User talk:Cyde/Ref converter

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This talk page is for technical discussion of Ref converter only. If you want to threaten me with blocks, RfCs, and RfArs, you can do so on my talk page. --Cyde Weys 21:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Re lost of citation name

Just seen your converter and will have to have a cautious go. However I note that the conversion ignores the citation name, ie {{ref|ABC}} ... {{note|ABC}} details becomes <ref> details </ref> ... <references/> (rather than <ref name="ABC"> details </ref> ... <references/>). The citation names are useful as they allow duplicate citation of the same source, and I try to take care to give meaningful names. Is there any way your code can be modified to preserve the citation-tag's name ? David Ruben Talk 14:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foreign Characters

This is a pretty nifty tool. The one issue I spotted is that it can't handle foreign language characters; it converted the ancient Greek letters to gibberish when I used it on Epaminondas [1]. Just wanted to let you know about that, and thanks for programming this--I'd been meaning to get around to converting those for a while, but it was just too much work until now. RobthTalk 03:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor nitpick, not your fault…

It would appear that the users of {{note}} are in the habit of inserting a full stop at the beginning of their notes to demarcate the "Note…" marker. Is your code sufficiently flexible that these might be removed, since they look decidedly odd in the new format. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good work!

Good work on this, Cyde! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:51, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of the gibberish foreign language links: another way to fix this is simply to go back to the last reversion in the history before the conversion, click "edit", scroll down to the bottom (where the interlanguage links usually are), and copy and paste them into the current revision, removing the gibberish. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:09, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Good work indeed! talk to +MATIA 06:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TODO

This is a todo list. I'm striking things off as they get done. If you have anything to add, please add it, but just realize I make no promises to implement any ideas other than what I have personally proposed. --Cyde Weys 20:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Remove the Defaults button. It's become redundant. --Cyde Weys 20:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Link back to on-wiki Ref converter page. --Cyde Weys 20:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Some articles seem to have multiple refs all linking to the same note, and they don't use note labels. This is very bad syntax but nonetheless Ref converter should be able to handle it. --Cyde Weys 07:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Some pages, such as Albert Einstein, use {{rf}} and {{ent}} rather than {{ref}} and {{note}}. Can these be converted too? --Alvestrand 08:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible problem, not certain of origin

This change left behind a stray instance of {{ref}}. The oddity is that it did have a target, which was shared by an instance of {{ref label}}. Might this be what confused your code? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Should this have worked?

See article Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company... I think it's the old style kind, and has 3... (I wrote the page originally). Here's a snippet of article text showing use of ref label: ...source{{ref label|fiw|1|none}} it was... Script issues "Error, no refs found in that page." Should it have? Thanks for making this tool available. I stole your source for my own nefarious purpuses as well! ++Lar: t/c 22:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, just tried the wikirefs2.pl I was notified about (thanks for the fast turnaround!) on the same article (WB&I co) and I still get Error, no refs found in that page. ++Lar: t/c 03:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
er, the reason it didn't find any is because you tested your code against it, I should have checked the history! Thanks for the fix. Is it just me or does it strip out spaces and single carriage returns? the text seems rather blocky now... ++Lar: t/c 04:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Huh? I checked that edit to Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company and I didn't notice any spaces or newlines being trimmed out. Do you have another example of this occurring? I definitely want to fix it if something's going wrong. --Cyde Weys 13:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I could be confused or misremembering. maybe something else prior did it? None of the removed text changed the external appearance of the article, but I wrote the article in the first place and I tend to use a lot of white space, so I was sure I had used it in that case. I havent pored over your regexes, I was just sort of jumping to a conclusion (unrelatedly, AWB takes out white space, unnecessarily in my view, so I tend to get spun up about whitespace easily) there, sorry! (I have to get better at poring over edit summmaries before shooting my mouth off, I guess, that's twice in one day it has tripped me up) ++Lar: t/c 13:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harvard references?!

Okay, apparently there were Harvard reference templates too? See {{ref harv}} and {{ref harvard}}. I modified my script to handle them. There's apparently also a {{ref num}} but I can't think of a good way to handle it yet. And it doesn't help that I haven't found any actual working examples of it being used in articles. --Cyde Weys 08:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't WP:FN still state that Harvard refs are acceptable? (Okay, somebody changed it so it doesn't say so any more, but still...) We shouldn't be going around changing these willy nilly, IMO -- they're a perfectly acceptable citation format. Johnleemk | Talk 15:15, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Harvard references work pretty much exactly the same as {{ref}} and {{note}} (in fact, all I had to do to get Ref converter to deal with them was add "ref harv" and "ref harvard" to the regex alongside "ref" and "ref label"). Harvard references just display differently. They also fall prey to all of the exact same things that can go wrong with {{ref}} and {{note}}. So either they're all deprecated or none of them are. I'm leaning towards the position that they are deprecated, because Cite.php is demonstrably better in a number of ways and is much more easily maintainable. --Cyde Weys 22:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] When Harvard is (much) better

There are many times when Harvard references are preferable to m:Cite.php for a given article. Fortunately, Wikipedia:Footnotes continues to reflect this fact. Specifically, in scientifically oriented articles, an alphabetical list of bibliographic references that may be multiply referred to by name is vastly better than an order-of-first-occurence list of references by number only. This was an issue recently on Retreat of glaciers since 1850, when it was on the front page, and overzealous WP:BOLD deleted the consensus opinion of editors.

