[Foundation-l] WikiCite - new WMF project? Was: [Wiki-research-l] UPEI's proposal for a "universal citation index"

[Nikola Smolenski]

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).