We have a lot of old references at nowiki (as most of the wikis), and we need some easy way to fix them without fiddling with wikitext. Often the wikitext is so messed up it is nearly impossible for an average user to fix it anyhow. Early versions of VisualEditor or ContentTranslation may have created the mess, but more often it is simply old raw references.

We typically want to go from a raw form of reference

<ref><cite class="citation web">[http://www.eurocontrol.int/ra-downlink/gallery/content/public/library/Review_of_ACAS_RA_Downlink_ver_10.pdf "Gjennomgang av ACAS RA Downlink, En vurdering av teknisk gjennomførbarhet og operative nytten av å gi ACAS RA bevissthet på CWP"] (pdf). s.&#x20;20<span class="reference-accessdate">. </span></cite></ref>

to a form with a template

<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bamuseum.com/museumhistory20-30.html|title=British Airways Museum Collection 1920–30|accessdate=17 June 2007}}</ref>

What follows is a user scenario where a user want to do an automatic replacement (bugger, I have used a pdf-link and the following will fail)

Given I am an editor
When I open an article for editing
Then I find some raw references

Right now I can't even see which one is raw and thus need fixing. If the ref marks was styled somehow to make the type visible, then it would be easier to navigate to them. Now I have to click on each one of them, which is quite boring.

Given I want to fix a reference
When I open the reference
And clicks edit
Then I get the edit pane

Right now I am left with no clue how to change the entry into a template. I want a button [repair] or [change to template] to open the Cite dialog, but still show the old reference content so I can copy-paste from it. (Note that right now I can't even select from the reference before I click edit, allthough I can copy the link.)

Given I'm in a dialog for importing the old content into a new template
When I switch to [automatic] in the cite dialog
And copy the link from the old content
And paste it into the text field
And clicks generate
Then I get a new prefilled template

If I use the [automatic] pane it could be prefilled with the external link from the raw content, or it could be prefilled with some other recognized identifier. If I use some of the other panes (tabs) the scenario would be slightly different.

At this point the old content from the reference should still be visible and such that I can copy-paste from it. Note that the attributes for group and name are still part of the enclosing reference.

Given that the template still lacks some old data
And I have copy-pasted old content
When I click [save]
Then the old raw reference should be replaced with the new one with the template

That should be a full user scenario for switching from an old raw reference to a new one.