces. "Hard to recognize as a single identifier" and "poorest searchability" are each critical problems. And if it line-wraps, the former of them becomes even worse. DMacks (talk) 07:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 as it makes it easier to use in other applications. Also as there is no accepted standard, it makes sense to avoid using hyphens (and especially spaces!!) and only use the actual numbers --Ita140188 (talk) 08:42, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 for useability – see reasons given above about being easier to search for and the number remaining as a single coherent element rather than breaking across multiple lines. Also, if we required the spaces or hyphens, I expect people would end up putting them in incorrectly, which would be even worse. Mgp28 (talk) 09:30, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 for blatantly obvious reasons. There seems to be a problem with ISBNs almost all the time. I routinely see book citations with the warning "isbn= value: invalid character," despite the fact that, upon checking out the book's details, we see the ISBN number correctly copied. -The Gnome (talk) 10:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  (Side note: whenever you see that, try checking if someone automatically replaced the hyphens with en-dashes (e.g. Special:Diff/1178112453).) 2603:8001:4542:28FB:69D3:61CF:7C25:A2F8 (talk) 01:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC) (Please send talk messages here instead)

• Option 5 but without the need to change the format ISBN template. This is a tempest in a teacup and frankly a waste of time to set a formal policy on this. Just because a couple of editors have run into a disagreement doesn't mean we need to standardize anything. Ealdgyth (talk) 11:39, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 Add an explicit mention of ISBN to CITEVAR and block editors who edit war other it or perform mass changes. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:41, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  There's no real need to change {{format ISBN}}. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:44, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• Option 1: KISS principle applies. I think Wikipedia looks more credible when it is consistent, both within and between articles. I appreciate how nice some people find it to work in a world where they have all options and no limits, but this is a small change that will make things easier for editors and readers. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:15, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1, there are external tools which allow you to add hyphens automatically if you really want to. Any standard is better than none, however, to facilitate looking up book citations Mach61 (talk) 13:07, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 and endorse ActivelyDisinterested's recommendation to Add an explicit mention of ISBN to CITEVAR and block editors who edit war other it or perform mass changes. Indeed I would extend this to blocking everyone who edit wars or makes mass changes (without explicit prior community consensus) related to any manual of style matters - such behaviour actively hinders the improvement of the encyclopaedia. Any option here other than option 5 is implicitly endorsing the uncollegiate behaviour that brought us here and encourages more time wasting about trivialities. Thryduulf (talk) 13:57, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  I understand your frustration with mass-change style-warriors (and just took one to ANI a few days ago), but you seem to not address the evidence that one of these formats is demonstrably more utile for the end reader (for a common use case of Googling for what we said the ISBN is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:43, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• Option 1 or 2 - basically either no hyphens (or spaces) or all hyphens. My preference is for 1. Lack of spaces and hyphens is more search friendly, and while hyphenated may be easier to read, when you are caring about the ISBN other than doing research/searching for it. Its an identifier, not a descriptive piece of prose. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:59, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 The hyphens create information for those who know, and as we generate search links for ISBNs, we've addressed the search problem. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:57, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  A search problem is solved, but another is not, as I've clearly demonstrated. How does "creating [the] information" someone somewhere might know, aid anyone in finding the source, which is the sole function of our citations (or case of us providing an ISBN)? WP is not a database of bibliographic trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:49, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree with your evaluation that "finding the source" is the sole function of our citations. During my editing I have found myself all the time looking at citations and using the information there to know whether spending extra attention on it may be worth my while for improving an article. Some of these are pretty obvious - if I see a citation from the New York Times, I'm less likely to think that I'd better check that than if it comes from something called the Fight For Our Truths Newsletter. A citation to a science publication's 1920 edition is going to need checking and probable removal in a way that one to a 2020 edition is less likely to. I may know nothing about the University of Worcestershire Press, but if they purchased a one-digit block of ISBNs, that will more likely have me digging into the question of whether this is a legitimate scholarly press than if they had a three-digit block. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  So, because probably the only WP editor in the entire world who would recognize and use that information finds it personally convenient to have hyphens in there to make that determination a little easier, all the other users who are copy-pasting ISBNs to use them for actual source finding (which, yes, really is the purpose of our citations, per

  WP:V) should have their utility impeded?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

