Module talk:Find sources/Archive 1

Archive 1

Broken "news" link

Moved from Template talk:Find video game sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The "news" link hasn't been working for a while. Instead of updating it to match the normal {{find sources}} template, what do you think about scrapping it altogether? The point of this template is the quick link to the RS search, which is included with the {{VG deletion}} delsort template (which also needs to be updated). czar · · 14:41, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Request for proper capitalization

For proper capitalization, could someone please edit Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources to change "highbeam" to "HighBeam" and "wikipedia" to "Wikipedia"? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:47, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 19:08, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Google

Is there any reason that Module:Find sources/links/google sets the results per page to 50 instead of the user’s preference (or if it’s by design, why not 100)? Also, can we document the as_eq parameter with a link to say, this documentation? —LLarson (said & done) 16:33, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

 Done Having waited a sufficient amount of time with no objections, I removed the 50-results-per-page parameter from the Google search. —LLarson (said & done) 03:49, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the latest revision to this template

Moved from Template talk:Find sources mainspace

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:10, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this revision, “‹ The template below (Find sources mainspace) is being considered for merging. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›” can be seen in the template itself and on pages which use it, such as Ping (video gaming). Shouldn’t it be surrounded with <noinclude> tags?
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 19:40, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Way too late, but no, it is intentional for TfD tags to show up on uses. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 22:41, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Please use HTTPS URL for JSTOR link

The purpose of this edit is to provide increased privacy and security for users by having the Module:Find sources/links/jstor template generate an HTTPS link to JSTOR instead of the current HTTP link. The JSTOR search URL appears to support HTTPS. In Module:Find sources/links/jstor, please change http://www.jstor.org/ to https://www.jstor.org/ instead. --Elegie (talk) 05:53, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Elegie:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 06:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Update Google Images to use new-style URL and forced HTTPS

I switched the Google Image search format string to a newer format at Module:Find sources/links/google free images/sandbox, and was hoping for it to be applied to Module:Find sources/links/google free images.

The current template uses the old-style Google image search URL format, with google.com/image?tbm=isch instead of google.com/search?tbm=isch. Currently the old format redirects to the new format, but I think it would be better to just use the new format to avoid any broken links in the future. Also, the protocol-relative URL scheme is now obsolete so I changed it to use https:// instead. If this is applied and works out I might make some similar changes to the other Google URLs. Thanks, Habst (talk) 15:04, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Done — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:25, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

@Habst: Thank you for the edit request! Fixes like these are very welcome. (And of course thank you to JJMC89 for carrying it out. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Highbeam removed

Moved from Template talk:Find video game sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the Highbeam link from the template, as the service is no longer working - see https://www.questia.com/hbr-welcome for the public statement. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:41, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Some google searches using this module have "-wikipedia" at the end

I've noticed an issue occurring with Template:Find sources mainspace that I believe originates with this module..
An example of what is occurring:
On this diff you can see Template:Article for deletion/dated at the top. The first two Find sources links search with "-wikipedia" included in the search term, which seems to negatively affect the results coming back.
I'm hoping that someone may know what is wrong so that this can be corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanstrat (talk • contribs) 02:09, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC of potential interest

Moved from Template talk:Find sources mainspace

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:10, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

An RfC is underway that interested "watchers of this page" wound enhance by participating, I hope that many will! The discussion is located at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#RfC regarding "Ambox generated" maintenance tags that recommend the inclusion of additional sources. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 07:05, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Too complicated

This module seems to me like it is needlessly complicated. Why is it a good idea to store the configuration for each template in its own module subpage instead of in the wikitext of the template? That appears to make it harder to edit for no apparent reason. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:32, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I am guessing because auto-documentation template also uses it? —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 11:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

It would still be possible to implement autodoc even without /templates cfg pages. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

As I have just done. I also think that the /autodoc template config pages should also be in Wikitext and associated with the template, but it's not clear exactly where. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 21:09, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 February 15#Module:Find sources/templates/find sources. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 July 2020

Please copy Module:Find sources/sandbox to Module:Find sources. This will allow the template to generate search queries for arbitrary page titles (specified by |title=) with parenthetical disambiguators separated from the main part of the title (this is already supported for the current page title).

Please also copy Template:Afd2/sandbox to Template:Afd2, which will make use of this new parameter.

I posted a section on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Find sources and parenthetical disambiguiators proposing these changes. There has been no response in the past week. The testcases are unaffected. The change is demonstrated in one of my sandboxes. Danski454 (talk) 20:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done Please document the new parameter. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:02, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 19 August 2020

Please add a link to Bing and DuckDuckGo as many people use these search engines as well when looking for sources on Wikipedia. (I use Bing myself.) Aasim 01:06, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please make your requested changes to the module's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:32, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 26 November 2020

Please add a link to the Open Library, a book-oriented project of the Internet Archive. I've drafted the subpage Module:Find_sources/links/openlibrary for review and testing. I would have sandbox tested it, but can't seem to find my way to the right sandbox. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:42, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

This should be discussed at least a little before editing this widely used module. Taking the simple {{Find sources}} example from the {{Find sources}} documentation, what would the new output look like? Has there been any discussion about adding this? Johnuniq (talk) 22:58, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Change "-wikipedia" to "-site:wikipedia.org"

The former is too broad; mentioning Wikipedia in of itself shouldn't be enough to disqualify a source. If some sources *cite* Wikipedia then the person looking for the sources should just not use those sources themself, rather than potentially being unaware of any source which happens to mention a widely-used website. For any topics *related* to Wikipedia especially, this template would be completely useless.

Also, the "newspapers" link should just add "&tbm=nws" as a query parameter instead of adding "site:news.google.com/newspapers" to the query string.

PBZE (talk) 04:38, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I was originally considering making the same request, but now I'm uncertain about it. The proposed change should be weighed, pros and cons. Using a negative site keyword, will exclude pages hosted at wikipedia.org only. Using the negative wikipedia keyword, but minus the "site:" prefix, will avoid any pages containing "wikipedia" on them. This could theoretically exclude good pages that happen to have the token "wikipedia", but I suspect that is minimal. On the flip side, it may exclude some forks and mirrors who credit wikipedia, but only if the "site:" prefix is not included. My hunch is that including the "site:" prefix will hurt more than it helps, but this would need some investigation. Mathglot (talk) 19:56, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Please monitor WT:MED discussion

Hi. It's brand new yet, but you may wish to monitor WT:MED#Announcing new template Find medical sources. If and when it stabilizes, we can discuss what to do at that point. Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Discussing wording for the expansion proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi Sdkb As mentioned here, here's my first draft for a proposal to present to the projects, VPP, etc, as you suggested. Let's try for as neutrally worded a proposal as possible, laying out the current situation, and summarizing the various ideas we've come up with. (Signed by both of us together, if that's possible; 4 tildes, ampersand, 4 tidles?) Following the neutral proposal, we could each add our own comment/!vote stating our own preference and reasons; which could be different. As you said, this affects a lot of pages, so I've gone into some detail in the 'Background' section after the proposal question. Here's my first draft for wording:

Draft 1 by Mathglot

Proposal to facilitate use of different sets of links for different search domains Proposal question: Do you favor an expansion of the find sources template/module to be able to facilitate generation of different sets of links for different search domains (such as medical, video games, etc.) and if so, which approach do you favor? by param by auto-detection of WikiProject by WikiData property some other approach (please specify and add to list (with datestamp)). Votes can be combinations of more than one of the above. Background This is a proposal to expand the current functionality of {{find sources}} to include knowledge of different flavors of "find sources", and generate different sets of links according to some scheme of selection, either automatic, parametric, or by data property. Currently, we have three flavors of find sources links: {{find sources}}, the basic set of sources starting with five Google links, plus JSTOR, NYT, and a couple more {{find video game sources}}, this contains the basic set above, plus three more links targeted to video gaming {{find medical sources}}, a completely different set of links aimed at supporting WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing One could imagine other possible search domains in the future: perhaps other academic subect areas, biographies, country or region, and so on. This would involve creating a new {{find NewDomain sources}} template, and an update to the wrapper template to transclude it under the right conditions. Approaches The first area where this proposal was discussed in some detail is at Template talk:Talk header. Two approaches were tried in its sandbox and tested, each delivering the expanded functionality by different methods: by proposed new parameter |search-domain=: set to one of the values 'medical' or 'video' ('general' being the default case) by auto-detection of WikiProject: if the TP header transcludes the WikiProject 'Video games' or 'Medicine' (neither one = default) Both of these were found to work as expected, delivering the desired expanded functionality as shown in the testcases page (here, and here; current sandbox revision uses method 2, so testcases for method 1 currently fail, but pass successfully with the correct sandbox revision in place.) A third approach was discussed but not tested: 3. detection of search domain by WikiData property associated with the article. Design Implementation is via a wrapper template (here) which does all the detection of search domain, and transcludes the correct flavor of template. By placing the wrapper template at the current title (Template:Find sources) and moving the old content to Template:Find general sources, this remains transparent at the top level; all current transclusions of Template:Find sources after the changeover will invoke the wrapper, which invokes {{Find general sources}} by default. Outside of the Talk header template, this means a seamless transition for all other transclusions which will do exactly the same thing after go-live as they did before; that is, they will continue to invoke the basic "Find sources" link set, albeit by one extra call where {{Find sources}} transcludes {{Find general sources}} which invokes the Module. Currently Template:Talk header includes the basic set of source links for all articles where it is not suppressed by parameter. After go-live, the behavior of "find sources" in Template:Talk header may change, depending which solution is chosen. If the parameter method is chosen, then the links in the Talk header would remain the same, until someone added the parameter. If auto-detect by WikiProject is chosen, then the links in the Talk header of pages on medically-related topics will switch to the medical links, and on video-related topics will switch to the video links; all other Talk headers would remain as before. Impact on other templates Other templates use the {{find sources}} templates, such as {{unsourced}} and other maintenance templates, as well as many others. Depending which approach was chosen, this could affect whether the other templates could take advantage of them. A combined approach allowing auto-detect and via param would permit both. Thanks. /sig: Sdkb & Mathglot/ Notes

Please either add your own below, or change the one above to your liking. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for writing all that out, Mathglot! It looks pretty good; the main suggestion I have is to give a little more background so that it's clearer what the proposal is. I also think that we should ask for discussion, rather than bolded !votes, around the approaches question, since it's the sort of thing that's complex enough that discussion tends to work better than a survey. Here's my draft trying to do these things:

Draft 2 by Sdkb

Proposal to improve customization of Template:Find sources Background This is a proposal to expand the functionality of {{find sources}}, a template frequently used in {{Talk header}} (example) to help editors find sources to improve articles. Specifically, we seek to make it possible for different sets of links to appear for different types of articles, such as links to medical sources for medical articles. Currently, there are three related templates that generate find sources links: {{find sources}}, the basic set of sources starting with five Google links, plus JSTOR, NYT, and a couple more {{find video game sources}}, which contains the basic set above, plus three more links targeted to video gaming {{find medical sources}}, a completely different set of links aimed at supporting WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing We anticipate that additional templates in this family for other subject areas may be created in the future. Under this proposal, talk header will choose between the available templates, either automatically or on the basis of a manually set parameter, to display the one most appropriate for a given page. Approaches for selection We are considering several possible approaches for how to select which set of links to use: Through a new parameter that can be manually set (i.e. to display medical links at Talk:Giardiasis, we'd change {{talk header}} to {{talk header|search-domain=medical}} at that page) Through auto-detection of WikiProject banners (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because it includes the {{WikiProject Medicine}} banner) Through auto-detection of Wikidata properties (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because an automated analysis of its Wikidata item identifies it as a medical topic) It would be possible to combine these approaches, such as through using option 2 with the option to manually override via a manual parameter. Previous discussion is at Template talk:Talk header, and we have created functional prototypes of options 1 and 2 in the talk header sandbox, which can be seen at the associated test page. (Current sandbox revision uses method 2, so testcases for method 1 currently fail, but pass successfully with the correct sandbox revision in place.) Which approach(es) would you prefer? Design We are considering implementation via a wrapper template (here) which does all the detection of search domain, and transcludes the correct flavor of template. By placing the wrapper template at the current title (Template:Find sources) and moving the old content to Template:Find general sources, this remains transparent at the top level; all current transclusions of Template:Find sources after the changeover will invoke the wrapper, which invokes {{Find general sources}} by default. Outside of the Talk header template, this means a seamless transition for all other transclusions which will do exactly the same thing after go-live as they did before; that is, they will continue to invoke the basic "Find sources" link set, albeit by one extra call where {{Find sources}} transcludes {{Find general sources}} which invokes the Module. Currently Template:Talk header includes the basic set of source links for all articles where it is not suppressed by parameter. After go-live, the behavior of "find sources" in Template:Talk header may change, depending which solution is chosen. If the parameter method is chosen, then the links in the Talk header would remain the same, until someone added the parameter. If auto-detect by WikiProject is chosen, then the links in the Talk header of pages on medically-related topics will switch to the medical links, and on video-related topics will switch to the video links; all other Talk headers would remain as before. Impact on other templates Other templates use the {{find sources}} templates, such as {{unsourced}} and other maintenance templates, as well as many others. Depending which approach is chosen, this could affect whether the other templates will be able to take advantage of them. A combined approach allowing auto-detect and via param would permit both. We look forward to your feedback on the considerations above and the proposal overall. Thanks! /sig: Sdkb & Mathglot/

Let me know if it looks good! I'm thinking we can hold it at WP:VPR, with invites to the affected WikiProjects and other relevant pages. Does that seem best? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:10, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, I like your changes overall, especially the additional background and expansion of the items in the Approaches section with the parenthetical explanations, the wording about "anticipat[ing]" future stuff, and other additions; all good! The only quibble I have, is minor, and results, I believe, from a slight difference in focus that we have in how we look at it. The way I see the focus, is that it's all about "Find sources" expanded to support all sorts of other templates, with the "Talk header" playing the role of "happens to be the first example" but with one eye fixed firmly further afield to include all the maintenance and other templates.

If I understand you correctly, you see it focused more on "getting {{Talk header}} improved" (because we're practically there already), and worrying about other stuff later. They both amount to the same thing, really, and I'm okay with going with your approach, but I just wanted to make sure our description includes enough material about future expansion, so that any decision taken now doesn't lock us out of future expansion with other templates because it wasn't explained clearly enough at the outset.

I think you tried to address that in the "override" comment in the first sentence after "Approaches" point 3, although I misread it at first as meaning "normally WikiData detect, but you can turn off the links entirely using 'none' in param 1". I only realized after a couple of re-reads, that you didn't mean it that way at all (amirite?). I'd like that part to be clearer about what "combined approach" is. How bout changing that sentence to:

It would be possible to combine these approaches, such as implementing a combined option 2 – 1 approach, which in the case of {{Talk header}} would default to option 2 (project auto-detect) with the option possibility of including the parameter (e.g., {{talk header|domain=medical}}) which would then take precedence over the project auto-detect. Having the parameter available would also be extensible to use by other Templates on article pages where project detection isn't applicable; see below.

That's a bit clunky, but I think you see where I'm trying to go with it; maybe you can come up with something smoother? Practically speaking, I think the approach of going with what we have now because it's already working makes good sense, so I'm fine with it.

Other than that, all good. Also, I agree with VPR as venue. One last, tiny detail: I'd like to try the "combined sig" thing if possible, so we should sign within seconds of each other or a minute or two; I've never used the #IRC channels, but maybe we could coordinate that way; otherwise, maybe an "appointment" of when to first place it, including a ping right at the end, to be replaced by the other person's sig? Or do you have a better idea? (Not married to the idea of a double-sig; just thought it would be nice.) Mathglot (talk) 22:33, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Notes

Sounds good! So how is this for a final draft?

Final draft

Proposal to improve customization of Template:Find sources Background This is a proposal to expand the functionality of {{find sources}}, a template frequently used in {{Talk header}} (example) to help editors find sources to improve articles. Specifically, we seek to make it possible for different sets of links to appear for different types of articles, such as links to medical sources for medical articles. Currently, there are three related templates that generate find sources links: {{find sources}}, the basic set of sources starting with five Google links, plus JSTOR, NYT, and a couple more {{find video game sources}}, which contains the basic set above, plus three more links targeted to video gaming {{find medical sources}}, a completely different set of links aimed at supporting WP:MEDRS-compliant sourcing We anticipate that additional templates in this family for other subject areas may be created in the future. Under this proposal, talk header will choose between the available templates, either automatically or on the basis of a manually set parameter, to display the one most appropriate for a given page. Approaches for selection We are considering several possible approaches for how to select which set of links to use: Through a new parameter that can be manually set (i.e. to display medical links at Talk:Giardiasis, we'd change {{talk header}} to {{talk header|search-domain=medical}} at that page) Through auto-detection of WikiProject banners (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because it includes the {{WikiProject Medicine}} banner) Through auto-detection of Wikidata properties (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because an automated analysis of its Wikidata item identifies it as a medical topic) It would be possible to combine these approaches, such as implementing a combined option 2 – 1 approach, which in the case of {{Talk header}} would default to option 2 (project auto-detect) but would allow any editor to set a parameter (e.g., {{talk header|search-domain=medical}}) which would then take precedence over the project auto-detect. Having the parameter available would also be extensible to use by other templates on article pages where project detection isn't applicable; see below. Previous discussion is at Template talk:Talk header, and we have created functional prototypes of options 1 and 2 in the talk header sandbox, which can be seen at the associated test page. (Current sandbox revision uses method 2, so testcases for method 1 currently fail, but pass successfully with the correct sandbox revision in place.) Which approach(es) would you prefer? Design We are considering implementation via a wrapper template (here) which does all the detection of search domain, and transcludes the correct flavor of template. By placing the wrapper template at the current title (Template:Find sources) and moving the old content to Template:Find general sources, this remains transparent at the top level; all current transclusions of Template:Find sources after the changeover will invoke the wrapper, which invokes {{Find general sources}} by default. Outside of the Talk header template, this means a seamless transition for all other transclusions which will do exactly the same thing after go-live as they did before; that is, they will continue to invoke the basic "Find sources" link set, albeit by one extra call where {{Find sources}} transcludes {{Find general sources}} which invokes the Module. Currently Template:Talk header includes the basic set of source links for all articles where it is not suppressed by parameter. After go-live, the behavior of "find sources" in Template:Talk header may change, depending which solution is chosen. If the parameter method is chosen, then the links in the Talk header would remain the same, until someone added the parameter. If auto-detect by WikiProject is chosen, then the links in the Talk header of pages on medically-related topics will switch to the medical links, and on video-related topics will switch to the video links; all other Talk headers would remain as before. Impact on other templates Other templates use the {{find sources}} templates, such as {{unsourced}} and other maintenance templates, as well as many others. Depending which approach is chosen, this could affect whether the other templates will be able to take advantage of them. A combined approach allowing auto-detect and via param would permit both. We look forward to your feedback on the considerations above and the proposal overall. Thanks! /sig: Mathglot/ {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:20, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Regarding co-signing, I'll set my sig to ten minutes from now; if that works, you can do the same and then just copy to VPR when it comes time. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:55, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Sounds great! (sig time check: Mathglot (talk)) Looks good; here we go.... Mathglot (talk) 23:23, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb:  Done! Eager to read the feedback.

 Courtesy link: WP:VPR § Proposal to improve customization of Template:Find sources

Feel free to comment there whenever you want. I might hold off a bit, till I see if and what kind of feedback we get. One last thing: was thinking of either collapsing this thread or archiving it now, as the main action will be at VPR. What do you think? Mathglot (talk) 23:35, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I'll put an archive box around this, just to make sure further discussion is centralized. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: add an icon linked to a project page with more detailed find sources information

At WP:WikiProject Women, Ipigott had an idea in this discussion (diff ) about adding a link to the list generated by "find sources" that would target a project page where more detailed information about how to find sources could be found. I think this is a really good idea, and worth considering here.

Piggy-backing on Ipigott's idea, I had a couple of thoughts about how to make it even more useful:

• to save horizontal space and also highlight the different nature of the link, we could use an icon image for it (such as )
• the icon link could default to a standard location (perhaps Help:Find sources), and could be parametrizable, so that the link could go somewhere more specific for those articles where it made sense to do that.

Here's some mocked-up links for the Talk header of Talk:Isadora Duncan, designed to simulate a proposed inclusion of an icon with parameterized override of the default destination, to point instead to a page under WP:WikiProject Women in Red, which is specifically about finding biographical sources for women:

Thoughts? Adding SusunW, who was involved in these discussions. Mathglot (talk) 01:44, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I definitely like the thought of {{find sources}} adjusting by project; that's what the {{Find video game sources}} and {{Find medical sources}} already do. My sense is, though, that structuring it as a separate click people will need to make will likely greatly reduce the number who do so.

There are a bunch of possible changes currently up in the air, so if you want to pursue this further, waiting for those to settle first might make it easier. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Yah, probably so. This just happened to come up when it did, and thought it best to raise it while I still remembered it. We can shelve this till some later point when other things shake out one way or the other. Although I didn't get the part about "structuring it as a separate click" so remind me to ask about that when (if) it comes up again later. This isn't meant to be any kind of separate click, just a link like the others, except instead of going to an offsite database search page that generates search results for a particular topic, this would go to an on-site project page that has links to multiple sources, unrelated to the search keywords. Somewhat like TWL is now. Mathglot (talk) 10:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Multiple RS link sets in a single topic

Mathglot and Sdkb previously came up with a great proposal to improve Template:Find sources. By adding some simple logic to the template that pivots off WikiProject banners, Template:Find sources can produce a RS link set that is more relevant to each topic. A manual override would be built in to disable this at the topic level.

The Village Pump Proposal received consensus to move forward. One lingering question from that discussion was how to handle topics that might benefit from multiple RS link sets. For example, Talk:Medtronic is part of both WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Companies. The topic could benefit from both MEDRS and standard RS links.

Approaches

We could stack the best matching link sets (temporary mockup) or detect a conflict and revert to the basic set. I have no preference.

Thoughts? - Wikmoz (talk) 04:54, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I had thought about this, and came up with the same approaches you identified:

• include two (or multiple) stacked "find source" link sets, as in the mockup
• define a WikiProject hierarchy based on "source strictness" and include only the most general one. In this approach, if Medtronic is in projects Companies and Medicine, and sourcing for "Companies" is defined as 'RS' (general) while sourcing for "Medicine" is 'MEDRS' (strict) then Talk:Medtronic would get only the more general {{Find sources}} list.

Of these two approaches (there may be others), I think I prefer the first, in order to address Spicy's comment of 19:54, 13 August (diff, perma) at the proposal. Whether it (or either one) should be implemented in the initial launch or as a refinement later is a separate question. Mathglot (talk) 05:31, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Unless a better solution is proposed, I support this approach. Seems clean and transparent in its functionality. - Wikmoz (talk) 03:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I think having multiple link sets would be best. I don't think it's helpful to exclude specialized sources in favour of general sources, or vice versa, if both might be useful for the article. The current mockup looks a little clunky but I'm sure the presentation can be improved. Spicy (talk) 16:34, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Priority

This seems like a lower priority edge case. So whatever the resolution, it seems safe to defer this to a future update. The previously-discussed manual override could be used as a short term fix in some topics. - Wikmoz (talk) 03:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Repeating the search in what's displayed

Sometimes I add a second or third to an AfD when I think that searching for references by an alternate name (often in a different script such as Cyrillic or Chinese) would be helpful. It would be helpful if {{Find sources AfD}} could display what's being searched for so that readers recognize that the second or third instance is looking for a variant spelling or different script. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 19:58, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia Library text

"TWL" is not a widely known acronym, even among experienced Wikipedians. I'd suggest changing it to "Wikipedia Library". {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:08, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb:That's a pretty long name, and might cause the "find sources" links to wrap at some window widths, when space is at a premium. Sample links currently for {{find sources|Egypt}}:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Sample links including Wikipedia Library instead of TWL:

Find sources: Google (books · news · newspapers · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · NYT · Wikipedia Library

How 'bout, "WikiLib", instead? Alternatively, I've been thinking about adding tooltips and this would be a good candidate for one. (Tooltips active in the last four links in second row above.) I know, I know; a tooltip won't help mobile users, but I can't see a mobile user going through the long and involved sequence of steps starting from a list of find source links, to TWL (heh heh...), and then the whole procedure required to log in, find a source, generate a citation, and come back to the original article and add it. I do some intricate stuff on mobile, but this would be just too much for me. If there's anyone who would attempt it on their smartphone, I know who it is. Let's see what Cullen328 says. Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I consider my smartphone to be a miniature computer capable of doing almost any type of edit that can be done on a desktop computer. The problem is not the devices. It is the crappy mobile sites and mobile apps that the WMF has cooked up. That is why I always use the desktop site on my mobile phone, and I go though the process described above all the time. It is not really difficult. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:36, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I think tooltips definitely has potential! If we need a slightly shorter name, we could use WP Library. If there's agreement to remove Google newspapers as I propose below, that'll reclaim some space. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:00, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot, following up, per the documentation at {{tooltip}} and MOS:NOHOVER, there are some accessibility concerns around using the tooltip to provide information about the sources, rather than just providing the abbreviation. But the counterargument is that something for some users is better than nothing for everyone. I'll implement the abbreviations now, and if we find consensus for including explanations in the tooltips, I'm fine with adding that element, but I just want to be cautious given that this is an 800k-transclusion template. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:05, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb:, yes, and I have always been on the fence about tooltips because of NOHOVER. I tend to favor inclusion due to the "some users" issue you raised (and also because of Cullen328's comment; he's quite right that it is an interface issue, not a device issue; tooltips *do* work on mobile in Desktop view). One of the reasons I lean towards inclusion, is that if we didn't include stuff merely because of inability of "some other users" inability to see it due to their chosen interfaces being unable to render it, then we should stop leaving user warning messages on user talk pages entirely; obviously, that won't fly. The other reason is that NOHOVER seems directed more at article than talk space. WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU is a larger issue for another venue, but it explains why I lean towards inclusion of tooltips here. Note that the new {{Find biographical sources}} uses tooltips extensively, but I won't squawk if consensus is opposed and removes them (but I would like to see and participate in that consensus). Mathglot (talk) 21:18, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Just a side note on this - since we started rolling out some design improvements this month, I think the best place to link to for TWL is now https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ rather than the current destination. In terms of names, I'll just quickly say that I think "WikiLib" would be confusing, it's not a term we've used anywhere else, but "WP Library" is probably fine. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:12, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this before; changing the link sounds fine to me! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Support renaming "TWL" to "WP Library". I don't have template editor permissions but perhaps Mathglot or Sdkb could implement the change? - Wikmoz (talk) 17:54, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 September 2021

@Wikmoz: I think there's consensus to change TWL to WP Library, FENS to FENS, and NYT to NYT. However, looking at the code, I'm not sure how to get the tooltips to work properly in the module, so I'm opening an edit request to draw in someone who knows how. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:24, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I've made edits to the sandboxes, it looks like this:

Can someone please copy Module:Find sources/sandbox and Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources/sandbox to their respective main pages. Danski454 (talk) 16:48, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done User:GKFX^talk 18:46, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this earlier, @Danski454; thanks for coding and thanks @GKFX for implementing. I just switched to non-breaking spaces, and the other change it'd be nice to see is for The New York Times to be properly italicized if either of you know how to do that.

I am noticing that this is causing {{Find sources}} to go onto two lines on many pages, at least on my display. If either of you have thoughts on the proposal immediately below, it'd be nice to implement that soon to get it back on one line. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Your feedback would be appreciated at Village pump proposals

There is a discussion going on at Village pump (proposals) about expanding the functionality of Template:Find sources to facilitate the generation of different sets of "find sources" links, depending on the search domain (general, medical, video, etc.). Your feedback would be welcome at WP:VPR#Proposal to improve customization of Template:Find sources. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:21, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 184 § Proposal to improve customization of Template:Find sources Mathglot (talk) 00:38, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Google News vs. Newspapers

Having links to both Google News and Google Newspapers is confusing. The News link is the one most people are going to want, whereas the newspapers link goes to a subset of the results from Google Books (which also apparently has newspapers) and is therefore redundant to the books link we already have. I'd suggest removing the newspapers link. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:11, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

If the consensus is to keep it, tooltips might help here as well. See section #Wikipedia Library text above for more about this. The other aspect to this, is that Newspapers.com is available at the Wikipedia Reference Library (already linked) and that's really where you want to go, for those who have access to it. Mathglot (talk) 21:45, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Support removing "newspapers". I didn't know Google had this function. It's really cool. However, given the age and limited size of the archive, I doubt it's going to help editors in 99% of use cases. - Wikmoz (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Reliability. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:59, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Lean support – Unsure about removing newspapers; can you elaborate? I haven't looked in detail, but a few searches seems to show "news" = weighted to current events and online versions of news sources which may have more content than their printed paper, or at least, different content; while "newspapers" seems much less weighted to current events, and as you say, may be a subset of books; a kind of proxy to older, archival copies of newspaper content (a bit more like searching newspapers.com). Otoh, I see distinguishing "newspapers" from "news" in the mind of the viewer as a big enough problem to maybe just cinch the deal right there and remove it—I can't think of a simple way to disambiguate those two without lengthy clarification, and we don't have the real estate for that, and viewers won't have the patience for it, even if in a perfect world both of them might be useful. So I guess, yeah. Mathglot (talk) 21:14, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done here, taking into consideration Mathglot's "yes to both" comment below. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:50, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Why does this link to Google?

While it may be true that Google indexes a lot of websites, the use of its services requires the user to be subjected to proprietary software; furthermore, it is well-known that Google is very privacy-invasive. On a site like Wikipedia, which was founded on the ethos of freedom and ethics in software and technology, why are we heavily linking to a company's services that are the complete opposite of that? DesertPipeline (talk) 10:41, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, it's quite puzzling. Especially as it does so without warning: if I see a link for "scholar" I may think it goes to Internet Archive scholar instead. DuckDuckGo is a more suitable target. Nemo 07:54, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Systemic bias

As mentioned a couple of times before, I think including the NYT is symptomatic of a systemic bias in favour of the USA. I don't think it should be there as the only newspaper represented. Stifle (talk) 09:51, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

What would you suggest doing instead? Nikkimaria (talk) 11:40, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

The Guardian is an easy replacement, as it's non-profit and non-paywalled. It's still western-centric and tends to carry a lot of pro-NATO propaganda, but slightly less so than the NYT. It's used on a comparable number of articles, indicating the editors find it useful.

It's also possible to link the news tab of DuckDuckGo, whose representation bias is less harmful than on other news sources, because at least there is a geography/culture selector which the bias-aware person can use to tune the results for higher cultural diversity. Nemo 07:58, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Google News: "Archives", not "recent"

If anyone can figure out the URL structure, I think Google News links should go to a results list with the "archives" option set (which fetches results from all time without prejudice toward more recent items) rather than the default "recent" option. This will turn up more relevant results for more obscure topics and avoid WP:RECENTISM. Thoughts? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:13, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Following up on the technical side, it looks like we just need to add &tbs=ar:1 to the URL. Courtesy pinging the other two editors who have been active here recently, @Mathglot and Wikmoz: Would you support this? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Reliability. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:59, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, this seems to handle the concern I had at the News vs. Newspapers section just above; so, yes to both seems to handle my concerns. Mathglot (talk) 21:36, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, It looks like newspapers was removed byt the "&tbs=ar:1" parameter wasn't added. Is it still the plan to add that? - Wikmoz (talk) 05:15, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I was just waiting for a little more confirmation of consensus, but now  Done here; thanks for the follow-up! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:21, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I support both too, in case that helps! I had meant to say so earlier, but I was waiting to see whether more-experienced editors would comment more, and then I forgot where this discussion was and didn't find it again until now. —2d37 (talk) 10:28, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

At least one source doesn't play nice with special characters

Moved from Template talk:Find biographical sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

We might need some pre-processing for accented letters. Take the example of Charlotte Brontë:

Find biographical sources: Britannica · British Library · EoWB · books · Guardian · Infoplease · JSTOR · Library of Congress · MUSE · NYT · TWL

The InfoPlease link doesn't process the ë properly (it looks like invalid or escaped UTF-8 conversion: displays as %C3%AB). The InfoPlease result page does have a <meta charset="utf-8" /> but even the result pages when searched without the accented letter completely omit the final -e, and she shows up as "Charlotte Bront", so the problem seems to be on their side, and maybe preprocessing the ë won't even help. There may be other cases where pre-processing to strip accents for some destination sites could help, so need to keep aware of that case. Mathglot (talk) 03:55, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize in the comment I just made a minute ago at Template talk:Talk header that this is a new template you just launched! Is there a reason you didn't build it through the find sources module? I'd think we'd want to stick with the process that module established for creating new find sources templates. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:09, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Only that it's easier to delete this than mess around with the Module in case this doesn't fly. It's kind of a live testing ground, more than a sandbox, less than a module update. If approved, it should definitely be adopted in the module, but there may be a lot of tweaks based on feedback, before it stabilizes, so thought that would be easier to accomplish that here than there. Hope that makes sense. Mathglot (talk) 10:13, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Issues with specific links

Moved from Template talk:find biographical sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The Guardian

This is covered already at Template talk:Newspaper of record#The Guardian. Mathglot (talk) 00:31, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Library of Congress

In the form dropdown for search format (param &in=) the default choice for the form selector is 'Everything' which returns a null value, so the url string contains &in= with no value. That works fine when going direct to the site and entering a query, but for some reason it doesn't from the template. For the time being, I've coded it to include the drop down selector 'Books/Printed Material', which returns original-format:book as the value for &in=, so it's currently coded as &in=original-format:book. The problem is, that gives pretty crappy results for some searches; try clicking LoC in this example using query 'Hamid Karzai':

and after the crappy results come back, then click 'Everything' in the drop-down and search again, and watch how much the results improve. Mathglot (talk) 00:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Okay, tweaked the url and got it to work, but it was hella slow (30"), so restored sone one param that I didn't think we needed and one empty param (&new=true&st=) and now it seems to work okay. Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Trying Alexander Street, Hathi

Moved from Template talk:Find biographical sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Inspired by a conversation at WT:WOMEN, added some links including HathiTrust and Alexander Street. Here's how it looks in sandbox rev. 1038969680‎:

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:26, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Creation

Moved from Template talk:Find general sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Created as a duplicate of {{find sources}}, rev. 1018938532‎, in partial satisfaction of the implementation of a choice among three (or more) different sets of links presented by {{find sources}} based on some selector, such as |search-domain=, presence of specified WP:WikiProjects on the Talk page, or certain WikiData properties. This template is the unmarked case and represents the links displayed in the general case where no selector is detected or specified. As such, it inherits the code of the previous {{find sources}} template and [re-]implements its functionality. Mathglot (talk) 06:36, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot, the VPR discussion has been archived and I think it's pretty safe to say it found consensus. Any updates on this? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: agreed; I've had a rough jet-lag adaptation and have been sticking to low-complexity stuff. I'll get back to this in a copla days. Adding Wikmoz, who asked a similar question somewhere. Mathglot (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:59, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

If we can assist, please let us know. I can take a swing at modifying Template:Find biographical sources/sandbox to use modules the same way Template:Find video game sources is set up--if that is the correct module pattern to replicate. - Wikmoz (talk) 18:22, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, Mathglot: it appears everything starts with the link entries? I added The British Library and Library of Congress to Module:Find sources. If this looks right, let me know and I'll run down the remainder of missing links. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:37, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I now understand the basic structure of the Module:Find sources and was able to get Template:Find biographical sources/sandbox set up. I also now see Mathglot's preference for holidng off on setting up the modules until things are more final. Let me know if it's better to hold off and just launch with the static templates. I have no idea what's involved in setting up the conditional display logic. Help us, Mathglot. You're our only hope. - Wikmoz (talk) 19:06, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Moved from Template talk:Find biographical sources

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Not seeing any results from the Encyclopedia of World Biography in the University of Michigan search. Any objections to removing the EoWB link? - Wikmoz (talk) 00:38, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Biographical sources

Updated in the module (see rev. 1060706179‎) to match the old, "manual" version of the template (e.g., rev. 1053768182‎), and repointed the template at it, in rev. 1060724238‎ (diff). This is ready for prime-time. We could advertise this at WP:BLP just as an available template, without necessarily proposing WikiProject autodetection used in projects VG and MED, or we could mention that, too.

Example (using "J. K. Rowling"; from the notice box wrapper incorporating the template):

Adding @Sdkb and Wikmoz:. Mathglot (talk) 08:26, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay... I've been buried in some other projects. I think we paused work on this one because the source list was still in flux. Definitely worth kicking off the discussion at WP:BLP. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:10, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia library

Copy of discussion originally at Template talk:Find sources#Wikipedia library.

Just a quick note that the Wikipedia Library link should point to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ rather than /partners, as the correct entry point for accessing content :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I've updated that (in Module:Find sources/links/wikipedia library), since it's really independent of the rest of the rollout. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Samwalton9, I took another look. When I go to the domain home I'm unable to access any resources, nor even see which ones are available. A better choice, it seems to me, is https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library/ which for a logged-in user provides a search box that when filled and submitted will execute a search on the sources they have access to. (A non-logged in user gets a WM login page, which then proceeds directly to the search page.) Ideally, we'd prefer to skip the page with the search box and just execute the search directly upon clicking the link (as we do for every other link in the find-sources set except for that one) but in the case of WP library the search is executed by ebscohost.com which requires url params that encode session data from the logged-in user and other information (unlike all the others) and so we're unable to do that. But it seems to me that going to the 'my_library' gets the user as close as possible to the WP Library results they are seeking; it still requires them to fill the search box and hit Submit, but nevertheless it's better than the domain home page. Unless there's something I'm missing, in my opinion we should use the my_library address. It's second-best compared to showing the search-results directly, but the best we can offer now. (Domain eds.s.ebscohost.com stores two session cookies, and maybe down the road an enterprising js- and template editor could look into whether session or other information could be extracted to provide the missing ebsco query params and execute the search directly, but that's well beyond the scope of this implementation.) Mathglot (talk) 18:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Pppery, thanks for that. My response above had an edit conflict. Can you take another look at the module url for WP Lib in light of this information, and if Sam agrees with the reasoning, adjust the link in the module again as needed? (P.S., in refactoring this to a subsection, I dropped an indent level, thus technically a TPO-vio; hope you're okay with this.) Mathglot (talk) 18:25, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Moved from Template talk:Find sources § Wikipedia library

Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I suggested linking to the homepage so that users might understand what they're logging into before continuing. If we linked to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/users/my_library/, then the first prompt a new user of the library would see would - I think - be the OAuth confirmation, which might be confusing. This is especially the case if the user isn't actually eligible for the library. They'll approve a mystery OAuth prompt, and then be shown a 'you are not eligible' screen. I know it's an extra click but at least if they've seen the homepage they understand what they're logging into in advance. Ultimately your choice though, that's just my opinion :) The question of automatically searching for a term like the other links is an interesting idea, and I think you've hit upon the reasons it's not immediately obvious how that would work technically, but I'll chat to our engineers and see if there might be something we can do. Ultimately users would still need to log in first though. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:33, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

User:Samwalton9 (WMF), thank you for your comments. I disagree with setting the link to the home page. When I signed up to TWL, the only users who could use the library resources were the ones who had previously signed up for it and received access; is it still that way? The WP Lib access from find_sources currently is not ideal, because it requires additional user input, namely, entering a query and clicking the search button. Every other "find sources" link but this one provides direct access to the SRP (search results page) for the given query; only the WP lib requires an extra click, or in this case, typing in the query, and then clicking. At least, that is the case on the my_library page. However from the homepage, we are even further from the SRP, and would require yet another click. That is the opposite of the direction we want to be going.

