I have been working with Sam and others for some time now on brainstorming a proposal for the Foundation to create a centralized wiki of citations, a WikiCite so to speak, if that is not the eventual name. My plan is to continue to discuss with folks who are knowledgeable and interested in such a project and to have the feedback I receive go into the proposal which I hope to write this summer. The proposal white paper will then be sent around to interested parties for corrections and feedback, including on-wiki and mailing lists, before eventually landing at the Foundation officially. As we know WMF has not started a new project in some years, so there is no official process. Thus I find it important to get it right.
The basic idea is a centralized wiki that contains citation information that other MediaWikis and WMF projects can then reference using something like a {{cite}} template or a simple link. The community can document the citation, the author, the book etc.. and, in one idealization, all citations across all wikis would point to the same article on WikiCite. Users can use this wiki as their personal bibliography as well, as collections of citations can be exported in arbitrary citation formats. This general plan would allow community aggregation of metadata and community documentation of sources along arbitrary dimensions (quality, trust, reliability, etc.). The hope is that such a resource would then expand on that wiki and across the projects into summarizations of collections of sources (lit reviews) that make navigating entire fields of literature easier and more reliable, getting you out of the trap of not being aware of the global context that a particular source sits in.
To give all a more concrete view, here is an example from some software that I have implemented in our lab called WikiPapers. Please take note that while this is a scientific literature example, the idea is general to *all publications ever*. Also, while I have implemented a feature-full version of a WikiCite, it's important to point out that for the WMF project we will need a new extension that handles the needs of the project exactly, and in PHP (I use Python :).
The name of the wiki article is a unique key that is a combination of the author names and the year, in the following format: Author1Author2Author3EtAl10b. This works for scientific articles, but we may find we need to modify the key for other kinds of sources. The content of the wiki article is composed of an infobox constructed via the Citation template, and any other text and media the community determines it is useful and legal to include in the article. Example article:
Screenshot of how this infobox renders on our wiki: http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/0/0e/KangHsuKrajbichE...
Title: KangHsuKrajbichEtAl09
{{Citation |publisher=SAGE Publications |dateadded=2010-07-17 |author=Kang M.J. and Hsu M. and Krajbich I.M. and Loewenstein G. and McClure S.M. and Wang J.T. and Camerer C.F. |url=http://pss.sagepub.com/content/20/8/963.full |abstract=Curiosity has been described as a desire for learning and knowledge, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We scanned subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they read trivia questions. The level of curiosity when reading questions was correlated with activity in caudate regions previously suggested to be involved in anticipated reward. This finding led to a behavioral study, which showed that subjects spent more scarce resources (either limited tokens or waiting time) to find out answers when they were more curious. The functional imaging also showed that curiosity increased activity in memory areas when subjects guessed incorrectly, which suggests that curiosity may enhance memory for surprising new information. This prediction about memory enhancement was confirmed in a behavioral study: Higher curiosity in an initial session was correlated with better recall of surprising answers 1 to 2 weeks later. |title=The Wick in the Candle of Learning |bibtex type=article |number=8 |volume=20 |owner=Sethherd |journal=Psychological Science |year=2009 |cites=O'ReillyFrank06,Cowan95,Wise04,Fuster80,Panksepp98,KakadeDayan02b,DelgadoLockeStengerEtAl03,BrewerZhaoDesmondEtAl98,DelgadoNystromFiez00,Beatty82,Baddeley92,Waanabe96,Roland93lm,DelgadoNystromFissellEtAl00,WagnerSchacterRotteEtAl98,SeymourDawDayanEtAl07,ODoherty04,BandettiniMoonen99,ODohertyDayanFristonEtAl03,RogersOwenRobbins99,KnutsonWestdorpKaiserEtAl00,CircuitryMemory,OReillyFrank06,Watanabe96a,BrewerZhaoGabrieli98,WagnerSchacterBuckner98,RogersOwenMiddletonEtAl99,Baddeley86,Watanabe96,Rolls96a,PallerWagner02 |cited_by=Author1Author2Author3EtAl10,etc... |pages=963 }}
Then, any other WMF wiki, or any other MediaWiki, could cite this universal entry by simply typing {{cite|KangHsuKrajbichEtAl09}}
Additionally, if a technology such as Semantic MediaWiki is used (as it is in WikiPapers), arbitrary lists of collections of literature can be generated by constructing simple queries that are boolean combinations of template properties. Given that SMW does not scale well, I have a plan that uses Lucene instead for fast, scalable dynamic generation of collections of citations. Imagine the possibilities..