   😼  10:45, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  So far, you're "the only WP editor in the entire world" I've seen actually complain about the search ability, rather than discuss it in the abstract. You also seem to be quite hostile to people who have different knowledge or experiences making comments, so perhaps it was not wise for you to open up a "Request for Comment". Were you under the illusion that I had not read your earlier comments about searching even though I had reflected that in my comments, or are you just trying to bully me into agreeing with you? Or was the sole point of this to slide your claim of "sole function" before and pretend you'd said "purpose"? (For those who may wonder the difference: the purpose of a screwdriver is to turn screws, but if I also use it to open pistachios, then screwdriving is not its sole function; it is functional in other ways as well.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• 5 and don't change the template, per AD and Ealdgyth above. Second choice, 2 per Nat above. Also, hats off for the most un-neutral presentation of an RfC I've seen in a long time, where in the "summary of arguments," counter arguments are presented for every option except OP's preferred Option 1. I have not seen anyone try to prime the pump like this before. At least the RfC question is brief and neutral! 😂 Levivich (talk) 15:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  One of the arguments for that option doesn't have a counter, and everyone's invited to add one, and I literally can't think of one that wouldn't sound like some kind of parody/mockery of someone trying to make such an argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:49, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  You could just search by title, it doesn't have any of the issues searching by ISBN does, or you could search with the isbn special word.[18]. Both of these are more likely to return results on rare books. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  Nah. Lots of works have the same title, and lots of works are published in very different editions, while we are citing a specific one, and it is the one that the reader needs to find. And nearly zero of our readers know anything about a Google "special word" (meanwhile that is Google-specific, and the searchability issues with ISBNs actually apply across other major search engines).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  There may be more than one book that it is fine to find, as there are many books these days where a paperback and a hardcover have the guts printed at the same time, including listing both ISBNs on those pages; it is only on the cover where only the separate edition ISBN shows up, and any reference to interior material on the paperback edition also works for the hardcover edition, and vice versa. On the other hand, you can have two copies of a book that have the same ISBN but are different printings, and the newer one may have had errors corrected, so that creates verification problems; someone checking the first printing of that ISBN may not find the statement as claimed, someone checking a later edition with a different ISBN might be able to verify it just fine. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. It doesn't matter that some other source than the one the claim-making editor used might also be usable to verify the claim. The purpose of our citations is saying where exactly the claim came from and providing sufficient information to verify it with the exact work that is said to be the source for that claim.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

   😼  07:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 – I'm biased because I wrote the current version of {{Format ISBN}} so of course I prefer option 2. I prefer hyphenated ISBNs because at a glance they look like ISBNs ; otherwise they are just big-damn-numbers that require inspection. —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Preference for Option 2 or Option 5, because otherwise they just look like lengthy numbers when in option 1 format. Looks less high-quality that way. Would also like to see evidence of the strength of the edit conflicts that prompted this RfC. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 and enforce "Where more than one style or format is acceptable under the MoS, one should be used consistently within an article and should not be changed without good reason." (From the lead to the MoS.) Especially re the bot. We manage to do this with a host of issues, from US v British English to serial commas, I don't see why ISBNs should be an exception. (Nor why they should be jammed into one particular house style, seems pretty unWikipedian to me.) Gog the Mild (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  Just for clarification, the bot isn't doing anything. Anomiebot is just substituting templates, which it does for any template setup to substitute. The change has to have been made by a normal editor. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:06, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• Option 5 I don't think this needs to be standardized, although I personally prefer and use the hyphenated format. (t · c) buidhe 16:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 - most reliable format for searches. Glendoremus (talk) 18:01, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 as most flexible for both their reader and writer. Also with note to block the Citation Bot from FA pages, which it consistently edits despite WP:FAOWN and WP:CITEVAR explicitly advocating against this. Suggest proactive policing as to whether certain individuals fire up the bot even when NOBOTS is present, in gross violation of P&G. Serial 18:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 without single format instruction. I have always followed Template:Cite book "Use the ISBN actually printed on or in the book", which may or may not be hyphenated. We should be going by how the book publisher presents ISBNs, not databases. If it doesn't show up in as many search results that's not our problem. I am not convinced that readers are unable to change formatting themselves if they happen to need different search results. I don't see why it matters if some are hyphenated or not. Some DOIs are very extensive and others are short. Other identifiers differ, so too can ISBNs. Heartfox (talk) 18:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5. If necessary change the gadget(s) that format ISBNs to enable them to allow click through to the various tools mentioned; it is definitely not a good idea for these formats to be mass-changed. ISBNVAR seems worthwhile; it's a pity we need it but having it would be better than mass edits to fix this. This simply doesn't need to be made consistent everywhere. The arguments against 5 given above are consistent presentation to the reader -- few readers will care, and fewer of those will agree on what the right format is; and ending editorial conflict, which ISBNVAR would achieve. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  Adding a note to say that I read option 5 as "no change" but if there's a substantive difference and "no change" gains consensus then my !vote can be read as a support for either. And either creating an ISBNVAR or clarifying that CITEVAR includes ISBNs would also be good. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 - Usually the way it appears in the sources, and easier to proof read. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:28, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 5. 1 is the most efficient. 5 is the most accommodating. Senorangel (talk) 03:28, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 – Those who omit the hyphens are doing so out of convenience or laziness — which I get, we all have busy lives, but that's what bots are for. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:02, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  It's not "lazy" to want opaque numeric identifiers to waste as little space as possible. –jacobolus (t) 18:27, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  I don't believe that's a valid argument. There is no reason to "save space" on Wikipedia — this isn't AP style, where newspapers have to save space as much as possible because of their limited space. Hyphens are the proper formatting and make the long string of numbers easier to read. InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  ISBNs are, to the vast majority of readers, an opaque numerical identifier without personally meaningful structure. Readers are not memorizing these numbers, writing them in their journals, or reciting them over the phone. They are clicking links or copy/pasting them from one computer system to another.