In general, m:Cite.php is very well suited to footnotes: i.e. annotation of the main article flow that elaborate on some specific point in the article but would disrupt flow. It is far less well suited to citations which are bibliographic in nature (where it is still relevant to support specific assertions by reference to specific external sources).

The current limitation in the MediaWiki software and m:Cite.php is addressable in prinicple. But it doesn't do what is needed as currently implemented. The system does allow named references as well as inline ones. The problem is just that it forces in-line description on first occurrence, which is too narrow. I think something that would solve the issues would be allowing an "invisible" section to layout the references as actually desired (alphabetical, etc). For example, if I could do this, I'd probably use it more widely:

<hidden>
 <ref name=alpha>Alpha, Bob.  ''Cool article on topic''</ref>
 <ref name=beta>Beta, Sally. ''Sally weighs in''.  Note that Dr. Beta revises 
 this analysis in ''Later work''</ref>
 <ref name=gamma>Gamma, Yuri. ''Yet another one''</ref>
</hidden>

== Main article ==

 A number of experts contend Foo.<ref name=gamma/><ref name=alpha/>.  However, 
 other experts believe Bar might hold.<ref name=beta/>  The intermediate, Baz
 position is sometimes held by both sides.<ref name=alpha/><ref name=beta/>

This would let us put all the references together in a block, including annotation to the citations themselves. But it would also allow easy reference by name, and in orders other than the prose sequence (and also repeated references to the same source). This particular solution would still require listing references at top rather than at bottom, which might be a disadvantage; probably more important is that it would still use numbered references rather than named ones.

Another improvement that would address this might be to provide an option to the <references/> tag. E.g.:

== References ==
<references type=name/>

In my imagination of this, this would cause all the note links to use the reference names rather than sequential numbers; as is fitting to certain article topics. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, you can do a kind of Harvard referencing with cite.php (this is my favorite citing style). See J. R. R. Tolkien for an example of a way to do it. Blackcap (talk) 20:57, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
The only problem with that example is that it has absolutely nothing even similar to Harvard reference style about it. It's fine for what it is, but it doesn't address any of the issues I raise here. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:04, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
If you look at the notes in that article, they're delivered in a Harvard notation style, i.e., author-date. Then, in the references section, there's an alphabetical list of the sources. That is classic Harvard notation, except that it's not inline. You had mentioned above that in your modified system, "this would let us put all the references together in a block, including annotation to the citations themselves," which is exactly what the citation style in said article does. That's the similarity I was seeing, and thought it may be helpful, so I brought it up. As for your other troubles, in all honesty and after reading your post several times I don't have the slightest idea what problem you're trying to solve or how your solution works, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. Blackcap (talk) 05:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
What similarity do you perceive betwen the references in the Tolkein article and Harvard referencing? As far as I can tell there are two essential features to Harvard refrencing:
  1. References given inline by author name (and year)
  2. Hyperlinks connect to corresponding citation
The Tolkein article has neither of these features. It is true that the small number of citational sources are listed alphabetically. It's not so disruptive with just a few citations; but for other articles with dozens of citations, this style would look absolutely terrible. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The similarity I saw was in the author-date citing style, and the alphabetic list of citational sources. The list is hyperlinked back to the citation, in the notes section. It doesn't really matter, though; it doesn't seem like it's what you're looking for and we might as well leave it at that. Blackcap (talk) 00:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I actually like the Wikipedia:Harvard referencing article quite well, because it illustates a few things:

  • Harvard references are BOOK POINTERS - the page numbers should go inline, not in the footnote, for instance. And the target should be the complete book citation - which I think should use {{cite book}} - different issue.
  • The kind of references that are usefully done with <ref> are really FOOTNOTES - text that, for one reason or another, should be kept separate from the main body of text for reading, but kept together with it for maintenance.

It makes sense, to my mind, to mix both in the same article. And the Ref converter should, in such a case, take care of the footnotes and leave the references alone. If that's possible.... --Alvestrand 21:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cough medicine

The converter didn't work properly for Cough medicine. I like the idea fo the tool, though. Cheers, Singkong2005 03:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It works now on that page. --Cyde Weys 01:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summary failed

Thanks for the great script. Just to let you know, I used it on Gun politics in Australia but it failed to fill out the edit summary for me (using Safari 2.0.3 should that matter; also I did a Show Changes, Preview and clicked on a few refs and backlinks so maybe these broke the auto-fill or something... shrug). Otherwise, it seemed to work.--Russell E 05:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It only fills in the edit summary if you click on the link back to the page from within the Ref converter. --Cyde Weys 06:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I am doing this, and it still doesn't fill it out for me. Im using the latest versin of explorer.--Esprit15d 19:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Can you try using Firefox? I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't be working ... it's using very basic HTTP stuff that's been around since the first CGI scripts. --Cyde↔Weys 19:57, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Ooopsie me. I was dragging and dropping to a new window (duh!). It's working. Thanks!--Esprit15d 12:48, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link list update

Ref converter has been updated once again. This time I have created "WikiLinks", which automatically generates a fresh list of articles with old reference styles that need converting. Just run WikiLinks, open up a bunch of the resultant links it give in separate tabs, and go through each tab one-by-one and convert those references.

And thanks to JesseW on this one, he gave me the idea to actually do it. It certainly does improve efficiency by a bit! --Cyde Weys 06:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Does the script work only on Wikipedia, or does it work on other sites, too? It doesn't work for me... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.62.15.191 (talk • contribs)

Right now it only works on enwiki. I suppose there's no reason I couldn't get it to load any random wiki URL (assuming that wiki uses a recent version of MediaWiki, has Cite.php installed, and uses {{ref}}/{{note}} format). The thing is open source, though, and it shouldn't be too hard to modify it to your needs. All you need is a apache (or some other webserver) and Perl. And it is well-commented. As a temporary work-around you could just copy the code from the other wiki temporarily into a sandbox on Wikipedia. --Cyde Weys 03:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cool

This is incredibly useful. I've been meaning to convert a bunch of stuff I vote for ages, and this takes a minute. Chick Bowen 03:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Go spread the word then. Just a hint, you don't seem to be using Ref converter exactly correctly, as I see you aren't having it automatically fill out the edit summaries for you. That's just a nice little automatic bit. Read the short instructions thoroughly and you'll get it. --Cyde Weys 03:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm perfectly willing to believe I'm screwing it up somehow, but I hit the link as commanded. It generated a URL with autosummary ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oswald_Mbuyiseni_Mtshali&action=edit&autosummary=Updating%20reference%20styles%20with%20[[User:Cyde/Ref%20converter|Ref%20converter]].]), but that URL did not result in the summary being filled in. It's broken as it appears here, of course, but for a different reason. Chick Bowen 04:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
That URL is working just fine for me (well, I have to copy it, obviously it's not working here). Are you using weird browser extensions or something? I don't see why this wouldn't work for you ... all you should have to do is click the "this link" link and it should work. I haven't heard of this problem from anyone else. Are you running Windows under a foreign character set maybe? --Cyde Weys 04:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't work for me, either. I'm using a totally standard version of Firefox (1.5.0.2.), Win 2000, and the Classic skin. I've yet to check if it works for me in Monobook, but I'll tell you in a minute. Blackcap (talk) 07:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Nah, doesn't seem to work for me in Monobook, either. It's not a big deal, though: I have my own edit summary that seems to work fine. Blackcap (talk) 07:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I also get no autosummaries filled in when I use the Wikipedia link provided by the tool. I use Firefox 1.5.0.2, WinXP and the Monobook skin. Great tool, at any rate! Sandstein 07:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone else have a clue here? I am at a loss. I tried that link you posted and it worked just perfectly. Why would some computers (or is it Wikipedia) be ignoring some parameters passed in by the URL? --Cyde Weys 07:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I've no idea. I've never heard of an autosummary before, until I heard you talk about it. I wouldn't let it worry you, though, it doesn't diminish the tool at all. Blackcap (talk) 07:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Same here. Sandstein 07:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

As others have said, I've never experimented with autosummary. I use XP, Firefox 1.0.7 (yeah, yeah, I know), Monobook. I do have Windows configured to allow Japanese, but that's not supposed to affect any other characters, and never has before. I don't have any Firefox extensions running. I can't imagine! Doesn't diminish my appreciation, though, Cyde. Chick Bowen 13:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two suggestions

  • Possibly use a link to the new footnote standard in the default autosummary (for those for whom it works)? The one I use is Converted references to the new format using Cyde's converter. I've taken the liberty of referring to it on the tool's page (for those for whom it doesn't work; feel free to change it, of course).
  • The step of having to click "Go" first before copying the text appears a bit counterintuitive and superfluous, especially as there is no visual feedback after clicking "Go". Can you make it so that the conversion is initiated automatically?
Sandstein 07:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah, the second suggestion appears to have been implemented already. Sandstein 08:05, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflicted) We don't want to be cluttering up edit summaries with too many links. Generally you just link back to the automated tool that you're using and that tool's page should make it clear exactly what is going on. If that's a problem with my page, well, we need to work on it.

And as for your second point, I'm not sure I understand. It can't automatically click Go for you, because how is it to know when you're done typing in the page name? You can also use the Return key too. Or if you're referring to it not going automatically from WikiLinks, I don't know what to say .. it does go automatically for me! If you're suggesting removing the textfield and Go button entirely when following a WikiLinks link, that's probably a good idea.

I also just modified the converter to make it slightly more clear what's going on. What do you think? --Cyde Weys 08:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the change to the converter. It does "go" automatically for me now when coming from the list of links, too, so consider this issue settled.
As to the links in the edit summary, I thought it might be useful to inform contributors to articles using the old style what exactly it is we do here, but you're right - your tool's page does this at the very top. Sandstein 08:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{fn}}, {{fnb}} et al.

Some articles still use these templates, e.g. Marbury v. Madison. Could the converter convert them, too? Sandstein 08:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Those two are used so very inconsistently it is hard to figure out what to do with them. They just link to each other by number, right? So I suppose I could treat it exactly like {{ref}}/{{note}} except instead of alphanumeric tags it's just numeric tags. I'll have to look into it. But there is going to be a large failure rate with those kinds of footnotes because they are so very old and used so very inconsistently. --Cyde Weys 08:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

That is pretty much how m:Standardize notes.py handles fn/fnb. It changes fn|1 to ref|fn1. (SEWilco 16:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Ref num converter

The following message was just sent to the spamlist.

I have just updated Ref converter to handle {{ref num}} links. I am not entirely sure of the correctness of the new code, though, so I have uploaded it as a testing version here. Please use it for now, especially on pages that use ref num, and contact me with any bug reports. If no bugs are detected by 2006-04-24 00:00 UTC then I will overwrite the old version of the ref converter with the new version and you can go back to using wikirefs.pl. --Cyde Weys 17:28, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Soooo ... I take it no one has found any bugs with the new version yet? --Cyde Weys 18:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contentious conversions

The top of the output of [2] is now a list of pages, e.g. J. K. Rowling, where reference conversions have been repeatedly reverted by proponents of the old system. To avoid futile edit wars, I propose:

  • that we recommend that editors put the following comment in the references section if the conversion of an article's notes proves to be contentious:
<!-- There have been objections to converting the references in this article to the new format described in [[WP:FN]]. Please discuss on the talk page before converting. See [[User:Cyde/Ref converter]] for an automated conversion tool. -->
  • that the converter handle such pages (i.e., those with comments containing "references", "footnotes", "WP:FN" or similar) appropriately, e.g. listing them separately or not at all.
Sandstein 17:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Many articles already contain comments with the words references and footnotes in them because there are lots of instruction comments out there on how to use the old system (Ref converter actually removes these comments). Anyway, putting a specific text into the article wouldn't work because WikiLinks simply takes a picture of the "What links here" page. If it actually had to inspect each linked page's source we would be talking about orders of magnitude more bandwidth usages and strain on the Wikipedia servers. I don't think this is acceptable. --Cyde Weys 18:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I see. Then we should probably recommend that users look at the talk and/or history page first, as proposed below. Sandstein 18:39, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
As an alternative, how about creating a category called something like NoCyde, that contentious-page people can insert into their page, and have the perl script exclude any page in that category? Rpresser 16:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref converter

Very cool tool! Thanks for creating it. I did several ref conversions the hard way before I noticed your converter. I guess I was one of the ones who converted J. K. Rowling (only because it was the first article that came up on the list) to try out the tool. I didn't realize there was some disagreement about it. Your conversion tool converts to the latest style, which I support. The new style makes a positive difference particularly in articles where there is a lot of activity and paragraphs being deleted, moved, added. Keeping the ref info close to the sentence it references helps keep the reference list up-to-date. The old way tends to leave outdated leftover refs that no longer are a reference for anything. Meanwhile, I won't convert articles where there has been any backlash over the new style, I'll look at the history and talk of an article before I convert. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 18:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

It's less controversial than you think. In the case of J. K. Rowling, it's really just one user who is objecting. The vast majority of people support the update to the newer, cleaner, non-deprecated styles. There's just some old hold-outs, for whatever reasons. --Cyde Weys 18:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey would you take a look at this post conversion edit of mine? It put some extraneous words/characters "UNIQ375fb366c1811c0-HTMLCommentStrip7bcedf19223347ff00000001" after the reference I don't see how to remove. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 18:51, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I guess Cite.php just doesn't like comments inside of ref tags. This is the first time I've seen it after hundreds of uses from Ref converter, so I think it's a pretty rare problem that can be fixed manually. --Cyde Weys 18:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
This is indeed the case, and I have filed a bug for it. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 16:29, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't realize it was the comment that was doing it. I've done several conversions now and they all look good. Wonderful utility! : ) --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 19:22, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Handling of malformed {{note}}s

When {{note}} is used at the end of a footnote, rather than at the beginning, the converter fails to recognise it as a footnote. This has happened to me three times so far (see e.g. the history of Pope Joan). Maybe this could also be automated? Sandstein 20:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't seen this usage before either. Sigh. I'll take a look at it later ... I have too many things to do today, though. --Cyde Weys 20:55, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

A temporary solution would be to move the notes to the beginning of the footnote, save, and then run it through the converter. Jude (talk,contribs,email) 00:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I did. It's probably not worth coding if no one else sees it. Sandstein 17:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this really that big of a problem? I've used Ref converter quite a lot and I never saw anything like that. It might not be worth modifying Ref converter to take care of; just take care of it manually during the few instances in which it does occur. --Cyde Weys 00:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding Lulu's messages

You may be here because a certain user just spammed your talk page with his screed. I'm not going to spam all of you with a response, so I'll just respond here and hope you read it. His words in italics, my response in normal font.

