'''Citation needed'''<ref>This wiki doesn't even have the {{Citation needed}} template! One more example of the need for Global templates</ref>
What methods do people use to turn their MediaWiki instances into actual useful software?
It's just that I want to be able to quickly enter a Citation in "Chicago Style" (''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style The Chicago Manual of Style]'') or ''the'' general 80% use-case citation style by filling out a dialog box or template but without needing to brush up on things I might have learned while writing papers in college.
It's great that the open source community - both developers and editors - has been hacking away at Citations as a feature for years (e.g. [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Results/Citations 2021 Wishlist Survey results for Citations] [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Results/Citations 2022] [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2023/Results/Citations 2023] and an entire conference series called "WikiCite" eg. WikiCite 2020 presentation "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCJbbvjXtkg The frontend of WikiCite]" {{#ev:youtube|gCJbbvjXtkg|start=6:18}})which also has an [https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/The_frontend_of_WikiCite extensive etherpad].
There has also been a years-long initiative to create "'''Global templates'''"
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Taxonomy
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Taxonomy#Citations
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Alternative_solutions
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Transition
But in a 3rd-party context, I don't want to have to know or understand any of that in order to accomplish the simple task at hand: creating a citation/footnote in a standard format.
And, from a competitive landscape perspective, if Drupal, WordPress, and writers tools like Scribbr have Citation generation "built-in"<ref>Check how these other projects use CSL and/or perhaps use a library for CSL like Citation.js? https://citationstyles.org/</ref> then why doesn't MediaWiki?
{{ambox|
It has bothered me for a long time that you can't re-use templates from WMF due to "dependency hell" (using that term loosely here to describe the cascading inclusion of dozens of templates and modules). I imported dozens of templates [https://wiki.freephile.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex?prefix=&namespace=828 and modules] in 2017 in an attempt to get basic "citation" and "Infobox" templates. This is still the technique for implementing the Citation Tool
;Citation Style 1:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Citation_Style_1
== My Wiki is Not Wikipedia ==
== Solution ==
A Without an easy '''existing''' solution, users will simply not adopt the software, or not reference information that should be referenced. You could ''maybe'' resort to third-party tools to help you create parenthetical referfences (e.g. [https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/citation-styles/ Scribbr]), but that is a failure from the MediaWiki project perspective if users need to use other tools for basic functionality. '''One idea''' We can develop a basic set of templates and possibly Lua code, system messages and Project namespace content bundled into a Page Exchange bundle.
== See Also ==
* [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/4256/ Workboard for a "Cite Extends"] or so-called "book referencing" from German Wikipedia community * https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Technische_W%C3%BCnsche/Topw%C3%BCnsche/Erweiterung_der_Einzelnachweise* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/4256/ {{reflist}}