Help talk:Citation tools

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I've created this page to avoid duplication. It is transcluded at WP:Citing sources, hence the NOINCLUDE tags at the start of the article, which are only displayed here. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:34, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is really a how-to page, propose this be moved to Help namespace. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:27, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, as this really does not lead where I thought it would. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:36, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

 Done ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A bot-filled template that did ISBN -> "cite book" would be really useful. —Ashley Y 00:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia automatic citation generator sucks. Not only is it unable to generate ISBN citations sometimes it doesn't even do it for WorldCat websites (instead generates a citation *to* the website itself!!)

Example

https://www.worldcat.org/title/1043358349 pony in a strange land (talk) 13:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I created a bookmarklet for automatic creation of citations. With a single click you can generate a reference or an external link from an online newspaper article. The bookmarklet needs extra code added for every website in order to "learn" that particular website, and the code must be updated every time (very rarely) a website changes the way it's storing those key elements (title, author, date) in their HTML pages. That implies a little work but it's so much worth it! I am using it very much (on Romanian Wikipedia), and it's saving me lots and lots of time. If more people find it useful, then we can grow together the script to make it capable to handle the most well known websites. Those who would like to try it can find the script here: User:Ark25/RefScript. Such a bookmarklet is the best solution for creating citations because:

• you don't depend on an external server, which might work or not
• you don't depend on a browser addon, which might work or not
• it works in Firefox and Google Chrome, and maybe it can be made to work in Internet Explorer (I don't have much time to test that though)
• it's super-fast

This is how the script works:

Say you have a link like this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23814524

After visiting the link, you click the bookmarklet. The script can generate a reference using the {{cite web}} template:

<ref name="BBC_2013-09-19c">{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23814524 |title=Sea otter return boosts ailing seagrass in California |newspaper=BBC |date= 26 August 2013 |last=Suzi Gage |accessdate=2013-09-19}}</ref>

or it can generate a plain reference like this:

<ref name="BBC_2013-09-19r">[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23814524 Sea otter return boosts ailing seagrass in California], 26 August 2013, Suzi Gage, ''BBC'', retrieved at 2013-09-19</ref>

Or it can generate an external link, looking like this:

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23814524 Sea otter return boosts ailing seagrass in California], 26 August 2013, Suzi Gage, ''BBC''

The output will be like this: ^{[1] [2]}

References:

External link:

• Sea otter return boosts ailing seagrass in California, 26 August 2013, Suzi Gage, BBC

In order to change the output of the script, you just have to change the last variable, from "sc" to "sr" or to "s".

For the moment, the script can only handle a few sites (BBC, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Ars Technica, TG Daily), but the good part is that everyone can teach the script how to handle a new website. If for example you are using a lot The New York Times for citations, you can teach the script how to find the key elements (title, author, date) into that newspaper's online articles and then you can save a lot of time by creating citations with a single click. I am not using often English newspapers for the citations I create, but I developed the script to handle about 30-40 most important Romanian newspapers and that's helping me a lot.

If you can't manage to add code to the script, then ask me to add code for the newspaper you need, and I will try to do it, depending on how much free time I have. —  Ark25  (talk) 02:06, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A number of the links go to pages that say this template is no longer used. For example, ISBN and Jstor.

Can anyone confirm if this Firefox extension works for them? On my PC it slows down the browser and the Wiki-code it produces does not actually copy to my clipboard, when I press the button. CorporateM (Talk) 01:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are quite a few Wikipedia articles about Fraternities and Sororities that reference an edition of Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. There have been only 20 editions going back to 1879 (most recent is 1991). I'd like to somehow make it so that a cite to a specific year or edition could be given and all of the information filled in for it. Would this be an appropriate template and if so, is there any existing template that would serve as a guide to how to make it?Naraht (talk) 16:16, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some of you may be interested in this:

There is a Tech Talk next Monday, 29 February at 20:00 UTC (12 Noon Pacific Time) about Zotero and the mw:citoid service.

The main subject is how to extract accurate, automated bibliographic citations from websites. This talk is mostly about Zotero, which is a free and open-source citation management tool. Zotero is used on the Wikipedias through the automagic citoid service. Citoid is currently an option in the visual editor and will (eventually) be used for automated citations in the wikitext editor at some Wikipedias. Zotero is also used by many academics and researchers, and most of the information presented will be useful to people outside of Wikipedia as well.

