Wikipedia talk:ProveIt/Archive 2017

New version enabled
Given that consensus has been achieved, I have enabled the new version of ProveIt for all users. The new version has several new features, bug fixes and is under active development. However, if for some reason you still prefer the previous version, you can go back to it by visiting your preferences and enabling the gadget called "ProveIt classic". I hope you like the new version and please leave any feedback, bug reports and feature requests at the Phabricator project. Thanks! --Sophivorus (talk) 16:26, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the addition of the "classic" gadget; i have immediately activated it, as it does the task to my requirements. I shall not be watching this page any longer, but feel free to ping me if any of the issues i have raised about the new version are resolved.  Happy days, LindsayHello 16:57, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This new ProveIt is a significant improvement, but there are a few setbacks: the text is so tiny, and it does not leave a gap between each field like the older versions (it should be something like, which it is not). I hope these issues are resolved. -- Kailash29792 (talk) 07:36, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi! Are you using the MonoBook skin? I just pushed a patch to make the font bigger in the MonoBook skin, as there was a bug making the font smaller at the MonoBook skin. Cheers! --Sophivorus (talk) 18:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes Sophivorus, the text size is fine now. Did you read my other complaint? Kailash29792 (talk) 04:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I do not care for the new version. It seems harder to use and I do not understand at all how to add the title of the ref, etc. There seems to be way less features than the old one, so I will continue to use the classic. If the new one is improved, I may use it, but for now will stick to the old one.--Seacactus 13 (talk) 00:48, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Sophivorus, here's a suggestion: Could you provide a way for the unnecessary info to be collapsed from the ProveIt template? An example, in the cite web template: Author link 1, 2, editor link 1, 2, arXiv identifier, and other things whose meaning I don't know. Would it be possible to collapse these and have only the main data fields, like the ones in ProveIt classic, but with an option to expand for those who want them? Until this issue is resolved, I think I'll have to stick with classic. Many thanks, though, for trying so hard to improve our experience!   MediaKill13   (  talk  )   20:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)


 * IMHO, there is a VERY Serious bug in the current version. It is at phab:T148236. Template parameters that have not yet made it into TemplateData that are used in an article will be silently deleted with their data. I have requested that this be fixed urgently or that ProveIt be taken off-line again until fixed. I am a huge fan of ProveIt, but my work over the past week in resolving this for cite book in the English Wikipedia made me realize how serious this is. Many Thanks, John --Arg342 (talk) 00:39, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Please confirm with some real life testing, cheers! --Sophivorus (talk) 15:35, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It looks like this will work! I just tested on an article with 157 authors and it seemed fine. Also tested with a few other parameters not yet in the TemplateData and it seems to be working there as well. Many thanks for taking care of it!--Arg342 (talk) 17:58, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The older version used to render references like, which is not so with the new version. Some may laugh at my statement, but I think that style of rendering references is the best and cleanest. , could you please do something about this? Kailash29792 (talk) 08:37, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hm, I can change ProveIt so that it styles templates that way, but I'm looking around to see if there's some convention as to the preferred way to style templates and can't seem to find it. Do you know of any? --Sophivorus (talk) 16:24, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The very sight of how the new ProveIt renders references makes me sick, including the fact that fields like "accessdate" have a forced and unnecessary hyphen in them, while there is little gap between the fields, making the ref very hard to read. Kailash29792 (talk) 08:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The hyphenated form of multi-word parameters is the standard form, per a well-advertised RfC and the citation templates' documentation. accessdate is a particular problem, because careless editors using spell-checkers change it to access date, which is invalid. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:03, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * , sorry for the late reply. Okay, you don't have to replace "access-date" with "accessdate" (though I still prefer this method), but please do such that there is a gap between the fields, like how I said here on 08:37, 19 November 2016. Also, please make it easier to navigate fields in ProveIt, i.e. we type to search for the field. Kailash29792 (talk)  04:30, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I have created a related task for this at T157431. Please add any further requests to Phabricator, thanks! --Sophivorus (talk) 11:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Settings
There aren't any settings for this tool, right? I like to have all my references consistent in the order of author, title, publisher, page, url, date, accessdate, with no extra spaces between parameters, and with |last= and |first= instead of |author=. There's no way to do any of that currently using this tool, is there? 12.233.151.252 (talk) 18:46, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Correct. It uses a consistent ordering and formatting, but neither are user-customizable. Mattflaschen - Talk 05:38, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * For the benefit of any late-comers reading this, it would appear that ProveIt likes to use the ordering set up in the TemplateData for the template being used. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:49, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Changing names of parameters unnecessarily
In cite news, is a perfectly acceptable synonym for, and is indeed preferable when citing an actual newspaper. However ProveIt insists on changing the latter to the former. Why? Please stop it. TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 15:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It may have something to do with these recent changes to the TemplateData code in Template:Cite news/doc. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:00, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That simply explains how ProveIt knows that is a synonym for, not why it is changing a perfectly acceptable usage into a mis-statement. If I am citing a newspaper, I want it shown to be a "newspaper" rather than the more-generic "work"! HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:01, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Relax Phil. The reason is that ProveIt normalizes parameter aliases to the canonical parameter names. I thought that under most circumstances this would be desirable behavior. But do you people think that this is a generally undersirable behavior? --Sophivorus (talk) 22:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Template:Cite episode & Template:Cite video
It doesn't recognize the templates, nor does it include it as an option. Could someone fix that? Thanks. MCMLXXXIX 00:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * --Sophivorus (talk) 11:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Did you fix the video template as well? It's still not working. -- MCMLXXXIX  11:35, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I just noticed that the template was a redirect. -- MCMLXXXIX  13:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Cite paper
It doesn't recognise cite paper either, which is a redirect to cite journal: is that deliberate? —Phil | Talk 16:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * --Sophivorus (talk) 17:29, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Updating references doesn't work
I have entered a book reference and saved changes, then I wanted to add the "pages cited" in my reference so I re-edited the page and updated the reference using ProveIt but nothing has changed in the text itself. I have tried using both the classic version and the new version but nothing works. It seems like you have always to remove the reference completely and re-insert the updated version!
 * Hm, is this still an issue? I'm definitely not having this problem and I guess most users aren't either or they'd be reporting it. Also, the fact that you experience the issue both with the new and the classic ProveIt suggests that it's only you experiencing this issue. Still it may be useful to know what causes it. If you can give more details on your system and how to reproduce the bug, I may be able to figure it out. Thanks! --Sophivorus (talk) 20:30, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Template:Cite interview
The current ProveIt doesn't seem to recognise this template. Can someone please look into this? -- Kailash29792 (talk)  06:49, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Before I can add it, it's template data needs to be defined. --Sophivorus (talk) 22:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * If, by "defining" a template you mean showing the full syntax, here it is:

-- Kailash29792 (talk)  03:14, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * That's not what I meant. Check out TemplateData, and let me know if you decide to add the template data! --Sophivorus (talk) 21:39, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Archive URLs
Example diff:

It added some wrong archive URLs. Corrections: (not all caused by ProveIt)

We now have a sophisticated bot called InternetArchiveBot (IABot) whose primary job is to add archive links. It's been in development for nearly two years and worked on by a team of developers at Internet Archive, the MediaWiki Foundation and the lead developer is User:Cyberpower678. It's processing not only every article on Enwiki but other languages also.

It's a complex process to find archive links and IABot uses a database and web interface. It's available under the article history tab "Fix dead links". We also have a bot WaybackMedic which fixes link rot in the archive URLs themselves (second diff above). I'm the author of Medic (1+ year development) and so I often see when there are problems with other tools and bots and archive links.

Could we discuss? I'm sure there are ways we can better coordinate efforts. -- Green  C  21:10, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi! I read your message and checked the links, but I'm afraid I don't understand what does ProveIt have to do with any of this. Is it causing trouble in some way? Could you explain a bit slower? --Sophivorus (talk) 21:43, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It's possible I'm misunderstanding how ProveIt works. In this diff at line #97 it added a link to which doesn't work. In this diff line #731 it added a link to  which doesn't work. Were the link discoveries done by ProveIt or by the client? I'm also seeing Checklinks edits in the mix which have known problems, it has a complex history. --  Green  C  22:54, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Sophivorus, does ProveIt provide the archive links or are they client/user provided? If the later, InternetArchiveBot will soon have an API that will allow tools such as ProveIt to query for available archives from 20+ archive services, if providing archive URLs is a feature ProveIt wanted to incorporate. -- Green  C  15:43, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Links are user provided, ProveIt adds no links on its own. However, it'd be interesting to incorporate that functionality you're talking about. Could you link me to the API or any documentation available? Or if you want to go further, you may start a task at project/board/2317, thanks! --Sophivorus (talk) 20:24, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok great. The API is currently under development so nothing right now but wanted to pass it along as a future possibility. -- Green  C  21:05, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Sophivorus, Cyberpower678 now has a working API with documentation for accessing the archive database. --  Green  C  00:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

ProveIt for books
When I load ISBN, ProveIt often reverses the author's first and last names. Also it generates a url to Worldcat. According to the documentation of, the url= parm is for "URL of an online location where the text of the publication can be found". WorldCat shows library holdings, but not the text. And Worldcat is accessible anyway from the ISBN parameter of books. Kim9988 (talk) 18:28, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Part of the GUI is out of the screen
Hi.

I use ProveIt on Firefox and I am currently running Firefox 54.0.1 x64. There is a problem with ProveIt GUI: The bottom portion of the list is hidden by the footer. Here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/yFhff

I even know how to fix this. Every time I load the page, I add the following CSS rule to :

I was wondering if a more permanent fix is possible.

Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 14:01, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * , you got a solution to this? -- Kailash29792 (talk)  04:30, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now, cheers! --Sophivorus (talk) 14:27, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I am afraid it does not look that way from where I am sitting... —Codename Lisa (talk) 01:08, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Did you do a hard refresh (ctrl + shift + r) to load the latest CSS? --Sophivorus (talk) 08:50, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Even better. I used a fresh Firefox instance with no cached Wikipedia content. —Codename Lisa (talk) 10:16, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Dot at the end of the text of the reference
Hi ! I use ProveIt on French Wikipédia. I systematically have to add a dot at the end of a reference manually, is it possible to make it automatic ? Thanks. VateGV  ◦ Discuss? ◦ Discuter ? ◦ 16:37, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello,
 * Whatever you do, please make sure you don't do that on English Wikipedia.
 * As for the French Wikipédia, could you please show an example?
 * Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 06:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello, be reassured, I will pay attention to the differences between en and fr. On fr, we usually present our sources as follow :
 * As you can see, there is a period before the tag, and I wondered if it is possible to add it automatically with the gadget. But if there is no such a period on en, it may explain why there is no neither on fr. I will contact the project dealing with gadgets directly then... VateGV  ◦ Discuss? ◦ Discuter ? ◦ 11:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * As you can see, there is a period before the tag, and I wondered if it is possible to add it automatically with the gadget. But if there is no such a period on en, it may explain why there is no neither on fr. I will contact the project dealing with gadgets directly then... VateGV  ◦ Discuss? ◦ Discuter ? ◦ 11:50, 15 October 2017 (UTC)