Help talk:Reference Previews

Central feedback page for Reference Previews.

I keep seeing conflicting information. Reference Previews work fine on my wiki for logged out users, but when logged in they stop working. Page Previews are enabled by default and also enabled in the user's preferences. I've seen a thread or two on this forum as well as this post in the project hub (T278739).

It's not clear to me if they should work, if they conflict with something else, or just don't work for logged in users (not sure why?). My wiki is just local testing and is basically a stock configuration with a mobile skin.

Hard to tell. Maybe the skin? Popups might work different in the Minerva skin a.k.a. on mobile. Do logged in users see the regular page previews?

About 2 days ago the showing of page previews has 100% stopped working. (I use Firefox) I have spent over an hour trying suggestions found by using google but nothing has worked. There is no option on any gadget I can see to alter this. I have been doing page refreshes after trying various chnages - don't ask me to tell you, it's too much for me to remember. Just what is going on? I have got used to this facility and it's not as though I don't contribute to Wiki. I do because I realise its value. Please can people who know how to do it get it working again? :-( I have just tried it in IE11 and it WORKS (I was trying to stop using that).

Thanks for the report. Unfortunately I currently can't reproduce the issue. I tried with Forefox 70 on the English Wikipedia, and both Page Previews (when hovering links to other articles) as well as Reference Previews (when hovering the numbered footnote markers) work. Note that both need to be enabled in your preferences. Additionally, the feature might be disabled via a cookie in case you are not logged in. Look for a link "Enable previews" at the bottom of the page and click it, if it's there. Cleaning your browsers cache (including the cookies) might as well be worth a try. --Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)

Hi Thiemo Kreuz, thanks for replying. Sorry my reply is late but I have been diverted to ther things. Using Firefox, I found an option in Wikipedia which allowed the showing of some text when I hover the cursor over a pale blue link, but it's not the same as I used to see. So I took photos of the same wiki page, using cursor hover over the same link, using Firefox, IE11 and Chrome. The latter two browsers displyed in the same way, (but differently to the way Firefox is displaying now) and in the way the Firefox used to do for me. I would like to send these photos to you but haven't found out how to, or if that's possible

I prefer the way that Chrome and IE11 display. Is there an option I can set to get Firefox back to the way it used to display for me?

Kind regards,

Jon

I would love to see these screenshots. You can upload them on Commons, or on Phabricator when logging in with your wiki account.

I have the same issue. The page previews only work if I am not logged into my wikipedia account.

Same issue here as well.... sort of... on Firefox 81.0.2 / ArchLinux. My suspicion is that for users who had created their accounts prior to the rollout of this feature may have it disabled by default. Page previews can be (re-)enabled through the "Appearance" section of your account preferences, under the heading "Reading Preferences." @Anutrix @JontheDuke

@Themathkid I thought the same but there's no such option in "Appearance" section of account preferences.

Hey @Anutrix and thanks for you reply. The extension that allows the previews is not installed on mediawiki.org so the setting can't be used here. Please re-check on your local Wikipedia if you see the setting and if enabling it works. Thanks!

@Christoph Jauera (WMDE) Thx. It worked.

Hello,

The solution is:

Go to preferences up on the top right close to your username on wiki then click appearance and then finally check the box for

"Enable page previews (get quick previews of a topic while reading a page)"

This is automatically on while not logged in. You must have accidentally un-checked it while logged in to your account. I must have done the same and this was the very easy solution.

When you hover over a reference, you get a card with a "Jump to reference" link at the bottom. The problem is, when you move the mouse pointer from the current position to the link, if you go outside the boundaries of the card for more than a short time, the card is dismissed.

For people with impaired manual dexterity, getting the pointer to its desired location without deviating from the card boundaries can be challenging. On some devices (touch-screens, trackpads, etc), it may be challenging even for people with full dexterity.

One possible fix would be to increase the duration of the timeout. Another would be to move the link so it's closer to the initial cursor position. Another might be an option to have the card latch open until explicitly dismissed.

In a significant number of articles, certain reference lists indicate footnotes, not sources (notably, {{efn}} lists, which use the lower-alpha reference group). Would it be technically possible to display something like "Note" instead of "Reference" for such lists? "Reference" incorrectly implies that the note text indicates a source.

@Jc86035Thank you for your feedback. We will discuss it in our team when we pick up work on this feature again. We're currently focussing on a different project.

This is not possible.

help me?

Thanks for the feedback. As of now, this is not possible. I recommend clicking "Jump to reference". You will find the contents from the popup a second time at the bottom of the page.

You may try to use the tab button to navigate.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T268967

This is, as well, the common flaw on Wikipedia, is that explanatory footnotes and references notes are being combined. They are not the same. Please consider separate them.

About the design overall, I think it is great. I think it catches up with state-of-the-art, elegant designs, and makes Wikipedia cleaner and less boring. Send my appreciation to the designer!

Thanks for the positive feedback, that's very much appreciated! However, what do you mean when you say "separate them"? One popup typically shows a single footnote only. What needs separation, where, and how?

I mean to let it able to distinguish between explanatory footnotes and references footnotes. So let's say there is an explanatory footnote, instead of marking it as 'References,' let it be marked as 'Footnote.' References are sources that supports the statement, so having an explanatory footnote marked 'References' is going to be confusing for non-Wikipedians.

Ah, I see. So this is mostly about the heading that currently says "Reference", and possibly the "Jump to reference" link at the bottom. I would love to make these more context-sensitive. Unfortunately there is currently no way to distinguish explanatory footnotes from actual references. Do you have an example article?

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but consider the en:Interstellar (film) article. There are explanatory footnotes, but was titled 'References' when I hover on them.

@Gerald Waldo Luis Thanks for your feedback! Our team is currently adding a class which can be used to specify references as notes. When used, the pop-up title will then say "Note" instead of "Reference".

