Wikidata:Referencing improvements input

References are very important on Wikidata in order to be able to verify and trust the data we have. A team of students is working on improving the workflows around referencing data points. Please provide initial input for them on this page.

This is working with the current system

your input and signature

This isn't working with the current system

ability to simply copy+paste references between claims, properties and items (possible through API, but not using UI) --Jklamo (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Users are not prompted to add a reference. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:19, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Can't add references (nor qualifiers, BTW) when adding a value. Need to save first. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:25, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
your input and signature

Ideas for new useful features around referencing

talk with Dario Taraborelli, he has work / pointers about a tool that can turn a Website / PDF / Book into a reference. That would be already a great help. --Denny (talk) 15:17, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
a (preferably mobile, but possibly a browser extension) tool that displays a statement without reference, lets the contributor hunt on the web for a reference for that statement, mark up the statement, and then create a reference almost automatically from the site (and let the contributor fix it, if needed) --Denny (talk) 15:19, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A quick way to extend a reference from a single statement to multiple statements. Pichpich (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Seconding this, especially for references for items that are part of a work-edition pair (as per the quasi FRBR model we use outlined on Help:Sources). I'm not sure if we *actually* need to have references for both work and edition items if a proper relationship exists between the two, but it should at least be obvious to a contributor that they need not duplicate work. -Thepwnco (talk) 02:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
tool to convert wikipedia refs (using wiki refs template) into WD refs --Jklamo (talk) 15:29, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ability to drag a citation from Zotero into Wikidata (may need to collaborate with Zotero devs). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:18, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Some items, such as VIAF ID (P214), are self-references. This could be indicated by a parameter in the property description. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:24, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
fix Pywikibot implementation, see also this post. Multichill (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
References can be classified in different classes with specific set of properties. Help:Sources was aiming to create some of these different classes in order to help contributors to put all information about thr references with the minimum need of looking for the necessary properties. An interactive process can be made to make this data entry more easier: by clicking the "Add reference" button the contributor opens a menu and select the type of reference. Then a new window appears with the list of properties (specific to the reference) and interface to enter the corresponding values. Tools for better research of other similar references (works, editions, translations,...) can be available and perhaps links to external databases. Warnings about incomplete data can be added to indicate that some main properties are missing. Snipre (talk) 23:22, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would reuse VE's workflow as much as possible because the current iteration is quite efficient and that is what users are going to be familiar with. For that I would change the behaviour of the [add reference] link by invoking a similar conntextual menu as the "cite" button offers on VE (website, book edition, news, journal, basic, re-use) but in our case "basic" would just add an empty data field. It would be nice to be able to automatically create items for the author and publisher if they were not found by the suggester.--Micru (talk) 08:29, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There should be at least a warning if I change a value that has already a reference. (Right now someone can change for example the date of birth but qualifiers like "imported from ..." keep the same. It's complicated for new editors, ignored by some bots and an invitation for vandalism.) – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kolja21 (talk • contribs) at 23:10, 23 November 2014 (UTC).[reply]
An idea, expanding on the suggestion by Jklamo: Many Wikipedias have developed various templates for citing books and journals, e.g. Vorlage:Literatur in German WP or Template:Citation in English WP. Where these templates are used, we have a kind of structured data it might be possible to convert to Wikidata items through a gadget. That's how I envision it: The gadget is programmed to know the most widely used templates (Literatur, Citation...) and their parameters. Now, if you click on a citation in a Wikipeda article that's using one of these templates, you're offered convert to Wikidata item. A Wikidata item is then created with the equivalent fields filled out automatically, and allowing manual corrections before saving. Gestumblindi (talk) 20:36, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think what is needed is a reference tool for wikidata that is a combination of these 3 or 4 tools:

1) Sourcerer by user:Magnus Manske (Wikidata:Tools/User scripts#Sourcerer) which provides refs/links from the corresponding Wikipedia articles

2) autofilling of references via mw:Citoid service (mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference_Dialog) after input of URL or DOI, ISBN etc. Citoid relies in part on zotero, currently outputs cite_web and cite_news. (see tools en:User:Salix_alba/Citoid and en:User:Mvolz/veCiteFromURL)

3) autofilling of references via Wikipedia template filling by user:Diberri, currently outputs cite_book, cite_journal, cite_web etc.

4) a template form/input dialog box for manually correcting the autofilled values, like i.e. MakeRef or Templator Vorlagen-Generator or en:Wikipedia:RefToolbar.

And i agree with Kolja21s point about the current systems systematic invitation to keep the false old reference. That is really bad and must be changed. --Atlasowa (talk) 22:54, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-paste a reference from one item to another. (Now we can duplicate reference only within an item, not between items). Xaris333 (talk) 10:33, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]