Module talk:Find sources

This talk page is intended for discussion of template content and links. For discussions relating to technical aspects of the Find sources template, see Template talk:Find sources

General sources template without a specific search

Is there a way to place Template:General sources notice at, for instance, my talk page so that it merely lists the source venues without cueing in on any specific keyword or search item? 𝒮𝒾𝓇 𝒯𝑒𝒻𝓁𝑜𝓃 (talk | contribs) 20:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Teflon Peter Christ: Not quite clear what you want: do you want to see links that don't go anywhere? You can generate a list of links that mostly have no search results when you click the search links, if that's what you mean; for example:

• {{general sources notice|.}} →

You can hover over the links to see what the search request url looks like. Most of them, like the Google links don't generate anything if you click them, neither does NTY or WP Lib, however JSTOR does. Or, did you want to see the list of search venues, so, Google, NY Times, and so on? The template doc lists them with brief descriptions here; does that help? Mathglot (talk) 10:43, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Boolean search operators

It wouldn't be too hard to add some of the boolean operators. A minus sign works for Google and some other search engines, but not for all of them; for example, this mostly works:

{{find sources|John Adams|president -Quincy}} → Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

it's okay for the Google links and some others, but the correct operator for exclusion in WP lib is NOT, so: twl:"John+Adams"+president+NOT+Quincy works whereas the one in the find-sources does not. Same thing for some other search engines. Or, maybe this could be handled at the level of documentation only, assuming that all the search engines can interpret capitalized booleans AND and OR (can they?). The biog or other search domain links might be an issue:

{{find biographical sources|John Adams|president -Quincy}} → Find biographical sources: Britannica · British Library · EoWB · books · Guardian · Infoplease · JSTOR · Library of Congress · MUSE · NYT · TWL

Several of these definitely don't like "minus" has a unary exclusion operator. Google also has other operators such as NEAR and :intitle, and others; and individual search engines may have their own equivalents of these. But then there's the question: even if we can do it, should we? I kind of suspect there isn't that much demand for it, but I thought I'd raise the issue to see what people thought. Mathglot (talk) 11:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Internet Archive Scholar

I've added Internet Archive Scholar to the links table, and the template/config for template/Find general sources. It has a very clean, very intuitive look and feel, and 25M documents. ry it out on your favorite queries; here's one:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Would like to get feedback from anyone willing to comment on how it stacks up against Google scholar. For the time being, I've not added it to Find sources medical, mostly because it doesn't have Google scholar currently either, and also because I think the MEDRS folks are more particular about what gets added there. But I think it would make a fine addition to {{find medical sources}} as well. Note: it's still in beta, so some features are weak; for example, although you can add to restrict to post-2000 documents, you can't set custom date ranges (yet) like you can in Google scholar. Mathglot (talk) 06:58, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Backed out this change. Product is still in beta, and the sort order of results is not most relevant first. Worth revisiting later. Mathglot (talk) 07:48, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

New York Times

The current version of the talk header is:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · NYT · WP Library

Can someone point me to the discussion where consensus was found to give preference to The New York Times over all other news sources? This is about one of the oddest things I've seen in a long time and I wonder what I am missing. I have searched the archives here and don't find anything. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:10, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I would prefer NPR or Reuters or literally anything else. Heck, even Christian Science Monitor is a better choice. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:23, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

