Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite/feature requests

Temporary Main Page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite
Project purpose and original proposal: Wikipedia:Wikicite project purpose
Feature Requests: Wikipedia:Wikicite feature requests
Technical Background: Wikpedia:Wikicite technical background
Wikicite Syntax: Wikipedia:Wikicite syntax
Wikicite Outreach Wikipedia:Wikicite outreach

Specification Requests

BibTeX

Entries in the Wikicite database should be "compatible" with BibTeX entries. BibTeX is the citation format of choice for math, physics, computer science and some other areas. This means that a BibTeX entry should be structurally a subset of the WikiCite entry, so that some trivial text processing with perl or gawk can extract BibTex from the Wikicite entry. Possibly a BibTeX entry by itself could be a minimal Wikicite entry. This is a design issue.

Wikicite would have numerous advantages over a raw BibTeX entry. One could it to direct readers to specific sections of a book, warnings about pitfalls in other sections, summaries, of what you "really need to know" to understand a paragraph, POV's and so on. This is impossible in BibTeX.

Namespace

Wikicite entries should be in their own namespace equally accessible to all wikiprojects.

XML

Wkicite entries should be able to produce XML, multilinguinal, output. See bibulus for an example software project.

Editor generated tags

There will be tags that can be added which will be stored in the database for look up. For example, {{name:Wealth of Nations}} could be added to "An Inquiry into the causes of the Wealth of Nations". These tags should be protectable to prevent vandalism from breaking links.

Language and Origin information

Each wikicite entry should include original language of publication and original place of publication, with any additional language translations (and perhaps their own wikicite entries) available. Also, edition information with editor info and new date of publication for each new version of a book, say Guinness World Book, an encyclopedia, etc.

Preparation using existing system

Preparing for Wikicite can be done by encouraging current features which put citations in formats which can later be converted to Wikicite use.

Reference semantics

Encouraging semantic mark up, migration to future systems should be easy. If existing citations use formats which identify the components (Title, Author, etc.), machine conversion to new formats can be done.

The use of correct name tags according to the style recommendations should allow automatic generation of author / page information and nice titles.

As shown in Cite_your_sources#Citation_templates, at present different templates are used for book, journal, and web references due to existing programming. However, there should be a single "Citation" template which can be given all types of sources and allows omission of fields.

Citation components

The present approach of trying to make inconspicuous links to references is a good start (see Wikipedia:Footnote3). Even if a single endnote has several Templates for different components, at least everything is identified.

At present the Template:Journal_reference does not accept a digital object identifier although DOI is intended to provide a permanent web link to a journal article, so a separate Template:Doi has to be added.

A journal article or book may have an associated web site but presently each has to be given as a separate item.

A single source may have several components to refer to. One part of an article may refer to a book, while another part may refer to the web site for that book. Or several citations may refer to different pages within the same book. Future citation tools may allow such distinctions while retaining the relationship between sources.

Citation presentation

It is not possible to know if a future system will have footnote text inline with the text or separate. Storing citation data separately is easy for the display system to move the text of the footnotes from the end of the article to inline positions if needed. See also: m:Referencenotes

Wikipedia may want to use different presentation of references, whether to follow new standards or user preference (ie: General, Technical, Academic, FullGlossary, WebOnly, IncludeFeeLinks). Once components of a reference are identified, they can be manipulated in various ways.

Related activities

Semantic web

Data in Wikicite may be useful for Semantic web use. What that means is not clear, other than that info should be available in RDF/XML format. When defining the meanings of Wikicite data fields, the W3C definitions should considered. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/