Template talk:Bibleverse

Template:Bibleverse is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

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Archives: 1, 2: 6 months

This template was considered for deletion on 2006 June 18. The result of the discussion was "withdrawn by nominator".

Vulgata Clementina

Noting this is at Wikisource:la:Vulgata Clementina but not yet supported here; does LA WS need to do anything to make this possible? Jim Killock (talk) 19:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose my first question would be whether anyone is actually going to link to a Latin bible edition on enWiki (especially when we have five versions in English to link to). Primefac (talk) 20:21, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First parameter as book number

Although it is no longer documented, for backwards compatibility, this template can use the first parameter as a book number, eg.:

Markup	Renders as
{{Bibleverse\|1\|Samuel\|3:16-4:18}}	1 Samuel 3:16–4:18
{{Bibleverse\|1 Samuel\|3:16-4:18}}	1 Samuel 3:16–4:18

Because of this, some transclusions of this template leave the first parameter blank. This feature is deprecated and may be removed in the future. Daask (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just because something is optional doesn't necessarily mean that it's deprecated; usually when something is deprecated there is a note saying as such, tracking categories set up, and an active push made to eliminate those uses. That does not seem to be the case here. If it works both ways, I see no reason to change it. Primefac (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the code (see the section with the comment "first argument is a numeric prefix and second is book name"), you can see that it is by design. Wikilinking the book name even works: 1 Samuel 1:15–16. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Displaying the translation in the citation?

It may not be obvious to the reader that a given citation of a Bible verse is from a particular translation. It certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me at The Bible and homosexuality. I had to inspect the URL and take a guess.

I think it would be a good idea to include the name of the translation in the citation, with a wikilink to the translation's article if available. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 11:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that User:GraemeLeggett mentioned that the citations generated by this template lack this rather pertinent information. I'm a little surprised that nobody noticed. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 11:45, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose this template needs to decide on what it is. If we're talking about using it as a reference for quoting the Bible, then I agree; it should absolutely be in some form of {{cite book}} format. According to Bible citation, though, all that is needed is the book name and verse; however, this is antithetical to the stated purpose of this template to specifically not be an in-line reference. I'm happy to code up whatever is decided, but I don't necessarily want to be making a ton of changes that then need to be reverted because a local consensus says one thing and broader consensus after the change is made says another. Primefac (talk) 12:44, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I took a look at the code earlier today, to see if I implement it myself, and I found the code really hard to understand. All the information about sites, books, and versions broken up into separate tables, and the common logic is mixed in with special cases for each source. I'm not sure that putting another pair of tables in the code (one for whether to wikilink, another to specify the title or link text) is a wise idea. Is there a particular reason for the individual tables, rather than having one table each for versions, sites, etc., or is it just the way the code has grown over the years?

If the latter, I'd be sorely tempted to rewrite the module. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 13:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't build the module, so I can't really speak to its structure; this and subsequent discussions are about the module conversion. If you think you can do a better/cleaner job than what's already there, by all means go for it; the merger with the other Bible verse templates was a pain in the arse trying to plug all of the extras in there. Primefac (talk) 13:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Biblica issues

Just noting here for future reference that Biblica has changed formats; NLT is now the "New Luo Translation" in Dholuo (see e.g. Genesis 1:15–16). If all of these codes for NIV are supposed to link to the NIV, methinks the module should be changed to point to the NIV version if any of the relevant Biblica codes are entered.

Note that I have yet to check if the other codes for the other sites still work as intended. Primefac (talk) 12:48, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rewriting and extending Module:Bibleverse

I'm currently rewriting the module that backs this template so that it is (hopefully) easier to extend and maintain.

The key change is the consolidation of most of the separate tables in the module into three: one for books, one for versions, one for hosting sites. These tables then become a convenient place to put all of the special-case data and functionality. I hope to add some new functionality to the module in doing so:

The ability to indicate the version of the Bible in the template output.
A more flexible "multi" mode: the NRSV is currently hardcoded as the version to use when querying BibleGateway.
The ability to override the site to link to (if desired, it seems to be a current use case – see below).
The option to provide a link to alternative translations (as used in an ad-hoc manner here, at least).

