Upgrade StorageWikipedia...
I'm sorry if this feature has already been requested, but I did search it in the forums, and the only result that came up was not exactly the idea I had in mind.
My request is for the Zotero icon to be available for Wikipedia articles. I know I used Wikipedia as a resource for several papers I wrote in college, and my professors widely accepted its use in papers. That was several years ago, so I'm sure that now, Wikipedia is probably even more widely accepted as a source for college research.
In any case, I think it would be very helpful for Zotero to be able to generate an entry from a Wikipedia article page. It seems that the information could be easily obtained, as all Wiki articles are in a standard format, with the critical information located in the same place every time (or atleast that is how I understand Wikipedia to be organized).
I understand that it would be difficult for some of the information that Zotero usually lists to be pulled from a Wikipedia page. However, some basic information could be gathered, such as Title, Address, Date Accessed, ect.
I understand that any Zotero user can create an entry with general ease, but if other users use Wikipedia as much as I do (and did in college), it would be very convenient to have such information already accessible by using the Zotero icon in the address bar.
Thank for reading my request. I would love to help on the development of such a feature, but I know nothing about making such tools, so I probably would not be very useful.
-MK
My request is for the Zotero icon to be available for Wikipedia articles. I know I used Wikipedia as a resource for several papers I wrote in college, and my professors widely accepted its use in papers. That was several years ago, so I'm sure that now, Wikipedia is probably even more widely accepted as a source for college research.
In any case, I think it would be very helpful for Zotero to be able to generate an entry from a Wikipedia article page. It seems that the information could be easily obtained, as all Wiki articles are in a standard format, with the critical information located in the same place every time (or atleast that is how I understand Wikipedia to be organized).
I understand that it would be difficult for some of the information that Zotero usually lists to be pulled from a Wikipedia page. However, some basic information could be gathered, such as Title, Address, Date Accessed, ect.
I understand that any Zotero user can create an entry with general ease, but if other users use Wikipedia as much as I do (and did in college), it would be very convenient to have such information already accessible by using the Zotero icon in the address bar.
Thank for reading my request. I would love to help on the development of such a feature, but I know nothing about making such tools, so I probably would not be very useful.
-MK
"Title, Address, Date Accessed, ect." are added when you click the "Create New Item from Current Page" button. Were you aware of this feature?
If you were, it'd be useful to refine your request. If the "create new item from current page" is satisfactory, but you find using the Zotero icon in the URL button is "easier," perhaps you want an option to put an icon up for EVERY page (preferably one which was different from the icon that Zotero has site translators for).
If it isn't satisfactory, how should a Wikipedia-specific translator be different? A few ideas:
Either way, I think I am missing something, perhaps a lot, and look forward to a clarification.
Omegatron added embedded data to the citation templates on WP. Thus, if you go to a page which has citations (like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_probe>;), you'll be able to grab those references.
Finally, the new version of Zotero has a useful quick-copy feature, that allows you to copy a reference from Zotero & paste it in the WP citation template format onto WP.
Now we all know I am a newbie.
1. I was confused by the lack of any reference or any button on the Special:Cite page ... I now realize why this is the case, but I can also see how others might be similarly confused. Yes, yes I know, I should tell Zotero to "Create New Item From Current Page" to grab the WP page into my collection. I think you're going to tell me that a Cite in Zotero button on the Special:Cite page is not going to fly, but how about including in the Important Note something about Zotero and similar tools and one line on how to add the WP page to your collection.
I love that work that Omegatron did (am I correct if I say, "Omegatron has embedded data in the citation templates on WP so that WP pages now display a nifty icon which when clicked will list all sources referenced in any WP article"?
What is the proper term for this "nifty icon"?
2. When I "Create New Item From Current Page" from a WP page Zotero creates a link to the current page. I'd like to set Zotero to create a Permanent link to the current page. That is, if the page is a Permanent page, then link to that page, if the page is the article, then link to the Permanent version of that page. Yes, I could do this myself, by clicking on Permanent link, but I'd prefer it if Zotero had an option that I could enable to perform this.
3. Is there any way, or any structured way, to insert WP content from a Discussion, I mean Talk, page into Zotero?
4. I have not yet thought about, much less used Zotero to insert content in to the WikiPedia, so I'll discuss that at a later date.
4a Is there any need to push data from Z to a Talk: page? I imagine there is, so is there a structured way to do so?
5. I think mousekitty wants a robust way to grab data from WP into Z. Sure it would be nice if Z populated the Website Title field and other fields in the Web Page Template, but I think mousekitty was asking for a WP specific Template which includes, say, a reference, or flag, for any images; # of revisions, talk page flag, list of contributors, # of revisions, creation date, date of last contribution, etc. If this is possible or well received I'd be happy to contribute thoughts, specs, etc., but I don't code.
NB. Ambiguity Alert: WP=Wikipedia and WP=WordPress
- If you view a regular Wikipedia article without citations, Zotero will not detect anything. There should be no icon in the address bar.
