User talk:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks websites

Purpose / Value

Hi there,

Simple question: what is the purpose of this project? I mean, there must be some kind of value added by doing the work to tag all these references?

My question is genuine, not sarcastic, by the way. (Your page explains what you're doing but not why.) Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 12:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: The purpose of the project is to tag the bare refrences that Reflinks and friends can't fix, so other human editors or maybe even a better automated tool, can fix them instead. BHG can correct me if wrong through. Rlink2 (talk) 13:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Rlink2. That's it in a nutshell.

@CapnZapp: It's vastly quicker for me to tag the references than to fix them myself. Like over 100 times quicker. So the tags are a simple and quick way of bringing the bare URLs to the attention of other editors.

Reflinks is a great tool, but it won't fix bare URLs tagged with {{Bare URL inline}}. So to avoid impeding use of Reflinks, I tag only bare URLs which it cannot fix. The other main tools to fill bare URLs (reFill, ReferenceExpander, Citation bot) all support {{Bare URL inline}}, so their use is unimpeded by the tag. Same with @TweetCiteBot and tools being developed by @Rlink2.

For the last five months, I have been feeding lists of articles to Citation bot at a rate of 2,000 to 5,000 pages per day. There is some overlap between those lists and the list of pages where I tag bare URLs, because the bot is a bit fuzzy: there are some websites where it never manages to fill a bare URL, some where its capacity is patchy, and in all cases it relies on external resources with intermittent availability. So I have seen cases where Citation bot may fill a URL that it skipped one, two or even three previous passes.

Hope this helps. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Just clarifying that TweetCiteBot (TCB) is my project, not Rlink2’s. TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

(I came from the ping to TCB’s account). TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 16:39, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. First off, I did not imply you should fix these references. (Not sure if you were defensive when you wrote It's vastly quicker for me to tag the references than to fix them myself. Like over 100 times quicker. You needn't be is what I'm saying). That said, my concern was whether this {{Bare URL inline}} tag was some kind of clean-up or problem tag. After all bare URLs are allowed. Now then. If the tag is only intended to help tool users realizing which bare URLs can't be fixed by their tools maybe I could interest you in improving the documentation to make a bit more clear for any editor that just sees an edit summary and don't know what's going on that the tag is basically an "internal Wiki process technical tag" if that makes sense. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 18:14, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @CapnZapp. Yes, I was a bit defensive, because after more than 15 year editing en.wp, I know from experience that no good deed goes unpunished.

On the rest, it seems that we disagree. Yes, {{Bare URL inline}} and its banner sibling {{Cleanup bare URLs}} are both clean-up and problem tags. WP:Bare URLs provide little info to readers and are subject to WP:LINKROT, so they should be filled. The guidance on that principle is long-standing and stable: bare URLs are allowed, but only as a step to a full ref. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:16, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I can see (at least) two interpretations of bare URLs are allowed, but only as a step to a full ref:

One, you are only allowed to add bare urls if you later fill them in or at least plan to.

Two, an interpretation that accommodates the possibility of multiple editors. That is, not requiring the first bare-url-adding editor to also be the second full-ref-filling editor.

The difference is important. If editors that add bare urls are over time considered to be problemmakers or creators of messes that need to be cleaned up by others, and possibly "encouraged" (harassed) into contributing full urls or stop contributing at all, I would strongly object to that. Contrast this to the alternative where editors that add bare urls are instead genuinely thanked for their contributions; where such contributions are seen as taking that first and most important step of actually finding the sources in the first place, where bare urls are seen as enabling other editors to make use of the indicated sources and bring them up to full Wiki standards, where Wikipedia chooses to accept bare urls over the alternative where fewer sources would be contributed, keeping the threshold for participation low and friendly.

So assuming this means we can "agree to disagree" I have no problems here. Again, I have no problems with making life easier for tool-using editors that improve bare urls. I would never react to any url improvement with anything other than appreciation. However, if you plan this work only as a first step towards making it harder or less friendly to add sources without meeting your standards of how these should look like, I must ponder my options. Have a nice day, CapnZapp (talk) 12:54, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: my interest here is solely in filling bare URLs, to make more reader-friendly refs and prevent linkrot.

I find it regrettable that some editors choose to add refs in a way which creates a lot of work for others to clean up after them, but I have no intention of harassing anyone. Your verbose assumptions of bad faith do nothing to help anyone.

Have a nice day. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:48, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure in an ideal world there would be zero extra work from incomplete refs, but we don't live in that world. We live in a world where adding a bare url is much less cumbersome than adding a full citation. The choice is often between getting a bare url and getting no url at all. I would choose the former every time. That is because I realize the most important part of any reference is not its completeness, but having it at all. Have a nice day to you too! CapnZapp (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Great project

I have been using various scripts through the years to help standardize citations on here such as Refill, Citoid, etc and have encountered just exactly what your project is gathering. It's great that you have managed a database on websites that fail to grab the title and greatly thank you for the effort on this project. – The Grid (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Interesting!

Hi Brown Haired Girl. Firstly, thanks for all you do for Wikipedia.

I have just become aware of your work on sites that are difficult to extract reference metadata from. Good stuff.

In your section on Reference-filling tools, reFill also uses Zotero, by virtue of using Citoid as its parser, so should be subject to the same limitations as CitationBot in that regard. On the flip side, Zotero is extensible, as I have recently noted at Wikipedia:ReFill#How it works. I wonder if there's a willingness amongst volunteers to add to the extensive list of translators to cope with more of these anomalous websites which have non-standard metadata. Any investment of effort in that regard would benefit all tools that use Citoid / Zotero, such as reFill and CitationBot.

With JPxG coming onboard to help with the reFill code, I now have someone to collaborate with, and am putting some time into retrospectively documenting how the solution works, beginning at Wikipedia:Refill/technical. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@Curb Safe Charmer. Out of curiosity, do you know if Visual Editor -> Cite -> Generate also uses zotero/translators? If so, maybe I'll start submitting some bug reports to their GitHub. For example, PubMed publication dates often get parsed incorrectly by Visual Editor -> Cite -> Generate.

In regards to BHG's project, it may be useful to concentrate on programming/improving one tool instead of many tools. We could get it to handle most of the edge cases that she is finding, then run it on citations tagged with {{Bare URL inline}}. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: hi, nice to hear from you. Yes, the Cite tool in the visual editor uses Citoid, which uses Zotero and its translators. It would be great to have more people working on translators for the worst offending sites. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)