I realize this would require software changes, but my preference would be to make such modifications as are necessary to execute the ebscohost-domain url that actually executes the search query at WP Lib directly from the WP Lib url in the "find sources" link, so that when someone clicks "WP Library", they get the SRP already filled in with the results from a WP Library search already on it, no other clicks, no typing the same query over again. Naturally, this would only work when they are logged in, but users that use WP Library will be logged in. (If not, they'll get the login page and know what to do; as I recall, "prev-url" is stored and will activate automatically following the login.)

Anyway, that should be the goal for what happens when you hit the "WP Library" link in "find sources", even if that's not where we are now, and may not be for some time. Following your suggestion would be going in the opposite direction in my opinion, and I would be opposed to it for that reason. As for the inchoate proposal, what is the best venue to do that: WP:VPR, Phab, someplace on mw, or meta? Mathglot (talk) 20:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Notes

@Mathglot: I hear what you're saying and agree clicking straight through to results for the relevant search term would be ideal. I'll chat with the team at our engineering meeting tomorrow and see if we can find a good way to facilitate this.

"When I signed up to TWL, the only users who could use the library resources were the ones who had previously signed up for it and received access; is it still that way?" - Users logging in to the library now have their eligibility checked automatically and receive access to a set of ~30 automatically-granted collections, and can then file applications to access others. Any eligible user can access these collections without any pre-approval. Does that answer your question? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:38, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF) and Sam:, Aha, yes it does, and that's a big improvement, as well as a leap forward in sustaining WP:Verifiability! Thanks for taking this on with the team, and I'll be very interested in how it goes. I'm sure a wider audience will be interested in following this, too, so I'll probably open a brief summary discussion at WP:VPR to let folks know this is going on, unless you prefer a venue at mw or meta or wherever; lmk. Thanks again, Mathglot (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T294919

@Mathglot: I chatted with our engineers and it looks like it should be very feasible for us to implement a URL pattern which initiates a library search. You can track progress on this work at T294919. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF):, that's really excellent news! I believe that in its small way over time, implementation will help lead to greater acceptance and increased use of the Wikipedia Library by editors who visit Talk pages, which in turn will provide better support for Wikipedia's core principle of WP:Verifiability. I really appreciate your taking this up; thanks again. Mathglot (talk) 17:54, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Search-url feature launched

The new "direct-search" url for Wikipedia library has been launched, and is now incorporated in the module config in this template as the link format for this search. This means that everywhere that "find sources" displays a 'WP Library' link, you can click the link and go straight to a page of search results.

For those wishing to use a Wikipedia Library link directly on a Talk page, you can do that, too, like this:

https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/search/?q=<your urlencoded query>

The Wikipedia Library query recognizes double-quoted terms as "exact search", and boolean operators AND, NOT, and OR; minus sign is *not* a synonym for NOT. Details on urlencoding here, but as a first cut, just replace blanks in your query with + and double-quote characters with %22. Thus, you could have the following query:

https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/search/?q=%22myocardial+infarction%22+NOT+patients+NOT+clinical

giving these results. Mathglot (talk) 21:06, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Small update to this, we got The Wikipedia Library added to the Interwiki map, so this link could now use [[twl:TITLE]] instead, if that seems preferable. Up to you. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 (WMF):, that's great news, thanks! Adding users @Wikmoz and Sdkb:. Mathglot (talk)

Fantastic! URL encoding isn't too hard—it's just the magic word {{urlencode:dfgsjkdfghsdlf}}—but an interwiki option is even better. Let's absolutely integrate this into the find sources module! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:32, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

The main thing tempering my excitement remains that it's incredibly difficult to cite something found on EBSCOhost properly (using |id={{EBSCOhost}}). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Testing: [[twl:"myocardial+infarction"+NOT+patients+NOT+clinical]] =

• twl:"myocardial+infarction"+NOT+patients+NOT+clinical

Looks good! (Possibly we should add a test case or two.) Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

What is the purpose of the "as_eq=wikipedia" parameter for Google Search?

Not that it bothers me, but it appears that no one has asked this so far. --79.249.159.172 (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

That's to exclude wikipedia results from the query. It's possibly too broad and maybe site exclusion would be better. Mathglot (talk) 19:05, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Extra search links from old (now-deleted) template

Following this discussion it wad decided to merge {{Friendly search suggestions}} into {{talk header}}, the latter of which calls this module. The transclusions of the former template were removed but the merge has not fully taken place yet. However, people have started re-adding the FSS template, so I have deleted it again. The relevant content/search capabilities of the template are below. They were copied from Special:PermaLink/1037650204. Do with this what you will.

     | text  = You can help improve this article! Perform a search for up-to-date information by using these '''search tools''': <div class="hlist">
* {{#invoke:Find sources|Find sources|{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}
* {{Find sources multi/archive|{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}
* {{Find sources multi/bing|{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}
* {{Find sources multi/ddg|{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}
* [https://fist.toolforge.org/fist.php?doit=1&language=en&project=wikipedia&data={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}&datatype=articles&params%5Bcatdepth%5D=0&params%5Brandom%5D=50&params%5Bll_max%5D=5&params%5Bcommons_max%5D=5&params%5Bflickr_max%5D=5&params%5Binclude_flickr_id%5D=1&params%5Bwts_max%5D=5&params%5Bgimp_max%5D=5&params%5Besp_max%5D=5&params%5Besp_skip_flickr%5D=1&params%5Bgeograph_max%5D=5&params%5Bforarticles%5D=noimage&params%5Blessthan_images%5D=3&params%5Bdefault_thumbnail_size%5D=&params%5Bjpeg%5D=1&params%5Bpng%5D=1&params%5Bgif%5D=1&params%5Bsvg%5D=1&params%5Bogg%5D=1&params%5Bmin_width%5D=80&params%5Bmin_height%5D=80&sources%5Blanguagelinks%5D=1&sources%5Bcommons%5D=1&sources%5Bflickr%5D=1 Free image search]
* [https://www.gigablast.com/search?c=main&q={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}} Gigablast]
* [https://academic.microsoft.com/#/search?iq={{urlencode:%40{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}%40|PATH}}&q={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}|PATH}} Microsoft Academic]
* [https://www.questia.com/searchglobal#!/?keywords={{urlencode:"{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}"}}!AllWords&pageNumber=1&mediaType=books Questia]
* [https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:book&qt=advanced&q={{urlencode:"{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}"}} WorldCat]
* [https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylc=X3oDMTFiN25laTRvBF9TAzIwMjM1MzgwNzUEaXRjAzEEc2VjA3NyY2hfcWEEc2xrA3NyY2h3ZWI-?p={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}&fp=1&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8 Yahoo]
* [https://www.yandex.com/search/?msid=1501758427.20016.22894.2840&text={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}&lr=21074 Yandex]
* [https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query={{urlencode:{{{1|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}}}&sort=Relevance ''Washington Post'']

Primefac (talk) 11:48, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Hm; as a start, we could add link configs for them and a template config for FSS, but I've got no time for this in the near term (month or two). Pinging @Sdkb and Wikmoz: in case anyone feels like looking at this sooner. Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

It would be helpful if an advocate for any one of these sources propose it as an addition to the current {{Find sources}} template. Questia and Microsoft Academic are no longer operational. Yahoo Search is just Bing. I'm not sure what Gigablast brings to the table. There are some relevant discussions relating to Google and the New York Times that may be relevant and could use additional editor engagement. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Questioning the decision to remove link to Google newspaper archive

In looking for sources for various articles at AfD, I noticed that the Google newspapers link had disappeared. See above: Module_talk:Find_sources#Google_News_vs._Newspapers 17 October 20121. While the newspaper archive result can still be found by selecting a drop down menu option in the Google books search result, I think removing the direct link is an unfortunate choice for less experienced users who are reviewing biographical sources for individuals prior to the Internet age and for those who do not have access to the Wikipedia Reference Library. I raised the point just a little while ago at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Buddy Bernier. Compare search results for Google books to Google newspapers. The book search result does not highlight much suggesting notability whereas the newspaper archive result does. 68.189.242.116 (talk) 19:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

JSTOR

What's the point of including JSTOR, which is useless for most people? I suggest instead a link to a full text search on the Internet Archive, which is infinitely more profitable. For instance I was just suggested a search which only turns up 160 results, none of which obviously relevant, while the equivalent search on archive.org returns 45k results and the majority of the first 5 seem relevant. Nowadays most of JSTOR is available on archive.org, I think. Nemo 07:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, anecdotally my experience has been that they tend to have somewhat different focuses: JSTOR is better for academic journals/papers, whereas Archive.org is better for books. There is a wikilink to the WP Library, which can help editors access JSTOR, and finding a source on JSTOR can be helpful even if one isn't able to access it on that platform. Idk; it's hard to choose only a few most important source searches. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:12, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Sdkb, thanks for your answer. I suggest that you revisit this, as your experience might now be outdated. One way could be to try again and use archive.org for your future searches before you try something else. In the last couple of years, the Internet Archive has added millions of issues of about 15k periodicals. Nemo 19:14, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Nemo bis:, a lot of the different databases have some overlap in what journals they cover, so picking the ideal set of links if we're trying to be parsimonious of space is tricky. With the recent launch of direct search results from the Wikipedia library, this becomes even trickier. Wikipedia Library returns results from dozens of databases (see full list) and includes JSTOR, Muse, ProQuest, and many more. A top-ten result page from WP Library might or might not contain results from JSTOR, as it has to compete with results from so many other sources, whereas including JSTOR directly will guarantee ten results from JSTOR (unless it's such a rare topic that there aren't ten results).

