As part of Article Guidance (T396029), we want to ensure that the way references and citation prompts are handled in Article Guidance is consistent with how Edit Check handles them in the Visual Editor, specifically the Reference Check configuration.
Background
The Editing team's Edit Check feature surfaces feedback to editors as they write inside the Visual Editor.
Article Guidance currently prompts editors to add citations via inline {{Citation needed}} markers embedded in community-defined outlines. This means citation prompts in Article Guidance are community-configured per outline, whereas Edit Check's Reference Check is configured separately via its own configuration layer.
This creates a risk of inconsistency: editors could receive overlapping, contradictory, or confusingly different citation-related prompts depending on which tool is surfacing them and how each has been configured.
Goal
Ensure that the way Article Guidance prompts editors around references and citations is consistent with how Edit Check's Reference Check works, so that:
- Editors receive a coherent experience across both tools
- Volunteers are not required to configure what they would reasonably understand to be the same feedback mechanism in two different places
- We do not inadvertently create toil for communities by having two separate citation feedback systems that behave differently
Related context
- Edit Check Reference Check configuration: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check/Configuration#Reference_check_configuration
- T425549 — Automatically format references with Citoid when added to Article Guidance initial contents
Questions to answer
- How does Edit Check's Reference Check determine when to prompt for a citation, and on what basis?
- How does this differ from the community-configured {{Citation needed}} approach in Article Guidance outlines?
- Are there cases where both would fire for the same editor on the same content? What would that look like?
- What would alignment look like in practice, should Article Guidance defer to Edit Check for citation prompts, or is there a case for both existing with clear distinct roles?