  Most of the time I personally would rather leave the ISBNs out altogether. I find them usually to be less useful than the author + title for looking up books, and they add quite a lot of noisy clutter to citations. But I recognize that some editors seem to really love ISBNs. The least we can do is make them as compact as possible. –jacobolus (t) 20:18, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  I suspect that a fair portion of the people who are actually using ISBNs from references are doing so in a way that the number is not going to be just copied and pasted. While certainly plenty of people get books from online sources, others go to their local bookstore or ask for it from their local library, perhaps as an interlibrary loan... and in those cases, it seems unlikely to me that they would be saying "go to Wikipedia and copy and paste from there", but bringing along a printout. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:12, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  Have you personally done this? Do you know someone who does this? Speaking only for myself, I don't know of anyone who has ever done this. The last time I can imagine someone taking a printout to the library to look up a book there was about 1998, and it wouldn't have been by ISBN. –jacobolus (t) 04:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I have personally printed out book information including ISBN and taken it to the library (not for finding the book on their shelves, but for requesting an interlibrary loan) and to the local bookstore requesting a book be special-ordered. I live a life beyond your imagination. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:16, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  If we best want to help folks taking citations to their local public library though, it would probably be more useful to add Dewey Decimal numbers instead of hyphenating the ISBNs. –jacobolus (t) 04:49, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• Eliminate Option 4 (spaces) as an acceptable format on Wikipedia, for the many disadvantages cited, including parsing and copy/paste searches. I prefer hyphens, as they are more readable especially when looking for errors, but can live without them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:29, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  I agree. Whether hyphenated or not, option 4 should not be supported on Wikipedia except as a target for cleaning. Izno (talk) 18:54, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Follow the current guidance (not offered as an option above): hyphens are optional but preferred, and should not be removed if correctly placed. Bots use and help maintain WP, but our primary concern is human readers and editors, and chunking is useful for humans. Kanguole 09:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  +1 for this. Just noticed it now. Justifying what I also understand as the current guidelines is basically what I've tried to verbosely communicate in my other comments. Thx. Salpynx (talk) 01:44, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Eliminate the 'Format ISBN' template – Using this template, especially within other citation templates, is a huge eyesore. If ISBNs need any kind of formatting it should be done automatically by the {{ISBN}} template or CS1 / CS2 templates (similar to the way they automatically standardize date formats). Personally I'd prefer the version without hyphens but this really doesn't matter. user:Trappist the monk has started disruptively littering these templates all over the place, and they should be told to stop. –jacobolus (t) 18:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  Update: I misunderstood. Apparently there's a cleanup bot that comes and converts use of the template to just the digits with hyphens. These still seem like distracting bikeshedding edits in violation of

  WP:CITEVAR (now twice as many), but thankfully at least the template name doesn't stick around. –jacobolus (t)

