Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 5

Very confusing and unorganized page

This page needs a lot more clarity, and needs to be simplified. It is very hard to see what's going on. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Danianjan (talk • contribs) 01:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Overview of major changes this month

Disclaimer: I have very little technical knowledge of Cite.php, so I don't know the relative ease or difficulty in making these changes. I am, however, interested in improving and using the footnote and citation systems in Wikipedia. --J. J. 10:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Purpose

User:NikoSilver initiated a "<ref> function" poll here from June 7th–14th. For those new to the discussion, hopefully this section will help clarify and summarize the issues voted on and where we go from here. While the majority of voters support all of the proposals (33 to 5), I've found the extensive discussion to be a more relevant guage for each of the issues; this is why I've opted to summarize the discussion instead of the list of proposals as a whole.

Cite.php has become a huge project, so it's been necessary to illuminate, aggregate, and create a lot of bugs this month. For the sake of simplification (and my own sanity), I've had to leave some of the minor issues and bugs out of this summary. This is, after all, only a guideline, not a policy.

As a next step, I think it would be good to create a detailed, ongoing, scratch sheet /List of outstanding ref bugs and issues. This would help to centralize issues (big and small) scattered throughout these talk archives; it could also aggregate "forgotten" problems mentioned in Wikipedia:Footnotes#Disadvantages and future improvements and Meta:Cite/Cite.php#Issues (and its talk page). To get started on this list, take a look at this MediaZilla query: "MediaWiki extensions" > "Cite" with defaults for other options.[1]

Procedure

The summary is ordered basically the same as the top to bottom discussion on this talk page, as well as the designated comments from this main article and Meta Cite.php pages. For those active in the poll, please go ahead and fix any obvious mistakes I may have made or use the "General responses" section at the end for more subjective opinions; I've marked my misunderstandings in italics. Also, instead of another messy round of debate below each DISAGREE/DISCUSSION point, I think extensive discussion should be centered around the linked bugs for most of the issues mentioned (6B below may be an exception, in which case it would probably be worth aggregating related debates on a /Same ref repetition issues subpage; e.g. Operation Auca discussion). Hopefully this will take us one step closer to integrating this summary into the main Footnotes article (and related Meta/Citations articles) depending on bug states.

Terminology

Basically, footnotes are a numbered list of supporting comments and/or citations added to the bottom of an article and referenced with a number in the main text (this is both a CMS and MLA practice, although the latter emphasizes Harvard references; can someone verify this for me? --J. J.). On paper, these would actually be called endnotes; this is why the footnotes section is often generically labeled ==Notes==. There are various opinions on whether or not citations/references should be mixed with footnotes/comments in the same section. While still functional in old articles, the use of templates for footnotes (Wikipedia:Footnote3) has deprecated. Templates are still actively used, however, with Harvard references (shows short text in article instead of just a numbered footnote style; see the Harvard link above).

List of issues mentioned

1. Wikipedia:Footnotes#Disadvantages and future improvements is similar to the proposals and comments in this poll, but it needs to be updated. See particularly the mentioned bugzilla:5810 (still open): <clearrefs/> possibility when wanting more than one Notes section. Bug 6271, mentioned below, is a "grouping" work around to this problem.
2. Meta:Cite/Cite.php#Issues also mentions several open bugs that haven't been mentioned here. These are just a few: bugzilla:2257 template numbering; bugzilla:4529 ref can't take template arguments; bugzilla:5567 should have id and name (for legacy); Meta:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Suggestion:_sub-reference_attribute_for_ref_tags is related to bug 5885 below; FYI, Ævar's (the Cite creator) contributions are sparse.
3. REJECTED 1 (but bug still open): Mix in one list, but differentiate footnotes and Harvard references e.g. <ref harv="(Smith 2003)">Smith, John (2003). ''Some Book Title'' Press: Nowhere.</ref>. While rejected in the poll, the related bugzilla:6272 is still open. (Correct me if I've misinterpreted this one. --J. J.)
4. REJECTED 2: Have choice to use, exclusively, either footnotes style or Harvard style in one article.
5. Discussion 1 (DISAGREE, but bug still open): Separate <ref> and e.g. <note> sections. DISAGREE, although it is AGREED to support bugzilla:6271 which proposes designating two or more <referencesF /> "groups". (I'm not clear if this proposal has agreed to support the bug for footnotes only, or if the intent is to separate footnotes (referencesF) and full bibliographic references (referencesB). Shouldn't there be a separate bug for the top-to-bottom reference grouping ,e.g. Comparison of operating systems? --J. J.)
6. Discussion 2 (RESOLVED bug, but comments): Ability to turn off superscripted footnotes at will (using e.g. parenthesis or brackets around the numbers in normal text instead). (While resolved, I think bugzilla:6310 needs to explain how this is done with CSS or editing the Cite.php file. --J. J.)
7. Discussion 3 (RESOLVED bug): Ability to include comment code within a reference, e.g. <ref>This is shown, <!--This is not--> this is shown, too.</ref>. Bugzilla:5384 resolved (as evidenced by my successful test).
8. Discussion 4 (DISAGREE, but but still open): (A) Ability for hard returns in the edit box to affect final results within <ref> tags (instead of having to use <br>). (B) To allow easier reading within the edit box, have the parser ignore the [enter]s before and after the ref tags (see the commenting technique and spacing technique for details and a couple of satisfying workarounds). DISAGREE for both; they would require major changes to MediaWiki edit box code, although note the workarounds for 4B. Even though this group disagrees, bugzilla:6311 is still open.
9. Discussion 5 (AGREE, bug still open): Ability to use refs in templates. See bugzilla:6312 for details.
10. Discussion 6 (AGREE, bugs still open because of code complexity): (A) Ability to move text within selective refs to a central location, similar to the old Footnote3 mentality (see #Do_want). Bugzilla:5997 includes 6A, as well as (B) Fixing non-1st ref content (archived discussion); Bugzilla:5885 is specific to 6B; by consensus, this is one of the most important unresolved issues. Meta:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Suggestion: sub-reference attribute for ref tags is a similar, alternative bug (although I don't think there is a MediaZilla bug for it yet).

