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Manually edit Wikisource citation data
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Description

I would like a means to edit the information given when the "Cite this page" link is clicked on Wikisource pages. The current citation given for most Wikisource pages is inadequate, especially because it does not reflect the true authors or date of the text. I would suggest that improving citation output would increase the number of real-world citations which reference Wikisource.

My preferred implementation would be a new "Edit this page" tab at the top of each Wikisource Special:CiteThisPage. This would lead to a form where the bibliographic details could be modified (not the formatted citations).

Perhaps this could be integrated with Wikidata somehow.

I am initially proposing that citations be manually edited. Ultimately, it would be nice to have a bot or script that could generate citations for all pages in a large collection, eg. Ante-Nicene Fathers, but that seems secondary to creating a system to store and edit the information.

I realize that this feature may not be useful or advisable on all wikis (eg. Wikipedia). Therefore, I suggest it be a site-wide option to activate this feature. I expect it will only be used on Wikisource.

Event Timeline

For clarity, can you give an example of what you are expecting to see, and how what is presented is inadequate?

If we are talking citing WS pages at the Wikipedias, my preference would be to look to build templates that could directly utilise arbitrary wikidata for the work, and have the easy means to pull such a citation template from the WS page.

Examples of preferred forms and actual forms:

Hassatt, Maurice M. (1913). "Martyr". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. IX. New York: Robert Appleton. Retrieved from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Martyr
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Martyr. (2013, November 5). In Wikisource . Retrieved 12:18, April 16, 2017, from https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Martyr&oldid=4654045

Tedder, Henry Richard (1911). "Periodicals". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Periodicals
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Periodicals. (2015, October 19). In Wikisource . Retrieved 15:19, April 16, 2017, from https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Periodicals&oldid=5773333

One significant reason the present system is inadequate is that it does not include the name of any actual author. While the above citations used APA format which omits the author entirely, other citation forms given list "Wikisource contributors" as the author. This is incorrect; they are at best editors and the true author should be credited.

From memory extracting the author name was problematic, though maybe that has changed since this was previously discussed. . Ideally we should be constructing these references from wikidata data as that is more extractable data, though pretty incomplete for WS editions. ~~~~