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User:Obedmakolo/CitationToolkit

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This tool helps you manage and improve citations on Wikipedia. It does citation generation, validation, and highlighting so that you can easily reference sources, correct citation errors, and track citation usage within articles. Project status: Still in development (Actively maintained)

Basic functionality

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The Citation Toolkit is intended for use by Wikipedia editors, researchers, and writers. It is meant to help users efficiently generate, validate, and manage citations to ensure accurate and well-formatted references in Wikipedia articles and other research works.

Give a basic description of what the tool does and how it does it, but leave technical details for later.

The Citation Toolkit uses automatic data extraction to do citations. It takes URLs, DOIs, and ISBNs from various sources and uses them to generate, and format citations in different styles. For more details about the technical implementation, see the developer documentation.

What Citation Toolkit does not do

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Are there pieces of functionality that a user might expect, but which are not implemented? Why might someone not want to, or not be able to, use the tool even if they have all the prerequisites?

This tool cannot generate citations for offline or paywalled content unless a valid reference is available. It does not have advanced AI-driven context checking to verify factual accuracy—users should always manually review citations.

Prerequisites

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Before using this tool, you should be familiar with:

  • Basic Wikipedia editing, including how to add references and citation templates.
  • Citation formats, such as APA, MLA, and Chicago

You should have:

  • A modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge)
  • Access to Wikipedia or relevant platforms where the tool is integrated
  • A stable internet connection for online citation retrieval

How to use Citation Toolkit

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Write down the 3-5 most important tasks that users of your tool will do. Each of those tasks is a section of your user guide.

Finding Pages with a Particular CITEREF Anchor

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Step 1 : Open the CITEREF Lookup Tool

Step 2 : Click on the CITEREF Anchor
  1. Sub-step a : Input the CITEREF identifier (e.g., CITEREFJones1928).
  2. Sub-step b : Click the Search button.
  3. Sub-step c : Review the list of pages that contain the specified reference anchor.
Step 3 : Use the Results

Click on the relevant pages to check where and how the citation is used. When a user has completed all the steps you list, they should have successfully done the thing you named in the section header.

Tracking Pages with Harv and Sfn No-Target Errors

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Step 1: To Identify Errors in Articles.

Step 2 : Navigate to Track pages with Harv and Sfn no-target errors.

Identify the Article of interest.

  1. Sub-step a : Click on the article of interest to display the CITEREF identifiers on that article
  2. Sub-step b: The tool scans for missing or broken Harv/Sfn references.
  3. Sub-step c : From here you can now track pages with Harv and Sfn No
Step 3: Fix or Report the Errors, Update the article by correcting broken references.

Highlighting Citations in an Article

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Step 1: Navigate to Highlight which text in an article.

Step 2 : Enter the Wikipedia Article Title
  1. Sub-step a : Input the article name.
  2. Sub-step b: Click Highlights to generate highlights.
  3. Sub-step c : The tool will visually mark citations within the text.
Step 3: Review and Use the Highlights
  1. Sub-step a : Identify unsupported statements or misplaced citations.
  2. Sub-step b: Edit the article to improve reference quality.

When a user has completed all the steps you list, they should have successfully done the thing you named in the section header.

Troubleshooting

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The tool is not loading?

  • Check your internet connection.
  • Refresh the page or clear your browser cache.
  • Use an updated browser like Chrome or Firefox.

How to get help and report issues

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  • Report Issues: Submit bug reports, feature requests, or technical issues on the Citation Toolkit GitLab issue tracker.
  • Ask Questions or Get Help: Join discussions or seek assistance on the Wikimedia community forums or relevant Wikipedia talk pages.

Developer documentation

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Technical implementation

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Provide a brief technical overview of how you implemented the tool's main functionality.

The Citation Toolkit is implemented as a collection of web-based tools designed to assist Wikipedia editors in managing and improving citations within articles.

It utilizes the MediaWiki API to interact with Wikipedia's content, enabling operations such as retrieving and analyzing page data. Additionally, the toolkit leverages Lua scripting within Wikipedia's template system to process and format citation information effectively.

These technologies are employed to ensure seamless integration with Wikipedia's existing infrastructure and to provide accurate and efficient citation management functionalities.

Code structure[TO DO]

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A high-level description of the code architecture, focusing on what a developer would need to understand if they were trying to get oriented to the repository so they can contribute code or debug an issue.

The {_______} module does {_______}. The {_______} directory contains {_______}. 

 TO DO

Local development

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Set up

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How to set up development environment:

  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}

Install

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How to install:

  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}

{Optional: Include a code sample or screenshot that helps your users complete this step}

Configure

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How to configure:

  1. {Substep 1}
  2. {Substep 2}

Build and test

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How to build and run locally:

  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}

How to run tests:

  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}

Debugging

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  • {specific error message or log/console output}
    • How to resolve the error, or what the log output means
  • {specific error message or log/console output}
    • How to resolve the error, or what the log output means

How to contribute

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The Citation Toolkit maintainers welcome contributions!​

  • Code Contributions: Developers are encouraged to submit code enhancements, bug fixes, and new features to improve the toolkit's functionality.​ You can reach out to Vahurzpu for more information on contributing to the toolkit
  • Documentation Improvements: Contributions to the project's documentation are appreciated to help users and developers better understand and utilize the toolkit.

You can reach out to Vahurzpu or visit the Citation Toolkit GitLab repository for more information on the contribution process.

Contribution process

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Before contributing, read the Wikimedia Code of Conduct which outlines community guidelines and expectations. We follow {style guide / coding conventions}. 

TO DO
  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}
  1. {Write the step here.}
    1. {Substep 1}
    2. {Substep 2}

Credits

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The Citation Toolkit was developed by Vahurzpu and is hosted on GitLab.

Documentation is written by the WMA 2025 Hackathon Team 15 with fabricator task number T390356.

We extend our gratitude to the Wikimedia community for their invaluable feedback and support during the development process.

License

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The Citation Toolkit is licensed under the (GPL-3.0 only). For full details, please refer to the Contributions section on the Citation Toolkit page on Toolhub.

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