COinS on Wikipedia

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Omegatron

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Feb 12, 2007, 8:24:52 PM2/12/07
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I was asked to poke this list. <http://onebiglibrary.net/story/
zeroconf-meta-opensearch-part-2-coins-unapi-churn-end-game>

I have added COinS tags to the two most common Wikipedia citation
templates, {{Cite book}} and {{Cite journal}}, so when people cite
something using one of these templates a COinS tag will be generated
after it.

So if you go to any major article that references books or journals
(like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibian>), you should see COinS
tags in the <em>References</em> section, next to each reference, so
you can visit your library's copy of a journal article that we cited
to check our facts, etc.

This won't be the case for <em>all</em> books or journals, though;
only those that use the citation templates <http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Template:Cite_book> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Template:Cite_journal> But these two are very common.

I'm not sure if I got everything right. If you see an error in the
encoding of the COinS tag, please point it out on my talk page <http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Omegatron> Especially PMIDs.

Caveat: There's no way to do any sort of string processing, so if
someone includes things in the fields that aren't meant to be in the
equivalent OpenURL fields, there's nothing we can currently do about
it. For instance, if someone enters a link within the title field,
the COinS tag will have brackets in it. See my examples of unlinked
and linked title tags:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Omegatron/
COinS_testing#Markup_within_parameters>

It seems that resolvers can find the articles in most cases, anyway,
though. In the future I hope to have a markup stripping tag to make
this even better:

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8161

Wikipedia also has had a very rudimentary COinS tag on the Book
sources page for a while, right after the word "Notes":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources

It just contains the ISBN that is passed to the Book sources page, as
that's all we can really do with the tools given to users, but that's
better than nothing.

Omegatron

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Feb 12, 2007, 8:26:34 PM2/12/07
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Oh. Is this <http://gcs-pcs-list.googlegroups.com/web/coins-
transparent.gif> an official logo or something? Would it be
appropriate in the Wikipedia article about COinS? <http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COinS>

Eric Hellman

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Feb 12, 2007, 10:16:58 PM2/12/07
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Somehow I missed the existence of this graphic. Way back when, there
was discussion about how COinS needs a logo- like those RSS logos.

I suggest that this graphic be acclaimed the official
graphic-for-purposes-of-slide-presentations-on-COinS

--

Eric Hellman, Director OCLC Openly
Informatics Division
er...@openly.com 2 Broad St., Suite 208
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://openly.oclc.org/1cate/ 1 Click Access To Everything

Daniel Chudnov

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Feb 14, 2007, 10:44:07 AM2/14/07
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On Feb 12, 2007, at 8:24 PM, Omegatron wrote:
>
> I have added COinS tags to the two most common Wikipedia citation
> templates, {{Cite book}} and {{Cite journal}}, so when people cite
> something using one of these templates a COinS tag will be generated
> after it.
>
> So if you go to any major article that references books or journals
> (like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibian>), you should see COinS
> tags in the <em>References</em> section, next to each reference, so
> you can visit your library's copy of a journal article that we cited
> to check our facts, etc.

This is great! I've already started hyping this in a podcast
interview that will be well-heard. :)

Thanks for your work on this, and for updating us.

-Dan

Daniel Chudnov

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Feb 14, 2007, 10:46:24 AM2/14/07
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This logo was created by Andrew Forman, who gave me permission, at
least, to show it publicly during talks while I speak about COinS
(which I've done repeatedly). I think it's safe to presume he'd be
happy to see it more widely used, although I think he's no longer
active in this community due to job/life changes.

If anybody knows how to reach him, please forward this so he can
confirm and we can be sure?

-Dan

Alf Eaton

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Feb 14, 2007, 11:40:37 AM2/14/07
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And don't forget - if you do want to cite a journal article on
Wikipedia (well, biomedical journal article at least), you can export
a correctly-formatted citation for Wikipedia from HubMed using unAPI...
http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/001408.html

alf.