  23:30, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 - If a book lists its ISBN with hyphens, it would be really annoying to have a bot come through and remove them. The hyphenated number is recognizable as an ISBN and adds a layer of meaning that would be lost. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:28, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1. The single long digit string is easier to select (via double click on a desktop UI or by tap-and-hold on a touch UI). Searching works better with this option. Select-copy-paste-search seems like by far the most common thing users will be doing with an ISBN. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 Although I think the terminology of the survey is misleading. I don't think 9781723818028 is wrong at all, but 978-1-7238-1802-8 is better. I find the hyphenation meaningful and frequently helpful when editing, as do others. Both are ISBNs according to the ISBN standard. Wikipedia doesn't need to invent an ISBN standard -- there is one and many editors seem able to work with it. We don't need to oversimplify reality. It's not that complicated. I do have a personal opinion/preference that we shouldn't use spaces because of the practical concern already mentioned "more difficult to recognize as a single identifier", which just seems practical for Wikipedia, but is anyone really suggesting that? The consistency argument just seems wrong to me. It's like arguing we need capitalization standards for personal names, and seriously suggesting all-lowercase would solve potential confusion. To capture the variable information available a better analogy would be publication date specification and insisting either everything on Wikipedia needs full year-month-day, or everything should have month and day stripped for "consistency". I do not understand why anyone seriously thinks correctly hyphenated ISBNs are a problem. (and I thought ISBN edit warring had settled down) Salpynx (talk) 21:15, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Options 2 or 5 I like the hyphens visible as I know how the digits are encoded by the hyphens. I often get nothing when trying to get the autofill function in the cite book template to work and have to fill in the the fields manually because the ISBN isn't recognized for some reason and the hyphens help me to ensure that I've transcribed them properly. We're not paper and I'm entirely unmoved by the argument that the hyphens consume precious space and typing time in the templates.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5. Standardise nothing; permit editorial discretion.
  I can't remember which publishers are which way, but I have definitely both needed to hyphenate an unhyphenated ISBN and separately to dehyphenate a hyphenated ISBN for different publisher's search queries.
  Personally, I copypaste whatever format is on the publisher's landing page, or type in whatever is on the copyright page of a physical book.
  I'm probably biased because I don't think I've ever noticed whether an ISBN in a citation is hyphenated or not (I'm just glad to see them), and have never thought to standardize their formatting even in one article, even if I've personally added all the book citations. Folly Mox (talk) 02:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Options 4 and 2 in that order. Having grouping is the point; it intuitively identifies what is or isn't an ISBN. Spaces should always be preferred to hyphens, commas, and all other grouping characters. Ifly6 (talk) 02:41, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• ISBNs used to be fundamental to the markup, many years ago, and spaces didn't work then. For historical compatibility, and the fact that spaces break word selection, rule out any option that includes spaces. Other than that, on balance I'd lean towards what all of the other WWW sites mentioned are doing. It's the 21st century. We don't punctuate our ISBNs now, just as many of us don't punctuate our telephone numbers in our mobile 'phones now. Yes, there are house style guides for paper publishers that say "use hyphens". It seems like a step backwards to copy them when we started off Wikipedia by keeping up with modern non-paper WWW conventions. That said, we should be easygoing if an editor uses the old paper-style hyphens. The hyphen style should be acceptable, just recognized as not what the WWW has largely settled on. Uncle G (talk) 03:13, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5/status quo. This is a tea-cup storm. Let's not make it harder to use templates for those with editing issues and make countless pointless bot edits to clutter watchlists and edit histories. For clarity, I don't support the idea of standardising ISBNs even within a given article; it just seems like pointless make-work. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:27, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1; failing that: Option 5. We see that lots of sites with information about books use the compact form, with no loss in utility as an identifier. This actual use across the web is much more persuasive than what a standards body has said it wants. Introducing hyphens or spaces introduces more possibility for error (like the example where endashes created an error) and harder detection of error. Confirming that a string consists of 978 and then ten more digits is one of the simplest regular expressions you can make; (verifying the check digit is more complex but has to be done whatever format the ISBN is given in.) MartinPoulter (talk) 14:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 for consistency with the way we as a project handle other issues of this type. Me, I like hyphens. I think they make a bibliography look more cyberpunk.
  talk
  ) 14:34, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 or, failing that Option 5. Practice elsewhere and ease-of-use argument favour option 1. Ease-of-reading arguments against this have some merit, but don't make a particularly compelling argument in favour of any particular hyphenated/spaced option - so option 5 second-choice. But to me, ISBNs have limited utility as human-readable information, and are much more valuable as machine-readable tags, which favours option 1.
  Charlie A. (talk
  ) 15:43, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 for usability and concision. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:16, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 as first choice. Option 5 as a second choice (although I do not like to see spaces). I do think consistency is important here. --Enos733 (talk) 16:53, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 Consistently inconsistent. Leave it up to personal preference/local consensus so long as it is consistent within the article. Curbon7 (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 – Unequivocally the highest utility option. Will begrudgingly support Option 5 if consensus for Option 1 does not eventuate. 5225_C (talk • contributions) 12:14, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 5 - per Sturmvogel 66. I'm not impressed by the arguments for either conciseness or consistency, and I find the spaceless version (as mandated by option 1) to be less usable. — Charles Stewart (talk) 21:52, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  "Less usable" in what way? What's an example use case in which the hyphenated form demonstrably has better usability (which is not the same as or even closely related to subjective aesthetics)?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:56, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 5 per
  WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk
  ) 22:33, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree that that's applicable.; users still won't have to change their behavior or read any new rules if one of options 1-4 passes. Mach61 (talk) 05:29, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

