Issue: Add a Reference Manager

Will this be in the next version?

We are aiming to add a better template inserter in VaultWiki 4. References will simply be a sub-section of the template inserter that would be opened directly if the FOOTNOTE button is clicked.

Awesome.

I am not seeing this in VW4 yet.

I am getting feedback from my users that many people find adding footnotes too difficult. This issue should therefore be high priority, as its currently confusing users.

Adding references should be simple: highlight the text that needs a reference, click on the reference button, a popup comes up where the reference link and name can be entered, click submit, done.

Please add this to VW4.

Additionally: please change the feet icon with a 'R' (reference) icon so that its easier to understand for the user.

This won't be added until we add the WYSIWYG template features. Footnotes would have to use templates so that you can select the appropriate format for the source (i.e. paper book, video, blog, magazine).

I suggest to use a completely separate function for references: much like attachments are visibly separated from posts/wikis, references should be listed in a separate box.

Is this feature planned for VW4.0? It was planned for beta1 but is not in there.

WYSIWYG features like this will be added in before 4 goes gold.

It would be really beneficial to see this implemented and also in a way that suits modern experience. People are not accustomed to advanced bbcode and an interface would make adding references really easy for the user.

Some thoughts:
No one understands the foot icon. My members complained until I removed it. Consider to use the font-awesome list-alt icon: https://fontawesome.com/icons/list-alt?style=regular
This is also in line with the xenforo editor.

Most people do not get the 'footnote' name. 'References' would be a more accurate name. You are already using this name for the footnotes heading.

A reference consists of multiple elements:
- title
- author
- link
- source
- date

A few more are possible, but these can be stuffed in the source.

Once the icon is clicked, a 'References' modal should appear with fields asking for the above data. Then the user can click 'submit'.
The references are then added to the article in footnote bbcode.

IMHO this would offer a much better UXD.

Adding citations is really hard to do in the mobile age. Users simply will not do it anymore because the interface is really hard on mobile. 85% of my users is on mobile device.
With citations you end up with a very long block of code, consisting of a chain of elements that need to be in specific order. Its already hard on desktop.

Wikipedia has a 'cite' function since 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...Citing_sources
See the second and third video on the page.
Its a good citation manager.
It also includes search for references, which is probably searching wikibase: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/API
They also have a quick and easy way to insert named citations.

It would be great if one or more of these features would make it into VW because it would make it so much easier for my members to edit VW when all competing sites offer such easy tools and draw away members.

IMHO this suggestion would be a major step forward.

Now that we have done a lot of editor-interface work in RC 3, giving us the foundation for a dialog to insert and fill template parameters, something like this becomes feasible. However, I don't see it happening in this branch, as I'll discuss in the next paragraph. For now, you should continue using your existing citation templates for the time being. In RC 3, you can make your own "Reference" or "Citation" pack and push it out to the relevant areas. You can recommend that users use it by adding template-rules to the areas. When the user clicks it, they will be prompted for the template parameters you defined (author, work, date published, etc -- again, however you designed your citation templates).

As for a standardized, built-in reference function, there is still an internal debate going on as to how this will be accomplished.
References would use either pre-installed citation functions or templates.

1) The better option appears to be citation functions that can be invoked by BB-Code. In this way we can process the inputs and construct citations programmatically, supporting variable numbers of authors (MLA now supports up to 20 visible authors per citation). We can add some really robust processing and options here, by creating MLA, AMA, et al, libraries and generating the output using built-in functions.

However, this approach becomes problematic when you consider multi-language wikis. The wiki language system is not tied to the forum language system. So if you have only the forum language English, but your wiki has English, French, and German, how do the citation functions translate? Basically, we would not be able to put the phrases in the forum language system. Would Phrases be a new wiki content type?

2) The other option is to use pre-installed templates. Since templates are wiki pages, they can be translated using the wiki language. However, templates could become really complicated (supporting up to 20 authors?!). Currently there is no way really to add multiple values to the same parameter (without having explicit authorFirstName1 through authorLastName20), and linking similar values (constructing: Last Name, First Name) could become complicated in this event.

We may end up using a combination of techniques, but a coherent technical design still needs to be ironed out, along with the potential implications to other existing features, whether they may need to be integrated or would experience breaking behavioral changes.

We do not use any citation templates as far as I know. We use the footnote and reflist bbcodes. But this is a real struggle for members. Footnotes can be allover an article. Understanding these can get very confusing for editors and reason to give up on all wiki editing. Its one aspect of vaultwiki where there is lots to gain. Not just because it makes life easier for all editors, but also because it will no longer scare off new editors.

I do not understand why the interface language would be an issue. To me it seems logical that if a website does not have multiple interface languages installed, the interface language will therefore also not be in any other language than the main language.

Have you evaluated the wikimedia citation manager? Maybe their approach can also work for VW.

One of the changes between VaultWiki 3 and VaultWiki 4 is that the wiki language became independent from the forum language. One common problem in VaultWiki 3 was that a forum having English and German interface languages would have weird behavior such as:
- If a wiki page is written in English, then viewing the page under the German interface would have some broken text, the page wouldn't exist, or would forcibly change the user's interface language without them knowing (thus confusing them when they navigated to a different page). In many cases, the behavior was undefined.

So VaultWiki 4 keeps interface and wiki languages completely separate. (This also means there are now wikis that have more wiki languages than the number of interface languages, which was an expected feature of this design). But let's stick to the original situation...

Let's say your forum has English and German interfaces, and you are viewing a wiki page that is written in English but using the German interface. If we phrase the citations, the citations are now in German, rather than the language the surrounding text is actually written (English). It will be a jarring experience. So we need to figure out a way to keep the citations in the same language as the wiki page.

You suggest to consider the method that MediaWiki uses. MediaWiki doesn't have an interface language. There is only the wiki language. So citations are phrased using the MediaWiki phrase system (each phrase is actually a wiki page you can edit). We consider this approach in option #1. However, we would have to make a new Phrase content-type too, which will require additional design specs.

As we are 11 years after the initial posting of the feature request I think its time to update it to the demands of current times.
Nowadays with fake news, misinformation, etc. citations have become of major importance for readers, for legislators, for Google and for webmasters.

1. Readers need to be able to check if the information they read is real or not. A citation in flat text without any way to check if the citation is real, does not bestow trust.
2. Legislators around the world have legislation implemented and more coming against fake news and misinformation. Webmasters can be liable.
3. Google ranks pages and websites well that have content referenced with valid citations. And Google barely ranks pages that do not have such credibility. Google also punishes for citations with dead links.
4. For webmasters getting misinformation on their website is a major concern. Especially if the website is in a country with stringent laws against it. You can have the greatest content on the internet. If it is not backed up by authority or references, then Google will now disregard it.

Within this context its vital for wiki articles to get a much better way to manage references. IMO its no longer something that is nice to have, but something critical. As noted above we need an easy interface for authors to enter the correct data.

Nowadays we can make use of citation generators and reference managers API. For example:
https://www.scribbr.com/apa-citation-generator/
https://www.scribbr.com/plagiarism-checker/

If citations on an article are checked and backed up, so that it can be checked that the citations are real and not fake, then that would make the article credible.
I'm not sure yet, what the best solution is in terms of citation API's, but its clear to me that it would be very valuable to implement a solution.