User talk:Looie496/VE Reference editor

Comments from Clem Rutter[edit]

Nice idea- I suspect that this has never been done, and in a cooperative project it should have been published and opened to scrutiny thus saving hours of fire fighting.

There are a few point to be added. I am looking at it from the point of view of academics that are being trained to do first time wikipedia edits.

The inline reference editor (IRE) should be entered by a key-stroke, so fingers don't leave the keyboard (Perhaps Alt-R)
Academics are happy to use {{sfn}} and {{efn}}, this can be made easier to hint available cites
At times- a raw url will be better than nothing
Entering full references can be done using the existing cite/citations blanks- but for real experts the addition of a customised blank.
Entering full references should provide the option to name a existing page that contains that reference- and have it automagically copied across
Books can be automagically filled in by quoting the ISBN

Double clicking or Alt-R on an existing reference should enter the reference editor- showing the existing contents- and hinting on suggested content. Thus Alt-R will toggle between VE and IRE.

Other user views should be sought before the Functional Spec is drawn up -- Clem Rutter (talk) 23:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure how sfn or efn could be added in a way that new editors would understand, but it's something to think about. I'm also not sure how copying of references from other articles would work -- the implementation seems challenging. Regarding automagic filling in, ultimately that should also be set up for doi's, pmid's, and other indexing systems as well. Looie496 (talk) 00:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that we must look at this from the users pov not the coders. Anyone who has ever written an academic paper has spent 'hours/days/years' of their time typing (Smith, Weston (2006), p=27) or similar into their manuscript. My academics are sitting at a keyboard, with two or three books on the desk, search for page numbers and adding them- then copying the biblio details from p3 into the Bibliography below the reflist. I have just finished a draft of Harle Syke Mill Wikipedia:GLAM/QSMM and I have all my references stored on a User subpage- but I can lift most of them from a similar article. I c&p- but if VE is to work we must eliminate c&p. At the functional spec stage we mustn't try and work out the algorithm needed for an implementation- we do that because at heart we are coders- but it limits the final product. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 01:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]