  If 1-4 won't have any effect then I'm not seeing the point of them. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Status quo per Kanguole: hyphens are optional but preferred. No evidence has been presented that there is a problem here, except that some editors idiosyncratically prefer to copypaste ISBNs into a Google web search rather than use Special:BookSources. The advantages of hyphenenated ISBNs (viz. that they are human-readable, and that they convey useful information to those who know how to read them) outweigh the slight inconveniences suffered by those who are using them in unexpected ways.
  I second the argument by Salpynx below that the RFC is malformed; the question implies that there is no existing standard, which will naturally cause !voters to assume that Option 5 is the status quo (see for example the !votes by Mike Christie and Espresso Addict). In my opinion, every one of the options presented will cause more problems than simple enforcement of the existing guidelines. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
  ETA: if I have to pick an option, Option 2, but this is still a distant second to the status quo. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 07:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
  • FWIW my !vote for option 5 is not support for "hyphens are optional but preferred", it is support for "no option is preferred over any other". Thryduulf (talk) 12:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
• Preferably Option 2 which looks like an ISBN. I find Option 1 and Option 3 acceptable, but not 4, since it doesn't get the pros of 1 (searchability) or 2/3 (readability, usability). Option 5 is a reasonable improvement if no standard is adopted. MarioGom (talk) 17:23, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2: It's the official standard and it's much better for readability than just an unstructured string of 13 digits. If that fails to reach consensus, my second choice would be option 5 with options 1 (9781723818028), 2 (978-1-7238-1802-8), and 3 (978-1723818028) as supported variants. The use of spaces (option 4) seems to be rare and non-standard and I can't see any good reason to support it even as a variant. Gawaon (talk) 18:36, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1: It's cleaner in the wikitext, which is complex and messy. Templates can reformat with dashes during rendering. Second choice is #2. Third choice is #5. -- GreenC 02:00, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 (looks like an ISBN, and is more common), or, less preferably, option 1 (consistency above all), enforced by all relevant templates, and oppose option 5 which will lead to bikeshedding. People who argue that option 5 will prevent arguments are ignoring the fact that ISBN formatting will become inconsistent in an article over time, thus leading to arguments. This should be 'set & forget'; we have more important things to do. DFlhb (talk) 09:51, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  Citation styles and national language varieties do not generally lead to bikeshedding, I don't see why this would be any different? Thryduulf (talk) 10:44, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  It's not that rare for ENGVAR, but its clear benefits make up for that. Even one debate about ISBN format is one too many, when around 1% of readers interact with citations, and much fewer will interact with ISBNs.

