Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Citations/Tool for separating the references from the body text
Tool for separating the references from the body text
- Problem: Most often bibliographic references are directly mixed within the text and the code of the page. This considerably clutters the code of the page and makes difficult to locate the exact place where to do the needed additions or modifications directly in the page code, especially for long sections. This is a long problem affecting most of Wikipedia pages since the beginning. Even if some skilled contributors try to use Harvard name and date style and tricks with notes to locate all their references in the reference list at the end of the page, afterwards other contributors will directly insert their references in the body text of the page and the maintenance of the code becomes extremely tedious and a never-ending story.
- Who would benefit: All contributors for an improved experience of editing the page code without being perturbed by the full references directly embedded in the code.
- Proposed solution: To adopt the same approach that in all the references management programs (End Note, Reference Manager, Pro Cite, Zotero, Mendeley, ...). By clearly separating the in line citation in the text (with the reference name or ID only present in the text where the citation has to appear in the text) from the references data or code stored apart at the end of the page in the section reference. An interesting alternative is given in another proposal: it is to store the references directly in Wikidata as metadata for the page. Then an advantage is the centralization of all the references in one single place where the different Wikipedia sites could store, share, translate and discover all the common references.
- More comments: Bots could be developed to assist for the migration of the references data or code at the end of each page in the references section or even better in one central place in Wikidata. I realize not to be the first for wishing such a feature. I already read this suggestion on different Talk pages and it is also probably discussed and advised in Wikipedia help pages and references templates since a long time. So, sorry to likely reinvent the warm water, but I think it is worth to insist once again on this never resolved issue in Wikipedia. I also realize the considerable technical challenge, or work, this could imply, but the question is certainly worth to be addressed once again and to find and implement a real solution. This will represent a real improvement in the code of each page. Aim: a cleaner and more accessible page code.
- Phabricator tickets:
- Proposer: Shinkolobwe (talk) 19:25, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Discussion
- There exist such tool, with the Czech interface. @Jvs:. JAn Dudík (talk) 11:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- @JAn Dudík and Jvs: Thank you for this information. I had a quick look at the proposed link with automatic translation from the Czech language to English, but I could not immediately find on the page a specialized function to directly do this job. I did not try to use the script too. So, I cannot presently assess if this tool is sufficient for solving the problems to be addressed but it could be a good first start. Thank you. Shinkolobwe (talk) 11:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- http://
josef-svoboda.site44.com/wiki/wikiref2.html
JAn Dudík (talk) 20:35, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- http://
- @JAn Dudík and Jvs: Thank you for this information. I had a quick look at the proposed link with automatic translation from the Czech language to English, but I could not immediately find on the page a specialized function to directly do this job. I did not try to use the script too. So, I cannot presently assess if this tool is sufficient for solving the problems to be addressed but it could be a good first start. Thank you. Shinkolobwe (talk) 11:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- I'm not completely sure if this is what you are looking for, but if you need a tool to assist in moving inline citations into a references section in order to change them into so called list-defined references (framed by
<reference></reference>
or wrappers likeTemplate:Reflist
), in the English Wikipedia this tool might be helpful (to be added to your common.js):
importScript('User:Kaniivel/RefConsolidate_start.js');
- If you are looking for ways to pull citations defined at Wikidata into Wikipedia, the English Wikipedia has an (still experimental) implementation for this named
Template:cite Q
. - --Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:36, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
- hmmm seems like a solution; but i'd need to use it first to see if it fits. BTW this need more advertisement, never saw this before on the citation and reference help pages. TRANSviada (talk) 18:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- This working well would be conditional on some easy way to expand (without needing to jump to and from paragraph to bottom of source text) - either all refs or individual refs. 81.140.68.252 20:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Voting
- Support for real after all these years with all these strict sourcing rules and wikipedia/mediawiki hasn't yet a proper reference management system. it's a mess with duplicated stuff everywhere. there should be a repository (wikidata) for creating entries for reference works. then being able to cite them on wikimedia projects like wikipedia. BTW why don't we open an issue on phabricator already since it seems no have none regarding this? TRANSviada (talk) 18:43, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support --NGC 54 (talk / contribs) 19:38, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Silver hr (talk) 21:03, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Ponor (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support A real references managing system would be great. — Jules Talk 22:57, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support YFdyh000 (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 00:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Abductive (talk) 00:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Lion-hearted85 (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support TrudiJ (talk) 04:38, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support This would make source editing so much easier and friendlier, and the possible Wikidata integration would be even better. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support There are also significant policy and culture issues to address if editors wanted to implement this kind of tool (at least in en) but it's work that desperately needs to happen and cannot happen if the technical foundation is missing or impossible to build. ElKevbo (talk) 05:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Stepet49 (talk) 07:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Tmv (talk) 07:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Samwalton9 (talk) 09:39, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support JAn Dudík (talk) 10:55, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Kpjas (talk) 11:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support MilkyDefer (talk) 12:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support as Wiki Projects develop on wide themes end up using the same references across different articles, a simple way to add them rather than manual edits Kaybeesquared (talk) 13:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Hb2007 (talk) 13:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Baltakatei (talk) 17:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support --Roly Williams (talk) 17:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Brilliant! Will save a lot of time. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 18:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support conditionally for it having an ability to readily expand and edit refs without needing to move between text and references (preferably a click-to-expand option) 81.140.68.252 20:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support dwf² (talk) 22:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Wholeheartedly support reference migration to Wikidata - Darwin Ahoy! 01:12, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose This can mostly be achieved with en:Template:Cite Q, which already exists. NMaia (talk) 01:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose Isn't this what list-defined references are for? Those are a lifesaver, and I use them whenever I write articles. I heard they don't work with VE, which should be fixed instead of making a new feature. JPxG (talk) 05:48, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
- Support Libcub (talk) 18:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)