How about a literature database that makes it easy to include references in posts?
A few thoughts on such a literature plugin:
- I guess there is no point in creating a database in discourse from scratch, given existing solutions such as zotero, mendeley, endnote and (hopefully soon) Citavi Web.
- To start with, I think the focus should be on supporting zotero, since it’s free and open source (and perhaps there will never be a need to support anything else).
- My idea would be that the plugin acts as an interface between a dedicated zotero database and the discourse forum.
- Starting with an empty db, a user who wants to add a reference (via a button in the editor) gets the option to add a new reference (not sure if this should be done with a dedicated discourse ui or simply using the existing zotero ui, but the user should not have to leave discourse to do it)
- Once there are records in the db, users can search them and paste them into their post while editing.
- The citation style should probably be fixed via a site setting (cite setting
) - There should be a dedicated bibliography page where all db records are listed in alphabetical order with to all the posts where the respective item is cited.
Now, the last point is where it becomes tricky: Since this type of linking is analogous to how discourse already works, the best way to achieve this might be to create a post for every reference, but I’m not sure about this, since there should only be one record for each item and that should be in zotero, I suppose.
But it would also be conceivable that the zotero database is used merely as a way of quickly insert text which would then live a life of its own, without any links, but that would defeat the purpose of making it easy to find all posts citing a specific text.
Any comments or ideas?