  edit: the debates in this discussion give you a preview. Some have opinions about how all ISBNs should look. Others will argue for changing some ISBNs to reflect various search engines or the style used in the book. Option 5 guarantees these arguments will occur, whereas tyranny of the majority will save us all boatloads of time on an irrelevant matter. DFlhb (talk) 11:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC) edited 12:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 2 looks like the better choice, Option 1 is also acceptable. Having dashes makes it look more organized and easier to understand. The 🏎 Corvette 🏍 ZR1^{(The Garage)} 13:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 2 – Hyphens are used by the vast majority of sources, and they facilitate line breaks which is useful for multi-column footnote sections. Additionally, I would very much be opposed to mandating that the hyphens be removed (as in option 1). Graham (talk) 06:11, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  Are they? As pointed out in the proposal Worldcat, which is probably the biggest record of ISBN on the web doest use hyphens or spaces. My wife's latest read Rod The Autobiography doesn't, neither does my read by Jack Dee. And if you look at the back of books where the bar code is, they are only spaced as per the bar code. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  Quickly grabbing the four closest books, all of them from different publishers (DK, Andrews McMeel, Running Press, Center Street) and published in 2022 or later, all four of them have the ISBN with proper hyphens above the bar code. The Center Street one does not use hyphens on the copyright page, but the other three do. Pulling up an Amazon listing for the hardcover edition of Rod: the Autobiography. I see a picture of its back cover which does included the hyphenated version over the bar code (although there do seem to be multiple editions off hardback out there.) Finding a listing for the UK paperback edition on eBay, it does not use hyphens on the copyright page but does above the bar code. Searching "Jack Dee" on Amazon and pulling up the first result, then using the "read sample" version (which shows the ebook version), the copyright page there shows separated ISBNs, although using spaces (grrr) instead of hyphens. Pulling up a copy of that same Jack Dee book on eBay, I can see it uses hyphens above the bar code on the back cover. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  I find them hyphenated on copyright pages the vast majority of the time. Of course, the style used in bibliographic databases (such as WorldCat) might differ from that, and I might feel differently if we were discussing the style best used in a database. Graham (talk) 02:20, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

• Option 5 per the above arguments. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Status quo (not quite option 5). As with
  WP:LAME edit war or otherwise incidents that require individual sanctions). (Personally, I find that hyphens make a citation look more complete, and it's easier to remove them than to add them if you don't know where they go, but it's not such a big deal that I change from one to the other arbitrarily.) Oh, and this !vote applies to both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK
  ) 18:43, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Status quo / Option 5. But I disagree with the idea that even within an article there needs to be consistency. It doesn't matter. If one editor wants to have the hyphenless version and another uses hyphens, who cares. The rare times ISBNs get used, they're going to an ISBN lookup website, which should be able to handle any format. Furthermore, to the extent any format should be preferred, it should be the format read out of the book itself - which usually seems to be the hyphens format in my experience, so I'm surprised Option 1 is getting as much traction as it is. But basically whatever is written in the book itself is what should be used for any one citation, and if for some reason different books within the same article had different styles, then oh well. But really. This is
  WP:CREEP - it doesn't matter, let people contribute ISBNs however they like. SnowFire (talk
  ) 22:23, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Slight addendum: I might be okay with deprecating the 'spaces' format (i.e. Option 4), although that seems to be rare anyway. SnowFire (talk) 16:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
• Status quo /Option 5. For the reasons given by SnowFire and others. I don't see how forcing any change is going to improve Wikipedia. - Donald Albury 23:33, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1, easier to copy and transfer. Stifle (talk) 10:49, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• Status quo. I was ready to go all in on Option 2 as what I recall bibliographies using most often, but that is tempered by how WorldCat uses Option 1. I'm inclined to think that this isn't an issue and that internal consistency is only important for FAs. I see no harm in adding the Option 5 functionality and letting editors opt into an ISBN-standardizing CS1 option similar to date and engvar formatting but I also don't think we need to police this across all articles now. czar 17:18, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 1 Regards,--Goldsztajn (talk) 11:39, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
• Status quo with caveats. Spaces as a format should be depreciated. Otherwise, both hyphenated and non-hyphenated have their place and there really is no issue with both being used in the same article. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 03:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
• Option 5 with Option 2 as the default parameter. Require talk page consensus before using another parameter. Sennalen (talk) 16:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (ISBNs)

The searchability issue favors no spaces. But it's even more important that the ISBN be correctly entered, and in many cases this must be done by the editor looking at a paper book and typing the ISBN. The hyphens reduce the likelihood of an error in the manual copying process. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:48, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