Omegatron

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Mar 19, 2007, 11:32:47 PM3/19/07
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Alright. I went ahead and added a COinS tag to Wikipedia's
automatically-generated "Cite this article" page, which applies to the
article itself; not the references. The intent is to act as metadata
to allow the citation information to be read by automated tools, not
to resolve it (since the article revision already has a URL). I just
used the journal format as no one really made up their mind about
which format is the most appropriate; we can always change it. Here
is the code I used:

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004
&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal
&rft.atitle={{urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}
&rft.jtitle={{urlencode:{{SITENAME}}, {{MediaWiki:Sitesubtitle}}}}
&rft.date={{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTH}}-{{CURRENTDAY2}}
&rft.artnum={{REVISIONID}}
&rft.genre=article
&rft.aucorp={{SITENAME}} contributors
&rft_id={{urlencode:{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|
oldid={{REVISIONID}}}}}}
">&nbsp;</span>

which generates something like this (except unbroken):

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004
&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal
&amp;rft.atitle=Cuttlefish
&amp;rft.jtitle=Wikipedia%2C+The+Free+Encyclopedia
&amp;rft.date=2007-03-02
&amp;rft.artnum=112171784
&amp;rft.genre=article
&amp;rft.aucorp=Wikipedia contributors
&amp;rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle
%3DCuttlefish%26oldid%3D112171784
">&nbsp;</span>

Does this look good? REVISIONID is our internal revision number. Is
this an appropriate use of rft.artnum?

Eric Hellman

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Mar 20, 2007, 11:19:26 AM3/20/07
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Beautiful!

--

Omegatron

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Mar 20, 2007, 11:51:38 AM3/20/07
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Oh, and the page that would actually display this info and generate
the COinS tag is here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Special:Cite&page=Cuttlefish&id=112171784>

The tag is at the bottom underneath everything else.

Andy Mabbett

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Mar 20, 2007, 4:49:31 PM3/20/07
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In message <1174405898.6...@l75g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
Omegatron <omeg...@gmail.com> writes

That's good; but I believe that the data and COinS mark-up should be on
the page itself; see:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Citing_Wikipedia#Citation_data_should_be_on_the_page_concerned>
aka:
<http://tinyurl.com/2fpxsu>

--
Andy Mabbett
* Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/>
* Free Our Data: <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>
* Are you using Microformats, yet: <http://microformats.org/> ?

Omegatron

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Mar 20, 2007, 9:50:05 PM3/20/07
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On Mar 20, 4:49 pm, Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> That's good; but I believe that the data and COinS mark-up should be on
> the page itself

Of course, but that would require changes to Mediawiki. We're not
going to add them manually to each page. After we make sure we have
the COinS tag on the "Cite this article" page correctly formatted, we
should file a feature request:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi


Also, ocoins.info can be updated:

1. Wikipedia
* Book Sources Page
* Cite this article / article bibliographic details page
* References that use citation templates

I intend to add them to more citation templates next.

Andy Mabbett

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Mar 21, 2007, 10:32:29 AM3/21/07
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In message <1174441805.9...@p15g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>,
Omegatron <omeg...@gmail.com> writes

>
>On Mar 20, 4:49 pm, Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>> That's good; but I believe that the data and COinS mark-up should be on
>> the page itself
>
>Of course, but that would require changes to Mediawiki.

Yes; as I say on:

>After we make sure we have the COinS tag on the "Cite this article"


>page correctly formatted, we should file a feature request:
>
>http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi

By "we" I assume you're volunteering ;-)

It might also be worth starting discussion on the MediaWiki wiki.

Please post here if you do either; I'd certainly add my support.

>Also, ocoins.info can be updated:
>
>1. Wikipedia
>* Book Sources Page

That doesn't seem to be working. For instance, it gives me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/
fmt:kev:mtx:book&isbn=0950788120&sid=openly:openurlref

(wrapped for clarity)

which simply returns the Wikipedia home page.

Andy Mabbett

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Mar 21, 2007, 11:49:43 AM3/21/07
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In message <kvmTy1R9...@pigsonthewing.org.uk>, Andy Mabbett
<an...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> writes

>That doesn't seem to be working. For instance, it gives me:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/
> fmt:kev:mtx:book&isbn=0950788120&sid=openly:openurlref
>
> (wrapped for clarity)
>
>which simply returns the Wikipedia home page.

I should have said that that's when suing OpenURL Referrer, in FireFox.

Omegatron

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Apr 3, 2007, 8:00:45 PM4/3/07
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On Mar 21, 10:32 am, Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> >page correctly formatted, we should file a feature request:
>
> By "we" I assume you're volunteering ;-)

By "we" I mean I'm volunteering, but don't wait for me to get around
to it. :-) We need to decide what we want, first, though. I've been
told that RDF or unAPI would be better for the article's self-
description:

http://forums.zotero.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=327/#Comment_2379

> That doesn't seem to be working ... when [using] OpenURL Referrer, in FireFox.

You must not have it configured right. Mine works fine.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/
> fmt:kev:mtx:book&isbn=0950788120&sid=openly:openurlref

It should look like that, but starting with your local library instead
of wikipedia.

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