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
Brian Mingus Graduate Student Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Colorado at Boulder
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.comwrote:
There have been a number of proposals floated in the Wikimedia community over the years to build a wiki-based project for collecting journal citation information. For those interested in that topic, you might want to check out the University of Prince Edward Island's "knowledge for all" project proposal -- it proposes to build an open universal citation index (to serve as an alternative to the many hundreds of proprietary citation index products that libraries currently buy). This of course is not the first attempt at this problem, but it's an interesting proposal that's getting a bit of buzz in the library community. http://library.upei.ca/k4all
-- phoebe
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Brian J Mingus, 19/07/2010 22:20:
The basic idea is a centralized wiki that contains citation information that other MediaWikis and WMF projects can then reference using something like a {{cite}} template or a simple link. The community can document the citation, the author, the book etc.. and, in one idealization, all citations across all wikis would point to the same article on WikiCite. Users can use this wiki as their personal bibliography as well, as collections of citations can be exported in arbitrary citation formats.
I have already mentioned it before, but this description looks quite similar to http://bibdex.org/ . Maybe we should join forces (i.e., send your proposal also to Sunir Shah).
Nemo
Brian,
The meta process for new project proposals is still the cleanest one for suggesting a specific Project and presenting it alongside similar projects.
It would be helpful if you could update a related project proposal on meta -- say, [[m:WikiBibliography]], if that seems relevant. (I just cleaned that page up and merged in an older proposal that had been obfuscated.)
Or you can create a new project proposal... WikiCite as a name can be confusing, since it has been used to refer to this bibliographic idea, but also to refer to the idea of citations for every statement or fact - something closer to a blame or trust solution that includes citations in its transactions.
We should figure out how this project would work with acawiki, and possibly bibdex. Bibdex doesn't aim to And it would be helpful to have a publicly-viewable demo to play with -- could you clone your current wiki and populate the result with dummy data?
I love the idea of having a global place to discuss citations -- ALL citations -- something that OpenLibrary, the arXiv, and anyone else hosting cited documents could point to for every one of its works.
Sam.
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Brian J Mingus, 19/07/2010 22:20:
The basic idea is a centralized wiki that contains citation information that other MediaWikis and WMF projects can then reference using something like a {{cite}} template or a simple link. The community can document the citation, the author, the book etc.. and, in one idealization, all citations across all wikis would point to the same article on WikiCite. Users can use this wiki as their personal bibliography as well, as collections of citations can be exported in arbitrary citation formats.
I have already mentioned it before, but this description looks quite similar to http://bibdex.org/ . Maybe we should join forces (i.e., send your proposal also to Sunir Shah).
Nemo
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On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Brian,
The meta process for new project proposals is still the cleanest one for suggesting a specific Project and presenting it alongside similar projects.
It would be helpful if you could update a related project proposal on meta -- say, [[m:WikiBibliography]], if that seems relevant. (I just cleaned that page up and merged in an older proposal that had been obfuscated.)
Thanks for your work on this - definitely in the right direction! I will consider whether I feel it's the right way for me to get started. One point is that I am pointing more in the direction of a long-form proposal, and I have more experience writing white-paper proposals for academia. I certainly want it to end up on wiki, but when TPTB finally read the proposal perhaps they will find it more persuasive if it is a professional looking document that lands in their inbox.
Or you can create a new project proposal... WikiCite as a name can be confusing, since it has been used to refer to this bibliographic idea, but also to refer to the idea of citations for every statement or fact
- something closer to a blame or trust solution that includes
citations in its transactions.
Another name that I have come up with is OpenScholar. I still rather like it, but suspect it has too much of a scientific ring to it? Names are certainly very important so we should do more work on this avenue. Including a list of names in the proposal would be a good idea, and perhaps the final name will be a combination of existing name proposals.
We should figure out how this project would work with acawiki, and possibly bibdex. Bibdex doesn't aim to And it would be helpful to have a publicly-viewable demo to play with -- could you clone your current wiki and populate the result with dummy data?
The problem with WikiPapers is that it has too many features! A feature-thin version would be ideal for the proposal though, so I will plan to have some kind of a demo site available.
I love the idea of having a global place to discuss citations -- ALL citations -- something that OpenLibrary, the arXiv, and anyone else hosting cited documents could point to for every one of its works.
Exactly :)
Brian
Sam.
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Brian J Mingus, 19/07/2010 22:20:
The basic idea is a centralized wiki that contains citation information
that
other MediaWikis and WMF projects can then reference using something
like a
{{cite}} template or a simple link. The community can document the
citation,
the author, the book etc.. and, in one idealization, all citations
across
all wikis would point to the same article on WikiCite. Users can use
this
wiki as their personal bibliography as well, as collections of citations
can
be exported in arbitrary citation formats.