General responses

Wonderful job! Only one important comment regarding the poll: All points have been agreed by 33vs5 users. The poll is in #Poll, and not in discussion. Those "disagree" comments were posted by users after the initiation of the poll. I apologize for rushing the poll and not giving the chance to these users to express their disagreement, but I guess the end result justifies my impatience. JJ, could you please amend your own text accordingly? Also, a suggestion: care to make ===Resolved=== and ===Rejected=== sections to get rid of those from the other ===Non-Resolved=== issues?:NikoSilver: 21:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Oooh. Well, silly me. Guess I need to polish up on my WP poll-reading skills; kind of sad that I managed to miss the point after reading through everything so thoroughly. However, Wikipedia:Straw polls reads, "Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting." I'll see what I can do to revise; we should be getting paid for this, Niko ;-) --J. J. 04:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I've decided to keep the summary mainly the way it is with a couple of exceptions. I've added a justification to the end of the first paragraph of Purpose. I've also added <del> strikeouts to the resolved issues (only two of them). Even though they've been voted on, several of the "resolved" and "rejected" ideas still have active bugs and/or are still being discussed. Leaving the list the way it is makes it easy to refer to the issues by number, too. --J. J. 13:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Inline references suck!

Holy f**king cow! What happened? Guys, I don't know how you managed to get consensus on this issue, but inline references utterly suck! They make it extremely difficult to author articles, they make it hard to maintain articles, they make it difficult to reference the same work more than once! This has got to be the most horrid style possible for managing references, and I am utterly disappointed to come to this page, to discover that its somehow been promoted as official policy! WTF! Who did this S**t? I'm sorry, but there is so much B.S. on W.P. already, that I certainly don't want the B.S. percolating upwards into the reaches of WP policy! Sorry for the foul language and exclamation marks, but really, this one takes the cake! Get a grip, folks, revert, and ban the inline-refrence style! Arghh! linas 15:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, inline references are a bitch. They make paragraphs look like they're double spaced, and make editors go "huh, wheres the text I wanted to edit" cause theres so much garbage inline. Fresheneesz 20:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Err, what? Could you please be more specific what you mean by "style"? If it's inline citation in general, your complaints are likely to be as effective as beating your head against a brick wall; if it's footnotes in particular, you might note the disclaimer at the top of the page: "N.B. This format is not mandatory; editors are free to use a different method. See How and where to cite sources." Kirill Lokshin 15:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Kirill, I think it is clear that Linas is referring to Cite.php and the <ref>Really long list of authors, probably five or six or something (XXXX) This is a really long reference to a paper that was published in the conference proceedings of the 6th international conference of the association of foo bar, XXXX, pp. 1024-1030</ref> - FrancisTyers · 16:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it would be even worse to cite something like that Harvard-style (since you'd not only have the really long list of authors in the markup, but in the final article text as well), so I'm not sure what he's proposing as an alternative. Kirill Lokshin 16:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not proposing harvard style, although what you describe wouldn't be a problem, e.g. (Firstguy et al. XXXX) and then in the references section you can give the full list. My complaint is solely that it is currently impossible with Cite.php to put full text references outside the body of the article, e.g. in a References or Notes section, like with Footnotes3. - FrancisTyers · 16:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that depends on what you mean by "full text". You're correct insofar as there's no intuitive way to reduce the in-text references to single tags (e.g. <ref name="foo-123"/>) in all cases (although I do recall that someone had found a clever, if complicated, way of doing so); but neither is there anything preventing the use of short-form citations in footnotes (e.g. <ref>Smith et al., 123.</ref>) with the bulk of the reference information contained in a separate "References" section. Kirill Lokshin 17:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Nothing prevents you if you discount the almost unbearable ugliness of the resulting layout (a pseudo-footnote to point to a Harvard reference that is not directly linked to the citation itself... yuck! It's hard to imagine anything uglier).

Btw. For an example of a way to group references and used named tags, see User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing. It's not perfect, until the MediaWiki developers act on a patch I've provided. But it's pretty good for some situations. It will be better when we can do the same thing, but with references at bottom. LotLE×talk 17:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Considering that the format I suggested is the one recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style for footnotes, I suspect the ugliness may be a matter of opinion ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you have evidence of that? I don't have a Chicago Manual, but I certainly can't recall it ever recommending such a dreadful thing. I agree about the form of the short citation, which is just Harvard referencing. But putting a Harvard ref in a (pseudo-footnote)?! LotLE×talk 17:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sure. From the fifteenth edition: "The short form, as distinct from an abbreviation, should include enough information to remind readers of the full title or to lead them to the appropriate entry in the bibliography..." (16.41), "The most common short form consists of the last name of the author and the main title of the work cited, usually shortened if more than four words..." (16.42), and "First note citation in a work with full bibliography: 1. Doniger, Splitting the Difference, 23." (16.3, emphasis theirs). The fourteent edition, if I recall correctly, suggested omitting the title and only using the author name and page number.

(A possible source of confusion: I intended the number above to be a page reference, not a publication year. Sorry if that wasn't very clear.) Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that part of the issue, incidentally, is the proliferation of templates like {{cite book}}. I can see where heavy use of them would cause the resulting layout to appear utterly absurd. For those of us who just write up the references by hand, however, it looks much simpler, as there's no need to point from templates to other templates. Kirill Lokshin 17:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand the question. The very first example on this page, Wikipedia:Footnotes, is an example of an inline reference. I am trying to say that not only are inline references bad, but they are so bad that they should be banned from WP. There could not possibly be a poorer design for adding references to a text. Thus, I was utterly aghast to find that somehow this style had become "recommended". I used swear-words, because this idea is so mind-bogglingly bad that I was left speech-less, jaw-agape, unable to find any other words that captured my feelings. linas 16:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find much support for your view, frankly. Despite the occasional flaws in implementation, the inline reference system has finally allowed us to begin working on properly sourcing all of the various things in Wikipedia without depending on fragile and difficult-to-use template schemes. Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support your view Linas, unfortunately I think your stand-off-ish approach will cause more problems than it will solve :) Try and enunciate your complaints in slightly more reserved language ;) - FrancisTyers · 16:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The stand-off seems unavoidable. Clearly, 30 people voted for this thing, and five against. To reply to Kirill, template schemes are neither fragile, nor are they difficult to use. For example, in Principle of least action, we had

...is often given to [[Pierre Louis Maupertuis]], who wrote about it in 1744{{ref|Mau44}} and 1746{{ref|Mau46}}. However, scholarship indicates that ...

I find the above to be eminently readable and editable. The markup is robust against error; there's nothing fragile about it. Its certainly not difficult to insert a reference. Then some anonymous editor did a drive-by conversion of the above, and turned it into:

...is often given to [[Pierre Louis Maupertuis]], who wrote about it in 1744<ref name="mau44">P.L.N. de Maupertuis, ''Accord de différentes lois de la nature qui avaient jusqu'ici paru incompatibles.'' (1744) Mém. As. Sc. Paris p. 417.</ref> and 1746<ref name="mau46">P.L.N. de Maupertuis, ''Le lois de mouvement et du repos, déduites d'un principe de métaphysique.'' (1746) Mém. Ac. Berlin, p. 267.</ref>. However, scholarship indicates that ...

