Improving URL citations on Wikimedia
Incomplete and missing citations of web resources are a relatively endemic problem on Wikipedia. There are two major problems to be addressed:
- There are many existing cite web citations which are currently incomplete.
- The relative difficulty and tedium of including web citations provides a barrier to editors properly citing works.
History[edit]
The project is a combination of projects proposed in the following area:
Tools[edit]
There are several tools to get around these issues for citations in general:
On WikiMedia[edit]
- Ref toolbar 2.0 (now included on English Wikipedia by default!)
- Citation Expander Gadget
Third Party[edit]
- Zotero (browser extension)
- Reference me (smartphone app that scans barcodes for ISBN)
- Cite4Wiki (browser extension)
For more, see Help:Citation_tools and Wikipedia:EIW#Citetool.
Projects Ideas[edit]
Retroactively fixing web citations[edit]
Cite Web Bot[edit]
A bot that would add titles to cite web CS1 style citations with the C1 title missing error.
Making URL-based/web citation easier[edit]
As originally proposed on the raw projects page, a a full URL-to-citation engine could be developed to support web citations in the way the citations with a DOI are currently supported. Such a project may include:
Bot-filled cite URL template[edit]
A bot filled template for web citations, similar to what already exists for DOIs and PMIDs.
RefToolbar 2.0 cite web autofilling[edit]
Add autofilling to RefToolbar 2.0 for citing websites, such as what is currently provided for DOIs and PMIDs.
Adding functionality to visual editor[edit]
The Visual Editor team is currently working on adding references to the transclusion dialog.
Extension to provide citations given an URL[edit]
An extension could be built to return a full citation to both the RefToolbar and the VisualEditor given a URL, similar to the CiteByDoi extension.
Road Map[edit]
This is currently what is being planned/implemented: