Improving URL citations on Wikimedia
Incomplete and missing citations of web resources are a relatively endemic problem on Wikipedia. There are two major problems to be addressed:
- There are many existing cite web citations which are currently incomplete.
- The relative difficulty and tedium of including web citations provides a barrier to editors properly citing works.
History
editThe project is a combination of projects proposed in the following area:
Tools
editThere are several tools to get around these issues for citations in general:
On WikiMedia
edit- Ref toolbar 2.0 (now included on English Wikipedia by default!)
- Citation Expander Gadget
Third Party
edit- Zotero (browser extension)
- Reference me (smartphone app that scans barcodes for ISBN)
- Cite4Wiki (browser extension)
For more, see Help:Citation_tools and Wikipedia:EIW#Citetool.
Projects Ideas
editRetroactively fixing web citations
editCite Web Bot
editA bot that would add titles to cite web CS1 style citations with the C1 title missing error.
Making URL-based/web citation easier
editAs originally proposed on the raw projects page, a a full URL-to-citation engine could be developed to support web citations in the way the citations with a DOI are currently supported. Such a project may include:
Bot-filled cite URL template
editA bot filled template for web citations, similar to what already exists for DOIs and PMIDs.
RefToolbar 2.0 cite web autofilling
editAdd autofilling to RefToolbar 2.0 for citing websites, such as what is currently provided for DOIs and PMIDs.
Adding functionality to visual editor
editThe Visual Editor team is currently working on adding references to the transclusion dialog.
An extension could be built to return a full citation to both the RefToolbar and the VisualEditor given a URL, similar to the CiteByDoi extension.
Road Map
editThis is currently what is being planned/implemented: