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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-11-04/Technology report

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/RSS description|1=New guideline for technical collaboration: citation templates now flag open access content, proposed best practices for communication and community involvement, and an improvement to Wikipedia's citation infrastructure}}{{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-header|||}}

{{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-start|{{{1|New guideline for technical collaboration}}}|By Evad37 and Headbomb| 18 October 2016}}

=Draft Technical Collaboration Guideline=

A Technical Collaboration Guideline (TCG) has been drafted by the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration team, led by Keegan Peterzell. The TCG documents best practices for involving the Wikimedia communities in technical developments and deployments. It focuses on communication and collaboration, rather than software creation processes, as development plans, goals, and expectations can vary between projects. The draft TCG has sections on software development principles, prioritisation, private planning, milestone communication, translation, and community decisions.

The initial TCG draft was based on discussions with the WMF's Community Liaisons and Product managers, reflecting on how to encourage collaboration, and past communication success and failures. Over the past few years, there have been multiple controversial product deployments, such as the VisualEditor (see previous Signpost coverage) and Media Viewer (see previous Signpost coverage).

The community is invited to review the proposed guideline and leave feedback. Discussion to date has focused on managing the translation load. E

= Citation templates now better at flagging free-access content =

Citation templates form an integral part of Wikipedia and are intimately linked to our policies on verifiability through reliable sources. Citation templates are currently used on more than 3,000,000 articles on the English Wikipedia. They are used to quickly format references and benefit from advanced logic that provides additional functionality; they facilitate both error-checking and bot-assistance maintenance, and integrate themselves with tools that allow for the automated filling of these templates based on external bibliographic databases such as CrossRef. For instance,

*{{cite journal |last1=Luallen |first1=R. J. |display-authors=etal |year=2016 |title=Discovery of a Natural Microsporidian Pathogen with a Broad Tissue Tropism in Caenorhabditis elegans |journal=PLOS Pathogens |volume=12 |issue=6 |pages=e1005724 |doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005724}}

will display the following fully formatted, machine-readable reference:

  • {{cite journal |last1=Luallen |first1=R. J. |display-authors=etal |year=2016 |title=Discovery of a Natural Microsporidian Pathogen with a Broad Tissue Tropism in Caenorhabditis elegans |journal=PLOS Pathogens |volume=12 |issue=6 |pages=e1005724 |doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005724 |pmid=27362540 |pmc=4928854 |doi-access=free }}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Series/Open access}}

Over the past few months, Trappist the monk, Pintoch, Headbomb, and many commenters have toiled on citation templates to facilitate the flagging of freely accessible content, in line with Wikipedia's commitment to promoting free culture and open access where possible. As part of the overhaul, access icons have been designed to be displayed for various levels of access:

:25px – for a full version of a source that is freely accessible, with no conditions

:25px – for a full version of a source that is freely accessible, with some conditions (e.g. free registration is required, only the first 5 reads are free, etc.)

:25px – for a full version of a source that is not freely accessible (e.g. paid subscription is required).

The appearance of these icons is currently under debate, and should not yet be considered final or set in stone. The access icons are supported by both Citation Style 1 (like {{tl|cite book}} and {{tl|cite journal}}) and Citation Style 2 ({{tl|citation}}) templates. Identifier templates like {{tl|arxiv}}, {{tl|bibcode}}, and {{tl|doi}} will be updated to match the behaviour of the citation templates so that manually formatted references can benefit from the new locks. The exact behaviour of the citation templates as to when those locks should be displayed is also currently under debate. What is presented below is the as-of-writing behaviour of the template, after the first round of updates, and should not yet be considered final.

;URL

Because links from {{para|url}} are normally freely available, non-free links (given in {{para|url}}) can now be flagged as restricted/non-free via {{para|url-access}}

  • {{para|url-access|free}} – unsupported, per the convention that unflagged URLs should be free. If it does become supported, it will display a green open lock, for when full versions are freely accessible to everyone
  • {{para|url-access|registration}} – will display a yellow dashed lock, for when a free registration is required to access the full version of an article
  • {{para|url-access|limited}} – will display a yellow dashed lock, for when free access is provided on a limited basis, for example if only the first few views of an article are free
  • {{para|url-access|subscription}} – will display a red closed lock, for when payment is required to access the source.

The {{para|registration|yes}} and {{para|subscription|yes}} options are now discouraged, and should be replaced with {{para|url-access|registration}} and {{para|url-access|subscription}}, respectively. This will resolve the ambiguity of the message in a case like:

  • (old) Smith, J. (2016). [http://example.com "Fictitious title"]. Fictitious Journal. 1 (2): 3. {{arxiv|1234.1345}}. {{doi|10.1234/123456}}. (registration required (help))

where it is unclear which link requires registration; whereas the new style will make it clear:

  • (new) {{cite journal/new |last1=Smith |first1=J. |year=2016 |title=Fictitious title |url=http://example.com |url-access=registration |journal=Fictitious Journal |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3 |arxiv=1001.1234 |doi=10.1234/123456}}

Whether the templates should support {{para|url-access|free}} to display green locks after the primary link is currently under debate. The full deprecation of {{para|registration|yes}} and {{para|subscription|yes}} will depend on the outcome of the RFC.

