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I've found editing Wikipedia (as a casual user) to be more daunting than it was five or so years ago, much in part due to figuring out the citation system. Also

by sehugg 11y ago

I've found editing Wikipedia (as a casual user) to be more daunting than it was five or so years ago, much in part due to figuring out the citation system. Also, uploading images (even those you own) was a headache that took a while to navigate. I don't think though that people will all transition to mobile and forget how to edit markup on keyboards, as the article suggests ... at least not anytime soon.

Strilanc 11y ago
I agree with both those criticisms. The citation templates are hard to find (I had to google them), bury their example usages, and you can't even find out if you did it wrong until the bot that rewrites the particular citation template you used comes by and fails. When I was uploading images I think I managed to get all the way to the last step of five before realizing I was supposed to be using wikimedia instead. The actual user experience for citing should be "just give me the link". Then wikipedia should do the rest. Is it an arxiv link? That's a very common site; scrap the data. Is it a docid link? Ditto. Is it some random pdf? Do your best to parse out the title and authors. Actually, even the URL might be overkill. A random bag of words about the paper (its title, or author and year, or just half-remembered fragments) could be more than enough. A naive search of google scholar with that bag of words, augmented with context from the surrounding article, could potentially have an excellent hit rate.
- hopscotch 11y ago
  Crossref is a non-google site, sponsored by the publishers, that, in my opinion, is friendlier for automation. Anecdotally, I get better results from them, too.
- lwf 11y ago
  > The actual user experience for citing should be "just give me the link". Then wikipedia should do the rest. You're absolutely right. And Wikipedia's Visual Editor[1] does just that: http://i.imgur.com/0yM2koH.png http://i.imgur.com/0yM2koH.png http://i.imgur.com/opVTplc.png http://i.imgur.com/opVTplc.png It isn't perfect, but it's constantly being improved. It was at one point rolled out as the default editing experience on the English Wikipedia[2], but was made opt-in after feedback from the community[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor#History https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor#History [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC

by sehugg 11y ago

Strilanc 11y ago

I agree with both those criticisms. The citation templates are hard to find (I had to google them), bury their example usages, and you can't even find out if you did it wrong until the bot that rewrites the particular citation template you used comes by and fails. When I was uploading images I think I managed to get all the way to the last step of five before realizing I was supposed to be using wikimedia instead. The actual user experience for citing should be "just give me the link". Then wikipedia should do the rest. Is it an arxiv link? That's a very common site; scrap the data. Is it a docid link? Ditto. Is it some random pdf? Do your best to parse out the title and authors. Actually, even the URL might be overkill. A random bag of words about the paper (its title, or author and year, or just half-remembered fragments) could be more than enough. A naive search of google scholar with that bag of words, augmented with context from the surrounding article, could potentially have an excellent hit rate.

hopscotch 11y ago
Crossref is a non-google site, sponsored by the publishers, that, in my opinion, is friendlier for automation. Anecdotally, I get better results from them, too.
lwf 11y ago
> The actual user experience for citing should be "just give me the link". Then wikipedia should do the rest. You're absolutely right. And Wikipedia's Visual Editor[1] does just that: http://i.imgur.com/0yM2koH.png http://i.imgur.com/0yM2koH.png http://i.imgur.com/opVTplc.png http://i.imgur.com/opVTplc.png It isn't perfect, but it's constantly being improved. It was at one point rolled out as the default editing experience on the English Wikipedia[2], but was made opt-in after feedback from the community[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor#History https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor#History [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC