Fanlore's Journal

One of Fanlore's support team developed a "bookmarklet" tool that allows us to automatically create a citation for any website or other online document that is being cited on Fanlore. By using a standardized cite format, it will be easier to make bulk edits or corrections down the road. The cite tool also runs the URL through archive services like the WayBack Machine, and if the page is already in the Wayback Machine, it will include that backup link. This prevents "link rot" (when web pages disappear).

The bookmarklet runs on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Below are the instructions for Firefox

1. Right Click on your Bookmark Toolbar and select "New Bookmark" (What is a Toolbar?)

2. When the Bookmark box opens up, copy and paste this text into the Location Field.

javascript:window.location.href='https://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/cgi-bin/cite.py?url='%20+%20encodeURIComponent(document.URL);

note the ; at the end of the string

3. Give it a name in the Name box (ex: Cite Tool).

4 Click "Add". The bookmarklet should now appear on your Toolbar.

5. To test, navigate to fanlore.org. Click on the bookmarklet and you will see this automatically generated cite code

{{source| url = http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page | title = Fanlore | archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/5vOAfOZBZ | archivedate = 2010-12-31 }}

6. Copy and paste this into your Fanlore page. It will look like this: Fanlore, ^{Archived version}

Notes:

What if the page has not been archived by the WayBack Machine?
You will see an abbreviated cite code: {{source| url = http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page | title = Fanlore }}

What do all the sections mean?
{{source = the beginning of the cite

| url = http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page = The original page you want to cite

| title = Fanlore = the title of the page. This is where you can edit or add text. Many web pages have no "titles" so you may have to add some text such as

| title = Fanlore, a cool fandom wiki

| archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/5vOAfOZBZ = the archived page.  The cite tool checks two locations - the WayBack Machine and WebCite. If the page has not been archived, the archived link section will be blank. You can always create your own backup link by using WebCite or the WayBack Machine (use the "Save Now" box). These backup services will not work on password protected pages, pages that have age statements or (in the case of the WayBack Machine) pages excluded from crawling.

| archivedate = 2010-12-31 = the date the archived page was created.

 }} = the end of the cite code

Can I add text around the cite?
If you want to add more text before or around the cite code, place it outside the brackets {{   }}

Come look at {{source| url = http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page | title = Fanlore | archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/5vOAfOZBZ | archivedate = 2010-12-31 }} a fandom wiki.

Come look at Fanlore, ^{Archived version} a fandom wiki.

EDITED: The WayBack Machine also has a bookmarklet you can use to create a backup link: http://searchengineland.com/save-urls-wayback-machine-demand-191150

I lost the URL, so I am reposting it here so I can (hopefully) find it again.  This is a draft/beta form to help new users create their own User page on Fanlore so they can start editing. It is basically "fill in the box", click "create code" and then copy and paste the code to your new user page.  You can find it here:  http://tinyURL.com/fanlore-profile 

A big thank you to kylara   for putting the form together. I've handed it out a few times and have received good feedback from new users.

I have a hard time typing and wiki coding makes typing even harder. However, I have been using a wiki plugin that will automatically convert rich text into wiki code. It is a plugin that can be installed on wikis (although Fanlore currently does not use it).

I access the plugin on the main Wiki site, do my editing in their sandbox and then copy and paste the converted text into Fanlore.

Process
1. Make an account on the main Wiki site. http://en.wikipedia.org/ and log in
2. Go to My Preferences and scroll down to Editing and select "wikEd, a full-featured integrated text editor for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome."
3. Then go to the Wiki Sandbox (it can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit )

You should see 2 rows of editing tools at the top of the sandbox - far more than the ones you see when you edit a Fanlore Page. If you do not see the 2 rows, you are not logged in.

4. Paste your text into the sandbox, Select All and click on the [W] button. It will turn your text into wiki code with (most) of the formatting. You may need to do some tweaking.
5. Copy and paste the converted wiki code into the Fanlore page and preview and then save.
6. Clear the Wiki Sandbox for the next person.

The expanded toolbox also offers handy shortcuts like creating lists with asterisks or numbers etc, doing a global search and replace, sort alphabetically.

I'll see if I can upload a screencap.
Screencap (click for larger version)


August 19, 2012 edit: as a reminder, there is a Greasemonkey script that can be installed and be made to work in Fanlore (see comments below).  I am not familiar with  how the Greasemonkey script works - if you're having problems  getting it to work on Fanlore contact one of the people discussing the script in the thread below.  I am still using the editor on the the Main Wiki which has installed WikiEd as an Preference option (see the instructions above which say to create a Main Wiki account in order to access the editor). The Preference feature has to be made available by each wiki and it not  tied to you adding the Greasemonkey script to your browser. As of today, the Preference option has not been installed on Fanlore. Also, the Main Wiki now allows you to have your own Sandbox (another option under 'Preferences") which makes it easier for you to have a tab open and work on converting test to wiki code and paste it into Fanlore.

http://waybackmachine.org/

"The classic Wayback Machine will remain in concurrent operation for a period, for comparing functionality, but may not receive any further index updates. (It received its last major update in 2008, with only small piecemeal updates since.) So, please use the new site for accessing material from recent years."

More here.

Since the new link is still in beta testing, I plan to use them side by side since the new website goes offline for updates from time to time.

A lot of time, we link to a website or an ongoing discussion rather than copying and pasting info over onto to Fanlore.  But once a website or a link is dead, that data is lost and your Fanlore entry may lack context or key info.

Your best shot is to head over to the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) and see if the website has been archived. But since the Wayback Machine crawls and archives randomly, you won't know if your citation can be resurrected until it is too late.

Enter: WebCite. A service designed for scholars to create a static snapshot of a website so that you can cite  it (and the page contents) for longer periods.  It is user driven - you have to submit the website link before the website goes down (when you're creating your Fanlore entry). It comes with a few caveats: it won't create a snapshot of pages that have the 'no robots' code. It won't grab locked content and if you're grabbing a page from an adult Livejournal community, all you may see is the 'Adults only' warning.  And it is intended to be used in addition to the direct link to the website, not in place.

I've tested WebCite on the Professionals Fandom Timeline which pulls the bulk of its content from a few key LJ threads. We have already laboriously copied the data over to Fanlore (with permission), but it seemed like a good test candidate.

I also used WebCite to create links to a Stargate Award website that is not currently in the WayBack Machine.

If you have used this service before, or know anything more about it, please drop a note. I think it will be particularly useful for blogs and forum  posts which are prone to vanish quickly. It comes with an easy to use Bookmarklet that will allow you to cite a webpage with one click.

edited: I had a brief discussion with someone about WebCite in which they expressed discomfort with the use of this tool (and about whether aspects of the Fanlore project in general could be seen as a breach of fannish community mores/trust).   So I'll toss out this narrower question: How does using Webcite differ from our using the WayBack Machine/Internet Archive or Google as our citation sources? Both Webcite and the Wayback Machine are using the same caching process and both store the website snapshot on their servers.  What I like about WebCite is that it is much more limited - it cites only the one page and does not scrape and archive the entire website (like the WayBack Machine). This offers us a better level of control over what we're citing to, makes certain we give proper credit to the source of info and grabs the smallest portion of material. In other words, it seems (to me) to be a better form of 'fair use'. 

Thoughts? Input? Other ways of looking at the 'what to link, what to quote, what to cite' question? Is any use of any tool that caches a website (ex. Google, WayBack Machine, LJ Seek etc) something to avoid? I realize there may not be a single or uniform opinion, but like Fanlore, I think that plural POVs are good.

edited  to add:   I have to keep in mind that Fandom - and Fanlore - is not operating in isolation. Scholars, other Wikis, libraries, and historians are running into the same questions and looking at and evaluating the same tools.  In fact Wired had a recent article about the US and UK digital archives and their reliance on the Oakland Archive Policy of 2001.   More here.

And...a recent Library Science article discussing yet another 'caching' service: Memento Web

And...: links to legal articles on digital preservation and caching  below.

Fanlore  is based on the MediaWiki syntax?  dialect?   Anyhow,lists of tools that will covert spreadsheets, word, and websites to wiki formatting. Here