Unreflective use of refconverter is causing many problems, and in many cases actively harming Wikipedia.

First of all, Ref converter is helping Wikipedia, not harming it, because it is converting away from the old, deprecated, hard-to-maintain reference templates.

The tool is nice to have—in fact, it's the impetus for me creating my own "Citation Tool" (still alpha).

A tool that is still alpha isn't going to do a lot of good, now is it? Ref converter is on version 2. You can't expect me to hold off on the use of my tool because theoretically at some point in the future you might release something that does the same thing.

Citation Tool does not do the same thing as refconverter. Please take a look at its project page for details. What Citation Tool does is complementary to what refconverter does; even if refconverter were used in strictly policy-conformant ways, Citation Tool would have a separate utility. Whatever you want to call the version numbers, the current version of Citation Tool does something that I believe is useful (diagnose the some of the errors that frequently arise when editors try to maintain m:Cite.php references) . Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

But it is nice to have to aid editors who are actually involved in editing a specific article, and who have reached consensus about making a given type of change to an existing article.

Lulu is now implying that articles are owned and you need to ask permission before making any changes, especially a change as minor as converting reference styles. This is directly contrary to Wikipedia policy.

Obviously not! I have stated many, many times now that a mis-citation of WP:OWN does not authorize blatant disregard for consensus. Unfortunately, such a blatant disregard for policy is what Cyde is advocating here. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not "authorizing a blatant disregard for consensus". I added the only two articles I'm aware of that prefer the old system to the Blacklist. What you're saying runs directly counter to what's actually happened. --Cyde Weys 03:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the semi-bot is largely being used to make "drive by 'improvements'" to articles where editors either have not considered the citation style, or where they have actively decided on something different from what the tool produces.

"Semi-bot" is a protologism that has no actual meaning on Wikipedia. Each edit with Ref converter is committed and reviewed manually. There are only two articles I can think of where the "regulars" are actively fighting the conversion to newer reference styles, and I have instructed Ref converter users (on the Ref converter page) not to mess with them for now.

This is extremely disrespectful to other Wikipedia editors, and a gross violation of process.

Au contraire, I think what Lulu is doing is much more disrespectful to other editors. He's using the Ref converter spamlist, which users signed onto solely to receive information on technical updates on Ref converter, to try to push his views. Also, Lulu seems to think that he can get other people to follow his narrow-minded vision of Wikipedia merely by threatening them. He tried threatening me with a user conduct RfC, blocks (he's not an admin), and even an RfAr. When that didn't work, he turned to threatening Ref converter users directly.

I have not looked at your specific changes made using the semi-bot, but I strongly recommend that you follow a guideline along the lines of: "Use this tool only after consensus for a change has been reached on the talk page of the article to which it is applied!"

This is just more repetition of the "you have to ask permission to do everything" myth, which runs directly counter to WP:BOLD, an established policy.

You may also want to take a look at User:Evilphoenix/ref conversion. This is a sketch of an RfC that may be filed to try to resolve this problem (I see no reason you might not opine there, even while it lives in userspace).

As it is written now, that RfC is entirely one-sided (and will likely receive substantial rebuttals once it goes live).

Ideally, Cyde will back off his insistence on changing all articles, even where against editor consensus. But unfortunately, his attitude has only become more belligerent when I have repeated requests in this regard.

Personal attack duly noted.

I think a positive involvment of well-meaning users of the semi-bot might help matters resolve amicably. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:34, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

And here he tries to end on a positive note so that he will sound less fanatical.

--Cyde Weys 03:08, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naturism

Naturism (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) uses idiosyncratic formatting (footnotes within footnotes) and needs expert attention. The converter's output is (unsurprisingly) garbled. Sandstein 05:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I just ended up fixing it manually. Multiple-layered notes are so far beyond the bounds of what's expected that I don't think it's worth the programming time investment to try and fix them automatically. Not that I minded fixing it manually, mind you. That nekkid chick on the horse is hot. --Cyde Weys 05:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mess

I just spent 30 minutes cleaning up after someone ran the converter on Historical revisionism (negationism) - don't get me wrong, it's a good idea and glad to have it done - but the converter has a problem. It does not properly convert footnotes that have line breaks. Either the script needs to be worked on, or whoever runs the script needs to know they need to manually fix it after it runs. thank you. -- Stbalbach 22:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prime Minister of Canada

...appears on the output of wikilinks.pl, but seems to have no notes. Sandstein 09:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about the footnotes included in Template:Prime Ministers of Canada (this template is inserted in Prime Minister of Canada#List of Canadian prime ministers)? Don't know whether putting that list of prime ministers in a separate template is a good idea - why not put the content of the template on List of Prime Ministers of Canada (the only other article where the template is used), and not repeat the whole list with all the graphics, on the Prime Minister of Canada page: I mean, keep the list to the list, and the description of the office of prime minister on the other page, without repeating the whole list? --Francis Schonken 09:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah. Yes, that sounds like a sensible idea to me. Sandstein 13:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Template:Prime Ministers of Canada subst'd in List of Prime Ministers of Canada: that article is "all yours" now, if you'd still be interested in converting the numbered footnotes.
Further, in Prime Minister of Canada#List of Canadian prime ministers, I made a link pointing to the "List" article, instead of inclusion of the template.
...and made the template a "redirect" to the "List" article (that is somewhat unorthodox, but will make clear where we're coming from... over time such cross-namespace redirect should probably better be avoided). --Francis Schonken 13:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source code?

