User:Dispenser/Reflinks

Reflinks is a tool that automatically or semi-automatically adds information to references using data present in the web page. It can process bare URLs (where the only information is a web address) or plain links (where the reference is a link and a title). Using Reflinks can save you time when writing your own articles as you can concentrate on writing and then fill in all the references once you are done. If you come across articles containing poorly formatted references, running Reflinks helps to prevent linkrot and provides readers with more details about where the information came from. You can use it on Category:Articles needing link rot cleanup. Note it does not work on all web links (e.g. PDFs), and does not always fill in enough {{cite template parameters. Lentower (talk) 12:19, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Usage – simple
Simplest method:
 * http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py – This webform does the exact same thing as the fix-it link in the Cleanup-link rot banner. Paste in the URL or page name of the Google Wiki article that you want the bare URLs fixed in. It can take 10 minutes for reflinks to finish filling in 100 refs. You can see the refs filling up the working page. You can stop at anytime. If unsure, or if all else fails, click the stop icon in your address bar. Then go through the process and steps to fill in the refs (see details in next usage section below). Then come back and run it again. This web form is better than the one linked below because the one linked below adds "bot-generated" notes and does not fill in nearly as many details.
 * http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Reflinks - produces different results.

Usage – template banner
Paste the Cleanup-link rot banner at the top of the references section of an article with bare-URL references to encourage others to clean up the bare URLs. Just copy and paste Cleanup-link rot, and then save the page.

Then you or others can click the fix-it link in the banner. Wait for the bot to finish filling in all the citation templates for each bare URL. '''This can take ten minutes for a page with a hundred bare URLs. It is faster for fewer links.''' Scroll to the bottom of the results page to see how much has been completed. When done, click the "show preview" button at the bottom of the page. If things look OK, then click the "save page" button. If things don't look OK, then fix what needs to be fixed in the preview edit window. Then click the "save page" button. This banner uses the interactive mode described in the next section.

Interface
Reflinks operates in two modes, interactive and non-interactive.
 * The non-interactive mode is automatic and faster, but produces less-detailed references. It also adds to alert future editors that the references have not been reviewed by humans (example diff).
 * The interactive mode is recommended, but takes longer. It fills in references more completely, creating high-quality detailed references without the "bot-generated" notes. It is the mode used in the template banner described in the above usage section. It can be used on bare URLs or plain links by selecting the relevant button before running the tool. The templates created automatically by the tool need to be reviewed to ensure that they are accurate, as they are often not. The references can be opened and viewed whilst running the tool, by clicking on the URL displayed above the box containing the reference, allowing you to review the title, date and publisher. An example of some fields that need changing when running the tool can be seen when comparing an unedited interactive-mode revision and an interactive-mode revision with human-made tweaks. The difference between the two interactive-mode revisions can be seen in this diff.

FAQ

 * Q: Reflinks says some links are "blacklisted" what does this mean?
 * A: Spam blacklist
 * Q: Sometimes the tool makes changes to the article, other than to the references, why?
 * A: Reflinks performs "common fixes" to the code in articles, for example to templates and tables. They should have no visible effect on the article.
 * Q: Where is the documentation for the various attributes, like citeweb, overwrite, and limit?
 * A:
 * Q: Reflinks says some links are dead, when I can still access them, why is this?
 * A:
 * Q: Beside PDFs, what web page formats does this tool not handle?
 * A:

User script
While Reflinks can be easily run anywhere by using the bookmarklet, some people are never fixed to a single computer. Building off the code presented there for a copy and paste example for your common.js/monobook.js/vector.js.