I have already mentioned it before, but this description looks quite similar to http://bibdex.org/ . Maybe we should join forces (i.e., send your proposal also to Sunir Shah).
Nemo
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj
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On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Brian J Mingus Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I have been working with Sam and others for some time now on brainstorming a proposal for the Foundation to create a centralized wiki of citations, a WikiCite so to speak, if that is not the eventual name. My plan is to continue to discuss with folks who are knowledgeable and interested in such a project and to have the feedback I receive go into the proposal which I hope to write this summer.
This sounds great. Just speaking as a community member, I've been thinking about this topic a long time myself, and have plenty to add to the conversation.
The proposal white paper will then be sent around to interested parties for corrections and feedback, including on-wiki and mailing lists, before eventually landing at the Foundation officially. As we know WMF has not started a new project in some years, so there is no official process. Thus I find it important to get it right.
I'd suggest finding an on-wiki spot to discuss this work. Here's one place this has been discussed in the past that may be a good place to revive the conversation: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books...
Rather than commenting on list about the subject itself, I've commented on the discussion page there: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Building_a_database_of_all_...
Rob
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@robla.net wrote:
On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Brian J Mingus Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I have been working with Sam and others for some time now on
brainstorming a
proposal for the Foundation to create a centralized wiki of citations, a WikiCite so to speak, if that is not the eventual name. My plan is to continue to discuss with folks who are knowledgeable and interested in
such
a project and to have the feedback I receive go into the proposal which I hope to write this summer.
This sounds great. Just speaking as a community member, I've been thinking about this topic a long time myself, and have plenty to add to the conversation.
The proposal white paper will then be sent around to interested parties for corrections and feedback, including on-wiki and mailing lists, before eventually landing at the Foundation officially. As
we
know WMF has not started a new project in some years, so there is no official process. Thus I find it important to get it right.
I'd suggest finding an on-wiki spot to discuss this work. Here's one place this has been discussed in the past that may be a good place to revive the conversation:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books...
Rather than commenting on list about the subject itself, I've commented on the discussion page there:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Building_a_database_of_all_...
Rob
Rob,
Thanks for bringing my attention to this proposal. It certainly has some of the same ring as this project, with of course some important differences. Commonalities between the projects are that they are multilingual and require a powerful search engine. Differences are that this project is for all literary sources and that I believe it is best suited at the WMF. The widespread use of citations across the Wikipedias will drive user contributions towards adding richer metadata to those citations. And having a source of citations available will increase the quality of the Wikipedias as it becomes easier and easier to cite sources.
Brian
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Another advantage that I see: people will spend less time filling in the citation templates and will thus have more time to make more precise citations. This means more citations with exact page numbers or quotes.
Perhaps this could be tested on-wiki prior to creating a separate project, perhaps through revival of Reference namespace. This could be done through templates only, would require no changes to MediaWiki and few changes to existing practices.
BTW1: it is my understanding that you imagined this for literature only, but it could be expanded to all citable media (videos etc).
BTW3: for citing online stuff, this could eventually be combined with archive of cited pages. If the original goes away we would still have the source for the readers to verify. This would also help with some copyright concerns (for example, using free images the source of which is later removed thus leaving the images with no evidence of being free).
This example illustrates some of the problems. If the work is available in other languages, the non-Serbian WPs would want to cite the translation in their language. If the book is being cited from an online excerpt, at least the enWP would require that this be specified. And if different people cited different versions in this manner, we would want to link them together. There seems to be the delusion that accurate work of this sort can be done by automatic programs. It can be done assisted by automated programs, but requires manual checking of every item by someone qualified to make the connections.
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Another advantage that I see: people will spend less time filling in the citation templates and will thus have more time to make more precise citations. This means more citations with exact page numbers or quotes.
Perhaps this could be tested on-wiki prior to creating a separate project, perhaps through revival of Reference namespace. This could be done through templates only, would require no changes to MediaWiki and few changes to existing practices.
BTW1: it is my understanding that you imagined this for literature only, but it could be expanded to all citable media (videos etc).
BTW3: for citing online stuff, this could eventually be combined with archive of cited pages. If the original goes away we would still have the source for the readers to verify. This would also help with some copyright concerns (for example, using free images the source of which is later removed thus leaving the images with no evidence of being free).