How can we get access to the source code of this "GPL" program? I don't see any links on the project page to the source, just a link that says that editors need to obtain permission to gain access to the source. Could Cyde please post a link to the program source? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The link is provided when you go onto the tool. If you don't see it there, here's the link. Snoutwood (tóg) 07:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks... I see the link on the tool page now too. Guess just suffering hysterical blindness. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 :) Snoutwood (tóg) 16:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Complementary tool

Citation Tool is now, IMO "ready for prime time". It seems to correctly diagnose and fix errors in m:Cite.php markup, which seem to occur frequently in complex articles. However, a sampling of random article seems to show that only about 1/100th of articles use this format convention, and most that do use in very minimally (just a couple footnotes). Moreover, articles converted by Ref converter are not immediately prone to the detected errors, since Ref converter seems only to produce unnammed references. But as those same articles are futher edited, such errors might be introduced.

Anyway, you can just jump to the Citation Tool web page to try it out (or read the project page for more details). The source code, FWIW, is linked right to the tool, as is a log of the pages processed with the tool. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Here's a question ... should Ref converter automatically name all references? Or only the ones where it's necessary (because of multiple refs)? Or should this be a user-selectable option? --Cyde Weys 16:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
My advice would be to make it user selectable, but with the default to be picking up the name that is currently used. e.g. {{ref|foo}} → <ref name="foo"/>. It's useful to be able to refer multiple times to the same footnote/citation within an article (whether doing so is appropriate or needed depends on the specific topic, of course). Of course, once refs are named, there's more room for the sort of errors Citation Tool picks up.
If you wanted to get moderately fancy, you could provide radio button toggles next to a list of references, allowing each one to be either named or unnamed. Of course, that's more complicated where there's already multiple references to the same note. Is it the case the Ref converter now copies the whole content into multiple places? That seems to create both bloat and maintenance problems, if so. But if an operator decided to unname a reference that was referred to multiple places, you'd have to go through and insert duplicate contents. Maybe the radio toggles only for the "single-use" references, but force named refs if there are already multiple {{ref|foo}} references. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:18, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
You may want to check the source code of Ref conv; it's more intelligent than you seem to give it credit for. Right now it uses reference names if and only if they are required, i.e. a single reference is referenced more than once. It certainly doesn't copy the same reference code multiple times. I was asking if a toggle should be added to use reference names even when they aren't required. And the operator shouldn't be allowed to unname a multiple reference and cause the same reference text to be copied into multiple locations. Cite.php doesn't even handle this gracefully - it will just display the exact same text, only twice, or thrice, or however many times it is include. --Cyde Weys 09:04, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I was referring above to a potential modification of the tool that forced unnamed references. In that case, you would indeed need to copy the reference content. However, it would not create the "masking" problem, since they were unnamed references. In any case, we agree that doing that is not a good idea. LotLE×talk 17:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Newline after </ref>

I find that <ref>-style references are easier to read in the page source when there is a newline after the end-tag. It ends up looking like this:

Joanne Rowling was born in [[South Gloucestershire]], [[England]] on [[31 July]], [[1965]]<ref 
name="lexicon-muggle-y" />, on the outskirts of [[Bristol]]<ref name="rowling-bio"><span 
class="plainlinks"> [http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/ J.K. Rowling's Official Site]. 
[http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/biography.cfm "J. K. Rowling's biography"]. Accessed [[17 
March]] [[2006]]. </span></ref>.
There is some confusion as to exactly where; Rowling has said she was born in [[Chipping 
Sodbury]], whereas her birth certificate apparently claims she was born in the Cottage Hospital
at [[Yate]]. The hospital is called Chipping Sodbury Hospital, but is actually in Yate.<ref 
name="lexicon-muggle-y" />

With a newline after the </ref>, an editor who encounters a <ref> can easily find the </ref> and continue reading. Could the Ref Converter be modified to do this by default? --P3d0 15:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I put a few variations on possible layout here: /Visual layout. It would be nice to find something where the inline footnote was not quite as disruptive in the edit window as it tends to be. Not every editor is a coder, nor familiar with all the intricacies of markup. Or even if they are, ease of visually parsing the text in the edit window is still important. LotLE×talk 17:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You could be onto something here, as that shouldn't change the look of the output one bit, but should make the source more readable. Want to bring it up at WP:VPT? I don't think I can just unilaterally change Ref converter to suddenly start using a different behavior. --Cyde Weys 19:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't get your point here. You've maintained in all the discussions everywhere else that Ref converter is GPL, and can be freely modified by anyone, however they like. You could certainly unilaterally modify the tool behavior if you wished to (as you've done numerous times so far; many along the lines of "bug fixes", admittedly). I suppose, however, that "vertically pad references" would be good as an option, e.g. a check box on the web page interface. I think the "Try 3" on the /Visual layout test page is actually the best one, but YMMV. LotLE×talk 19:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vitamin D