I can't begin to imagine why Kirill thinks that the later is less fragile, or is easier to use, than the former. Its just begging for typesetting errors, grammatical errors, poor flow. Its just plain eye-throbbingly difficult to read. Whenever one has something difficult to read, it will lead to errors and mistakes. Reference markup should be easy, clear, simple to use and convenient for the author. It should not be some machine-like monstrosity invented by some computer programmer who doesn't actually author articles, and has no sense of usability or ease-of-use issues. linas 17:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

You're discounting the other portion of the citations here, of course. For your examples, they would be:

{{note|Mau44}} P.L.N. de Maupertuis, ''Accord de différentes lois de la nature qui avaient jusqu'ici paru incompatibles.'' (1744) Mém. As. Sc. Paris p. 417. {{note|Mau46}} P.L.N. de Maupertuis, ''Le lois de mouvement et du repos, déduites d'un principe de métaphysique.'' (1746) Mém. Ac. Berlin, p. 267.

versus:

<references/>

The fragility in the first scheme is evident if the order of the two cited sentences is switched. Since the {{ref}} and {{note}} templates will no longer have the same ordering, the resulting footnote numbers will lead the reader to the incorrect citation. This, in my view, is far worse than any amount of inconvenience to the editors. Kirill Lokshin 17:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not discounting the other portion. There is a major advantage to having all of the references in one place. For one, it allows for an eventual conversion to bibtex, which is the defacto standard used elsewhere on the net (see for example, CiteSeer, ACM, CiteBase, Google Scholar.) I believe the bibtex standard is what WP should be using, instead of trying to reinvent something, badly. In particular, proper bibtex citation in WP would allow these other major citation engines to actually find and reference WP articles.

I don't understand the complaint about numbering: this sounds like a bug in the code. The answer is to fix the bug in the code, instead of forcing the user to go through some cumbersome contortions to work around it.

The separation between content and presentation has been the underlying principle of computer authorship for 40 years. Its the principle behind HTML, and SGML, and BookMaster another decade before that, and is carried forward by newer concepts, like Cascading Style Sheets. The inline-reference style is a big step backwards in technology. linas 18:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

BiBTeX ftw! - FrancisTyers · 18:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not a feature of the code, fundamentally, because the various {{note}} templates aren't linked in any way. We can either number the footnotes according to the order they appear in the article body, or according to the order they're listed in the "Notes" section; but we cannot do both. Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I created my own little sandbox on my user page (see new section below) to play with these two methods of notation (citation/referencing/sourcing/whatever). Feel free to read it and add some more examples. I may be missing some key advantages or disadvantages to either one of them that don't show up in my meager little experiment. From what I could tell, I couldn't find any solid advantage to the bookcite method: except for its optional strutcured bibliographic record implemntation. Though many find that too cumbersome, it can be easily mixed with the unstructured freeflow bibliographic record. The hybrid proposal metnioned above allows the use of the structured bibliographic record within the Cite.php solution. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cplot (talk • contribs) 16:42, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

I heartily agree. The content of the references should be in the References section, where it is rendered. — Omegatron 00:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I would reservedly agree with this if we had a system that a) preserved numbering order if things get shuffled around and b) made it clear there was an error ( works) if the reference got divorced from its referent. In the template system, there is neither, and so screw-ups routinely happen and aren't spotted for ages, which makes them a nightmare to fix. More than once I've had to spend a half-hour or more digging through page history to figure out where a {{ref}} was supposed to point to. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I just don't understand the "numbering problem". If the programmers can make <ref> have correct numbering, then why in the world would they be unable to make {{ref}} have the correct numbering? Why not just go back and fix {{ref}} to number correctly? For Pete's sake, the only difference is the shape of the brackets !! linas 13:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Let's try this explanation again, shall we:

• <ref> numbers footnote references in the article correctly. The footnotes at the bottom are automatically listed in the corresponding order when <references/> is added.
• {{ref}} numbers footnote references in the article correctly. The footnotes at the bottom are manually listed by adding {{note}} templates. There is no automatic ordering involved in this step; the footnotes at the bottom are numbered exactly as the {{note}} templates are ordered. If the {{note}} templates are in a different order than the actual footnotes in the article, the numbers won't match up.

This really isn't difficult. Kirill Lokshin 15:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem is this: no developer currently wants to implement any of these requests. They won't get done until one of the handful of active committers wants to implement them. Simple as that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Look at the bigger picture

Cplot and linas, I've done my best to look through your contributions and respond the the referencing comments and questions you've made in the past week. While I appreciate your fervor and several good ideas, please take the time to read through the recent poll and summary on this talk page. A lot of the issues you mention have been debated for many months on this and similar-topic talk pages. This is why I recommended creating a /List of outstanding ref bugs and issues; no one's commented on that suggestion yet, though.

On a more positive note, I think you've pinpointed two crucial issues to the whole Cite.php system. Cplot summarizes them nicely: "Both methods try to separate presentation from content. But they also both confuse citations, notes and sources."

1. "Part of what I hope to introduce with this proposal is more separation between content and presentation. By treating nested notations semantically as simply notations regardless of how they're presented (parenthetical, footnote, endnote, cursor hover [sic], etc), we can leave the presentation details to the moment of presentation. The reader can determine through preferences or changing environment settings (e.g., buttons on the top of the page) how much detail is displayed and where it is displayed."[2]
2. Also at the heart of the issue is clarifying definitions of and procedures for notes, citations, sources, and references; I would even add Wikipedia:Embedded Citations to the list! --J. J. 14:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment RockOfVicotry. So much of the discussion here and elsewhere seems to be driven by some seemingly minor shortcomings in the Wikimedia software. I haven't looked at what bugs and features have been highly prioritized by the software developers, but from my experience here, sorting out these note, citation, reference and source issues seems the most glaring of all (perhaps I just don't use wikimedia in ways that demonstrate the other bugs). BTW when I mention "cursor hover" I meant what some I think call a tooltip (another way of presenting a note; hover over tooltip to see what I mean).

In terms of the big picture, let me just explain my understanding of the separation between semantic content and presentation (visual and otherwise) as I've come to understand it (coming from my reading of W3 goals and initiatives). So much of the debates here are fueled (as far as I can tell) by presentation concerns. Another way to think about it is in terms of how the reader experiences an article. I may prefer seeing citations parenthetically placed within the main body of the text. Another reader may prefer to have those same citations separated into footnotes (or some other arrangement). Yet another reader, may have no interest at all in verifying the sources and would just as soon not see any citation whatsoever (but may want to see minor qualifiers like this one parenthetically placed in the text). Ideally, with properly designed server and client (i.e., browsers) software. All of those presentation preferences can be handled late in the process: separate from the task of composing and editing that begins the process. So something like the <ref> element could evolve to handle all sorts of these notes. For example, by adding an attribute to it <ref subtext="1"> or <ref subtext="2">, the markup indicates the semantic intent of the editor (how important and integral is this note to understanding the text). I understand all notes to be subordinate to the text. A subtext attribute would permit the author/editor to indicate how subordinate. The other suggestion in my proposal is to add an attribute called source that could be used on various elements such as <ref> <cite>. This way an editor could only need to enter something like <cite sourec="ISBN:0691002606">pp 24-38</cite> and they would be done (wikimedia would help them find and enter that source attribute through some form driven interface). From that simple entry WikiMedia would generate parenthetical reference not or footnote citation depedning on the presentation settings and also automatically add the source to the "Reference List". When the available software adequately supports the separation of semantics from presentation, decisions about presentation can be left until the page is actually assembled. As browsers add support XSLT, these presentation decisions (such as parenthetical or footnote citations) could even be left to the page loading phase.

This is not to say that there are no semantic editing concerns here too. Many have suggested it's confusing to read source markup where the ref element contains long notes or even cite templates in a block of text. Also it's often confusing to click on a "Footnote" section only to correct a footnote, only to find one element: "<references /> in the edit box. Althought these things may be confusing I think those issues are small compared to the problems of maintaining text and its associated subtext when a large group of individuals is collaborating on the project: even more so when many may be new to wikimedia and unfamiliar with the guidelines. I'm actually quite impressed at how well this all works. But I do think it's a very good idea to keep subtext (notes) with the main text in terms of semantic markup. Doing this helps ensure that reordering or deleting blocks of text don't break the references to the subtext.

All the long-term goals aside, we have to work with what's available now. So I've been exploring the features of WikiMedia to try to discern how to best meet the goals of separating semantics from presentation right now and down the line. My essay proposal was a first stab at that. Based on what I see from the software right now, I think it's best to use the ref element (without names) for notes and citations (or possibly Harvard citations inline), combined with a manually arranged "Source List" or "Reference List", probably using Harvard Reference templates or cite templates as documented here (though incompletely).

Nobody likes to maintain reference lists and with some modest improvements in the software, much of the burden for this could be lifted off of the editors. By moving the burden to the software, it also assures a certain level of conformity to policies: policies of structured markup that need conformance as opposed to policies of presentation that could be completely user controlled eventually. I hear over and over again that novice editors are intimidated or confused by the cite and Harvard reference templates. So presenting more automated tools using html forms could improve the process greatly, and even avoid the reentry of the same source every-time it's used throughout wikipedia. Wiki is already becoming the leading repository for encyclopedic content, zoological species database, quotations, dictionary definitions, etc. Why not make it the leading catalogue of referenced sources: streamlining the tasks of editors in the process. Just a few more of my thoughts on the big picture. --Cplot 00:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

"I haven't looked at what bugs and features have been highly prioritized by the software developers, but from my experience here, sorting out these note, citation, reference and source issues seems the most glaring of all (perhaps I just don't use wikimedia in ways that demonstrate the other bugs)." See this for a general idea of some of the more serious bugs, and this for a simultaneously over- and underinclusive list of feature requests that the developers may be prioritizing more highly (although that's dicier, because non-devs can change the priority field for some reason). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible solutions for notes, citations, and sources (and references)

Since I think such a long proposal may become unwieldy on an already lenghty talk page, I decided to move the proposal to my own user domain. I also took the liberty of bringing the comments over to the associated talk page. I hope that's not a faux pas. You're all welcome to come edit away in thie new space. --Cplot 01:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I should provide some summary of the proposal here. Following this link will take you to the full proposal. Basically I'm trying to think through the disctintions between notations, citations, references and sources. From that analysis I propose two strategies. First to alter the manual of style to to disentangle these issues. Second, to develop a list of feature requests for MediaWiki software developers to make the job of adding and editing content even easier down the line. I think this proposal addresses a lot of the concerns I've seen raised here on this page, which is why I metnioned it here. --Cplot 04:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

My observations

Looking at things semantically, a note is just a (typically brief) amount of content, that, while it has a place in the flow of content, is usually presented outside the flow of content. In print, ways of presenting the note outside the flow of content include placing it at the bottom of the page, placing it in the margin, and placing in at the end of the chapter or other textual division. Not all of these readily translate to electronic media. Parenthetical inline references are, in my opinion, an example of notes with very mild separation from the flow of content: the note is left in place, but merely placed in parentheses.

With this semantic definition of a note, a note simply has content and a place in the text. The <ref></ref> tag, used well, as in today's featured article Caedmon, fills these semantic requirements nicely, as do the older templates {{inote}} and {{hnote}}, though all differ in the presentation they produce.

Some have complained that when notes are longer than a few words, their presence in the flow of text impedes editing. This will be a complaint with almost any semantic notational system, because a note has a place in the flow of content, so some sort of placeholder must be left to indicate its place. Most semantic markup systems, such as TeX and TEI, do leave notes inline. Yet if this complaint is to be addressed by changes in software, rather than ask for something specific to notes, I would ask for something more general, to cover the general problem of daunting, involved markup having to appear on a page and impede editing.

Ordinarily, templates would solve this problem. But templates are an unattractive solution here, because any given note will only appear once, and probably not appear on other pages, and creating a template for every lengthy note is tedious, and editing them is troublesome for the unitiated, since they aren't actually on the page. So the software feature I would ask for, is the ability to define a local template: a template defined on the same page as the article, and used only on that article page.

Now, since some appear to use the words 'citation' and 'reference' to apply to at least two different things, I will say that when I say 'reference,' I mean a (usually brief, usually abbreviated) snippet of bibliographic information, used to note that some part of the content refers to some outside source. Examples include Smith, p. 32; Macbeth II. ii.; and John 3:16. References are often notes, or parts of notes, so if notes are taken care of, so are references: the reference is simply the content of a note, or part of that content.

