Wikipedia talk:ProveIt

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the ProveIt page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023: 12 months

Dates very often invalid

I really like ProveIt, but I very often find the result fails validation in the cite template with

 {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

The ProveIt tool inserts a date like 2009-01, cite flunks it, so I have to manually edit to 2009-01-01.

Can ProveIt just put a valid date in? I always us DOI inputs, so the date is whatever the publisher offered, typically only a month not a day. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that the date that ProveIt gets in the case of DOI load is from the Wikipedia Citoid service and that date is in YYYY-MM-DD format per https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/69241/date-format-mangling-on-import-of-doi

The Template:Citation#Dates and Help:Citation_Style_1#Dates suggest that YYYY-MM-DD would be acceptable.

Therefore the problem seems to be that many sources only provide YYYY-MM which is not acceptable to cite template or the MOS:

the format expected in the citation style being used (but all-numeric date formats other than yyyy-mm-dd must still be avoided).

So any sources with a monthly publication model will result in a cite template error when added via the DOI feature in ProveIt.

When the Citoid data is moved from the JSON API result to the proveit template data here:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/gadgets/ProveIt/+/refs/heads/master/proveit.js#542

the date values in YYYY-MM format could be patched up. The simplest patch would be YYYY-MM -> YYYY-MM-01; the best patch would be to convert the MM to a month, Month YYYY. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The simplest patch would be YYYY-MM -> YYYY-MM-01. Don't do that. Earlier versions of citoid and/or its predecessors did that but, thankfully, they no longer do. Making up a day-specific date to avoid the cs1|2 error resulting from the MOS restriction is a bad practice that should not be restored.

It was once proposed that citoid use the Library of Congress EDTF format (subsequently made part of ISO 8601-2019) YYYY-MM-XX (T132308) and support for that was provided in Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation. The cs1|2 module auto-translated EDTF dates to Month YYYY. Ultimately, the the proposal was abandoned.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:46, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Trappist the monk What do you think Proveit should do? Sophivorus (talk) 13:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Got access to the MediaWiki #time parser? If yes, perhaps fetch the date from it:

{{#time:F Y|YYYY-MM|<local language tag>}} → {{#time:F Y|2001-02|en}} → February 2001

That should return the proper date for most wikipedias which you can then insert in to the cs1|2 template's |date= parameter. You may need to use {{#time:xg Y|YYYY-MM|<local language tag>}} for those languages that distinguish genitive from nominative (whatever that is – grammar in my own language is difficult enough for me so I don't even try to understand grammar in other languages).

The above not being possible, I suppose that you could create some sort of data array that maps language tag and month number to month name for that language.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cache cosmetic notice

Would it be possible to have a "don't show me again" button when using the normalize feature to skip the WP:COSMETIC warning? I imagine most times that button is clicked, the editor is fully aware of the potential issues and policy, and is operating responsibly. Remsense留 17:45, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cite Rotten Tomatoes and Cite Metacritic

Please add {{Cite Rotten Tomatoes}} and {{Cite Metacritic}}. Gonnym (talk) 10:58, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Minor question

Thanks for adding the new "archiving" feature. (The one that puts an "Archive" button in the URL field and searches the Internet Archive for archived revisions). I noticed, however, that the button also appears in the Archive-URL field, which seems a but odd. Was this deliberate? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 14:05, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Cremastra Hi! No, it's not deliberate, but a side effect of the fact that Proveit adds the Archive button to every field of type "url" (as defined by the template data of each citation template). I can't think of a fix that works cross-wiki yet. Sophivorus (talk) 20:51, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Allow it to be used on Template pages

Perhaps some sort of config option could be added to make it opt-in, but it would be useful to be able to use ProveIt on template pages like Template:2024MERep. Unknown-Tree🌲? (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Unknown-Tree Done, see Special:Diff/1212427273, cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 20:48, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Super weird source misidentification (2022)

Anyone know how ProveIt could have gotten this idea? It's taken OCLC 922086108 (A.C. Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry), and mapped it to DOI 10.1016/0006-8993(79)90456-6 (Palacios, Niehoff, Kuhar, "Ontogeny of GABA and benzodiazepine receptors: Effects of Triton X-100, bromide and muscimol"). Aware this error is almost two years old at this point, but thought I'd bring it here just in case. Folly Mox (talk) 12:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Parameter name switches

I'm disappointed to see that this bug I raised in 2022 has not yet been fully resolved. Sdkb ^talk 19:46, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another related issue: In the reference

<ref>{{cite news |last1=Parsa |first1=Julia |last2=Harper |first2=Sage |last3=Tambellini-Smith |first3=Unity |last4=Evans |first4=Jaya |title=Sexual Assault Campus Climate: A summary of student demographics |url=https://tsl.news/sexual-assault-campus-climate-a-summary-of-student-demographics/ |url-status=live |access-date=5 February 2024 |language=en |work=[[The Student Life]] |date=2 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240204072328/https://tsl.news/sexual-assault-campus-climate-a-summary-of-student-demographics/ |archive-date=February 4, 2024}}</ref>

ProveIt changed |last1= and |first1= to |last= and |first=, despite there being additional authors. Sdkb ^talk 20:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dark mode style issues

Surprised this hasn't been brought up before, but ProveIt's interface is coming up unreadable for me with the site's appearance selector set to Dark mode; all of the text is white-on-near-white. The main issue seems to be that many of ProveIt's styles don't follow the Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis, which say:

Always define color when defining background
When defining a background color, it may be tempting not to define the color if it is the same as the article text color. However, when different themes e.g. night mode are applied, this could have unintended consequences (e.g. white text on a yellow background). It is thus recommended that you always define the two together.

The main ProveIt styles all set a light background-color while leaving color defaulted. FeRDNYC (talk) 05:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone who needs it, here's my bodge you can stick in your common.css or what have you:

@media (prefers-color-scheme:dark) {
	#proveit, #proveit-body, .proveit-item:nth-child(odd) {
		color: unset!important
		background-color: var(--background-color-base)!important
	}
	#proveit-footer {
		background-color: var(--border-color-muted)!important
	}
	#proveit-header {
		background-color: var(--color-inverted)!important
	}
	#proveit-list .proveit-item:hover {
		background-color: var(--border-color-progressive--hover)!important
	}
	#proveit input, #proveit select, #proveit textarea {
		background-color: var(--background-color-interactive-subtle)!important
	}
}

Remsense ‥ 论 18:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does not properly handle commented-out parameters in cite templates

In Special:Diff/1242637481, this script mangled a reference containing |editor3-first=Deyuan  by reordering the parameters so |year=1994 onwards--> came before |editor3-first=Deyuan <!--, leaving the reference with an unclosed comment and breaking display of that and all subsequent refs in the article. It also seems to have somehow duplicated some of the other parameters. Anomie ⚔ 13:56, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And that is why normalizing references should be done carefully and double-checked. Nobody (talk) 05:39, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of redundant publisher location

Would it be feasible to automate in normalization, per Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher, the removal of redundant locations e.g. publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge? Of course, the one hang-up I can immediately imagine is when multiple locations are specified, but that seems easy to consistently check for. Remsense ‥ 论 18:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]