This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Δ (talk | contribs) at 02:41, 18 March 2011 (→Discussion). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 02:41, 18 March 2011 by Δ (talk | contribs) (→Discussion)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Snotbot 4
Operator: Snottywong (talk · contribs)
Time filed: 23:24, Monday March 14, 2011 (UTC)
Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic
Programming language(s): Python
Source code available: Pywikipedia
Function overview: Fix duplicate references.
Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Per Misplaced Pages:CITE#Footnotes. Let me know if centralized discussion is necessary for this task.
Edit period(s): Will run once to clear out the current backlog, then run intermittently thereafter if the backlog becomes large again.
Estimated number of pages affected: Current backlog is 5,589 per toolserver.
Exclusion compliant (Y/N): No
Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Yes
Function details: The bot will work off the list of articles provided at the reference duplication toolserver script. Specifically, it will check each article for duplicate references. If it finds multiple copies of the text:
<ref>foobar.com</ref>
it will replace the first instance with:
<ref name=duplicateref1>foobar.com</ref>
and it will replace all subsequent instances with:
<ref name=duplicateref1 />
Unless someone has a better idea for a ref naming scheme.
Discussion
- In general, it is a good idea. The only issue I can think of is that, not very often, I'll use duplicate references when I want to use two different URL links to two different pages in the same book posted at Google. If the bot were to remove one of my two URLs, that would be a mistake. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 10:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- I assume this deals with exact same content between refs (+- whitespace)? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 10:06, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Needs wider discussion. The use of named references is opposed by some editors, see Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 74#Repeating a reference but doing something different for one example (there are links to other examples in there too). Anomie⚔ 11:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
- To be clear, the bot is only intended to find references that match exactly. If there are minor differences between the <ref> tags, the bot will not touch it. Even if there are two identical refs which use a {{cite}} template, but the arguments in the template are in a different order, the bot won't touch them. All it's going to do is look for <ref></ref> tags, take note of what's between them, and look for exact matches elsewhere in the article. So, in both Uzma Gamal's case and the cases brought up at the VP thread, those potential issues will not be a problem. I'll start a discussion to be sure though. —SW— 14:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Very strongly Oppose.Whether we should have named references or not (and correspondingly, whether we should have multiple footnotes at a single point) are matters of editorial judgment; an article repeating one reference exactly is not a problem - and will avoid other problems. The examples given in the discussion show clearly that the creator envisages only articles using web sources (for which the system of named footnotes is usually appropriate); but we have many articles which are not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Naming references is an editorial decision, and not one that I am trying to interfere with. There is no logical editorial process that would lead to the decision to have multiple references in an article that are 100% identical. There are plenty of reasons why you'd want to have multiple references to a single source, where each reference is slightly different (i.e. different page numbers, chapters, comments, quotes, etc.), and this bot will not affect those articles at all. In the unlikely event that duplicate references were created as a result of a conscious editorial decision, then it was the result of a bad editorial decision which should be corrected. Furthermore, the table that I posted at the village pump discussion clearly shows that the intention is not to only affect articles using web sources. Several of the examples use the {{cite book}} template, which is clearly not for web sources. The bot will not differentiate between varying types of sources, it will only look for identical wikitext between the <ref> tags. I'm interested to learn about specific example cases where you believe the operation of this bot will cause problems. —SW— 17:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
- Absolutely oppose. Of course there is a logical process which would lead to absolutely identical footnotes: citing precisely the same source at different points in the article. Print sources decrease this slightly with ibid. and loc. cit., but there is consensus that this is too dangerous for us, since any rearrangement may make these into errors - and they repeat ibid. anyway. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
- Please get a clue, if you are going to cite the same ref you should not be using ibid or anything like that, what you should be doing is creating a reference and then using <ref name="refname"/> to refer to it. Anything else will lead to a fuck up. If you're using ibid and someone else adds an additional reference between your original source and the use of ibid ibid now refers to the wrong ref. The person who decides to add a single ref should not have to worry about not breaking all the refs on a given page. ΔT 02:29, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
- Please read WP:FOOTNOTE. Named footnotes are one solution; they are not mandatory; depending on the article, they may be distinct disimprovements. If this bot is equally badly written in other respects, it should be stopped summarily. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
- Let me quote that back to you since you cannot seem to bother reading the full thing
- Absolutely oppose. Of course there is a logical process which would lead to absolutely identical footnotes: citing precisely the same source at different points in the article. Print sources decrease this slightly with ibid. and loc. cit., but there is consensus that this is too dangerous for us, since any rearrangement may make these into errors - and they repeat ibid. anyway. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
- Naming references is an editorial decision, and not one that I am trying to interfere with. There is no logical editorial process that would lead to the decision to have multiple references in an article that are 100% identical. There are plenty of reasons why you'd want to have multiple references to a single source, where each reference is slightly different (i.e. different page numbers, chapters, comments, quotes, etc.), and this bot will not affect those articles at all. In the unlikely event that duplicate references were created as a result of a conscious editorial decision, then it was the result of a bad editorial decision which should be corrected. Furthermore, the table that I posted at the village pump discussion clearly shows that the intention is not to only affect articles using web sources. Several of the examples use the {{cite book}} template, which is clearly not for web sources. The bot will not differentiate between varying types of sources, it will only look for identical wikitext between the <ref> tags. I'm interested to learn about specific example cases where you believe the operation of this bot will cause problems. —SW— 17:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Do not use ibid., Id., or similar abbreviations in footnotes.
- Not sure you can get much clearer than that. thus your argument is dead. ΔT 02:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)