;Always-free identifiers

Several identifiers, namely:

  • {{para|arxiv}} – for arXiv preprints like {{arxiv|1001.1234}},
  • {{para|biorxiv}} (new!) – for bioRxiv preprints {{biorxiv|047720}},
  • {{para|citeseerx}} (new!) – for papers available on CiteSeerX like {{CiteSeerX|10.1.1.220.7880}},
  • {{para|pmc}} – for papers available on PubMed Central like {{PMC|50050}},
  • {{para|rfc}} – for Request for Comments like {{IETF-RFC|125}},
  • {{para|ssrn}} – for papers available on the Social Science Research Network like {{SSRN|871210}},

will always link to freely available sources, and will automatically display the green open lock.

;Sometimes-free identifiers

Identifiers that link to sometimes freely available full versions can now be flagged with {{para|-access|free}}, where stands for the associated identifier parameter. That is:

  • {{para|bibcode-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|bibcode}} like {{bibcode|1974AJ.....79..819H}},
  • {{para|doi-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|doi}} like {{doi|10.4204/EPTCS.172.23}},
  • {{para|hdl-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|hdl}} like {{hdl|1808/3638}},
  • {{para|jstor-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|jstor}} like {{JSTOR|10.1086/673276}},
  • {{para|ol-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|ol}} like {{ol|25894862M}},
  • {{para|osti-access|free}} – to flag a free {{para|osti}} like {{OSTI|4435330}}.

Whether the templates should support {{para|-access|limited/registration/subscription}} to display yellow and red locks after these identifiers is currently under debate.

;Always non-free identifiers

Non-free identifier, or identifiers that never link to full versions of the reference, remain plain. These include:

  • {{para|asin}} – e.g. {{ASIN|B00086U61Y}},
  • {{para|isbn}} – e.g. {{ISBN|0-7475-3269-9}},
  • {{para|ismn}} – e.g. {{ISMN|979-0-2600-0043-8}},
  • {{para|issn}} – e.g. {{ISSN|0028-0836}},
  • {{para|jfm}} – e.g. {{jfm|54.0271.04}},
  • {{para|lccn}} – e.g. {{LCCN|89456}},
  • {{para|mr}} – e.g. {{mr|0123456}},
  • {{para|oclc}} – e.g. {{OCLC|632791477}},
  • {{para|pmid}} – e.g. {{PMID|123456}},
  • {{para|zbl}} – e.g. {{zbl|06626752}}.

Whether the templates should support {{para|-access|limited/registration/subscription}} to display yellow and red locks after these identifiers is currently under debate.

;But what does this mean for me?

Flagging free-to-read identifiers (or articles that are not free-to-read) is optional: no one is required to make use of the new features of the citation templates. However, those who like to go the extra mile should easily be able to adapt to the new system.

If you cite freely accessible sources with a template like {{tlx|cite web|url{{=}}http://www.example.com|title{{=}}...}}, or offline sources through templates like {{tl|cite book}}, there is (as of now) no need to change how you do things. However, if you cite registration- or subscription-based online mainstream publications, it is best to add {{para|url-access|registration}} or {{para|url-access|subscription}}. These replace the current {{para|registration|yes}} and {{para|subscription|yes}} (which are now discouraged and will likely be phased out over the next few months), or alternatively, the need to append {{tl|registration required}} and {{tl|subscription required}} templates after citations.

If you cite scientific journals with a template like {{tlx|cite journal|doi{{=}}10.1234/123456|title{{=}}...}}, it can be tricky to determine whether the source is freely accessible, especially if you work in academia or are a college/university student. Academic institutions will often have subscriptions, and all internet traffic going through the institution's servers will be granted access. For those reasons, it is best if you verify whether a source is free to read when you are at home before adding {{para|doi-access|free}}, unless you know the journal has an open-access policy. (The same applies for the other identifiers, like {{para|jstor}} and {{para|jstor-access|free}}.)

New bots like User:OAbot will be developed to make use of the new parameters (subject to trial and community consensus), while existing bots like User:Citation bot and User:Bibcode Bot can be updated to make use of them.

;I don't use citation templates. Does this affect me?

If you don't use citation templates, then this shouldn't affect you. However, if you do make use of identifier templates like {{tl|arxiv}}, {{tl|bibcode}}, and {{tl|doi}}, those will be updated to match the behaviour of the citation templates. If they end up supporting only {{para|doi-access|free}}, so will {{tl|doi}}. But if they end up supporting {{para|doi-access|free/limited/registration/subscription}}, then so too will {{tl|doi}}.

;Community resources and coordinated efforts

Readers interested in improving the flagging of free-to-read sources can coordinate efforts at WP:SIGNAL, a subsection of WikiProject Open Access. If you have an idea for a new bot but lack the technical skill or time to make one, you can make request for one at WP:BOTREQ. If you know of additional identifiers (especially free ones) that should be supported by citation templates, make a request at Help:CS1. H

=In brief=

New user scripts to customise your Wikipedia experience

==Installation code==

{{further|Wikipedia:User scripts#How to install user scripts}}

{{reflist}}

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