Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Citation cleanup

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Pages with duplicate reference names

This is the first WikiProject I'm joining. I forgot where I originally found the Category:Pages with duplicate reference names link from, I think it was from a technical discussion related to adding warnings and automatically categorizing articles with redundant reference names. As I started slowly going through it, I wondered if there was a related WikiProject, and this seems to be it. The backlog is so huge, that I'm inviting others to also join in . I'm not sure who started, but when I did, apart from recently changed articles, the A-B was already done.

It's a mostly systematic and boring task, but apart from exceptions, per-article work is not too long, so it's easy to just put in some available time, and stop anytime. I so far found a few sometimes challenging aspects, maybe some of this could eventually be part of the WikiProject documentation:

Infoboxes may already have reference tags, so duplicates may still show up for some sources when the deduplicating work is fully done. Checking the infobox template, then fixing the article source to use that reference may be necessary. I have lost half an hour fiddling with references on an article before discovering this. Common examples are country census data.
Some climate articles include chart templates causing some citations to clash.
It may be difficult to quickly distinguish identical and redundant inline citations. When an article is especially messy, copying all or most citations to the reflist (Help:Footnotes#WP:LDR), and then replacing inline references with tags seems to help.
It is unfortunately common for articles to have multiple citations with a common redundant tag, as well as a number of inline references to that tag. This means that precise information, if it once existed, was already lost. Checking external references to fix these may take longer, or may not be possible. When those point to multiple parts of a single site, or multiple pages of a single book, a strategy may be to consolidate those into one generic link to that resource (i.e. a range of pages, or sometimes just the whole book, etc).
I come across various citation templates which I'm not always familiar with, so some articles require me to read the Wikipedia citations documentation.
- Song articles often use the singlechart or Certification_Table_Entry templates which support the optional refname parameter.
- Schools using the NCES School ID template support the optional ref_name parameter.
The red error message shown about the redundancy shows a tag name. This name is not always obvious to locate in the article source, because various characters are substituted. Moreover, some citation templates automatically aggregate information into tags.
And of course one encounters many other types of citation related bugs when doing this (incomplete or obsolete accessdate, external links in website, red links, etc). It can also be the opportunity to add relevant top-page tags, categories or stub-template whenever necessary.
- Short incomplete articles needing stub tags near the bottom using the appropriate stub category template
- Tagging articles with bare URL citations using {{cleanup-link rot|date=<month year>}}

That's about it for now I think. PaleoNeonate (talk) 19:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed fixing bot-mangled citations

Use of the ReferenceExpander bot without manually checking its output has led to references being contracted instead. For example, the bot sometimes follows a link that now redirects to a new, uninformative place, but since the link technically "works" the auto-generated citation omits the archive-URL and creates a footnote that is nicely templated but completely useless. It also removes all sorts of ancillary information included in manually-formatted citations, like quotations. If multiple citations were gathered into the same footnote, it creates a replacement based on only the first of them. It can see a citation to a chapter in an edited collection and replace the authors' names with the editors of the volume. It can see a URL for a news story and create a {{cite web}} footnote that omits the byline which had been manually included. A list of potentially affected pages is available here.

Some of these are quick fixes, while others take more work. Any help at all would be appreciated. XOR'easter (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is still ongoing. We're now in the part of the worksheet where the script technically made the pages longer, in terms of character count, but sometimes it still removed information (e.g., turning a manual book citation into a {{cite book}} and losing the page number). It also throws junk into citations, of the sort you've probably seen before, like |last=Staff |first=News and such. And it tends to change access-date parameters to the date that the script edited the page, rather than the last date that a human actually read the source, which basically fabricates history. My own feeling is that the fixes are getting easier, and more of the potentially problematic edits are turning out fine, but help bringing this whole task to a conclusion would still be greatly appreciated. XOR'easter (talk) 22:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you were upset that you missed the chance to work on the ensmallened articles, there's a second batch that needs checking. XOR'easter (talk) 22:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is still ongoing, if anyone needs a new hobby.... XOR'easter (talk) 16:56, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bare URL drive?

I got this idea from Tails Wx, who proposed a {{citation needed}} drive. I doubt anybody watches this page, but here's my proposal anyways:

There are currently 65 000+ articles tagged with bare URL citations
This has only decreased by 4 000 since 4 Jun.
Bare URLs are for the most part easy to fix.

Perhaps we should initiate a Bare URL drive, like GOCE drives, to reduce the backlog and increase editor participation. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 14:23, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would still be interested in this. I would be happy to help coordinate it if that is needed. C F A 💬 21:47, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be great! Cremastra (talk) 07:45, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a draft here with some ideas based on previous drives. C F A 💬 19:33, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Talk:Pawn Stars § What to do about notes masquerading as citations?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Pawn Stars § What to do about notes masquerading as citations?. I could really use some guidance here, please advise. SmileySnail (talk) 07:19, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Update to Category pages

To make category pages easier to use, for the individual months within Category:Articles with unsourced statements I added these:

Random page button
Topic filter
Help message

These additions are "cloned" from changes done for:

Category:Orphaned articles individual months
Category:Articles lacking sources individual months

This update is being posted at:

Overall, I am hopeful these changes will help editors new to article citations and those regularly working to reduce the backlog. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 22:02, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question about 17,118 September 2023 articles

Wondering what is/has happened with Category:Articles with unsourced statements from September 2023? For "Sports" topic there are 14,637 articles. Is this possible from a bot run? August 2023 has 9,715 articles and Sept is only the 9th day. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 23:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pompey needs work

Hello. The footnotes of Pompey need some work. Some citations don't have links to the works cited, for example. If you have the time or interest, your input is appreciated. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 02:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Link to dead project

Under Open Tasks there is a reference to a project that is no longer maintained:

Articles in Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations. Consider using tools:~dispenser/view/Reflinks for this.

skarz (talk) 05:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Call for participation: Test and co-create a new feature for reusing references with different details (sub-referencing)

Hello. The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland is seeking to look over the shoulders of some Wikipedians who predominantly use Visual Editor, or switch between wikitext and Visual Editor when editing, especially when working with references.

Sessions will take 30–45 minutes and will include testing an early prototype for sub-referencing (= reusing references with different details) with Visual Editor. Compensation is available. If you are interested, please sign up here.

Please note that most likely, we won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX designer will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g., in terms of editing experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

-- For the Technical Wishes project, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:19, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!

Hello, we are reaching out to members of this project, because you are experts when it comes to referencing. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.

We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:

Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.

We are aware that enwiki and other projects already use workarounds like {{sfn}} for referencing a source multiple times with different details. The new sub-referencing feature doesn’t change anything about existing approaches to referencing, so you can still use sfn. We have created sub-referencing, because existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews. We are looking forward to your feedback on how our solution compares to your existing methods of re-using references with different details.

Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.

Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]