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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext

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agarrett at wikimedia

Sep 17, 2009, 3:46 PM

Post #1 of 10 (872 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext

On 17/09/2009, at 11:40 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> So, milder proposal: how do people feel about moving all
> (non-templated) metadata to the bottom of the page at save time? It's
> not a huge benefit by itself, but it allows that metadata to be edited
> separately without having to guess where it came from.

I'm fine with moving the metadata down there on demand when we
actually edit it separately and can't be bothered to put it back where
it came from. I think if we do that, we'd avoid the need to separate
it all on-save.

> And dear god do
> we need to get references separated out from the main text...

A fix for this went live today. You can now put your <ref name="">
tags into the <references> tag, and then reference them by name.

Might be fun to run a bot or something to move them down there, it'd
be a cheap usability improvement.

> Somehow I suspect the most controversial thing about doing that would
> be the massive war that would erupt between those who want interwiki
> links first and those who want categories first...

We'll argue about anything ;)

--
Andrew Garrett
agarrett [at] wikimedia
http://werdn.us/

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stevagewp at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 4:43 PM

Post #2 of 10 (840 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Andrew Garrett <agarrett [at] wikimedia> wrote:
> A fix for this went live today. You can now put your <ref name="">
> tags into the <references> tag, and then reference them by name.

Oh, so it did. And it works!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gippsland_Lakes_Discovery_Trail&diff=314622174&oldid=314098185

What's great about this kind of improvement is that it lets you see
where the next possible improvements could be:
- Separate out infoboxes
- Separate out images

*shrug*

Anyway, I look forward to a new era of editing without massive cite
templates in my face!

(And yes, a bot should go through and move them all...or at least ones
where the definition > X characters)

Steve

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rarohde at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 7:41 PM

Post #3 of 10 (833 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Andrew Garrett <agarrett [at] wikimedia> wrote:
>> A fix for this went live today. You can now put your <ref name="">
>> tags into the <references> tag, and then reference them by name.
>
> Oh, so it did. And it works!
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gippsland_Lakes_Discovery_Trail&diff=314622174&oldid=314098185
>
> What's great about this kind of improvement is that it lets you see
> where the next possible improvements could be:
> - Separate out infoboxes
> - Separate out images
>
> *shrug*
>
> Anyway, I look forward to a new era of editing without massive cite
> templates in my face!
>
> (And yes, a bot should go through and move them all...or at least ones
> where the definition > X characters)

Before we get all excited about having a bot move all the references,
it is worth noting that there is a rare use case that is known to fail
when moved inside the references block (bug 20707).

Specifically, it consists of nested refs constructed with the #tag
syntax. (Ordinarily, the parser and Cite make it impossible to place
a <ref> inside another <ref>, but someone figured out that you can
work around this by exploiting the out of order parser evaluations
created by #tag to create nested refs.) These nested ref
constructions universally fail when moved into the references block,
and often do so in a not very informative way.

In practice it is very rare to have a ref be placed inside the content
of another ref, so the problem of nested refs will almost never come
up, but it is something to be aware of if one is considering any mass
effort to relocate refs inside the references block.

It is actually a rather tricky problem to solve. The right answer is
probably to build in generic support for nested references but that
would require significant changes to Cite's data stack and probably a
couple modifications and / or new hooks in the parser itself. If I
reach a point of having more free time, this is an issue I've been
planning to look at.

-Robert Rohde

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stevagewp at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 8:27 PM

Post #4 of 10 (846 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde [at] gmail> wrote:
> In practice it is very rare to have a ref be placed inside the content
> of another ref, so the problem of nested refs will almost never come
> up, but it is something to be aware of if one is considering any mass
> effort to relocate refs inside the references block.

Hmm, doesn't seem completely unbelievable...I won't contrive an
example now, but I can imagine one.

But anyway can a bot detect these cases and just ignore them?

Steve

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rarohde at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 9:12 PM

Post #5 of 10 (839 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde [at] gmail> wrote:
>> In practice it is very rare to have a ref be placed inside the content
>> of another ref, so the problem of nested refs will almost never come
>> up, but it is something to be aware of if one is considering any mass
>> effort to relocate refs inside the references block.
>
> Hmm, doesn't seem completely unbelievable...I won't contrive an
> example now, but I can imagine one.
>
> But anyway can a bot detect these cases and just ignore them?

Yes, the nested ref syntax is sufficiently weird that it shouldn't be
too hard to train a bot to recognize and ignore those cases.

Of course, you'd also have to build consensus for any project to mass move refs.

-Robert Rohde

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stevagewp at gmail

Sep 17, 2009, 9:35 PM

Post #6 of 10 (838 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde [at] gmail> wrote:
> Of course, you'd also have to build consensus for any project to mass move refs.

Yeah, the strange this is theoretically we should have consensus about
how to do things. But without a bot enforcing style rules, the issue
never comes to a head, so different communities within the
encyclopaedia can each do things their own way, and pretend that
everything's fine. Then a bot comes along and everyone gets
upset...with the bot.

:)

Steve

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tim at tim-landscheidt

Sep 18, 2009, 6:40 AM

Post #7 of 10 (822 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:

> [...]
> Anyway, I look forward to a new era of editing without massive cite
> templates in my face!

> (And yes, a bot should go through and move them all...or at least ones
> where the definition > X characters)

Does this mean that we can switch off section editing soon
as it becomes useless?

Tim

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smolensk at eunet

Sep 18, 2009, 7:18 AM

Post #8 of 10 (827 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

Tim Landscheidt wrote:
> Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
>> [...]
>> Anyway, I look forward to a new era of editing without massive cite
>> templates in my face!
>
>> (And yes, a bot should go through and move them all...or at least ones
>> where the definition > X characters)
>
> Does this mean that we can switch off section editing soon
> as it becomes useless?

I don't see how would it become useless. In fact, I would like to see
table editing or template editing done the same way (I haven't
understood if it will be done or not).

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agarrett at wikimedia

Sep 18, 2009, 7:23 AM

Post #9 of 10 (839 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On 18/09/2009, at 2:40 PM, Tim Landscheidt wrote:

> Steve Bennett <stevagewp [at] gmail> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> Anyway, I look forward to a new era of editing without massive cite
>> templates in my face!
>
>> (And yes, a bot should go through and move them all...or at least
>> ones
>> where the definition > X characters)
>
> Does this mean that we can switch off section editing soon
> as it becomes useless?

Actually, the navigable TOC stuff being worked on by the usability
folks looks like a fine replacement for section editing (not that I
think it should be turned off, per-se).

--
Andrew Garrett
agarrett [at] wikimedia
http://werdn.us/

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stevagewp at gmail

Sep 21, 2009, 7:03 PM

Post #10 of 10 (789 views)
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Re: Article metadata separation from main wikitext [In reply to]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Tim Landscheidt
<tim [at] tim-landscheidt> wrote:
> Does this mean that we can switch off section editing soon
> as it becomes useless?

What you're saying is there's no point editing just a section, if it
relies on references defined elsewhere. But that's not true. It's
useful in the following circumstances:
* You're not creating or editing any references
* You're only creating new, locally-defined, references
* You're only editing locally-defined references

Section editing is unhelpful in this case:
* You're editing existing, remotely-defined references

The right solution is for a second edit window just for remotely
defined references to be used.

Steve

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