I'll call a 'citation' a full, structured, presentation of bibliographic information, with the purpose of allowing someone else to actually find the cited work. In my opinion, the various {{cite}} templates handle this nicely, and are structured enough to be readily converted to BibTeX or some other format, if someone desired to do so. Shimmin 14:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Nicely stated. I totally agree with your point of view. I woudl add that a reference in your terminology is semantically more than just part of a note. It also provides a linkage of some sort to the cited source (to use your terms). So semantically, it is special content within the note. --Cplot 18:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to imagine how your "local template" would work. It seems like we're going to have to make some major changes to the MediaWiki software in order to address these syntax/semantics issues! In the meantime, I still think our priority should be to differentiate endnotes, references, citations, sources, parenthetical notes, cursor tooltips, and embedded citations! Shimmin, can you elaborate on "if notes are taken care of, so are references"? See also bugzilla:6271#c7. --J. J. 13:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Shimmin, can you elaborate on "if notes are taken care of, so are references"? What I mean by this is that a reference, by which I mean a brief snippet of bibliographic information indicating that a particular bit of content is based on or refers to a particular source, is simply a common application of a note, by which I mean more generally content that, while having a place in the flow of content, is presented elsewhere, such as at the end or in the margin. The displaced content of a note can be one or more references, commentary on the text, or a mixture of the two. The recently featured article Caedmon includes many notes, most of which contain one or more references.

Cplot does correctly point out that a reference is somewhat special compared to other "note" content, because it may be desirable to link the reference to a full bibliographic citation elsewhere on the page. If the citation is given an id so that it may be targetted by a link, then this is as do-able as having the note include a wikilink to some other article, and not a significant complication. Again, see Caedmon for a well-executed example. Shimmin 00:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Ref after punctuation and the no consensus trap

I had a good laugh at this edit summary: [3] written by Slim. My "original research" was rather an "after having received another wiki scar" by those that disagree with the ref after punct. It's a bit unfair to reestablish this "no consensus" trap again. But anyway, guidelines seem not to have that much meaning on Wikipedia anyway ;). --Ligulem 23:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh sorry, Ligulem, I didn't realize it was you who had added it, in despair perhaps. :-) All publishers put footnotes after punctuation to the best of my knowledge. I have never seen it done otherwise. Are people suggesting we should write this ? Or even this !! The footnote is not part of the sentence. It is an extra sign that is offering a comment on the sentence. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No need to convince me ;). I even wrote a piece of software that can convert articles to ref after punct. But when doing that on a series of articles I got biten by the no consensus thing ;). After that, I thought that it would be best to write down the state of affairs. And yes, there are people on this wiki that want to have it like this . Just scroll up. --Ligulem 23:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Your software is incredibly useful. I can't believe any editor would support writing this ! I think people have just misunderstood, or don't realize what publishers do. Anyone who doubts this should simply open any book that has footnotes in it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

see above #Period/Full Stop and reference location and #Every sentence should have a reference?. --Philip Baird Shearer 07:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Philip, can you name a single publisher who places footnotes before punctuation, or a style guide that recommends it? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Amen, Slim. --J. J. 19:17, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

As a side note (possibly shooting myself in my foot): Paul Wicks wrote on my talk:

I'm another one that doesn't like it but will go along with it. In my area (neuropsychology) most journals have refs inside punctuation, with the exception of JNNP. This is somewhat infuriating when you have to move them all when resubmitting a paper there that's been rejected from elsewhere! Still, I shall endeavour to do this on future articles to maintain consistency.--PaulWicks 09:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

(archived thread, diff). --Ligulem 21:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible that part of the argument is that people are talking about different things? In the styles that use parenthetical inline citations (MLA, APA, Harvard, &c.) the citation typically precedes the punctuation. In the styles that I am familiar with that use numerically-labeled foot- or endnotes (such as Chicago), the marker typically follows the punctuation. Shimmin 22:24, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

SV I am not the one putting a perscripton on to others to force them to do what I think is better. In the world of written published material it is unusual for different editors to jointly edit a paragraph when they may not agree with what should be in the paragraph. As such I think that before the period helps clarify the the reference is for that specific sentence only. But all this is discussed with examples higher up the page.

Usually I would suggest a complete deletion of such a paragraph in this guidline, if we can not agree on such an issue, but I think you point about "recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style" is useful information which should be kept here. Hence the reason for trying to construct a balanced paragrah. As can be seen from Ligulem survey there are a lot of pages which use before period notation and even if one assumes only 10% were intentional and that on average 10 of those pages were edited by the same editor, that is still a lot of editors who have done this intentionally.

Given time either editors will accept CMS recommendation is a vaild point and it will become the norm or they will not. But what I do not want are revert wars over this issue with this page being used as a club in such revert wars to say that this is the only way to do things because the guideline says so. But again I have expressed these views higher up the page in more detail and I do not think it constructive to broaden them in this section. What I would like to do is work on a compromise wording which we can all live with. BTW my broadband supplier went belly up this week so my replies to posts to this page in the immidiate future may intermittant .--Philip Baird Shearer 11:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This statement from you sounds a bit like there was a revert war over this issue. Just for the records: there was none in wich I was involved and I can't imagine that there is anyone else who endevoured to undertake to move the punctuations around refs on a list of articles grater that 20. What I find bemusing is, that all featured articles do it like stated in this guideline here. Strange is, that Philip refuses to give a list or area of articles that should not be changed (e.g. along the lines "we do it on military articles like this, please leave it there"). And I can tell you that I changed a whole lot of articles where nobody cared at all where the punctuation is. And it was indeed very random where they were (even inside the very same article). And the claim that there a lot of editors who want it like Philip is simply wrong. It is in fact rather the other way round. This whole thing here is rather ridiculous. In fact Philip extended his refusal over entire wikipedia by asking me to stop changing articles to conform to what is the majority style. But if editors do it on all their featured articles by themselves, then it is ok. Very odd. But this seems to be the wiki-way (Maybe I should create a sockpuppet for each edit ;). At least please don't write it on this guildeline as if there was any consensus on this. Write how it is: more or less ridiculously random, with people disagreeing on the majority. That's why this is not an Encyclopedia. And it will probably never be. Or do you think the folks at Encyclopedia Britannica do it using one style on page X and the other way on page Y? They would laugh on us. And they probably do. Right they are. --Ligulem 12:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Not to be overly pedantic, but merely because editors have done something intentionally doesn't mean it isn't completely wrong. Again, is there any style guide that recommends—or even allows—the numbers to precede closing punctuation? Kirill Lokshin 12:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the ref should be put after punctuation. Until the question of how broad consensus is is cleared up, though, I'm not going to be changing anything. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I wonder whether people are confusing putting refs before punctuation and footnotes before it, as Shimmin suggested? Paul wrote above that neuropsychology journals put refs before punc, but surely they don't put footnotes before it. That is, you might write a Harvard ref before a period, as in: Wikipedia is a great website (SlimVirgin 2006). But you wouldn't place a footnote before the period, as in: "Wikipedia is a great website . Footnotes always (including in neuropsychology journals, surely) go after punctuation. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, there could be other reasons too. Does anyone have a really old (typewriter days) style guide? Where are non-superscript note numbers (e.g. Foo[1] versus Foo¹) placed? Kirill Lokshin 12:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is an example. A UK mobile phone company is offering a broadband connction. In their brochure all the references to footnotes come before the full stop. But on the internet page offering the same thing, they have stripped the stops for some reason so you will have to take my word for it [4]. However on as secondary page they have forgotten to strip a couple of stops see after footnote 2 and 3 (NB there are 2 2s) [5]. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I think perhaps you're finding examples of people who've simply made a mistake. Can you produce a book published by a mainstream publisher that puts footnotes before punctuation? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 13:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

While I would generally put refs after punctuation, there are cases when it doesn't make sense (for instance when a reference is about two different things{REFONE} in the same phrase, which is inside parentheses{REFTWO}). I wouldn' write "parentheses){REFTWO}" in this case, as that would indicate that the reference is about the whole parentheses expression, whereas it's only meant to be a reference for the second part. —Nightstallion (?) 11:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't follow your examples, Nightstallion. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 13:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll try again: If I've got "(A[ref1] and B[ref2])" it's clear that [ref1] refers to A and [ref2] refers to B. If we write "(A[ref1] and B)[ref2]", however, it would *strongly* suggest that [ref] refers to A and [ref2] refers to the whole expression in parentheses, i.e. "(A and B)". Do you get what I mean? Check the first paragraph of list of European Union member states by accession for an example (the parentheses expression after European Coal and Steel Community). —Nightstallion (?) 09:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe that footnotes go after commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks, colons, semicolons, and closing quotation marks, but before dashes, spaces, and closing parentheses. Other punctuation marks would probably have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I can agree with that. —Nightstallion (?) 09:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

A style guide with references to footnotes before the stop CEDEFOD Manuscripts for publication in English(PDF) --Philip Baird Shearer 12:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is an EU style guide (PDF see section 8). In this guide as in the last one they place footnotes in brackets but before the stop (¹ ).

Those two links appear to be from the same people, and they do that because they're using parentheses for some reason, so what they're doing is basically putting a number in parentheses as if it were a Harvard reference, like this (SlimVirgin 2006). But they're doing it like this (1). It's correct to put Harvard refs inside punctuation.

Philip, can you please find one English-language book by one mainstream publisher that puts footnotes before punctuation; then we'll have something solid to go on. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 13:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

A recent edit by Dbiv has changed the guideline to suggest that footnotes before punctuation are preferred in British English. I'm wondering if that is actually the case: the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, for example, states that the "footnote number follows any closing punctuation", as does the Cambridge Law Journal. Kirill Lokshin 23:27, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I just reverted that. It was clearly made without any prior discussion and in contradiction with what we are actually finding. Circeus 01:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The Disadvantages and future improvements section

Overall I think the project page is well written, concise and to the point. However the section "Disadvantages and future improvements" reads too much like a back-and-forth debate for the average reader. I suggest the salient points should be drawn out of that, summarized and perhaps reference made to other articles (i.e., preserving most of the links that are already there). Basically, trying to convey what readrs should get out of that discussion that elevantes it to the main page rather than here on the discussion page (where hopefully readers learn to check out for all their esoteric goodness). --Cplot 00:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Citation of different locations/page numbers in a work

What is the best way to refer to different pages in a book? For example, should I say:

The flowers of the Gangliopensis are green, and attract bees. In stark contrast, the Gangliofoosis has red flowers, and is pollenated by elephants.

thereby making two endnotes for one source? Is there a better way? --Slashme 10:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the way you've done it is fine. There have been several bug recommendations for this issue, but no solutions; see particularly Meta:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Suggestion:_sub-reference_attribute_for_ref_tags. There really isn't any consensus on this issue, which is why I keep emphasizing policies to differentiate citations from references. See several of my July comments above for more details. --J. J. 14:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I would make a separate "References" section full of fancy {{cite book}} tags and just put hand-written author-[title]-page citations in the footnotes themselves. (Some people don't seem to like the idea of doing any of this by hand, though, so YMMV.) Kirill Lokshin 15:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

A complicated page

I was wondering if anyone had advice on a ref system for Planetary habitability. When I started the ref's I used fn/fnb for explanatory footnotes and the mn/mnb for actual references. The latter is Wikipedia:Footnote4, which I've discovered is defunct and used on only a few articles. However, I further complicated it by separating my primary and secondary sources, which I think is useful on a long ref list for people looking to pick out good sources from generic ones; footnote4 allows me to do this as the numbers can be off sequence (ie., primary 1, 3, 6 followed by secondary 2, 4, 5). Is there anyway to keep the page ordered exactly as it is now, but with an accepted ref system? Marskell 14:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What happened to the "Every sentence should have a reference?" discussion?

Philip Baird Shearer provided a link to #Every sentence should have a reference? above, but this section seems to have disappeared - I can't find it on this page or in the archives, am I missing something? Thanks, heqs 22:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I just went to this page's history and clicked on Philip's July 5th entry. To answer your question, it's now in the archive. Centrix didn't create the archive link correctly. --J. J. 03:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. heqs 09:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Position of footnotes

I'd like to suggest that footnotes should be placed before the punctuation (as in everyday English grammar), and abandon the peculiar Chicago style of putting them at the start of the next sentence/paragraph. At the very least, both styles should be acceptable, rather than ordering everyone to follow the US/Chicago rules, which look ghastly and illiterate to UK users at least. - MPF 10:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

This has been debated to death (including above). If they look so ghastly, please identify a mainstream style manual that supports the positioning you suggest and perhaps a few journals or publications that actually use it. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 11:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

"As in everyday English grammar?" MPF, can you name one English-language book from a mainstream publisher that puts footnotes before periods/full stops? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

A quick look through my books soon reveals Dallimore, W. & Jackson, A. B. (1966) A Handbook of Coniferae and Ginkgoaceae (Edward Arnold, London), which does so consistently. - MPF 14:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything a bit more recent than that? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious if there's actually been any evidence provided that this is a UK/US issue. The Chicago style seems to be ubiquitious in the British books I have in my posession, in any case; and the Oxford & Cambridge style guides I was able to find online call for it as well. Kirill Lokshin 14:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Where does the footnote go if it applies to a huge section?