Please share this invitation with anyone that you believe will be interested. If you have questions, then please leave a note on my talk page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:43, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, apologies for cross-posting here but I figured this would be of interest to many citation tool developers and contributors on this page. Applications for WikiCite 2017 (Vienna 23-25 May, 2017) are open until February 27, 2017. WikiCite 2017 is a 3-day conference, summit and hack day to be hosted in Vienna, Austria, on May 23-25, 2017. It expands efforts started last year with WikiCite 2016 to design a central bibliographic repository , as well as tools and strategies to improve information quality and verifiability in Wikimedia projects. Our goal is to bring together Wikimedia contributors, data modelers, information and library science experts, software engineers, designers and academic researchers who have experience working with citations and bibliographic data in Wikipedia, Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects. For this initiative to be successful, it is critical to get tool developers working on citations and sources involved. Thanks to funding from a number of organizations, we'll have (limited) travel funding available: please consider submitting an application if you're interested in participating. This year's event will be held at the same venue as the Wikimedia Hackathon and we'll be able to accommodate up to 100 participants. If you have any questions you can get in touch with the organizers at: [email protected] (I don't always respond promptly to pings, this email address is the best way to contact us regarding the event) --Dario (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No idea if this is the correct page to ask this (if it is not, could someone point me the correct way?), but I had a question about citations and citation tools. Is there a tool of some sort that can scan two different pages for identical URL's in citations? I've put a lot of effort into fixing up the citations for Guns N' Roses, and am working on the article for their album Chinese Democracy, which shares a lot of the same references. Is there a way to see which ones they share so I can just copy paste the refs from the GNR article instead of redoing the refs by hand in the Chinese article? RF23 (talk) 06:43, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am not even sure what the tool is called, but it is a citation button with a check on it that is at the bottom of the edit page, right next to "show changes." I've been using it for so long, I can't even remember how I began, but for the last two days, it hasn't been working. I only get error messages that read "Error: Citations request failed." Am I the only one that is happening to? Thanks.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 19:53, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

me too--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:13, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#RfC: Citation tools regarding whetyer citation tools should allowed. Your input on this question is welcome. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Help is needed to reduce the overusage of cluster references at ARIA Music Awards#Most awards/nominations. There are 41 ref entries, each is a cluster ref with anywhere from two to 30 sub refs per cluster. This has resulted in a huge number of cluster refs many citing the same sub ref again and again. I have edited this page for years and just added in another cluster ref per artist without really thinking about it. Now that its been brought to my attention I want to find a way to do this more efficiently.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 01:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I recall at one point using a tool which parsed an APA reference list in plain text and output a list of Template:cite journal or similar. However, I can't seem to find such a tool right now. Does anyone else know of such a tool? Daask (talk) 15:59, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all! I'm thinking of applying for a software grant to develop a visual Zotero/Citoid translator editor. Before writing the proposal, I would really appreciate your feedback about the idea, as summarized here. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diegodlh (talk • contribs) 00:37, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A proposal has been presented here. We would appreciate your thoughts, comments and questions in its discussion page, as well as your endorsements if you would like to support it. Thank you! --Diegodlh (talk) 22:44, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books - https://reftag.appspot.com/ - appears to be down. This is a pretty helpful tool so if anyone has the ability to bring it back up that'd be appreciated. McPhail (talk) 11:28, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I second that. Has it maybe been moved? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:30, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I third it. I've been getting a 500 error for over a month on that link. Anyone know where it is now? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 21:25, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• @McPhail, Aymatth2, and Peacemaker67: This is an external tool that is outside our control. See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 78#Reftag error messages, also User talk:Apoc2400#Wikipedia citation tool and subsequent threads on that page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:56, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Redrose64: - that's a pity, thanks for the update. McPhail (talk) 09:23, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• The script code (Python) is available. I don't know how useful it is; it's quite old. Possibly the tool was taken offline because it no longer worked, and updating was not an option? Not something I can help with. Best wishes Pol098 (talk) 21:36, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't the automatic citation insertion tool work for Wikisource links? Please add this feature.--Trickipaedia (talk) 10:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many pages covering software utilities feature a giant table with capabilities and license terms, etc.

That would be useful here.

I have a source with BibTex, but I don't know which tool to mess around with, and given the confusion around what supports what (and if support even continues across the legacy browser-extension cataclysm), my easy path out is not to bother in the first place. — MaxEnt 19:11, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

According to its site, ottobib is no longer operational. https://ottobib.com

There doesn't seem to be any indication that it will return. Presumably its entry should be removed. Does anyone know of anything with similar functionality? (Hohum ^@) 16:27, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be a thing where I could drop an ISBN into the "automatic" tab of the mobile cite tool and it would automatically fill in most of the cite book fields. But then that mysteriously disappeared. I miss it a lot!

Where can I find info on what happened or updates on any prospects for restoration? TIA jengod (talk) 16:54, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any tool for combining exact (or near-exact) duplicate citations, other than AWB? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(And is this available in JWB? If so, I can't find the feature.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 00:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]