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(regression) Enable every citation to be editable as basic citation
Closed, DuplicatePublic8 Estimated Story Points

Description

References/Citations which use a supported template should be editable using basic form, in able to add some content before or after the template.
For example, in fr.wp, contributors often want to add a final point after the templates.

Before, it was possible using a non intuitive way (example in screen-cast video). We should to click on the ref number, then we clicked on Cite button (in tools bar) and on Basic form.

Event Timeline

Why do you need the template editor to add a point after a template?

On the French Wikipedia, citation templates doesn't add a final dot. It's the responsibility of the contributor to add it, when appropriate.

That allows for example to add instead a comma, to add a precision.

Oh, you mean a full stop inside the reference tag. If you have mixed content inside the reference tag it won't use the citation templates. I'd suggest the French wiki find another way to do this (e.g. a suffix argument?)

A suffix argument, as a CSS trick? If yes, a community discussion will be needed to remove the period on all pages. Last time a bot did this, a lot of users complained.

Is it not possible to have a way to edit a reference with the Basic form if needed? That may be useful is you need to combine references (like have two references in the same footnote) or if you want to add a note before the reference.

Jdforrester-WMF set the point value for this task to 8.
Jdforrester-WMF moved this task from To Triage to Freezer on the VisualEditor board.

Discussion on French Wikipedia ended to "why are we supposed to change a template? VE should be allow people to do what they want."

Is it possible to find a way to switch between citations templates?

CSS? No I mean an extra argument so instead of

<ref>{{Cite web|foo=bar}}.</ref>

you have

<ref>{{Cite web|foo=bar|suffix=.}}</ref>

You could even have {{{suffix}}} default to full-stop so in 99% of cases you just have

<ref>{{Cite web|foo=bar}}</ref>

Furthermore references which take the first form above will not show as "Website reference" nor go to straight to the template editor, which is a massive regression for most users trying to edit the citation..

There two different things now.

Suffix
That suffix idea has been rejected. It is easier on wikitext to add a full-stop instead of a parameter on a template.

Converting citation templates

Furthermore references which take the first form above will not show as "Website reference" nor go to straight to the template editor, which is a massive regression for most users trying to edit the citation..

I'm not sure to understand.
The idea to give a way to switch one template to an other, on user request. You sometimes find a webpage and, later that webpage appears to be a citation from a book. Being able to convert it would help a lot.

Indeed, it is less ergonomic to show basic ref editor than to show directly template editor.

I have an idea: is it possible to show "Show options" button in the citation dialog? In templates, this button enables to add some content before and after a template.
Visual editor should probably open citation which contains a citation template with the template editor for this template, even if some content is added after (or before) the template. And there would be a way to edit this content, like in current advanced template editor ("show options" button).
I hope I am clear.

Suffix
That suffix idea has been rejected. It is easier on wikitext to add a full-stop instead of a parameter on a template.

The wikitext community will always decide on the path of least resistance for writing wikitext. It is our job to convince them of the benefits of the alternative. Every other wiki gets by without extra text in <ref> tag (in most cases) and as far as I can tell there is nothing special about French grammar that requires them to do it differently either.

If the reference contains more than just a single template, i.e. <ref>{{citeweb}}.</ref> instead of just <ref>{{citeweb}}</ref> then it will be treated as a basic reference. We spent a lot of time writing code to detect the latter and changing the context to open straight into the template parameter editor.

Converting citation templates

Furthermore references which take the first form above will not show as "Website reference" nor go to straight to the template editor, which is a massive regression for most users trying to edit the citation..

I'm not sure to understand.
The idea to give a way to switch one template to an other, on user request. You sometimes find a webpage and, later that webpage appears to be a citation from a book. Being able to convert it would help a lot.

Changing from a web reference to book reference is an edge case that is not likely to ever be supported as there may be params in one that don't exist in the other - or have the same name but different meanings. You'd need to come up with a semantic mapping for every pair of cite_*** template parameters. It's much easier to just copy the ISBN/DOI/URL and recreate the reference with Citoid.

@Esanders I'm going to ask the French community again about changing templates.

This breaks a work-around for T95702 as well. Apparently it used to be that if you double clicked on the reference, it would open up the reference dialog instead of the template, if it was just a bare template.

Any objection to going back to the double click opening up the ref dialog instead of the template dialog? It's not super obvious but then at least there's a way to do it?