WikiTree Sourcer: Citation Assistant

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WikiTree Sourcer Citation Assistant

When WikiTree Sourcer supports creating citations for a particular site then there is an option on the Sourcer popup to build a citation. But for sites that are not supported Sourcer provides some assistance for the user to construct a citation using the formatting options currently set in Sourcer. This tool is called "Citation Assistant".

For an unsupported site you will see a menu item called "Show Citation Assistant" on the Sourcer popup. When you click this it will open a new tab showing the Citation Assistant or, if it is already open in another tab or window, it will bring that to the front.

The Citation Assistant is a form that the user fills out the create the citation. For unsupported sites the Sourcer extension doesn't have permission to extract anything from the page - not even the URL of the page. So the user must enter the information by hand - either by typing it in or copy/pasting it from the page being cited. If you have two screens it can be useful to move the Citation Assistant tab/window to the other screen so it is easy to see both the page being cited and the Citation Assistant.

Citation Assistant

Options

There are some options that affect the Citation Assistant. These are under Citation -> Citation Assistant in the Sourcer Options. Initially all these options are on so that maximum help/hints are shown. As the user gets used to using it these options can be turned off to simplify the UI.

Citation Assistant Options

Also the Options under Citation -> General will affect the layout of the citation produced by the Citation Assistant.

Live Preview

As you fill out the form fields the preview text will show the generated citation.

If you want to simplify the form you can turn off the preview box in the options.

If you change the Sourcer options under Citation -> General it will automatically update the live preview. So it can be a learning experience to have the options page and the citation assistant open in windows side by side and see how the generated citation changes as you change the options.