T362379 outlines an issue that is preventing people from being able to generate citations for sources from several major U.S. news websites.

This task involves the work of revising the error message people see in these cases to include a call to action to cite the source they're attempting to reference using an alternative method.

Doing the above, we think, would help reduce confusion and the effort people would need to expel to cite a reference in a way that conforms with Wikipedia guidelines.

Requirements

1. Create a canonical place, on-wiki (per project), where we can collaborate with volunteers on maintaining a list [i] that includes the following:
   • Domain
   • Custom errors message (out of scope for first iteration)

2. When someone attempts to generate a citation using Citoid for a domain that appears on the list “1.” would implement, present them with [i]:
   • A message communicating that what they’re attempting to do can’t be done and why [iii]
   • A call to action that offers an alternative path for doing what they set out to do

Note: to start, when someone taps Add manually the URL they will have pasted into Citoid will NOT be passed to the Manual tab. Reason: technically complex and people not be able to see the URL has been copied automatically. We can consider improving this experience if/when we come to learn people are becoming confused/frustrated.

Story

As someone who is coming to learn there is a technical issue that is preventing me from generating a citation using Citoid (default experience in VE), I want to know what alternative approach I can take to for generating a citation, so that I can finish adding a source to the article I'm editing in a way that aligns with Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

Mockup

Based on offline conversation, here is the new expected error state for Citoid.
This includes the following changes:

• styling updates according to design system guidelines (inline error message with error icon, error state for text input)
• disabled "Create" button as long as input field is unchanged
• adding a normal progressive button to assist with Manual add
• update to the copy to include the possibility to try a new source:

We couldn’t make a citation for you. Try another source or create one manually using the “Manual” tab above.

Open questions

• 1. To what extent – if any – is it feasible to leverage existing Edit Check infrastructure to implement the experience the Requirements above describe?
  • We won't be using any Edit Check infrastructure

Testing

The error message can be triggered by creating a citation for qqqqqqqq.

i. This list would resemble en:Special:BlockedExternalDomains
ii. This message would be consistent with what we introduced in T352134
iii. Without T364903, we can't offer people an explanation about why they're encountering the issue that they are