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Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Citations/New reference-filling tool

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New reference-filling tool

  • Problem: All the existing citation-filling tools have major flaws, and are unsupported
  • Proposed solution: A new tool which addresses all the issues with existing tools such as WP:Reflinks, WP:Refill, ReferenceExpander. Headline features: a) 2 modes: fill all refs, or only bare refs; b) interactive mode to allow editor to select which changes to accept; c) support for the thousands of websites which Reflinks cannot fill because it fails to complete a secure login; d) ability to fill refs with "|title=Archived copy", using the archived link e) tagging of dead links, which only Reflinks supports
  • Who would benefit: Any editor who adds a reference, or tries to improve an existing reference
  • More comments: This tool is crucial to upholding the en.wp core policy of verifiability. The history of existing tools is of great work being done by volunteer editors who later reduce their commitment to Wikipedia, leaving the tool to rot. This crucial functionality needs active maintenance, to cope with evolving internet protocols, developing community standards for referencing, and the bizarre ways in which so many websites mangle metadata.
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: BrownHairedGirl (talk) 18:25, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

  • For the records, the maintenance status of mw:Citoid is being discussed in phab:T294236. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whilst not exactly what you want, a lot of the feature you requested are included in the advanced reference editing gadget ProveIt, which also allows you to edit code manually and supports most reference templates. — Berrely • Talk∕Contribs 19:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • See Web2Cit for an ongoing effort in that direction.--Strainu (talk) 12:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BrownHairedGirl: Please cite Phabricator tickets or other discussions for the bugs you claim exist; and please explain why you think we need a new tool, rather than to fix those bugs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • A citation consists of two parts. One which is the same for couple of citation (static) like author, title, url and one which variable like section or page. What I need is a tool which helps me to handle it and which avoids that I have to type in the static part several times.—Hfst (talk) 06:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this should be updated because often there are repeat references, but it's often hard to find the code for those references in the backend code so that means multiple windows if the section it first appears is in a different section.. So having a list and clicking from that list so it inserts that one. And then figuring out where to insert pages for the same reference, but different page numbers needs to be smoothed out. If it's yadda Yadda author, then the page difference shouldn't force the user to retype it and also create a new line below. There has to be a neater way of doing it so it indicates it's a different page number. Also, auto fill by ISBN (Which is done on some other sites) would be useful too. It definitely needs an overhaul.--KimYunmi (talk) 20:06, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I wish to The interview of the eminent person should be mentioned as a reference. Mahmud (talk) 19:39, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is part of a larger set of reference services that would be helpful. Would love a broader consideration of reference management. E.g., PDF handling, consistent use of conventions such as sfn and rp, appropriate use of templates such as google books and youtube, making citations for pure text refs, etc. Lfstevens (talk) 06:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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