// sorry for cross-posting

Hello,

a new feature called Reference Previews [1] will soon be released as a beta feature to more wikis. The planned deployment date is October 24 [2] around 15:00 UTC.

As you might guess from the name, this feature gives you a preview of references in the article text. That means, you can look up a reference without jumping down to the bottom of the page. If specified, the preview also shows the type of a reference: whether it’s a web, journal, book or news reference. This can help readers evaluate the trustworthiness of a citation more quickly. If you'd like to know more about this feature, please visit the project page.[1]

Reference Previews originated from a wish from the German-speaking wiki community to have the preview functionality that already exists in many wikis integrated into MediaWiki. Coordination and implementation of this feature were done by the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland, with support from the WMF’s Reading Web team. The design for the feature was developed by the WMF. The feature is part of the MediaWiki Popups extension [3], which is also used for the Page Previews feature.[4]

Reference Previews have been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia for some months already, with around 3,000 users trying it out. Since then, a few bugs were fixed, and it’s been made easier to enable the beta feature. Now Reference Previews will become a beta feature on all Wikipedias and on three Wikivoyage projects.[2] 

We’re inviting everyone to give the feature a try: Please activate the beta feature [5] and let us know what you think on the central feedback page [6]! A big thanks to everyone who gave feedback so far.

If the feature isn’t available on your wiki [2] and you want to have it as a beta feature, please reach out to us on the central feedback page.[6]

For the Technical Wishes team,

Johanna

[1] project page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews

[2] deployment roadmap: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/ReferencePreviews#Deployment_roadmap 

[3] Popups extension: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Popups

[4] Page Previews: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews

[5] go to Preferences > Beta features, e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures 

[6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help_talk:Reference_Previews

Johanna Strodt

Project Manager Community Communications Technical Wishlist, Wikimedia Deutschland