Wikipedia: Import bibliography from articles

[michaelmcmillan]

Considering the amount of references to Wikipedia LittList gets, it would be extremely useful if the system could suggest proper references from the article. Wild idea: Bring up the article and let the user mark what paragraphs he/she has used to determine what footnote to use.

[michaelmcmillan]

Commit a467168 implements a skeleton for this functionality.

[michaelmcmillan]

Wikipedia now works for URLs. ISBN remains.

[michaelmcmillan]

As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible. For many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source;[1] indeed, some professors and teachers may reject Wikipedia-sourced material completely.[2] This is especially true when it is used without corroboration. However, much of the content on Wikipedia is itself referenced, so an alternative is to cite the reliable source rather than the article itself.

We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.

However, we are also confident that Wikipedia provides good overviews of most topics that it covers. See Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia, Caution on academic use of Wikipedia and our General Disclaimer page, for more information.