Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Citations/Make citation templates easier for newcomers to find and use

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Make citation templates easier for newcomers to find and use

  • Problem: The default form of source - "<ref>This is the template I refer</ref>" - that appears in editing mode, is to simple, and is not structured. Many Editors probably don´t know the existence of more elaborate types of citation.
  • Who would benefit: The great majority of the editors; Wikidata
  • Proposed solution: The current template should be complemented, at the side, by types of more elaborated citation templates, like "cite book", "cite journal", and "cite web". With a click the corresponding type of citation would be opened in the text. The Editor would need only to fill the proposed data.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: GualdimG (talk) 18:02, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@GualdimG: Which "current template" do you refer to, as there are many citation related templates on many sites? Which mw:Editor do you use? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wen we are reading any article, and click at the Edit button ([alt+shift+e]) to make any change, at the line imediately below the edit window, there is the "template" Cite your sources: <ref></ref>. This is the one I sugest that could be complemented by one (or more) more developed. In general, I supose, people at the begining don´t know (I remain so for a long time) that are others more developed and easy to use "templates", for instance:
  • cite news = <ref>{{cite news |last1= |first1= |title=|url=|work= |date=|language=en}}</ref>
  • cite book
  • cite journal

Thank you. GualdimG (talk) 14:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

* I will probably be repeating, but what I pretend improve is the possibility of the editors, namely the ones not experienced, from the beginning, gave sources with quality format. Insted of being visible only the simplest example of "Cite your sources: <ref> </ref>" at the line imediately below the edit window, ex: [1], I propose a complete new line with not only the simplest (<ref> </ref>) but also with "cite news" = (<ref>{{cite news |last1= |first1= |title=|url=|work= |date=|language=en}}</ref>), "cite book", "cite journal", and "cite web", in such a way that with a simple click over one of them, for instance "cite news", at the window edit would appear <ref>{{cite news |last1= |first1= |title=|url=|work= |date=|language=en}}</ref> and the Editor would need only fill with the proper data. Thank you. GualdimG (talk) 22:22, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@GualdimG: En wiki has this available in w:Wikipedia:RefToolbar. For other wikis, if you enable the mw:2017 wikitext editor in your beta options, it offers the same drop down menu with different citation types that VE has. This is not rolled out to new users, however. Mvolz (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to teach new users to fill citation templates, instead I want to teach them how to autofill them. What we need is the same technique that VE does with Citoid to be added into the normal wikieditor. New and one-time editors don't even need to know what a template is because the technique does it for them. Adding citation templates to the editor is an improvement but only if it has autofill. Before I found ProveIt I used to switch between VE and wikitext so that I could autofill citations. -kyykaarme (talk) 23:10, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References

Voting

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