User:Keesiewonder/ISBN Fixing Guidelines

These are guidelines, only, and not meant to be interpreted as policy. If you have suggestions for how to improve the guidelines by rewording something, providing examples, or adding content, please feel free to contact EdJohnston talk or Keesiewonder talk.

Suggested guidelines include ...

1. Please only include an ASIN if you cannot find a valid one of the other three cataloging numbers. We want to try to refrain from displaying a US-centrist or pro-Amazon perspective.
2. Don't worry if you don't know the 'proper' placement of the dashes since an auto-something-or-other will come along to fix it (eventually).
3. If you start with a page with an ISBN tagged as being in error, and need to supersede it with, say, an OCLC, consider leaving a courteous message on the article's talk page explaining what happened and leave the invalid ISBN visible inside html code. You may also want to leave a copy of the original citation with the "bad" ISBN on the talk page. Sample html looks like the following:
   
   <!--this is html text that will not display in the article but will when editors edit the article-->
   
   
4. If you're really stuck, move on to the next ISBN in error. If you don't like to leave things unfinished, make an effort to get help from people who may be able to help such as the frequent contributors to the article or the article's talk page, relevant portals, forums outside of Wikipedia, other ISBN fixers on Wikipedia, etc. Concise clues from your seemingly unsuccessful findings are most welcome within the html code written above. If you would like to be more verbose and obvious about the situation, please use the article's talk page.
5. Be especially careful when editing articles with complicated reference list structures such as 75 in text citations.
6. Be certain to do what you can to maintain the existing citation style in the article. If the article is using APA, stick with APA. If the article is using CMS, stick with CMS. If there is no citation style, or it is a mess, tactfully consider tidying things up by converting to citation templates, alphabetizing lists, etc. This is completely optional, since your primary intent is probably to clean up the "bad" ISBNs.
7. Expect that there will be articles where the editors most familiar with the material will want to continue listing the ISBN, even if it is "bad." This is okay. A possible compromise may be to list the ISBN as I S B N since it appears that SmackBot does not identify bad I S B Ns, only bad ISBNs.
8. It can be perfectly fine to end up deleting an ISBN entirely, yielding a book citation that is just author, title, publication date ... or whatever the article editors want. It is probably best to communicate this on the talk page over at least a couple days ... i.e. try not to delete the ISBN in one sitting. Come back another day, try to find it again, correspond with those who may care about the article content, and, if all else fails, eliminate the ISBN, and leave a trail on the talk page regarding what happened.