In terms of globalization, I would think Reuters, so we aren't preferencing just the US ... and besides, the NYT is paywalled, so not very helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:27, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that decision was made, but concerns about it have been brought up before, and we're close to remedying it. {{Newspaper of record}} looks for whether an article has an associated country (via Wikidata) and returns nothing if there's no country or a country without a clear reliable English newspaper of record or the newspaper of record if we've decided there is one. It's not at 100% technically yet (I'd like to exclude topics that have multiple countries listed, and to be able to handle two newspapers of record for some countries e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age for Australia), but after it's good enough, we can implement it with the code here. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:31, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks; I see I searched archives for New York Times and not NYT, so did not find that post. At any rate, whether or not one considers NYT as the newspaper of record, it is paywalled, so why use it? Most can't access it, and I am now up to $17 per month to read it (ugh). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:37, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The NYT paywall isn't particularly strict; readers who aren't subscribed can circumvent it as needed. I hope that the WP Library will introduce NYT subscriptions to its package; it might be worth suggesting it here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I am happy to have a workaround, but how many will know they can circumvent it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:47, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe there's a certain number of free articles per month. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:51, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I want my money back :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Once upon a time it was not paywalled, and it's probably a leftover from that time. Secondly, they have always kept certain limited material available for the public welfare; lately, this has applied mostly to articles about covid, afaict. Mathglot (talk) 22:26, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with Sandy that selecting one source is not generally how we do things - we prefer to offer a selection of sources to reflect a range of views and to better assess how notable a topic is, and what weight to give to aspects of it. The limited access (paid registration required or only a few free views are allowed), and the problematic search page (whenever I click on a NYT link in the template, I get the search page, but I don't see any articles or links to articles) also cause it to be a dubious source. This is the third time the NYT link has been queried, but the first time the query has had traction. Given that per WP:ELREG we should not be linking to sites that require registration, and that the template already links to "news" and "FENS", I am not seeing a reason why we should continue with it. However, I'd like to hear from User:Mr. Stradivarius as they have some experience of this template, and is the one who added the NYT link (it first appeared after this edit: [1] by User:Mr. Stradivarius, who incorporated a template they had been working on, which had the NYT link, the Module:Find sources, which incorporated another Stradivarius template Template:Find sources multi). SilkTork (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

  @SilkTork: The NYT link originates with this edit by Jwillbur to Template:Find sources 3 way back in 2008. My role was to port that template to Template:Find sources multi and then Module:Find sources, and when I did that I didn't change any of the links. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for that Mr. Stradivarius. Gosh, it's been here a long time, though it looks like Find sources 3 was created by Jwillbur just for the purpose of adding NYT to a variant of Find sources, and so the NYT link didn't become standard until Find sources 3 was rolled into Find sources. Be good to hear from Jwillbur on this, but as they created a variant template, rather than add NYT to the main template, I suspect the intention was not to make NYT a default search link. SilkTork (talk) 02:22, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The Associated Press and/or Reuters may be preferable. - Wikmoz (talk) 02:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea of Reuters (based on how often I have used them when writing non-US-based articles. If we’re after one news source, I believe them to be more globalized. But I also agree with SilkTork that the notion of linking to one news source is … anti-Wikipedian ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer nothing over AP and Reuters, since while those are both quality outlets, they're not particularly likely to have extensive coverage on any given subject. I think using {{Newspaper of record}} instead of defaulting to NYT would be a step forward, but additional technical help is needed to get that over the finish line (see my first comment in this thread above). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

There's also TASS and Agence France-Presse, though more preferable would be just Google's news aggregator. Selecting any topic, and searching via TASS, AP, Reuters, AFP, or Google news, it is always Google News that brings up the full range of views. The news agencies report stories, the media then select those stories which they feel are notable, and write them up, and then we summarise what the world's media say about the news item. I think that approach fits our purpose better than taking news items direct from the agencies as though we were a media outlet, or selecting just one or two news media, such as NYT or BBC or RT or Al Jazeera. SilkTork (talk) 03:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

My first click is always to the NYT. I think the value of having a paper of record isn't so much comprehensivity as just pointing out an example of what we consider a reliable source. This is magnified if we do it for other countries. For instance, if I'm looking at a New Zealand topic that has a bunch of coverage in a bunch of places but I don't know which NZ newspapers are considered reliable, it'd be helpful to be pointed to the New Zealand Herald as a starting point. That said, I could see us deciding that actually it's not worth it and just having nothing there instead. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd rather have a range of media than just the newspaper of record. When building an article we are looking for a range of views - that would include the mainstream newspaper of record/establishment view, but also alternative views, including views from the main opposition to the government of the day. Any country's newspaper of record is going to mainly give the "official" view - that's why they are the newspaper of record. I would resist the notion that Wikipedia should be directing editors mainly to a narrow "official" view of an event. SilkTork (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