Still, I've discovered that the documentation on versions IDs is rather sparse. It's unclear why certain abbreviations correspond to certain versions (look at all of them that point to the NIV), and I've found code for handling undocumented version abbreviations:

bb, bbc, bbl, and opb: these co-opt the version field to select Bible Hub specifically. It's unclear to me which version of the Bible this site uses by default, so I'm not quite sure how to handle them.

jpr, and jp: these two are only seen in an if statement, which overrides them with he should they be the given version. A code comment appears to provide context: chabad doesn't work so reroute, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what these codes were originally referring to.

Feedback on these suggestions and advice on the meanings of the abbreviations are both very much welcome. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 13:18, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indicating the version in the output is a great idea.
Flexibility for multiple verses is great.
One feature of the template is to allow for changes to all these websites. The editor should be able to designate the Bible version, and then if in the future the website that hosts that version goes down, or if the way their URLs changes, the template can be adjusted so that every reference to that version doesn't have to be changed. If we let the user pick the website as well, it becomes much more complicated. What if that website goes down? Are there cases where the editor needs to be able to designate the website?
In my opinion, the use case showing a link to "alternative translations" is promoting original research. How does it help the reader understand the text to just be shown 42 translations of the same text with no commentary on why they differ? Instead, the editor should be referring to reliable source scholarship on how the text should be translated.
On the versions that link to the NIV, my guess is that Biblica used to host those versions, and then at some point they stopped. The best solution would be to reroute those to to the best source for those translations, or just let them fall to Bible Gateway. I'll admit I don't have a lot of energy for that. In my opinion, almost every use of this template should link to the NRSV, which is the dominant choice of biblical scholars. Versions like the NLT and the Message have no place on Wikipedia.
Those Bible Hub codes are for backwards compatibility after merging several other templates into this template. Those codes should be deprecated, as I don't think there are valid use cases for Bible Hub. In my opinion it will always be used for original research.
I don't know the answer to jpr and jp, but what I know is this template used to link to an external tool that linked to a site called Chabad that hosted some versions that some Wikipedia editors writing on Judaism liked to use. When it went down, or at least stopped linking to that version in the same way, we decided to link to mechon mamre because I believe the main purpose was to show Hebrew. You can find some discussions if you search the talk archive. This is kind of illustrative of the problem with allowing the user to pick the website. In my opinion, the purpose of this tool should be to allow editors to easily link to Bible verses, not a panoply of Bible-related websites. An alternative solution would be to hunt down every use of codes that are not real Bible versions and fix them.

--JFHutson (talk) 17:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the issue with several versions linking to the NIV, I've made a proposed fix in the sandbox. I added an Amplified Bible reference to testcases. If someone else would review and implement I'd appreciate it. --JFHutson (talk) 20:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So, if I understand what you're saying (compounded by my own guesses at abbreviations):

amp and ab are for the Amplified Bible. I presume the deletion is to allow them to fall through to Bible Gateway?
msg is for The Message (Bible)
nlt is for the New Living Translation

I'll do a deep dive into archives and old revisions of the module. If I can bring chabad up in the Wayback Machine, and the site was ever suitable for Wikipedia, it will say which versions it was hosting.

Good observation: site overrides reduce the reliability of Wikipedia's external links. Getting an archive-bot to redirect to a snapshot on the Wayback Machine would be tricky, as the URLs don't exist in source code.

Your point about alternative translations makes sense, too. I suppose that, if pointing to them is necessary, you're probably going against WP:RSPSCRIPTURE, because scripture is "only suitable for attributed, relevant quotes." Attribution, at least in my opinion, ought to include the translation for something as particular as a religious text.

You wouldn't happen to know how to search the source code of pages, would you? That would make the job of surveying all 8,000 uses of the template much easier. EnronEvolved^{My Talk Page} 22:45, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes on those abbreviations. The deletion is to fallback to Bible Gateway, which is an improvement on sending them to the wrong translation. See H:INSOURCE for searching the source code. I also think you could do something with WP:AWB. Sorry I don't have the capacity or interest at the moment. --JFHutson (talk) 00:51, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]