But this won't be affected, because nothing about this RfC (no matter what its outcome) would have any requirement for particular input. There isn't any suggestion anywhere in here to do something to disallow anyone inputting |isbn=978-1-7238-1802-8 or {{ISBN|978-1-7238-1802-8}}. All the options presented above call for ensuring that {{format ISBN}} will auto-convert whatever format, as needed. And |isbn= and {{ISBN}} already handle all these formats anyway and convert them internally (to 9781723818028 style) for use with tools like Special:BookSources/9781723818028). AnomieBot would take care of {{format ISBN}} regardless of the input, automatically, since it's already substituting that template (the bot is completely agnostic as to what the template's output is). Even Option 5 wouldn't impose on someone an entry-format requirement, just permit other editors to re-normalize the format to whatever was already dominant on the page (the way we do with normalizing divergent citation formats, date formats, English variety, etc., to conform to the rest of the page). If we settled on a particular format (instead of option 5), a bot could actually more directly just replace divergent formats with the canonical one, without relying on {{format ISBN}} as an intermediary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:10, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

|isbn= and {{ISBN}} already handle all these formats anyway and convert them internally (to 9781723818028 style) – wouldn't the obvious solution here be to have these templates which "already handle and convert" these variants also standardize the displayed output throughout an article? A global standard would in my opinion be best, but if there's no consensus on a global standard format, it could be subjected to a per-page preference similar to date formats, defaulting to the just-the-digits format since that one seems to be most popular to date. There does not need to be any kind of stardization of the hyphens/spaces used in the template parameters in the page markup, so readers who want to type an ISBN from a paper book copying the format exactly could continue to do so. –jacobolus (t) 18:51, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

This is basically what Option 5 is about.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

No this is entirely different from your "Option 5". Changing the {{ISBN}}, {{citation}}, and {{cite book}} to standardize the output ISBN format would solve the problem once and for all in a single place in a way which would require no article edits and no significant editor effort. Changing {{format ISBN}} and insisting on a standard hyphenation (even per article) would require a bot to go touch some proportion of citations on most articles throughout the project, which would be hugely disruptive and annoying, and then would be just as much of a pain if anyone ever later decided to standardize on a particular hyphenation variant. –jacobolus (t) 13:00, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Note AnomieBOT doesn't do anything special to subst {{

• The issue of intervening edits making changes harder to undo is just a standard part of Wikipedia editting, I'm not sure it's mentioned, and {{format ISBN}} doesn't enforce anything, it's a tool you can use if you wish to format the ISBNs with hyphens.-- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:49, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  If you're working on an article and want to make sure everything is presented in a standard manner that's great, as per the exception to CITEVAR that covers such work. However if your going from article to article to just impose your preference on such things you should find something actually useful to do. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:27, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  It was "drive-by" changing of the format to the hyphen-laden form, by different editors at unrelated articles, twice in the same week that inspired me to pose this RfC question, though it had been on my mind for some time because of previous but more spaced-apart incidents.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  If editors are ignoring CITEVAR (and I think it would already apply), ask them to stop. If that doesn't work report them for disruptive editting as with any problematic editting. Introducing CREEP to solve the issue isn't the way to go. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:09, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  If we already all clearly agreed that CITEVAR applied to this, then this discussion and the events which led to it would have have happened. And not all ISBNs on Wikipedia are in citations; that's just the most common use case.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  The events that led to this was one editor systematically mass editting their own personal preference into articles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:28, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Some history:

• 16 March 2020 – {{Format ISBN}}, Module:Format ISBN, and Module:Format ISBN created
• 6 June 2020 – template made substable
• 18 November 2022 – nominated for deletion
• 25 November 2022 – template and modules deleted deleted as a result of the TfD
• 22 April 2023 – template and modules recreated as a result of this discussion (permalink) at WT:ISBN

Above Editor SMcCandlish wrote: And |isbn= and {{ISBN}} already handle all these formats anyway and convert them internally (to 9781723818028 style) for use with tools like Special:BookSources/9781723818028). Not wholly true. Yes, |isbn= and {{ISBN}} handle separated and non-separated ISBNs and, yes, for ease of check-digit validation, hyphens and spaces are stripped, but when creating a link to Special:BookSources, both use the ISBN string as supplied in the template:

|isbn=978-1-7238-1802-8 → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-7238-1802-8.