That might be true for something like The Straits Times, but we won't be linking to that as a newspaper of record because it's not RSP-greenlit (see the documentation). For developed democracies, I don't think that's an accurate view of what newspapers of record are—I mean, the NYT just published this major story the other day, which doesn't seem particularly "official" to me. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:26, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that pushing a single newspaper of record is great. For instance, with American topics, with more regional items, you're not going to want WaPo or NYT or anything like that - a regional newspaper of record like The Kansas City Star would be the better source for say a major midwestern topic. It doesn't seem very flexible to pick one or two newspapers of record and run with that for a whole region. It's part of editorial discretion to judge what the most suitable news outlets would be for a topic (when news outlets like that would be useful). Hog Farm _Talk 19:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm:, given that the template is all about supporting WP:Verifiability by aiding editors—especially, but not solely, new editors—to find sources for content, what is your view of how best to achieve that wrt this template? I'm not quite sure if you're proposing removing NYT and all newspapers of record, or something else. Putting it another way and using your example: would users be better served by having no newspaper links at all, than by having one there that would not be optimal for some midwest issues? Or am I missing your point? Mathglot (talk) 02:39, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: - I'm saying the one-size-fits-all approach of just listing NYT or just picking a one or two newspapers isn't great. Ideally, we could just link to Google News, but there's plenty of junk that shows up there and new editors aren't as likely to be able to sort through to find the good stuff. Just picking one or two newspapers to is just going to enhance systemic bias. Not sure what the best approach is, but the current one of just linking to a single, largely paywalled source, is unlikely to be helpful in most cases. If there was some sort of google-news-adjacent thing that did a better vetting job, then that would be ideal, but just giving a single source is going to end up pushing further systemic bias. Hog Farm _Talk 03:14, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I will fully admit to being biased on this, but I think the NYT link is fine and can stay. If it's replaced, it should be with a similarly high-quality source. The Google links already cover things like Google News searches for regional papers and the like; I think a few sample very high quality sources is fine. Alternatively, expand it: include the Washington Post, the BBC, whatever the equivalent is in Australia if any, and so on. SnowFire (talk) 00:41, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I would support removal personally. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

• The New York Times is not a suitable link target because it's metric-paywalled and USA-centric, even though it's a valuable resource to see what the USA mainstream view on a subject is. Reuters is an acceptable alternative but it's also becoming paywalled; its coverage is also a bit different, for instance there's more business news and less lifestyle/entertainment. The closest alternative would probably be theguardian.com, which is already used extensively and has the advantage of being non-profit, non-paywalled and a bit more global in scope. Nemo 17:58, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Link to JSTOR Wikipedia Library

Could the link to JSTOR be updated to the free one provided by the Wikipedia Library? [2] Access is limited to certain registered editors with a certain number of recent edits, but I think search still works? Schierbecker (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Possibly, but should be discussed. Last I looked, the non-free one, counter-intuitively, provides more results on search (by that I mean, results from a broader set of sources). There's a discussion somewhere about this which should be linked, if I can find it.

Secondly, how do you mean "free"? If I search for giardiasis at the "non-free" link without logging in, I get 2,875 results: here. So, if we replace that, the trade-off would be, I presume, providing better results from the Wikipedia Library version of it for confirmed users (t.b.d. if that's really true), in exchange for denying non-extended confirmed users any JStor results at all. Is this something we want to do? As a corollary, iirc, it's possible to detect a user who is not extended confirmed; if that's the case, we could serve one url to confirmed users, and a different one to the others, and then the disadvantages of the trade-off issue may disappear. Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Now that you mention it, there does appear to be significantly less book results on the Wikipedia Library version of JSTOR. If you find a link to the discussion about that, I'd be happy to have that.

I still would like to include a link to the Wikipedia JSTOR, especially if it can be done the way you suggest. It's an under-utilized asset. Schierbecker (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's better to link a place where JSTOR content is broadly available ("freely" is maybe too much to ask; often there will be copyright restrictions). A registration-only website obviously doesn't fit the bill. On https://scholar.archive.org/ there's most JSTOR content, so that's where I recommend to point the JSTOR link. A search for giardiasis finds 10k open access results, including [=subject%3A%22microfilm%22 thousands from microfilms] (a collection which has large overlap with JSTOR, I believe). Nemo 17:52, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Schierbecker and Nemo bis: Revisiting this from another angle, here's something which isn't quite what you asked for, but it might be something else that will help you get the resources you need at JSTOR (and elsewhere). It's always been possible to directly access the JSTOR link (or any other TWL partner) at the Wikipedia library, although not directly from the template in the way you mean; finding how to do it has always been a hassle for me, wading through Wiki Lib pages looking for it. I've been looking into creating a navbox that will provide direct access to every TWL partner individually for a given query, and you'd just place it where you could find it. This is still in development and is only about 30% done (it happens to include the JSTOR link you want), but you can get an idea how it would work by checking out the navbox below:

