Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Citations/Convert tools for different citations or citation styles

Random proposal ►◄ Citations  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Convert tools for different citations or citation styles

• Problem: There is no easy way to convert a reference from one style to another.
• Who would benefit: Editors who clean up references, and readers (consistency).
• Proposed solution: The simplest and easiest step would be a tool to convert between similar templates. For example, I sometimes see an academic article or a newspaper using a cite web rather than cite news or cite journal templates. It shouldn't be that difficult to add a button for 'convert style' here - right now one has to regenerate or manually retype the citation. A more complex but very welcome tool would convert references between different styles, like Harvard/APA and so on, though I realize that's much more challenging. For now, again, the ability to convert between basic cite templates would be a step forward anyway.
• More comments:
• Phabricator tickets:
• Proposer: Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:06, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• @Piotrus: To which wiki does this pertain ? As citation/reference templates all diffeer per wiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

  Slightly less an issue because Parsoid/TemplateData tie templates together I think? --Izno (talk) 18:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Regarding Harvard versus APA, that might be something for a specific coder to make a module for. We had an experiment for MLA books on Wikipedia convoluted with the current Citation modules but it was definitely just a trial, and made that module very spaghetti. But having a module/template would probably be the easiest way to do something--it's just no-one has said (very loudly) that they want it. --Izno (talk) 18:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• @Saung Tadashi: I've redirected your proposal here, per our discussion (that's basically what I meant by "merge"). Kind regards, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

  @MusikAnimal (WMF): Thank you, MusikAnimal (WMF) :) Saung Tadashi (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Volunteer Marek: or others who know: Can you list the templates between which you want to convert? Do you need to convert both from and to every template? How do you imagine selecting the citations to convert, or do you simply want to convert all citations in an article/section? (ping me if/when you reply) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:11, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Done. --Piotrus (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Berdajeno (talk) 21:31, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ponor (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support YFdyh000 (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Air55 (talk) 01:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support PianistHere (talk) 01:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support BugWarp (talk) 01:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Lion-hearted85 (talk) 02:40, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Flipchip73 (talk) 04:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Xinbenlv (talk) 05:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Abductive (talk) 08:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Thomas Kinz (talk) 10:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 12:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Kaybeesquared (talk) 13:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Urhixidur (talk) 16:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support - Would make it much easier to fix mixed reference formats. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 18:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support dwf² (talk) 22:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Emanuele676 (talk) 00:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:46, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support I do a fair amount of citation maintenance nowadays so any tools to help with this effort would be appreciated. RedWolf (talk) 19:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ghart27 (talk) 03:54, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support StringRay (talk) 16:22, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support. This idea can also be used with templates that are similar in other topics. BoldLuis (talk) 17:18, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Saung Tadashi (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support. Meiræ 21:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ziad Rashad (talk) 18:12, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Paperoastro (talk) 21:52, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 02:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Pinage404 (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose This is a per-project set of jobs for interested programmers. It is not a global MW devs matter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  05:32, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Baum64 (talk) 12:00, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Utopes (talk) 19:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support No such user (talk) 07:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ascax (talk) 15:25, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Governor Sheng (talk) 15:08, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Msblepoete (talk) 20:34, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support JN Dela Cruz (talk) 16:30, 18 December 2020 (UTC)