Wikidata:Requests for comment/Separating "citations" from all Wikipedia articles by using Wikidata

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Not an RfC discussion --Emu (talk) 12:23, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Separating "citations" from all Wikipedia articles by using Wikidata" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.

If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!


THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.

Hi, I have an idea , according to the design principle of "Separation of concerns", we should separate "citations" from "text". I mean instead of typing the citation text directly in the article (existing process), we place all citations in Wikidata, and WikiWriter only uses a "Template" and a "Numeric argument", to fetch that citation from Wikidata (and then adds some other factors such as date and time) and place this "Citation Template" into that article to do citing.

This Idea has many benefits: 1- Maintaining citations is good (single modification would change all articles e.g., single change in the order of book writers changes all citations) 2-Readability of article improves (with this idea each citation has smaller text in the article). 3-Article writer easier puts citations (only inserts numbers). 4-The writer has a list of "related references" to find the required book to refer to it, nowadays writer does not have this capability (i.e., mapping and function probably have the same book for referencing). 5-The same citation can be used in several Wikis (i.e., the same citation but translated from English to German language (but with the same argument number)) and is used in German Wikipedia without any change. 6-We can quickly find for example a certain book citation is used in what articles (by a simple query).

If we create a list of URL/DOI/ISBN (and writers gradually add new ones), this process (i.e., using "template" + "numeric argument" (and date factors)) for creating a citation becomes more maintainable, and more convenient than the existing process (i.e., inserting total text of citation).

Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:36, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: See m:WikiCite/Shared Citations.--GZWDer (talk) 13:57, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GZWDer: This is exactly what I mean, but I have a question, why today it is not applied to existing English Wikidata articles? At least in the last 2 years that I participate to Wikipedia, I did not see such citations. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:05, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GZWDer: I add a comment about this issue here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiCite/Shared_Citations#Creating_a_%22bot%22_for_transforming_existing_citations_into_Shared_Citations_and_encouraging_writers_to_use_Shared_Citations
Thanks again, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you GZWDer for directing attention to the "shared citations" proposal. I'll reply to comments over there. For the benefit of people reading this discussion here in the future, I would also like to point out the "cite q" functionality - which already exists for Wikipedia. See https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/01/14/automatically-maintained-citations-with-wikidata-and-cite-q/ . LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think that this is a great idea, but citations should be bot imported and people should still be allowed to locally create citations. If a user gets blocked on Wikidata for whatever reason being able to add citations to a Wikipedia would be necessary to edit there (content-wise). Maybe a new type of item should be created, perhaps "C12345" (for "Content") or "R12345" (for "Reference"). -- Donald Trung/徵國單  (討論 🀄) (方孔錢 💴) 15:35, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment @LWyatt (WMF): And the problem that "cite Q" cannot be used to link to the Wikisources is long unresolved. <shrug>  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:16, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

one says the week after it was quietly achieved at enWP. <shrug> Timing!  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:33, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Info I propose to close this RfC as improper issue for RfC after 31 January 2024. Please comment if you don’t agree. --Emu (talk) 20:45, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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