Every link in the top row (labeled "General") searches just the one Wikipedia Library partner listed, for the query "M8 Armored Gun System"; you can click the JSTOR link to launch the query at JSTOR. Note that this sandbox template is still in development, so only the 25 links in the "General" section are working so far. The idea is that you'd place this template on your talk page or sandbox, or maybe on the Talk page of the article itself, as a way of targeting not just JSTOR, but any one of the Wikipedia Library partners.

As far as using it on your Talk page, it has a "favorite queries" feature which you can preload with searches for articles you are working on; here's how that might look:

The fave queries do a full search of TWL, i.e., all partners together with consolidated results. I realize this wasn't the question you were asking, but are either of these something that could help you answer it, or might be worthwhile to you for other reasons? I'll probably finish developing the template, even if only for myself, but if I knew others were interested, it might make me more committed to do it. Mathglot (talk) 07:11, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Missing options

Please add the new links added to {{Find sources}} here as well. – Ilovemydoodle (talk) 05:07, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Edit request 22 November 2022

Description of suggested change:

Change this: Find sources: "example text" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

To this: Find sources: "example text" – Google (news · newspapers · books · scholar) · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Diff:

Change this: Find sources: "example text" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

To this: Find sources: "example text" – Google (news · newspapers · books · scholar) · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

−

ORIGINAL_TEXT

+

CHANGED_TEXT

Uni3993 (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 03:14, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Uni3993 is requesting that Template:Find sources mainspace be formatted the same way as Template:Find general sources so it's clear each link executes a different Google search. It makes sense to me. Only question is can we drop the quoted text in favor of "Google" or keep both? Otherwise, the edits to Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace are pretty straightforward. - Wikmoz (talk) 07:08, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikmoz I prefer my version but that version would work for me too, so who will make the change, I'm not allowed to do it. Uni3993 (talk) 00:01, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

So sorry, Wikmoz, I meant to mention Uni3993's previous TPER at Template talk:More citations needed. The TE asked that this be discussed here. So an edit request is not really warranted until more editors opine about the change. Thank you very much for your input! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 07:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Google links with parentheses in Find sources mainspace

Uni3993 has proposed that {{Find sources mainspace}} be formatted the same way as {{Find sources}} with respect to clearly identifying Google search links by wrapping them in parentheses.

I've applied these necessary edits in the module sandbox: Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace/sandbox. Three edits: 1. Added "Google" link; 2. Added separator = ' ( ' ; 3. Added afterDisplay = ' )' at end of link set.

The benefit here is that the link targets are no longer ambiguous. The slight downside is that the "Google" link goes to the same target as the quoted search term. However, we're not short on space here so I don't see that as too much of a problem at all.

CURRENT: {{Find sources mainspace}}

• Find sources: "Albert Einstein" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR

PROPOSED: {{Find sources mainspace/sandbox}} (actual edit applied in Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace/sandbox)

The edits are fairly surgical so not sure how much testing is necessary. Open to feedback @Paine Ellsworth, Mathglot, and Pppery:. - Wikmoz (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikmoz Looks good, maybe the quoted keyword that will be searched doesn't have to be linked to Google. That would be nice, so it would mean this keyword will be searched in Google and JSTOR and whatever service, not only Google. Uni3993 (talk) 20:26, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, looks good to me, too. I also think one doesn't need to link the keyword field (which could be many keywords). The "testing not necessary" makes me nervous; Template:Find sources mainspace/testcases doesn't exist, but Template:Find sources mainspace/sandbox does and already invokes the Module sandbox version; the testcases page could be easily cloned from the first two sections at Template:Find sources/testcases, and if those tests pass, that should be a good indication that it's good. Adding @Primefac and Sdkb: to ping list. Mathglot (talk) 21:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea of removing the link from the quoted text. However, I think we'd have to remove the introLink and code it into the blurb, or modify the introLink code to allow plain text. I remember there was some complicated logic around repeating the article title so I'm not sure how to do this or if it's worth the effort given the additional testing that would then be required. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2022 (UTC)