Hello Cyde. Thanks for this great tool. I have had great success with it, trouble free conversions of 11 articles with what I came to regard as a paranoid level of warning. However, the article Vitamin D may justify some paranoia. The tool appears confused with a multi line {{cite journal |…}}. It looks like the replaced text is invalid as it didn't bring along the closing part of the template invocation. I left the article unchanged so you could play with it.

The problem occurs where the {{ref|comparative}} gets substituted in line 11. The warning

Detecting multiple line cite, trying to fix, make sure I don't make any mistakes.

appeared on conversion. Thanks again. EncMstr 20:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The script also choked on a {{cite journal}} tag in Cars (song) MrHen 00:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML comment within reference

Federalist Papers had this apparently correctly converted reference:

<ref>Adapted from the introduction to ''The Federalist Papers'' 
 by Charles K. Kesler. <!-- expand note later --> </ref>

When expanded by <references />, it produces this peculiar note:

9. ^ Adapted from the introduction to The Federalist Papers by Charles K. Kesler. UNIQ5e18725c71ac5e7e-HTMLCommentStrip140f36514a165f5700000001

Moving the html comment outside the <ref>...</ref> made the strange text go away. It seems likely this is a mediawiki problem (submitted as bug 5384), but do you think Ref converter should warn about it? EncMstr 18:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, apparently HTML comments inside of ref tags break things. I'm thinking Ref converter should remove the comment and leave some kind of warning. Any better suggestions? --Cyde Weys 23:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Upcoming move

Tomorrow the server that Ref converter is hosted on will be moved to a new location. Expect downtime of up to a day. The new location provides an internet connection with a speed roughly twenty times faster than the current location. So if you have experienced any slowness issues in the past, this should hopefully clear them up. Also, the internet connection in the new location is much more reliable (so more percentage uptime). --Cyde Weys 23:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The move was successful, everything looks good. --Cyde↔Weys 19:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of articles with "no ref" errors

The following articles are, at this time, listed by http://teamgamer.org/cgi-bin/wikilinks.pl, but when clicked on produce "ERROR, no refs found on that page":

... and possibly others, I only tested the first 20. Sandstein 20:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to add any others to this list. MrHen

[edit] error "No refs" on page that has them

Hi, I've used ref converter sucessfully in the past but when I tried to do Sutton Court I got "ERROR, no refs found on that page." when I know there are loads - just in the old format. Any ideas why this may be a problem? — Rod talk 21:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As best I can tell, the error can mean they have already been fixed. Some seem to stick around, however, so I am adding them to a list in a separate section of this talk.MrHen 23:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] references-small class

Can the bot be updated to output <div class="references-small"><references/></div> instead of just <references/>? —Rob (talk) 21:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox

I created this userbox for people who are active in reference conversion:


<ref> This user is an official convert to <references/>.


To add it, use the markup {{Template:User ref}} --Esprit15d 19:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World War II casualties

The converer - which I often use and is a great tool - breaks down on that page.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Complaint

Hi, as I wp editor, I've had to deal with articles with inline references. I'm sorry say, that is the most horrible, unmanageable way possible of doing references. It makes writing and maintaining the article far more difficult than it need me. I am saddened that there is now some automated tool to make this conversion; and worse, that uninvolved parties think is appropriate to unleash on unsuspecting editors. Please, if you want to do this to your own articles, great, but please limit access to responsible others. More importantly, please consider creating a tool to convert refs to a style where they occur at the bottom of the page! linas 15:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't like them being in the body of the article either, but the advantage of the system is that you don't have reference numbering problems that can occur with ref/note. What we need is a system that puts them at the bottom and also doesn't create numbering problems.Rlevse 20:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
No offense, but nobody owns articles. ~user:orngjce223how am I typing? 21:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Converter site doesn't work

At least today, the link to the converter's web site doesn't work, so I can't use it. What is wrong and when will it be up? Rlevse 20:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

It's working again.Rlevse 01:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-line refs

Multi-line refs, i.e. this one using a citation template, break the conversion script. I'm not sure if it's solvable, but you should at least put a warning up about it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 18:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rapid reference

Could we modify this tool (or create another) to help creating in text references much faster? (Give it an own formula with textboxes to fill in and putting the reference on the cursorposition in the text when hitting an OK button. A memory function for old sources would help reduce typing a lot.) As long as we ask for proper references and footnotes, but make it a pain in the ass to provide such, wiki will continue to have a major sources problem. Wandalstouring 23:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like you're interested in m:Wikicite. (SEWilco 02:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC))

[edit] If the page already has a <references />...

