Community Wishlist/Wishes/Cite-anchor
Description
Summarizing the problem, validated on the talk page:
- Footnotes don't reliably inform readers which part of a sentence or paragraph is being verified. There is room for error.
- When content in a sentence or paragraph is expanded, footnotes are not sticky or anchored, and currently don't have the functionality to remember what they are supposed to verify when moved.
Even when using references to cite the article sources, there’s often a dilemma of what’s the exact range of text that the reference supports. For instance, when adding two refs in a single edit—one to the first sentence of the first paragraph and second after the second paragraph—it might be implied that only those particular sentences with references have been properly sourced. On the other hand, a reader may think that the second reference refers to the whole paragraph it’s in.
We already have means to signify what span of an article needs citation (w:pl:Szablon:Fakt / w:Template:Citation needed span) by wrapping the text into a respective template. An analogous tool for marking the span that’s truly sourced by each reference would be needed. Optionally (and by default for readers), hovering on a reference could highlight the respective article portion with color.
However, if the content is updated (eg. new information or even a few words added to the ‘sourced text’), this new content shouldn’t be automatically highlighted as supported by the original reference. Therefore, a tool similar to w:Template:Anchor but reverse in its function would be useful. It should remember the original text and potentially minor edits (like typo / grammar fixes). If it’s possible to configure sensitivity to unsourced content in mw:Help:Edit check (by sensitivity, I mean what’s deemed to be an edit adding new content), I believe a similar configuration could be applied to the cite anchor template. It could be called {{c-anchor}} or {{canchor}} and functionally it could replace the universal cite template with adding the new features.
Assigned focus area
Unassigned.
Type of wish
Feature request
Related projects
Wikipedia
Affected users
wikipedians, readers
Phabricator tasks
Other details
- Created: 07:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- Last updated: 10:43, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
- Author: Hedger z Castleton (talk)