Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/WikiCite context

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WikiCite context

N Outside the scope of Community Tech

• Problem: current system of ad‑hoc referencing is clumsy, wasteful, and error‑prone
• Who would benefit: the entire Wikipedia community and academic internet users beyond
• Proposed solution: prioritize efforts to establish and populate the WikiCite bibliographic database
• More comments:
  • for background: WikiMedia page, unofficial project landing‑page
  • some, if not most, of the proposals currently listed in this work‑stream would be solved if WikiCite was operational
  • it is imperative, in my view, that all proposals listed on this page be evaluated in light of WikiCite with subsequent resourcing decisions made appropriately
  • see also:
• Phabricator tickets:
• Proposer: RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

References

Discussion

@RobbieIanMorrison: Could you clarify what "prioritize efforts to establish and populate the WikiCite bibliographic database" means, technically speaking, given the team's scope? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I imagine the Community Tech Team is looking for concrete proposals. Whereas my comment related to context. I'm not involved in WikiCite but from what I've seen, that project should comprehensively address most problems related to bibliographic information and management. It seems to me that it would be a shame to devote effort to firefighting a broken citation system when it is possible to fix the problem in a much deeper way. If the team cannot contribute to WikiCite because it is a "large, long-term development project", then I suggest that most of the citation bugfixes listed here be put on hold and resources deployed elsewhere. Let's keep in mind the big picture. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 00:31, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

@RobbieIanMorrison: May I suggest something concrete? Because reliable sources have to be independent, I'd really like to see automated linking of sponsors and COIs, similar to that done on PubMed, with this metadata surfaced to editors adding citations and to readers reading them. I've made some COI metadata examples on Wikidata. I've seen way too many Wikipedia articles to fix which cite advertisements formatted to look like journal articles (called "sponsored supplements", and usually under the editorial control of the sponsor). This is a serious and invisible problem on the wikis, and only a source metadatabase can feasibly fix.

I'd also suggest that WikiCite become its own (data) wiki, with fair-use rules allowing them to host abstracts and the full texts of COI statements. This will make it much more useful, and give it a certain independence. It may be that there are good technical reasons from letting it mature further within Wikidata, in which case I would be glad to hear them. HLHJ (talk) 06:35, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi RobbieIanMorrison: Unfortunately, working on WikiCite is beyond the scope of the Community Tech team, so we'll have to decline this proposal. I understand the point that you're making about working on small fixes instead of a big-picture solution. Community Tech doesn't have any particular influence over those larger resource decisions, and if people voted for this proposal, there isn't anything that Community Tech could actually do. If people want specific firefighting fixes, then that's within our scope. I'm going to archive this proposal; let me know if you want to talk more about it. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:47, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi DannyH (WMF): I am happy with your suggestion to archive my proposal. It was less of a proposal and more of a prompt anyway. Hi HLHJ: I think your suggestion to add COI and advertorial metadata to individual references is excellent. A logical extension would be to track authors using unique identifiers, so other publications by the same author could be interrogated too for conflicts and a wider picture established. The ethical questions would need to be worked through of course. Perhaps the scheme would need to be limited to voluntary ORCID identifiers and similar. Looking forward to progress on all fronts. With best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 16:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)