Please do try out the "WP Library" link that you'll find in the Talk header of many articles, and see what you think. It may (or may not) change your calculus about whether to include JSTOR as a standalone link in the find-sources set. Mathglot (talk) 21:21, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, back to your original point of "useless for most people": is this because it requires a login if you go directly? Once again, Wikipedia library to the rescue: try this link: https://www-jstor-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org and see if it works for you. Mathglot (talk) 22:03, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

That only helps a minuscule minority of the hundreds of millions of Wikipedia users. The Internet Archive covers many more full text works, all available from a single search engine; JSTOR and the EBSCO search linked by https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ are much less comprehensive (and way more clunky to use). Nemo 19:05, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

New York Times

The current version of the talk header is:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · NYT · WP Library

Can someone point me to the discussion where consensus was found to give preference to The New York Times over all other news sources? This is about one of the oddest things I've seen in a long time and I wonder what I am missing. I have searched the archives here and don't find anything. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:10, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I would prefer NPR or Reuters or literally anything else. Heck, even Christian Science Monitor is a better choice. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:23, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

In terms of globalization, I would think Reuters, so we aren't preferencing just the US ... and besides, the NYT is paywalled, so not very helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:27, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that decision was made, but concerns about it have been brought up before, and we're close to remedying it. {{Newspaper of record}} looks for whether an article has an associated country (via Wikidata) and returns nothing if there's no country or a country without a clear reliable English newspaper of record or the newspaper of record if we've decided there is one. It's not at 100% technically yet (I'd like to exclude topics that have multiple countries listed, and to be able to handle two newspapers of record for some countries e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age for Australia), but after it's good enough, we can implement it with the code here. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:31, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks; I see I searched archives for New York Times and not NYT, so did not find that post. At any rate, whether or not one considers NYT as the newspaper of record, it is paywalled, so why use it? Most can't access it, and I am now up to $17 per month to read it (ugh). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:37, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The NYT paywall isn't particularly strict; readers who aren't subscribed can circumvent it as needed. I hope that the WP Library will introduce NYT subscriptions to its package; it might be worth suggesting it here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I am happy to have a workaround, but how many will know they can circumvent it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:47, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe there's a certain number of free articles per month. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:51, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I want my money back :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Once upon a time it was not paywalled, and it's probably a leftover from that time. Secondly, they have always kept certain limited material available for the public welfare; lately, this has applied mostly to articles about covid, afaict. Mathglot (talk) 22:26, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with Sandy that selecting one source is not generally how we do things - we prefer to offer a selection of sources to reflect a range of views and to better assess how notable a topic is, and what weight to give to aspects of it. The limited access (paid registration required or only a few free views are allowed), and the problematic search page (whenever I click on a NYT link in the template, I get the search page, but I don't see any articles or links to articles) also cause it to be a dubious source. This is the third time the NYT link has been queried, but the first time the query has had traction. Given that per WP:ELREG we should not be linking to sites that require registration, and that the template already links to "news" and "FENS", I am not seeing a reason why we should continue with it. However, I'd like to hear from User:Mr. Stradivarius as they have some experience of this template, and is the one who added the NYT link (it first appeared after this edit: [1] by User:Mr. Stradivarius, who incorporated a template they had been working on, which had the NYT link, the Module:Find sources, which incorporated another Stradivarius template Template:Find sources multi). SilkTork (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

  @SilkTork: The NYT link originates with this edit by Jwillbur to Template:Find sources 3 way back in 2008. My role was to port that template to Template:Find sources multi and then Module:Find sources, and when I did that I didn't change any of the links. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for that Mr. Stradivarius. Gosh, it's been here a long time, though it looks like Find sources 3 was created by Jwillbur just for the purpose of adding NYT to a variant of Find sources, and so the NYT link didn't become standard until Find sources 3 was rolled into Find sources. Be good to hear from Jwillbur on this, but as they created a variant template, rather than add NYT to the main template, I suspect the intention was not to make NYT a default search link. SilkTork (talk) 02:22, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The Associated Press and/or Reuters may be preferable. - Wikmoz (talk) 02:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea of Reuters (based on how often I have used them when writing non-US-based articles. If we’re after one news source, I believe them to be more globalized. But I also agree with SilkTork that the notion of linking to one news source is … anti-Wikipedian ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer nothing over AP and Reuters, since while those are both quality outlets, they're not particularly likely to have extensive coverage on any given subject. I think using {{Newspaper of record}} instead of defaulting to NYT would be a step forward, but additional technical help is needed to get that over the finish line (see my first comment in this thread above). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

There's also TASS and Agence France-Presse, though more preferable would be just Google's news aggregator. Selecting any topic, and searching via TASS, AP, Reuters, AFP, or Google news, it is always Google News that brings up the full range of views. The news agencies report stories, the media then select those stories which they feel are notable, and write them up, and then we summarise what the world's media say about the news item. I think that approach fits our purpose better than taking news items direct from the agencies as though we were a media outlet, or selecting just one or two news media, such as NYT or BBC or RT or Al Jazeera. SilkTork (talk) 03:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

My first click is always to the NYT. I think the value of having a paper of record isn't so much comprehensivity as just pointing out an example of what we consider a reliable source. This is magnified if we do it for other countries. For instance, if I'm looking at a New Zealand topic that has a bunch of coverage in a bunch of places but I don't know which NZ newspapers are considered reliable, it'd be helpful to be pointed to the New Zealand Herald as a starting point. That said, I could see us deciding that actually it's not worth it and just having nothing there instead. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd rather have a range of media than just the newspaper of record. When building an article we are looking for a range of views - that would include the mainstream newspaper of record/establishment view, but also alternative views, including views from the main opposition to the government of the day. Any country's newspaper of record is going to mainly give the "official" view - that's why they are the newspaper of record. I would resist the notion that Wikipedia should be directing editors mainly to a narrow "official" view of an event. SilkTork (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

That might be true for something like The Straits Times, but we won't be linking to that as a newspaper of record because it's not RSP-greenlit (see the documentation). For developed democracies, I don't think that's an accurate view of what newspapers of record are—I mean, the NYT just published this major story the other day, which doesn't seem particularly "official" to me. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:26, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that pushing a single newspaper of record is great. For instance, with American topics, with more regional items, you're not going to want WaPo or NYT or anything like that - a regional newspaper of record like The Kansas City Star would be the better source for say a major midwestern topic. It doesn't seem very flexible to pick one or two newspapers of record and run with that for a whole region. It's part of editorial discretion to judge what the most suitable news outlets would be for a topic (when news outlets like that would be useful). Hog Farm _Talk 19:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm:, given that the template is all about supporting WP:Verifiability by aiding editors—especially, but not solely, new editors—to find sources for content, what is your view of how best to achieve that wrt this template? I'm not quite sure if you're proposing removing NYT and all newspapers of record, or something else. Putting it another way and using your example: would users be better served by having no newspaper links at all, than by having one there that would not be optimal for some midwest issues? Or am I missing your point? Mathglot (talk) 02:39, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: - I'm saying the one-size-fits-all approach of just listing NYT or just picking a one or two newspapers isn't great. Ideally, we could just link to Google News, but there's plenty of junk that shows up there and new editors aren't as likely to be able to sort through to find the good stuff. Just picking one or two newspapers to is just going to enhance systemic bias. Not sure what the best approach is, but the current one of just linking to a single, largely paywalled source, is unlikely to be helpful in most cases. If there was some sort of google-news-adjacent thing that did a better vetting job, then that would be ideal, but just giving a single source is going to end up pushing further systemic bias. Hog Farm _Talk 03:14, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I will fully admit to being biased on this, but I think the NYT link is fine and can stay. If it's replaced, it should be with a similarly high-quality source. The Google links already cover things like Google News searches for regional papers and the like; I think a few sample very high quality sources is fine. Alternatively, expand it: include the Washington Post, the BBC, whatever the equivalent is in Australia if any, and so on. SnowFire (talk) 00:41, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I would support removal personally. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

• The New York Times is not a suitable link target because it's metric-paywalled and USA-centric, even though it's a valuable resource to see what the USA mainstream view on a subject is. Reuters is an acceptable alternative but it's also becoming paywalled; its coverage is also a bit different, for instance there's more business news and less lifestyle/entertainment. The closest alternative would probably be theguardian.com, which is already used extensively and has the advantage of being non-profit, non-paywalled and a bit more global in scope. Nemo 17:58, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

General sources template without a specific search

Is there a way to place Template:General sources notice at, for instance, my talk page so that it merely lists the source venues without cueing in on any specific keyword or search item? 𝒮𝒾𝓇 𝒯𝑒𝒻𝓁𝑜𝓃 (talk | contribs) 20:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teflon Peter Christ: Not quite clear what you want: do you want to see links that don't go anywhere? You can generate a list of links that mostly have no search results when you click the search links, if that's what you mean; for example:

• {{general sources notice|.}} →

You can hover over the links to see what the search request url looks like. Most of them, like the Google links don't generate anything if you click them, neither does NTY or WP Lib, however JSTOR does. Or, did you want to see the list of search venues, so, Google, NY Times, and so on? The template doc lists them with brief descriptions here; does that help? Mathglot (talk) 10:43, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Boolean search operators