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On 21/07/10 22:38, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Since there might be more than one edition of the same book, you'd still have to do a unique identifier, and expanding the cite into the text of the article is still a good idea. I would suggest making the system work like the current {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} and {{cite medline}} templates, where you'd add (say)
{{cite citeid|345343095}}
to the article, and a bot would come round to the article and replace this with:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља|citeid=345343095}}
Doing this would combine the advantages of a central database, which has great advantages for providing authoritative centralized data, with the redundant copying of the same information into the article, which has great advantages for archival purposes, so that, were the central database ever to be lost, or access to be unavailable, the information would remain accessible in the article text itself.
By retaining the link in the expanded template, corrections and improvements to data in the authoritative database could then, as necessary, be propagated into articles using a bot. However, if bad data is ever uploaded into the database, the full expansion of the cite would still be available in the article history, again aiding archival access, and protecting against data corruption.
-- Neil
On 22/07/10 12:04, Neil Harris wrote:
On 21/07/10 22:38, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Since there might be more than one edition of the same book, you'd still have to do a unique identifier, and expanding the cite into the text of the article is still a good idea. I would suggest making the system work like the current {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} and {{cite medline}} templates, where you'd add (say)
{{cite citeid|345343095}}
to the article, and a bot would come round to the article and replace this with:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља|citeid=345343095}}
That should have read:
{{cite citeid|345343095|pages=161|chapter=Јерисавља}}
Apologies,
-- Neil
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
On 21/07/10 22:38, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Since there might be more than one edition of the same book, you'd still have to do a unique identifier, and expanding the cite into the text of the article is still a good idea. I would suggest making the system work like the current {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} and {{cite medline}} templates, where you'd add (say)
{{cite citeid|345343095}}
to the article, and a bot would come round to the article and replace this with:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља|citeid=345343095}}
Doing this would combine the advantages of a central database, which has great advantages for providing authoritative centralized data, with the redundant copying of the same information into the article, which has great advantages for archival purposes, so that, were the central database ever to be lost, or access to be unavailable, the information would remain accessible in the article text itself.
By retaining the link in the expanded template, corrections and improvements to data in the authoritative database could then, as necessary, be propagated into articles using a bot. However, if bad data is ever uploaded into the database, the full expansion of the cite would still be available in the article history, again aiding archival access, and protecting against data corruption.
Whatever syntax is used, we should absolutely not expect users to remember it and the unique identifier of the cited work. There should be a "Cite" button in the toolbar that will allow users to look up (with search suggestions) the correct work, request any further information, and add the information into the page. Then we don't need to get hung up on the syntax, except for readability's sake.
I second the motion to move this discussion to the wikiresearch-l list, since two threads have diverged... SJ
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Andrew Garrett agarrett@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Neil Harris usenet@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
On 21/07/10 22:38, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
Дана Monday 19 July 2010 22:20:15 Brian J Mingus написа:
Feel free to provide your feedback on this idea, in addition to your own ideas, in this thread, or to me personally. I am especially interested in the potential benefits to the WMF projects that you see, and to hear your thoughts on the potential of this project on its own, as that will feature prominently in the proposal. Additionally, what do you think WikiCite would eventually be like, once it is fully matured?
I was thinking about this too. Main advantages that I see are that citations will become easier to use for editors while more informative for readers. Too often I just link to something instead of properly filling a cite template because it's just too bothersome. For example, instead of this crud:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
we would have just:
{{cite|work=Српски митолошки речник |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља}}
Since there might be more than one edition of the same book, you'd still have to do a unique identifier, and expanding the cite into the text of the article is still a good idea. I would suggest making the system work like the current {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} and {{cite medline}} templates, where you'd add (say)
{{cite citeid|345343095}}
to the article, and a bot would come round to the article and replace this with:
{{cite book|author=Š. Kulišić |coauthors=P. Ž. Petrović, N. Pantelić | title=Српски митолошки речник |origyear=1970 |publisher=[[Nolit]] | location=Belgrade |language=Serbian |pages=161 |chapter=Јерисавља|citeid=345343095}}
Doing this would combine the advantages of a central database, which has great advantages for providing authoritative centralized data, with the redundant copying of the same information into the article, which has great advantages for archival purposes, so that, were the central database ever to be lost, or access to be unavailable, the information would remain accessible in the article text itself.
By retaining the link in the expanded template, corrections and improvements to data in the authoritative database could then, as necessary, be propagated into articles using a bot. However, if bad data is ever uploaded into the database, the full expansion of the cite would still be available in the article history, again aiding archival access, and protecting against data corruption.
Whatever syntax is used, we should absolutely not expect users to remember it and the unique identifier of the cited work. There should be a "Cite" button in the toolbar that will allow users to look up (with search suggestions) the correct work, request any further information, and add the information into the page. Then we don't need to get hung up on the syntax, except for readability's sake.
-- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/
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