Best,

Johanna

Mentioned in Community Wishlist Survey 2021.

Hello, just a message to know if it's possible to enable Reference Previews on fr.wikiversity ?

@Lionel Scheepmans, thanks a lot for your interest! So far, the Popups extension which is the basis for Reference Previews and Page Previews is only running on Wikipedias and a few Wikivoyage projects. We're currently investigating if we can change that, so that more wikis could use Reference Previews. I'll let you know what comes out of the investigation.

Have a good day,

Johanna

Thanks for this replay. Here is The consensus on Wikiversité about the acceptation of beta fonctionnalities by the community. We are look forward to see the installation of reference Previews in our project. Have a nice day to ! Lionel

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234204

I already use Navigation popups, so its useless to use this tool. And 99% of wikipedians that saw "Reference preview" already know the existence of "Nav. popups"...

I completely disagree with your opinion, Nicolas.

I was always annoyed that the popups were available in mobile version of Wiki but not in desktop version. When I looked at the Beta-Features for the first time now I was very happy that it exists and instantly activated it.

Although I'd consider myself a "Wiki power reader" I realize now that I was never a power user since I never heard of "Nav.popups" nor of Wiki-Skins at all.

So I forcefully question that 99% and assume that you are in a type-of-user bubble were you might feel that way.

In addition we must not forget that beta features are intended to become standard one day and in that stage they will reach a lot more people than any skin features ever will.

And this is one feature I think will make "wikiing" much more comfortable even to those users that aren't aware that they are missing out this comfort at the moment. So did I: as mentioned above as soon as I got used to that feature in mobile version of Wiki I strongely missed it in desktop version.

Just not enough to google it, I suppose, since I just didn't think there was any possibility to adjust Wiki's look and feel at all.

So on the whole I suggest you just consider this beta feature to be the navigation popups feature on it's way to getting a standard feature. Which it truly deserves, I think.

Okay, I see. In fact you more right than what I thought, because "Nav popups..." is very unlovely... Thanks ! Nicolas de Bourgoing

Wow, I just found out another big thing (ultimately outing myself as noop user): I prefer to read Wiki without logging in with my account and just use the account to edit things.

So I would be very happy if that feature would be available without logging in. That makes me the day it becomes standard very urgently! :-)

Is it correct when I assume you are talking about the French Wikipedia? According to fr:Special:Gadgets the gadget is not enabled by default. Users must opt-in. The same is true for Reference Previews, as they are still in Beta. If you accidentally enabled both (which can easily happen when you subscribed to "Automatically enable most beta features") you can disable one again, either on the "Beta features" or the "Gadgets" tab.

That said, we are aware of the issue and not happy with the current behavior either. We track it in phab:T234204 and will definitely do something about it before the feature goes out of Beta.

Sorry for the false alarm, seems to be working now.

For some reason the page preview (ie the popup) function has stopped working for me when I'm logged in. It works fine when I'm logged out. I have the proper settings selected in my preferences. I have cleared my cache and cookies and restarted, but the problem persists. I've only just noticed this today. I'm on Windows 10 x64 laptop using the latest version of Chrome (as of 07/19/2020). Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, could you please let me know how to resolve the problem? Thank you in advance for any help.

This tool is doing the same job that the Reference Tooltips gadget has done for years. And it does it better. This one has that same horrible Visual Editor design style that is infecting Wikipedia and is too big with too much borders.

I meant "Reference Tooltips does it better" but can't seem to edit my own comment. This comment system is using that horrible style too.

Thanks for your feedback.

Yes, Reference Previews are pretty similar to the Reference Tooltips gadget. Because the gadget doesn't work well on all wikis, e.g. the German Wikipedia, there was a community vote to have the functionality inside of a MediaWiki extension.

There are some differences between the gadget and the beta feature, though. For instance:

• more visual consistency with Page Previews
• the titles of the popups make it easier for readers to estimate if the source is trustworthy

Please note: The feature is now in beta phase. The point of this phase is to find out what is working well and what is still needed to make this a well usable feature. If you have specific feedback, you're very invited to share it, as it helps us improve the feature.

Thanks!

Muchas gracias por esta herramienta tan útil. Saludos ~~~~

How does it not work well on the German Wikipedia? I have found no specific discussion of this in English and I even translated the German version of the Reference Preview article and it doesn't say there's any specific problem due to it being the German Wikipedia, just that they use an fork of the reference gadget there instead of the reference gadget itself. So what specifically is the problem on the German Wikipedia? Is it a technical issue? Something else?

Hello! This is the page on dewiki where the feature was wished for (Technical Wishes survey 2017, in German): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/Technische_Wünsche_2017/Lesen#Vorschau_von_Einzelnachweisen

It describes that there are several problems with the version on dewiki, amongst others:

• accessibility issues
• small font size
• irregular clicking behavior, e.g. you sometimes can't copy content from the preview

The page above links to another page (also German), which mentions more problems:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verbesserungsvorschläge/Archiv/2012/August#MouseOver_bei_Einzelnachweisen (end of the section)

Hope that helps,

Johanna

I too like the old tooltipp more - and I use it on "de" too.

The problem "small font size" is right now - to me - a strength, since I get to see the full text (with comments and citations). Whereas in the new extension I sometimes can't even see all the important infos.

Maybe the new extension could be made configurable? At least with css-hacks described on a help page.

The new tool, as most of the tools based on the new design, is much worse than the previous tool. For long citations, the tool display an ugly and awkward scrollbar, while wasting a lot of white space on the sides. The old tool on the other hand is much more space efficient and user-friendly.

I, too would be very unhappy if this replaced Reference Tooltips. It's bigger and more obtrusive, and adds a header and footer which serve no purpose.