It wouldn't be too hard to add some of the boolean operators. A minus sign works for Google and some other search engines, but not for all of them; for example, this mostly works:

{{find sources|John Adams|president -Quincy}} → Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

it's okay for the Google links and some others, but the correct operator for exclusion in WP lib is NOT, so: twl:"John+Adams"+president+NOT+Quincy works whereas the one in the find-sources does not. Same thing for some other search engines. Or, maybe this could be handled at the level of documentation only, assuming that all the search engines can interpret capitalized booleans AND and OR (can they?). The biog or other search domain links might be an issue:

{{find biographical sources|John Adams|president -Quincy}} → Find biographical sources: Britannica · British Library · EoWB · books · Guardian · Infoplease · JSTOR · Library of Congress · MUSE · NYT · TWL

Several of these definitely don't like "minus" has a unary exclusion operator. Google also has other operators such as NEAR and :intitle, and others; and individual search engines may have their own equivalents of these. But then there's the question: even if we can do it, should we? I kind of suspect there isn't that much demand for it, but I thought I'd raise the issue to see what people thought. Mathglot (talk) 11:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Internet Archive Scholar

I've added Internet Archive Scholar to the links table, and the template/config for template/Find general sources. It has a very clean, very intuitive look and feel, and 25M documents. ry it out on your favorite queries; here's one:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Would like to get feedback from anyone willing to comment on how it stacks up against Google scholar. For the time being, I've not added it to Find sources medical, mostly because it doesn't have Google scholar currently either, and also because I think the MEDRS folks are more particular about what gets added there. But I think it would make a fine addition to {{find medical sources}} as well. Note: it's still in beta, so some features are weak; for example, although you can add to restrict to post-2000 documents, you can't set custom date ranges (yet) like you can in Google scholar. Mathglot (talk) 06:58, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Backed out this change. Product is still in beta, and the sort order of results is not most relevant first. Worth revisiting later. Mathglot (talk) 07:48, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Link to JSTOR Wikipedia Library

Could the link to JSTOR be updated to the free one provided by the Wikipedia Library? [2] Access is limited to certain registered editors with a certain number of recent edits, but I think search still works? Schierbecker (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Possibly, but should be discussed. Last I looked, the non-free one, counter-intuitively, provides more results on search (by that I mean, results from a broader set of sources). There's a discussion somewhere about this which should be linked, if I can find it.

Secondly, how do you mean "free"? If I search for giardiasis at the "non-free" link without logging in, I get 2,875 results: here. So, if we replace that, the trade-off would be, I presume, providing better results from the Wikipedia Library version of it for confirmed users (t.b.d. if that's really true), in exchange for denying non-extended confirmed users any JStor results at all. Is this something we want to do? As a corollary, iirc, it's possible to detect a user who is not extended confirmed; if that's the case, we could serve one url to confirmed users, and a different one to the others, and then the disadvantages of the trade-off issue may disappear. Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Now that you mention it, there does appear to be significantly less book results on the Wikipedia Library version of JSTOR. If you find a link to the discussion about that, I'd be happy to have that.

I still would like to include a link to the Wikipedia JSTOR, especially if it can be done the way you suggest. It's an under-utilized asset. Schierbecker (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's better to link a place where JSTOR content is broadly available ("freely" is maybe too much to ask; often there will be copyright restrictions). A registration-only website obviously doesn't fit the bill. On https://scholar.archive.org/ there's most JSTOR content, so that's where I recommend to point the JSTOR link. A search for giardiasis finds 10k open access results, including [=subject%3A%22microfilm%22 thousands from microfilms] (a collection which has large overlap with JSTOR, I believe). Nemo 17:52, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Schierbecker and Nemo bis: Revisiting this from another angle, here's something which isn't quite what you asked for, but it might be something else that will help you get the resources you need at JSTOR (and elsewhere). It's always been possible to directly access the JSTOR link (or any other TWL partner) at the Wikipedia library, although not directly from the template in the way you mean; finding how to do it has always been a hassle for me, wading through Wiki Lib pages looking for it. I've been looking into creating a navbox that will provide direct access to every TWL partner individually for a given query, and you'd just place it where you could find it. This is still in development and is only about 30% done (it happens to include the JSTOR link you want), but you can get an idea how it would work by checking out the navbox below:

Every link in the top row (labeled "General") searches just the one Wikipedia Library partner listed, for the query "M8 Armored Gun System"; you can click the JSTOR link to launch the query at JSTOR. Note that this sandbox template is still in development, so only the 25 links in the "General" section are working so far. The idea is that you'd place this template on your talk page or sandbox, or maybe on the Talk page of the article itself, as a way of targeting not just JSTOR, but any one of the Wikipedia Library partners.

As far as using it on your Talk page, it has a "favorite queries" feature which you can preload with searches for articles you are working on; here's how that might look:

The fave queries do a full search of TWL, i.e., all partners together with consolidated results. I realize this wasn't the question you were asking, but are either of these something that could help you answer it, or might be worthwhile to you for other reasons? I'll probably finish developing the template, even if only for myself, but if I knew others were interested, it might make me more committed to do it. Mathglot (talk) 07:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Missing options

Please add the new links added to {{Find sources}} here as well. – Ilovemydoodle (talk) 05:07, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Edit request 22 November 2022

Description of suggested change:

Change this: Find sources: "example text" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

To this: Find sources: "example text" – Google (news · newspapers · books · scholar) · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Diff:

Change this: Find sources: "example text" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

To this: Find sources: "example text" – Google (news · newspapers · books · scholar) · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

−

ORIGINAL_TEXT

+

CHANGED_TEXT

Uni3993 (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 03:14, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Uni3993 is requesting that Template:Find sources mainspace be formatted the same way as Template:Find general sources so it's clear each link executes a different Google search. It makes sense to me. Only question is can we drop the quoted text in favor of "Google" or keep both? Otherwise, the edits to Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace are pretty straightforward. - Wikmoz (talk) 07:08, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikmoz I prefer my version but that version would work for me too, so who will make the change, I'm not allowed to do it. Uni3993 (talk) 00:01, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

So sorry, Wikmoz, I meant to mention Uni3993's previous TPER at Template talk:More citations needed. The TE asked that this be discussed here. So an edit request is not really warranted until more editors opine about the change. Thank you very much for your input! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 07:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Google links with parentheses in Find sources mainspace

Uni3993 has proposed that {{Find sources mainspace}} be formatted the same way as {{Find sources}} with respect to clearly identifying Google search links by wrapping them in parentheses.

I've applied these necessary edits in the module sandbox: Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace/sandbox. Three edits: 1. Added "Google" link; 2. Added separator = ' ( ' ; 3. Added afterDisplay = ' )' at end of link set.

The benefit here is that the link targets are no longer ambiguous. The slight downside is that the "Google" link goes to the same target as the quoted search term. However, we're not short on space here so I don't see that as too much of a problem at all.

CURRENT: {{Find sources mainspace}}

• Find sources: "Albert Einstein" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR

PROPOSED: {{Find sources mainspace/sandbox}} (actual edit applied in Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace/sandbox)

The edits are fairly surgical so not sure how much testing is necessary. Open to feedback @Paine Ellsworth, Mathglot, and Pppery:. - Wikmoz (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikmoz Looks good, maybe the quoted keyword that will be searched doesn't have to be linked to Google. That would be nice, so it would mean this keyword will be searched in Google and JSTOR and whatever service, not only Google. Uni3993 (talk) 20:26, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, looks good to me, too. I also think one doesn't need to link the keyword field (which could be many keywords). The "testing not necessary" makes me nervous; Template:Find sources mainspace/testcases doesn't exist, but Template:Find sources mainspace/sandbox does and already invokes the Module sandbox version; the testcases page could be easily cloned from the first two sections at Template:Find sources/testcases, and if those tests pass, that should be a good indication that it's good. Adding @Primefac and Sdkb: to ping list. Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea of removing the link from the quoted text. However, I think we'd have to remove the introLink and code it into the blurb, or modify the introLink code to allow plain text. I remember there was some complicated logic around repeating the article title so I'm not sure how to do this or if it's worth the effort given the additional testing that would then be required. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Find France sources

Reminder to self (or any interested party) that we have {{Find France sources}} as a working template that should be converted to the Module config. More eyes to look it over again and refine the search urls if possible would be nice (I just tweaked one param on Qwant that improved results a lot), and then convert it over. Mathglot (talk) 04:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

-wikipedia

This has been previously brought up in 2019 and 2021, and I'd like to bring it up again and see about pushing it to the finish line. The Find Sources module adds "-wikipedia" to the search strings by default. Personally, I'm just tired of removing that every time I use the template links. Adding "-wikipedia" to a search term may have once been a good idea, but in 2022, it's no longer a good idea, because these days, the word "Wikipedia" appears in many, many reliable sources, and "-wikipedia" would exclude any page that has the word "wikipedia" on it (indeed, many reliable sources now cite Wikipedia, even if they do so with caution, and almost every Google Book page for a book by a notable author has a knowledge panel with the word "Wikipedia", example below). If we want to exclude this website from search results, the correct string would be "-site:wikipedia.org". So, I'd like to propose removing "-wikipedia" or changing "-wikipedia" to "-site:wikipedia.org", which would exclude results from this website without excluding every other website that has the word "wikipedia" on it.

