User talk:ArthurPSmith/DraftRfC References

Discussion of Draft RFC

Add any thoughts you have on changes (or edit the page directly). ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Support

I don’t have much to add but general support. One idea may be the ability to reuse-with-modification or -addition: other projects often cite printed works with references to different individual pages. WD should eventually strive for that level, and it would be streamlined in the context of this proposal to allow a reference to link to the hash for the general source with the additional property (page in this case) to provide specifics. Karl Oblique (talk) 11:51, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Comment

I must say I've never run into issues caused by item size or reference multiplication. I therefore cannot fully appreciate the motivation behind this proposal. I wonder if the proposed change would not make it more difficult for people to add references? Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 12:43, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing to change the way references are currently added, just to add features related to duplicate references. I think that should make things simpler for people adding references when what they're adding is a duplicate, but shouldn't make it harder for unique references. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Although I guess proposal 2C would look different enough maybe some UI research would be needed to make sure it didn't seem harder for people? ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:49, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I would be surprised if editing a reference is something that happens frequently enough to warrant this level of UI afforance? I’m using some gadget or ja that allows copying references which would be a far more useful addition to the standard UI, while also allowing for easier editing (by quickly deleting a bunch of references and copying the changed instance). Karl Oblique (talk) 19:00, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

When the number of duplicates of a reference gets to be more than 50 or so I think what you're suggesting is adequate becomes a bit tedious. But I'm going to add a note about mass-deletion of the duplicate references, I think that's something that would really be useful too. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

posted as RFC

I've put it up in the regular RFC space Wikidata:Requests for comment/Duplicate References Data Model and UI. ArthurPSmith (talk) 20:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)