Template talk:Find sources

Module talk vs. Template talk
It's sometimes tricky figuring out where to look for certain topics. Should we add a notice along the lines of:


 * Template talk:Find sources is intended for discussion of technical aspects of this template. For discussions relating to link selection and content, see Module talk:Find sources.

And vice versa for the other talk page. We'd then move the 'New York Times' thread to the module talk page. - Wikmoz (talk) 22:44, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * makes sense to me. Assume you would be talking about a WP:Hatnote, which would be the right kind of notice for this. Mathglot (talk) 01:36, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * looked at this again, and it's probably doable, but not obvious. The template doesn't have a /doc subpage, rather, it uses the autodoc feature, and I've never really delved into that. Seems like the trick would be how to generate the hatnote only for the doc of the page where it belongs. Or maybe, use a combination of and the autodoc after it? That would probably create a second bordered doc box, so probably not. Just brainstorming, here... Mathglot (talk) 08:10, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I haven't been too active lately. I was referring to the talk pages just to separate the topics of discussion. I tried adding standard hatnotes to both pages. - Wikmoz (talk) 22:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Brainstorming: calling the module twice for dual projects
There has previously been discussion about what to do when an article is a member of two projects, e.g. Marie Curie is a member of WP:MEDICINE and WP:BIOGRAPHY. Previous discussion has centered upon the fact that the possible conflict between two projects is a negative, and how should we resolve it? It occurs to me that we needn't resolve it, and should reframe it as a feature, not a bug. The template could be modified to invoke the module twice, once for each project. This might raise additional questions, such as, should we throttle the max number of search domains for which a links banner could be generated, and if so, should that be a hard limit, or configurable (e.g., 2)? The way the template is currently designed, such a modification would be very easy to carry out. Mathglot (talk) 00:04, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

"FENS"/"TWL" acronyms
"FENS" is an internal term that would not be well known by the people who are the primary intended audience for the "find sources" bit, same with "TWL", though one does get the notification when they are eligible for that one so it's not quite as insider baseball. They have abbr annotations, but would it be that unreasonable to expand them to "Newspapers" and "The Wikipedia Library"? I don't think it would be a crime to have the section span two lines instead of one if need be. Remsense 留  16:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Future design of this template
This discussion found consensus for changing the template to include search engines of news titles/scholarly articles, instead of listing them individually. I am looking forward to your proposals to implement it, or even replacing it with Search for and modifying it if needed. I don't know much about coding, but I am willing to help Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Robustness design upgrade suggested
The core project WikiProject detection code takes place in subtemplates /proj/is med, /proj/is biography, /proj/is video. These subtemplates are working, but they are built using regular expressions and a stronger method is available now since the introduction of template HasTemplate based on new module functionality. The upshot of this, is that we now have a more powerful tool for determining the presence of the WikiProject templates, and all three subtemplates should be converted to use HasTemplate, and avoid use of regular expressions which by their nature are more fragile, as well as being more difficult to maintain. Another reason to use the new template is the redirects issue. The WP:MED WikiProject for example, has a dozen redirects, leading to more regex code in the subtemplate (/doc section proj/is med#Notes addresses this) and this could and should be replaced with HasTemplate as a robustness improvement which will also make future modifications easier and more bulletproof. Mathglot (talk) 20:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

WP Refs description
(updated) Change description of WP Refs from 'a Google search that only searches sites vetted by Wikipedians' to 'a Google search limited to hundreds of higher-quality sources' Superb Owl (talk) 17:19, 12 June 2024 (UTC)