Topic on VisualEditor/Feedback

Let's say that you have put in a Cite Web via VE. If you subsequently want to add (as you forgot to) a W:Template:self published-inline there does not appear to be a way to wrap the Cite Web in a 'basic' Cite (which I take to be akin to a simple <ref></ref> tag pair) so that the template can be included in the "ref" tags as recomended. Another example ... you see that a Cite Journal is to an open access manuscript, there is not a way to insert the W:Template:Open access after the cite journal template and before the </ref> tag.

In the opposite direction, someone has put in a basic cite which could/should be a Cite Web; there is apparently no way to convert the basic to the Cite Web type, or to take the content from the basic and insert it into a Cite Web template inside the basic implementation.

All in all this boils down to there being two representations of the <ref></ref> tag pair: one as a simple tag pair (basic) and one as inseparable from the citation template being used (any of the 5 template types currently supported). My thinking is that the simplest first thing to do might be to support conversion from a supported template type to a basic wrapping the template type (cite web implemented in the basic shell, for example); this would satisfy a substantial number of use cases and would essentially be a call to "make the ref tags visible" type of action - the ref tags represented by the basic shell. Conversion from basic to a supported type could be done using the algorithm used to interpret the template type to be assigned when using the generate-from-url-or-doi method ... but there are LOTS of potential problems there.

Regards --Ceyockey (talk) 03:20, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:Ceyockey,

You seem to be saying that if I add an automagically filled citation like this, that I cannot add the {open access} template like that. Except, of course, that I obviously can. ;-)

I freely grant that the workflow isn't exactly obvious (and consequently may change when Design Research finishes some more urgent work) and also that it's not currently documented. I've been sick for the last week, and one major effect is that I've been unable to get the user guide updated (in fact, the only reason I'm on mw.org at all tonight is to fix a formatting problem in it for someone else). So here are the steps:

Select the ref, but don't click the "Edit" button in the context menu. Instead, click the "Cite" button in the menu, choose the "Manual" tab, and then the "Basic" item in it. The selected ref will pop open in the Basic ref editor for you.

(And then, if you want, please take high-resolution screenshots of each step, showing off your favorite high-quality ref and additional template to add, upload them to Commons under both cat:Citoid and cat:VisualEditor, and drop the list of links at Help:VisualEditor/User guide/Citations-Full. Getting good screenshots made and uploaded is the first step in getting this documented.)

Thanks for reminding me about this.

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Hope you are feeling better. I've uploaded six screenshots, entitled "ConvertManualCiteToBasicCite_00#.png" (where # is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 8) to Commons and put them in the two categories you indicated. Hope these help with the documentation.

Thanks! I've put the first draft at Help:VisualEditor/User guide/Citations-Full#Manually_editing_an_automatic_citation. It'll get improved later.