Tools, part 3: Style tools and wikEd
This article is a continuation of Tools, part 1 and Tools, part 2, a series meant to introduce readers to useful tools for article editing. This time, we will be treating tools that relate to checking compliance with the Manual of Style, with a special mention of wikEd.
Many tools consist of user scripts, JavaScript code running in your browser, that can be imported by adding importScript("User:Example/awesome script.js") to your skin.js page. Compatibility varies with skin and browser, with Internet Explorer being the most problematic. A more extensive script list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts.
Various other tools are hosted on the Wikimedia Toolserver (currently provided by the German Wikimedia chapter) and can be accessed via a web interface. Some are also hosted on non-Wikimedia websites.
Dash tool
The Dash tool converts dashes, hyphens, and minus signs to their proper format per the Manual of Style. Particularly useful for year and page ranges, which are often input wrongly, with hyphens. En dashes are much easier to recognise in these contexts and are recommended by most authorities as well as Wikipedia's style guide. The script has been demonstrated to have an extremely low false-positive rate.
- Author : GregU
- Placement : Adds an en dash ("–") next to the history tab.
- Demo : Paste
javascript:importScript("User:GregU/dashes.js");autoEdExecute()into your browser's address bar while editing the article of interest. - Installation : Add
{{subst:js|User:GregU/dashes.js}}to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page.
Peer reviewer
Peer reviewer checks pages against some Manual of Style rules and generates a report on that. It was used as a user script to post reviews at Wikipedia:Peer review for four years before it was set up as a tool on the Toolserver. Installed as a script, it also provides some (outdated) automatic formatting options. Despite being unmaintained and looking for a new maintainer, it is still useful for checking for general issues in an article.
- Author : AndyZ
- Placement : Configurable, defaults next to log out on edit pages
- Demo : Paste
javascript:importScript('User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js');output_PR = 'wpTextbox1';JSpeerreview_simple();into your browser's address bar while editing the article of interest. - Installation : Add
{{subst:js|User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js}}to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page or run online at tools:~dispenser/view/Peer reviewer
Altviewer
Alternative (alt) text is an appropriate text substitute for an image, such as in an audio rendering of a Wikipedia article used by blind or dyslexic users. It also has secondary uses for low-bandwidth web browser and search engine bots. Once a requirement for featured content, it has since been downgraded over confusion of what constitutes a good description.
Altviewer provide a method for examining and comparing an image's alt attribute without turning off images or install Fangs extension for Firefox.
- Author: Dispenser
WikiSort
WikiSort adds a "Sort words" link on the sidebar. Pressing this opens a separate window that displays all words longer than six letters; this is useful for spell-checking articles.
- Author : Michael Devore
- Placement : Adds a "Sort words" link to the Wikipedia side bar.
- Demo : Paste
javascript:importScript("User:Michael Devore/wiksort.js");wiksLoad();into your browser's address bar while viewing the article of interest. - Installation : Add
{{subst:js|User:Michael Devore/wiksort.js}}to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page
wikEd
wikEd enhances the edit box with syntax highlighting with code check, on-page Show preview and Show changes, improved diff view, converting rich-text to wikicode, and nearly a dozen fix up buttons. Some features found their way into the usability team's editor; such as find and replace and reference and template folding.
wikEd boasts several translations, an API/customizations which are used by other scripts, and it is the second most popular gadget on the English Wikipedia. It works in most web browsers with the exception of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
- Author : Cacycle
- Placement : Replaces the edit box and adds new editing toolbars, see wikEd Help.
- Demo : Try it in the Wikipedia:Sandbox
- Installation: There are several ways to install the script. The easiest is to enable it under "Gadgets" in Special:Preferences.
Discuss this story
I have to commend Cacycle - he's been very helpful to those of us working to get wikEd to work on other wiki projects. He even helped us to set it up by default on a single page on Appropedia, so we can use it in converting content in HTML format into MediaWiki format. Extremely useful when there's a lot of open licensed content to convert to MediaWiki format.
Thanks for the review - I hadn't heard of some of those tools. --Chriswaterguy talk 16:55, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My peer reviewer button disappeared when I added the UTC clock to my setting.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
CanadaSignpost! East of Borschov 06:21, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]AFAIK, Peer reviewer is broken and you need to use the toolserv version to get it to work (AndyZ, the author, sadly went inactive two years ago). Mind you, the last time I tried installing it was few months ago, around July - but if it was fixed, there is no indication of that on the talk page. I'd love for this Signpost article to give this useful script enough visibility so that somebody will fix it... but for that, we should make it clear that this is a BROKEN tool. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:05, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]