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Consistent terminology for the "sub-referencing" feature in user-facing docs
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Description

No changes should be made to code or documentation until we have a team agreement about the new language.

We would like to have some agreement on consistent, unambiguous terminology for the Cite-Extends feature we can use not only in the code, but notable in user-facing Documentation.

  • It's already decided that the term "book referencing", "book reference", and similar should not be used.
  • Since at least a year we keep using "sub-referencing", "sub-reference", "subreference" or short "subref" quite consistently. Can we consider this an (implicit) agreement?
  • With or without dash? Might apply to other words as well, e.g. "re-use".
  • How to call the "parent"? We also talk about a "base" or "normal reference" in some places.
  • What about "extended reference", "extends", and similar? Should we avoid this in user-facing documentation, even if we stick to the attribute name extends=…? One argument here is that it's confusing in technical contexts that also talk about "MediaWiki extensions".

Product trio decision: We want to use "sub-reference", "main reference", and "re-use".

TODO:

Event Timeline

Change #1066690 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Rename internal BOOK_REF_ATTRIBUTE constant

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1066690

Change #1066691 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Rename parser tests to avoid "book referencing" terminology

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1066691

Change #1066693 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] [DNM] Rename "BookReferencing" flag exposed in JS

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1066693

awight changed the task status from Open to Stalled.Aug 26 2024, 9:45 AM
awight updated the task description. (Show Details)

Change #1066691 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Rename parser tests to avoid "book referencing" terminology

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1066691

In the last trio meeting we agreed on using the terms

  • sub-reference
  • main reference
  • re-use

That's align with what's officially used by ComCom in the documentation and communication around the feature [1}. The later is also already used in the code e.g. for the tab and button labels in Citoid.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing

What about "extended reference", "extends", and similar? Should we avoid this in user-facing documentation, even if we stick to the attribute name extends="…"? One argument here is that it's confusing in technical contexts that also talk about "MediaWiki extensions".

My feeling there would be: In documentation we should always go with sub-reference and main reference. The only thing that's not 100% straight forward is the "verb" or "action".

  • sub-referencing
  • creating a sub-reference
  • re-use a reference with different details
thiemowmde changed the task status from Stalled to Open.Aug 29 2024, 8:41 AM
thiemowmde triaged this task as Low priority.
thiemowmde updated the task description. (Show Details)
awight raised the priority of this task from Low to Needs Triage.Aug 29 2024, 10:56 AM

Sorry, I'm unsetting the priority because I actually see this as already blocking work. Feel free to set it back again if I missed some discussion about the topic.

Change #1066690 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Rename internal BOOK_REF_ATTRIBUTE constant

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1066690