- If you view a Wikipedia article with certain types of citations (in a References section, most likely), Zotero will pop up an icon in your address bar that lets you download the citation(s) into Zotero. In other words, if you view the article about Abraham Lincoln, you can download info about various Abraham Lincoln books into your Zotero.
- If you view a Wikipedia article and then click the "Cite this article" link in the Wikipedia navigation bar, you will go to a special page that has bibliographic information about that particular revision of the Wikipedia article itself. You should see a "journal" icon in the address bar that will let you download info about the Wikipedia article itself, even though it's not a journal (websites and similar resources will supposedly be added to COinS in the future).
That will just save it as a generic website with no author information or anything. If Zotero knew how to scrape Wikipedia articles, it could deduce all the information that is normally displayed on the "Cite this article" page and save it as an encyclopedia article. Someone could write a Zotero scraper for it, or we could add COinS to the article itself by asking the developers to modify Mediawiki. Since the "journal" format isn't really appropriate, though, I'd want to wait until the correct format is settled on before changing the software. I guess we could ask for a Mediawiki: namespace page and fill in the info with magic words so that admins could modify it in the future... Where? It will display a nifty folder icon in the address bar that lets you download the information about all citations in the article (but not the article itself). It will be possible! You can export citation templates with the latest beta.Most pages which have embeddded RDF use meta tags in the page header--this paradigm is obviously used to write metadata about the current webpage, and might be useful for clients other than Zotero (which self-describing COinS entries don't really seem to be). While RDF in HTML can also describe other things, I don't know if there is a strong case to use it over COinS on the "Cite this article" page.
unAPI might be cool to have on the "Cite this article" page, as it could theoretically just reuse the BibTeX & so any enhancements to "Zotero support" would benefit bibtex users & vice versa.
Journal Icon: Looks like a document, but populates the Journal template. Ok. Now, what's the name for the folder icon that generates multiple entries based on References?
Confusion, is unfortunately a state that many people find themselves in quite a lot. As for what's appropriate where...just look at the top of this page where you'll find a button entitled, "Bookmark this dicsussion". If I click that button will it add a bookmark to my Browser's Bookmarks? Will it add a reference to Zotero? Turns out it doesn't do either.
So it's hardly surprising that I was confused about the WP: Special:Cite. I am less confused now, however, and understand that that page is designed for someone to copy by hand, but now that Omegatron has written some code and added it to the WP I owe a debt of gratitute for making my life and those of other WP and Zotero users a little easier. Furthermore, I think I understand what you are talking about re: WP and Journal. So who do we have to contact re: a new format for MLA, et al.?
Now if only someone could write a plain English description of COinS I might be able to progress still further.
This is not English:
ContextObjects in Spans, commonly abbreviated COinS, is a method of embedding latent OpenURL ContextObjects in web pages. This allows client software to retrieve bibliographic metadata and to use an OpenURL resolver to find a mediated link. A principle advantage of using COinS, rather than giving a static OpenURL, is that the client can determine which resolver to use. This allows, for instance, searching for a copy of a book in one's own library.
Do you have any clue as to the time problem described here: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/669/middle-column-date-addedis-wrong/#Item_1
Hoping to learn still more from the Gods.
In my current understanding, a COinS tag is a little snippet of hidden, but computer-readable, bibliographic information, that can be used in a variety of ways. It uses the same format as the last part of an OpenURL, but encodes it so that it looks like plain text to a browser. OpenURLs are a way to link directly to something like a book or journal article, including a first part (which is specific to your school's library) and a second part (that describes the book with things like author and title). Your school's library "resolver" receives that information when you follow the link, figures out which book it is, and directs you to the page that gives information about that book.
Edit:
Now that I look at it, we can do microformats from userspace, as demonstrated on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCard#Live_example , since it's just divs with special classes. The citation one isn't finished yet, though?
I see no reason why embedded RDF which wasn't self-describing couldn't be added to the citation page (though I don't know how well Zotero imports this right now--it didn't the last time I checked). I don't know how this page was created--unAPI support on that page might not be inconceivable. Sounds good to me--kick it off & provide a link. As the originator of that page, I feel some sense of responsibility for any confusion. I'm reasonably familiar with the OpenURL spec. However, it is a technical topic & esoteric enough that relying on the OpenURL article, etc. to bring people up to speed seems unavoidable. Please raise any questions on the talk page for the article & we'll try to address them. Yes, hCite is still being discussed. As I said, we can also already embed RDF in userspace.
We can't do anything which is self-describing and automatic without WP developers buying into it.
If our goal is merely to get data into Zotero, a home-grown site translator seems like the easiest method. If we want to make WP data useful to other tools too, unAPI holds a lot of promise & embedded RDF is marginally more "mature" and might be "good enough."
But the citations can be done in userspace, as long as the code is compatible with wikimarkup. (COinS are, microformats with div are, but not ones with abbr) I meant to link it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats I need to read more about it, I guess. It looks like XML namespace stuff, which wouldn't be accepted by the software.
How can a mere mortal install this in their own MediaWiki?
Oh well. Time to get our butts in gear.