...the converter can break the page. A <ref> that appears after the <references /> is ignored, and so when e.g. Septuagint got converted, it had the effect of appearing to delete the footnotes. This is probably fixable in the converter itself, but until then, be careful with that, ok? /blahedo (t) 18:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bug

On this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_grammar&oldid=73358123 ; it seems to be misusing ref/note but the converter horribly chokes on it, deleting an entire paragraph. Lucky I always do show changes... JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of articles that were not correctly converted

Instead of having so many subjects with individual issues, I figured it would be better to have a master list. As these are handled, please remove them from the list. MrHen

Suggested format (feel free to change it):

  • Article Link - Text description


  • Catiline - Did not auto covert, and am too new with the references system to feel comfortable manually changing 38 refs.

[edit] Script's link to article was bad

When linking to "Manos"_The_Hands_of_Fate the script did not do well.

I am guessing it may have been the quotes? MrHen 23:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nothing happened

I've used Ref converter before and it worked fine, but put Herbalism through the mill and it said "Finished", then "Warnings occurred while processing this page, displaying now: Deleting comment on how to add old footnotes, make sure this was done correctly." Show changes showed that nothing happened.

P.S. What about using the cool template: {{subst:reference}} instead of <references/>? --apers0n 23:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An article which doesn't work

This failed to parse: wikirefs claimed there were no ref/note instances therein (i.e. ERROR, no refs found on that page). HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aware of server issues

Okay, I'm aware of the server issues. The hard drive actually crashed less than a week ago and I'm running everything on a new hard drive from backups. I haven't gotten the new Apache config working for the cgi-bin yet, but I'll get on that soon. My first priority was getting back up my wiki. --Cyde Weys 06:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ref conv is back up

I just sent this out to the spamlist.

Sorry for the downtime. References converter is now back up and running. About a week ago the hard drive in my server crashed. Luckily it stayed together long enough to allow me to pull all the data off onto a new hard drive, but I still had to go through the process of installing Linux on the new hard drive, installing all the necessary programs, and loading in all of the old data from the server. I got all of my essential services up within two days (CVS, Apache, Wiki), but I kind of forgot about web scripts, which I finally got around to fixing today. Everything should be fully functional again. If you see any bugs, just send me a message. You are receiving this message because you are on the spamlist. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, simply remove your name. --Cyde Weys 19:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Auto message

Would you know why my edit message isn't automatically generated? I can see that the "edit&autosummary" is still in teh URL, but nothing appears in the edit box. Why is that?--Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 19:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Because the autosummary code is part of Lupin's popups (a very popular add-on) not the basic site code. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Haha, wow, I didn't realize this wasn't part of basic MediaWiki. This explains many things ... Cyde Weys 19:12, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] sv version

Hi! Is it possible you could put up a version of the ref converter that uses sv.wikipedia.org? We have the same {{ref}}/{{note}} system used there in a few articles, and I'd like to use this tool. /skagedal... 12:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stats update

Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Ref has 9615 pages transcluded as of 00:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC). I'd update it on the main page, but I'm logged out. 71.128.189.190 00:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Another update, still logged out. 10,424 as of 23:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC). It's going up. -- 75.214.105.182

Ugh, who are all of these people still using the old system?! --Cyde Weys 19:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It's probably mosty caused by Template:Citation transcluding Template:Citation/core which supposedly transcludes Template:Ref (it doesn't actually do that, though; it just has an argument called Ref, and some piece of code is buggy enough to think that {{{Ref}}} is a transclusion). --Derlay 22:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The bug was in Template:Citation/core in fact, I just fixed it. Once the caches are updated, Template:Ref should become much less popular. :-) --Derlay 22:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Currently, Template:Ref is embedded/transcoded in 6856 pages as of 06:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC), according to API.php. I guess fixing the bug did help, but it's still a big job... It'd be nice if someone who was logged in copied these stats updates to the main page... 75.215.138.84 (talk) (really, User:JesseW/not logged in) 06:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Master boot record should not be converted

Master boot record is using {{ref}} templates & <ref> tags in order to create two separate sections for footnotes and citations. Therefore, it should not be converted, at least until this separation can be maintained. Someone logged in, please add Master boot record to the list of pages to watch out for. Thanks! 75.215.255.48 (talk) (really, User:JesseW/not logged in) 06:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recalcitrant articles (e.g., ASCII)

What should be done when an HTML comment in an unruly article specifically states that cite.php style should not be used in a particular section, the better to keep notes within a section? See, for instance, ASCII#ASCII control characters. --zenohockey (talk) 05:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Leave it alone -- when all the articles remaining using the old style are such, we can worry about it; until then, just leave it alone, and maybe mention add it to the list on the main page. 207.233.32.18 (talk) (really, User:JesseW/not logged in (but not all the edits from this IP are me)) 03:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible bug

This one gets a problem; I think it's a typo in the page, but the program should recognize it, if possible... 207.233.32.18 (talk) 04:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)