For example:

• Searching Google Scholar for wikipedia [5] brings 2.5 million results. That's how many pages are excluded by adding -wikipedia to a Google Scholar search string.
• Searching Google Scholar for "quantum mechanics" [6] yields as the top result a 2012 book published by Springer called Principles of Quantum Mechanics. That's working as it should. BUT...
• Searching Google Scholar for "quantum mechanics" -wikipedia [7] yields as the top result a book from 1998 called Quantum Mechanics. The 2012 book Principles of Quantum Mechanics is pushed down to the third page of search results [8].
• Why? I think because the Google Books page for the 2012 book has the word "Wikipedia" on it -- it's the author knowledge panel that Google pulls from us -- but the Google Books page for the 1998 book doesn't have that Wikipedia knowledge panel on it and thus doesn't have the word "Wikipedia".

In sum, adding "-wikipedia" de-emphasizes the newest and thus most relevant results, so we should remove that string or replace it. It kind of defeats the purpose of having these Find Sources links in the templates in the first place.

I'm not sure if anyone is watching this page, but thoughts? What's the process for establishing consensus and making a change to a protected module? Thanks, Levivich (talk) 16:51, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

We should keep the exclusion term, but modify it to add the site: search param. The idea behind adding -wikipedia as an exclusion search term is a good one, but per your objections, it wasn't executed properly. The term should be: -site:wikipedia.org. If done that way, it will no longer exclude books or other documents with the word wikipedia on it.

Your comment and reasoning are valid, even if your example was not. Principles appears on the third page anyway, even if the query is formatted properly (e.g., like this). Further, in the original version of the query, the fact that Principles appears on the third page is good evidence that the book does *not* have the word wikipedia in it anywhere (that's the whole point of the exclusion term, to exclude such results; that this isn't always the case gets into the fine points of the search ranking algorithm, but that's getting way beyond scope here and doesn't change the argument). The fact that it's still on the third page anyway, means that Google's ranking algorithm is ranking other results higher, and has nothing to do with documents that do, or do not, have the term wikipedia in them.

However, keeping the exclusion term is still a good idea, and your basic argument is still correct, so the exclusion term in the module should be modified accordingly to add the site: search param. Mathglot (talk) 08:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, but what is the purpose of adding -site:wikipedia.org to a Google Scholar or Google News search string, since neither site indexes Wikipedia.org? (Remove the minus sign and I get no results.) It makes sense to add the exclusion for Google Web tho. Levivich (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 December 2022

Moved from Module talk:Find sources/links

 – * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:38, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Please change "WP Library" to "TWL" as it is the more common term (see reference page). Thanks! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:28, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Just as a passing comment: TWL is a lot unclearer for me as someone who knows nothing about The Wikipedia Library. TWL is just another TLA on wikipedia (of many) whereas at least you can gather that WP Library stands for Wikipedia Librabry even if you have a passing knowledge of Wikipedia. Terasail^[✉️] 22:27, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Why not spell it out in full as "Wikipedia Library" or "The Wikipedia Library"? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:38, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Going ahead with this, because the tooltip for when a mouse hovers gives away "The Wikipedia Library", and "TWL" is more consistent with the other source-link initialisms. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 17:44, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 6 January 2023

Add to Category:Articles for deletion templates as it is used at Template:Afd2. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

You need to specify what template you want the category added to. Presuming you mean Template:Find general sources (the target of Template:Find sources AfD), I'm not convinced it belongs in that category since its used for far more than AfD discussions. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:35, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 16 March 2023

Description of suggested change: Change the link for the "WP refs" link to the one used in WP:RSSE. Much more accurate than the current one (which as an example, the current one, when searching "Euro Truck Simulator 2", has a top result for "download.com" to "download" the game, as opposed to the RSSE one which has the top result of the game's page on Metacritic) ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 01:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you have the list of domains searched by the RSSE google custom search? The existing one lists 496 sites, and the list is open to view to anyone. I don't think we should change it to any list that isn't transparent about what is being searched. If it's already there, maybe I didn't see it; can you point me to it? Mathglot (talk) 10:28, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe the existing one is actively maintained. Is there an issue with one that isn't transparent about what's being searched? It says its limited to those published by "well-known reliable sources", but I"ve asked on the talk page about what sources are specifically used. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:53, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. Barkeep has answered there. Consider further whether that's the set of pages you'd like to search. Izno (talk) 18:48, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 May 2023

add google with brave search and sci hub Baratiiman (talk) 08:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: 1. We will not be linking to Sci Hub. 2. We already have one Google search. I don't see a reason to use a second. Izno (talk) 22:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

but google and bing dont work in my country only brave Baratiiman (talk) 17:07, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 3 August 2023

Add Reuters and AP search as link codes to the Find sources module. There is some discussion on this change at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Replace nyt with reuters; while the proposal to replace NYT with Reuters is clearly controversial, there seems to be less controversy with adding it (and/or the Associated Press) as an option, and in either case having them available as a link codes would be a prerequisite.

I believe adding the following to the code in Module:Find sources/links should work (though I'd appreciate a double check; also as far as I know news wires are not italicized as titles the way newspapers are, but again, a double check on language and formatting would be appreciated):

	["ap"] = {
		url = 'https://apnews.com/search?q=$1',
		display = "Associated Press",
		description = "The [[Associated Press]], an American news agency",
	},

	["reuters"] = {
		url = 'https://www.reuters.com/site-search/?query=$1',
		display = "Reuters",
		description = "[[Reuters]], an international news agency",
	},

In addition, the link codes table in Module:Find sources/doc needs to be updated if this change is made, though the documentation does not appear to be template protected so I am happy to make said change myself. Thanks! Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 00:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Not opposed, but imho, this isn't the sort of thing that should just be added to the module as a simple response to an edit request (although I think it's fine to request it that way), but by broader consensus, as this would have a wide impact. Mathglot (talk) 08:22, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense to me! Two questions:

1. I want to make sure I really understand the change I proposed here, since I'm not generally familiar with modules. I was under the impression adding the link codes wouldn't impact existing templates, though looking more into it, it also seems like there's no configurability in the current templates so maybe adding the link codes is a useless no-op. Is the right thing here to seek consensus on the full change altogether (i.e. get consensus on adding one or both newswires to the find sources template before making any changes like adding them as options to the link codes list)?
2. Is the right place to seek consensus the VPR thread (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Replace nyt with reuters)? Adding the sources to the default find sources does seem like a pretty major change, and I assume a handful of editors doesn't make a proper consensus for something like that.

Thanks for your help here! Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 16:17, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

As for #1, you're correct; merely adding the config wouldn't change the behavior. Not sure about the second half of #1, but as it wouldn't do anything and consensus isn't guaranteed, it seems to me it would just be clutter, and there's no rush, so why bother?

#2 Wasn't aware of it until you mentioned it, but VPR is a highly visible location and one possible venue, so as it's open there already, that would certainly be the place to gain consensus for it, imho. I'm not a gatekeeper here, just trying to add my own opinion about your questions, but as it's a highly visible change, imho a solid consensus should be sought. Hope this helps, Mathglot (talk) 17:30, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

There are two relevant entities here: Module:Find sources and Template:Find sources. The module is the sort of core, which contains the structure for adding links, whereas the template is what determines which links are actually used, and is what appears on many talk pages. There are a few other templates that also use the module core.

Adding AP and Reuters to the module is something I'd support, as they could feasibly be used. But adding them to the find sources template in addition to NYT is something I'd oppose, as that'd be the first step down the path that ends with us listing every large-scale reliable news organization, and then we have something that's no longer one line but half a dozen, contributing to talk page bloat and banner blindness. We need to think about that actual workflow that someone search for sources for an article goes through. It's generally not to go to the website of every reputable news organization to see what coverage they have; rather, it's to use Google News, which will bring up stories from the NYT, AP, Reuters, and all the others. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:55, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Clarification: the template selects the search domain, and the module config files determine which links are displayed for each search domain. Mathglot (talk) 23:00, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Deactivate awaiting full clarification and consensus for this change. Please do not reactivate until consensus has been achieved. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 23:27, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done Note this specific edit does not change the output of any Find Sources template, which is controlled by the relevant subpage of Module:Find sources/templates. Hence this edit is innocuous and never required consensus. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:40, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 23 November 2023

	["bbc"] = {
		url = 'https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=$1',
		display = "BBC",
		description = "[[BBC]], British public broadcaster",
	},
	["wsj"] = {
		url = 'https://www.wsj.com/search?query=$1',
		display = "Wall Street Journal",
		description = "The website of ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', a [[newspaper of record]] for the United States.",
	},

Description of suggested change: add these codes to Module:Find sources/links so that BBC and Wall Street Journal become available for the template. both are globally reputable major news sources.--RZuo (talk) 14:56, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

 Done As before this doesn't actually change the output of any specific template - I'll probably require a much broader discussion before adding this to Module:Find sources/templates/Find general sources * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:50, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 23 November 2023

add these codes

		{
			code = 'ap',
			display = 'AP',
			tooltip = 'Associated Press',
		},

to these pages:

1. Module:Find sources/templates/Find general sources
2. Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources
3. Module:Find sources/templates/Find biographical sources
4. Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources video games

reason: https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&oldid=1186487350#RfC_on_Module:Find_sources_-_replace_New_York_Times_with_Associated_Press .--RZuo (talk) 14:56, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

 Done for Module:Find sources/templates/Find general sources. The remaining three pages aren't template protected so you can edit them yourself. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:50, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Ack, I'm only seeing this now, but this was a bad outcome, starting us down the path that'll end with us listing a dozen different high-profile newspapers. I've come to the view that we shouldn't be listing any newspapers individually in the find sources bar — the geographic hurdles, combined with the difficulty of achieving consensus on the outlets to use, and the banner bloat issue, are part of the reason. But really the main thing is just that people don't generally find sources by looking through archives in specific publications — they instead do searches on Google News or other databases that turn up broader results. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

It is as you feared ... * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

it is as i had planned. Sdkb is obviously one of the smart ones among the discussion participants. RZuo (talk) 07:24, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

while taking action against NYT in this template, i will be blocked from English Wikipedia maybe pretty soon. :) --RZuo (talk) 21:09, 29 November 2023 (UTC)