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

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  • 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]