Editor SMcCandlish also wrote: Given that "most of the parts [of an ISBN] do not use a fixed number of digits", some of the output of this template may be arbitrary anyway, without corresponding to meaningful ISBN identifier fragments. None of the {{format ISBN}} template output is arbitrary. The data in Module:Format ISBN/data is created by Module:ISBN RangeMessage xlate which takes as input a local copy of https://www.isbn-international.org/export_rangemessage.xml (that's a direct download link; the local copy that created the current version of Module:Format ISBN/data can be seen by editing Module:ISBN RangeMessage xlate/doc (edit link). The range data are inside the <!--...--> tags.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, if it's Special:BookSources that does the parsing instead, it's the same ultimate point in the end: it doesn't matter what input format some editor wants to use. I stand corrected on what {{format ISBN}} is doing (and adjusted the argument above to compensate); it's more clever code than it looked at first. But the same question remains: what utility does this provide? It seems to be clever geekery for clever geekery's own sake. We don't have any encyclopedic need for it, when a 9781723818028 works perfectly fine (as does Amazon's format 978-1723818028 for that matter). How is the end reader helped in any way? How are editors (doing anything actually productive) helped in any way?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

• question Would it be possible to do for ISBNs what we did for geographic coordinates, and display the value with hyphens while lilnking through to a page that allows passing the unhyphenated value to the various book search services? Mangoe (talk) 15:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  Are you asking this question of me? Are you asking for the citation templates to take |isbn=978-1-7238-1802-8 as input and have it create https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781723818028 as output? When creating links to Google books, Amazon, Worldcat, etc, Special:BookSources does strip hyphen and space separators (float you mouse over any or the source links at Special:BookSources/978-1-7238-1802-8 to see that).

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  (

  sc|abc}} ABC copy-pastes as "abc" (the caps are only visual cosmetics). And so on. Is that really a debate worth having? I'm not sure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

   😼  16:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  I use Special:Booksources exclusively for the templates that produce it, because copying the digits, typing out https://books.google.com/, selecting the entry box, typing isbn: and then pasting is a stupid amount of work when I have two links so easily available (one from article to Booksources and the other from Booksources to Google).

  And to be frank, using Google Web Search is a bad idea for book searching. Use the tool they provide for the reason they provide it. Izno (talk) 02:23, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  That's kind of a straw man, since I suggested no such tedious process, and going through it is entirely unnecessary. Just copy the "9781723818028" ISBN, open a new window or tab, type isbn , paste the number, press Enter. The entire process takes a couple of seconds, and instantly brings up the book you are looking for both in biblio databases (including your favored Google Books, which is not favored by everyone) and at vendors. Well, unless the ISBN has dashes or spaces in it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  Even this process takes longer than two clicks. I presented the whole of what one might do to ensure it was clear that I wasn't strawmanning - it's really how I do it to ensure that I get the data I need immediately (a user story). If we take your workflow (I was fairly certain you were using this shorter flow, so that's the second reason I wanted to make clear how people were getting from point A to B), you still are using Google (or other search service -- I use DDG, so your flow is not sufficient to account for that - I'd need to type !g also) in a way they don't intend ultimately, and thus you get the imprecise answers that you claim are the fault of one particular style of entry. Using Booksources eliminates this issue and also provides the normal ways to get at the bibliographic data, including Google Books, OCLC, and Amazon.com (or .ae, .au, .br, .ca, .cn, .de, .es, .fr, .in, .it, .jp, .mx, .nl, .pl, .sa, .se, .sg, .tr, .uk). Those are all present on the "front page" matter of Booksources (with access to other options below that). The only thing Booksources doesn't do is give me a direct link to the publisher's website, and that is even more trivial than your search (select, right click, search for -- but I'm not usually searching for the ISBN at that point anyway, I just plug the title in).

  Then you're just left with hand-input ISBN numbers which are no longer hand-input since a while ago since they all (were supposed to) lost their link to Special:Booksources, for which we now have {{ISBN}}. Izno (talk) 18:51, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  That you personally prefer a longer search process and/or using our Special:Booksources feature is rather irrelevant. It's faster to not. Booksources is something good to have in existence, but is actually quite tedious to use, and can be intimidating/confusing to a lot of users who have no idea what any of those databases and things are, so don't know what to click on when they get there. Even experienced users like me who do know what they are may find it much more convenient just to do copy-paste-click in Google. It's much more efficient. Unless the ISBN is broken up. Even then, I find it more efficient to copy-paste the ISBN and remove hyphens from it than to futz around in the Booksources list.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:57, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  It's faster to not This is a statement in your reality, but not a fact. Don't present it as such. Izno (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)