Topic on Project:Village Pump

When connected on → https://test2.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English?action=edit for example, tab Cite (fr:'sourcer') is present when editing the test page with VE. IT calls the Citoid menu.

On the other side on Mediawiki menu 'Cite V' is not present for example in → https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Help:VisualEditor/User_guide/Citation_templates&action=edit

BUT the VE Help on MediaWiki describes the existence of this Cite menu (Cite with V) on page → https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:VisualEditor/User_guide/Citation_templates#Re-using_an_existing_footnote

Inever see this menu; either Citoid is present and it corresponds to the 'button' case, or Citoid is not present and there is no menu 'Cite V' to describe!

I think this is to be clarified and section 'Cite V' must be deleted reinforcing informations on button 'Cite'. Advice @Matma Rex @Whatamidoing (WMF)? Thanks.

Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 20:08, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

The mysterious dropdown is still sometimes used! For example, I was able to find it here: https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&veaction=edit

I see that another part of the guide, Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Editing references, describes both systems (although it probably should describe the Citoid one with the button primarily, and only mention the other ones).

Here on MediaWiki.org, the items that would normally appear in the  "Cite" dropdown are instead moved to the "Insert" dropdown, since citations are rarely used. This doesn't seem to be described anywhere in the guide.

For better or worse, all three of these are currently supported…

To summarize:

Location of citation features

	"Cite" button	"Cite" dropdown	"Insert" dropdown
Used when	Citoid is installed and configured: Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki	Citoid is not installed or not configured	Citoid is not installed or not configured, and configuration setting $wgCiteVisualEditorOtherGroup is true
Example	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&veaction=edit	https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&veaction=edit	https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&veaction=edit
Looks like			(Looks like there aren't any screenshots of this on Commons)
Looks like (expanded)		(depending on whether any citation templates are configured)

Thans for all these precisions.

This confirms I dont find it on MediaWiki. But

Question : is it logic to describe here on Mediawiki a function available on en.wikibooks ? ...

On the other side Mediawiki as we see, holds the Help pages of VisualEditor to be as detailed as rich as possible. These pages are then translated to other languages. Once translated in FR, I was surprised to see that the FR pages already exists on https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide:%C3%89diteurVisuel which then duplicates the work of Help:VisualEditor/User guide/fr on Mediawiki.

Question : No good to duplicate : what is then the reference page ? (on which host the functionalities/extensions must be documented ? I have seen no official declaration.

Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 19:35, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

MediaWiki's Help: pages are meant to cover (almost) everything for (almost) everyone. It's "help for the whole world", not "help for this single wiki". There are even help pages here for software that isn't available on any WMF-hosted wiki. These pages get copied and adapted to wikis all over the world.

One of my struggles with Help:VisualEditor/User guide is that there are at least three different configuration options. How do you show the information this reader needs, when you don't know which system the reader is trying to figure out? It began to feel like a "choose your own adventure" book (livre-jeu). I never found a good solution.