I recently added a large section to TeX font metric. The specification is drawn from its canonical source---the documentation from the source code to TFtoPL. It's footnoted at the bottom of the Specification section now, but it really applies to all of it. I didn't want to just drop it manually into the References section. What should I do here?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Grendelkhan (talk • contribs) .

Is this a question about how to add multiple footnotes to the same source, or a question about what points in the addition would benefit from having a footnote pointing to the source you were using? Jkelly 17:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

What I have done in the past is put the citation right at the start of the relevant text. Then include in the note/reference a statement about the scope of the cited source and which sentences/paragraphs or sections of the Wikipedia article are covered by the source cited. However, you have to be ready to provide individual citations for each sentence if other editors demand it. --JWSchmidt 18:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

All of the source for that entire section really is the specification document. I can break it down further by section, but then I'd have a stack of references saying something like "TFtoPL, section 4". I've noticed that references to specific parts of works (e.g., page numbers) aren't used very often; is that a viable alternative? grendel|khan 18:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

In the case of overarching references, I say you either add a single note to the same ref for each paragraph, or you add the reference in the reference section and only use footnotes for potentially contentious statements. Circeus 18:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Nothing about is is particularly contentious, but I do want the reader to be able to see where I got all of this from. grendel|khan 18:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I had started to make a comment about this earlier today, but I guess I got distracted and forgot about it! I wanted to mention that it doesn't hurt to just mention the source at the beginning of the section. Something like, "This section is a summary of the TFtoPL guidelines." --J. J. 03:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I went with "The canonical specification of the TFM format is embedded in the source code of the program TFtoPL", and I think it flows naturally while conveying the source information early on. grendel|khan 06:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ref system slowing down editorial work

Poll: Wikipedia:Ref reform

How it looks now - text is virtually unreadable

Under a sain system - text is easily readable

I'm getting tired of wasting time over the ref system, whereby articles with many refs (these are often articles listed on ITN which need to be monitored closely) makes editing difficult by virtues of the refs being cited within the body of the text itself. The ref system should be structured so that the main text simply has a ^number with the ref itself being noted at the bottom somehow, thereby leaving the text free of and seperate from lengthy citations. El_C 17:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Practical changes, please (unless you're willing to do the coding yourself, of course); vast rewrites of cite.php are probably not high on the developers' to-do list. Kirill Lokshin 17:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me? I do the editing, thank you very much. It should be a priority because it's a significant and counterintuitive time waster. El_C 18:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Given that X (for very large X) KB of discussion above and in the archives has failed to come to that conclusion, I think it's only fair to suggest that demands for extreme changes to the system are not going to be foisted on the developers anytime soon ;-)

More to the point, isn't your proposal just the {{ref}}/{{note}} system with different formatting? Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a somewhat legalistic answer, which does not respond to the problem. "More to the point," sure, why not. El_C 18:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm asking why we would need to change the cite.php system if we can already do what you're proposing with an existing set of templates. (The cite.php system isn't mandatory, as far as I know.) Kirill Lokshin 18:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

A reformed ref system should be mandatory, or editing slows down for nuaght. El_C 18:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's clear, from previous discussions on this topic, that this position doesn't really enjoy consensus support; this is partially because nobody has proposed a replacement that will (a) work in practice and (b) does not require an extreme amount of developer effort (which likely won't be forthcoming for something that doesn't appear to have wide support in the first place). Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I skimmed the documentation on the {{ref}} system, and at first glance it appears the editor must manually assign the reference numbers and reference names. The <ref> system assignes numbers and places references in the reference list automatically. Or have I misunderstood? --Gerry Ashton 18:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically it (technically, they're numbered automatically; they just need to have the same order in the text that they do at the bottom). Going from El_C's example above, though, it seems the proposal would involve that as well. Kirill Lokshin 18:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Cite.php could have its behaviour tweaked to keep the text out of the way. I have no idea if this would be easy or hard for the programmer, but the change to the interface is minor, and would make it more flexible.

Currently, the first occurrence of a reference citation must contain the reference text:

      First citation.<ref name="smith-2006">[reference text in the article body]</ref>
      Second citation.<ref name="smith-2006" />
      
      == References ==
      <references />

When an article gets dense with references, this leads to the situation where there is more reference text and markup in a paragraph than actual article text. But an alternate possibility is if cite.php allowed the references tag to be a container, and move some or all of the references down there. It would still do all the magic of automatic numbering, linking, and back-linking.

      First citation.<ref name="smith-2006" /> 
      Second citation.<ref name="smith-2006" />
      
      == References ==
      <references>
      <ref name="smith-2006">[reference text in References section]</ref>
      </ references>

This would be more flexible, and allows the best of both worlds. It might also be used to manually sort the list of references in author-alpha order, rather than by the first occurrence of a citation, with the addition of an optional attribute: <references sort=manual> ... </references>.

This is just an idea—there may be a better way to accomplish this. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 18:29 Z

Woops, looks like somebody beat me to the idea by a day: meta:talk:Cite/Cite.php#Request for extension of ref/references templates.

I think the problem of references, citations, notes and sources is the singel biggest technical problem for Wikipedia to overcome. I'm not sure why it takes such a backseat to other programming issues.

However, since we have to work with what we have, I don't think notes and references should be mixed together. In other words articles should end with a "Notes" section with the tag <references /> followed by a separate "References" section where formated bibliographic references are listed either manually or using the cite and harvardref cite templates. The notes section should include only notes without bibliographic detail. The bibliographic detail should be in the "References" section, ideally using harvard-cite templates. This means the only thing appearing in the wiki source of an article would be notes/footnotes enclosed in <ref> tags. The templates should then be arranged in the "References" section in a suitable order (in other words arranged manually). :The named referrence tags really have no place in this. First of all a text only coincidentally requires a notation/elaboration identical to a previous notation. Also the named reference tags do not provide adequate user feedback to jump back to the section in the main text that rtargeted the footnote. In other words which of the up-pointing arros do I click to get back to where I was reading before viewing the footnote. Finally, the problem ref tags solved (the problem of keeiping subordinate text editied, inserted and deleeted along with the main text they refer to) gets reintroduced by using named references. This is because the deletion of the named reference with the textual elaboration could leave another ref tag of the same name orphaned (no more text that its referring to). <nowiki> So here's what I'm suggesting. An article's source should include cite.php ref tags for notes.<ref>to provide further elaboration on an issue that doesn't need to be in the main text or to provide a citation of a source that the author doesn't want to include in the main text</ref> The end of the article would then include a section called something like:

             Notes
             <references />
      
             References
             harvard ref templates

Until the the technical problems get worked out I don't think there's a decent alternative. --Cplot 19:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Some comments:

• The named ref functionality will probably not be removed, for backward compatibility. Of course, cite.php could be forked to something like notes.php, with the exact functionality you describe.
• In simpler articles, there is no need for both notes and references sections. A simple link to each reference is sufficient.
• I do like Harvard style, which makes it easier to include more information in the reference citations, and still avoid adding a notes section, using citations like (Smith 2006:123), (Smith 2006:123–24), (Smith 2006:123, 231), (Smith 1999, 2006), "... according to Smith (2006)", or "... according to the writer John Smith (2006)". I created these kinds of citations manually in the article T-34.

—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:21 Z

As the concern is about editing, note bugzilla:2745, a general suggestion for a second edit window for citation info. Implementation is easier if citation info is gathered in one section. (SEWilco 05:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC))

In reply to El C, I think that breaking a cite into multiple lines and maybe a little indentation helps greatly with the readability in edit mode. See the Zinedine Zidane article for an example. There probably isn't anything with a denser degree of citations (one sentence has eight), but the multi-line format at least makes it easier to see the the citations start and end. Canadiana 19:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hidden refs at the top

I have long disliked the current reference style due to the fact that the linked information is in the article text and makes editing articles much more difficult than with ref/note old style...however, I do understand that the cite.php style is beneficial from a management standpoint...but only marginally. In an effort to try and reduce the text area used by the current cite.php style, User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters developed an alteration which is currently used in one FA which I was the primary writer on...namely Shoshone National Forest. In this style, the citation within the article text is very much reduced, but since the developers haven't impemented the changes, all the references are at the beginning of the article.--MONGO 19:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The style mentioned above appears as follows when the editing window is open...[6]--MONGO 19:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

That also an idea I had. However, doesn't that mean the references must be listed in hide in the same order they appear in the text? And that the 'a' ref for every reference goes nowhere? It looks odd that every reference says (a b). References listed in "hidden" sections shouldn't be numbered/tagged. The other feature I want in cite.php is an optional page note, so the entire book reference doesn't need repeating. I don't have a system set up to easy test a php hook, or I would code this up myself. Is there a way to use some existing test site? Gimmetrow 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the style may need some tweaking, but that may have been possible if the developers had bothered to implement it. I'm not good at the programming aspects of this endeavour, so I have to rely on those that are to address concerns I have. Like El C, I really think the current cite.php style make editing articles much more difficult, but I also understand that cite.php is definitely more manageable if a ref is deleted from the article since one doesn't have to track that ref down at the end of the article and remove it from there as well. Another aspect of the current system I don't like is that it isn't really a footnote in that if an article is linked appropriate it appears as a 1,3, or whatever number, sometimes repeatedly in article space...so the style is more like a reference note than a footnote in reality...I'll beep Lulu and see if he has anything else to offer on this matter.--MONGO 19:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's a bit of an ugly hack:

1. It breaks usability:
   • It adds a confusing "a" link to every reference, which goes nowhere.
   • The only useful back-link is "b", but only an experienced editor would know why
2. It puts all of the references at the beginning of the article and hides them from visual browsers, but this probably breaks the accessibility of the article for
   • Google, which only indexes a certain amount of text at the top of the page
   • Users of alternative browsers, including text-only browsers, screen readers for the handicapped

Please don't do stuff like this which brings down Wikipedia's technical quality. If cite.php doesn't do what you want, either

1. Live without it.
2. Do it manually, or by the use of other templates.

—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:58 Z

It was only implemented in that one article and, as I stated, had their been success in getting it implemented, most of the concerns you mention here would have been addressed. Lulu was trying hard to get the proposal implemented..I suppose it is time to reconvert it back to something else...which is mainly a simple revert and a readditon of newer material...not abig job...currently the article is 6th on a goggle query...[7]. I leave it as is for a few more days and then make the corrections.--MONGO 20:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

How about a third option - work to change it. There are groups who are automatically changing reference styles over to cite.php without much discussion - it clearly is a better system, but it has some significant flaws which really should be worked on. Since there isn't much choice at this point as far as writing featured article quality pages without cite.php, we should focus on increasing its functionality. (as you have discussed above!) InvictaHOG 20:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The change has already been provided to the MediaWiki developers for a bunch of months now. I submitted the actual patch to the code that would let the reference hide at the bottom rather than top, and thereby resolve 90% of the concerns with having them at top. I know the few developers have worked really hard, and have many balls to juggle... but I'm quite frustrated that this few lines of change to the m:Cite.php code has been so thourogly back-burnered. There was even a "vote" on either this talk page, or maybe the one on citing sources, where a zillion editors all stridenly stated their desire for exactly the change I submitted a patch for. Aaagghh! LotLE×talk 21:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there a bug open in the MediaWiki bugzilla? Can we vote for it? Does anyone actually read the votes there, or is it just a way to let the non-developers feel like they're doing something effective with regards to development? grendel|khan 06:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Bugzilla:5997. Devs mainly do what they feel like doing, since only two are paid and those two are in charge of development, but something that gets a lot of votes might get slightly more attention if you're lucky. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Introductory section

The first section of the article contains "Also, Cite.php footnotes are not the only way to make footnotes. Many articles use templates to create footnotes." When I first read this, I thought this meant that Cite.php and citation templates were competing systems to create footnotes, but I have since learned that Cite.php creates the footnote numbers and the navigation aids, the citation templates create the content of the citation, and they can be used independently. I'd like to see this passage rewritten. --Gerry Ashton 18:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's referring to {{ref}}/{{note}} templates, not to {{cite book}} and its ilk. Kirill Lokshin 18:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Style recommendation

At Wikipedia:Footnotes#Style recommendations:

Enclosing the <references/> tag in a references-small class div, like this: <div class="references-small"><references/></div> is recommended.

I thought this was an option, and whether it is a good idea was controversial, or at least depended on the context and editors' preference. This also contradicts the statement in the next section "Resizing is not encouraged as a standard technique in all articles." —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 18:33 Z

I've changed the wording to be a bit more conservative and fit common practice. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Website links

Is it possible for website links in sentences to be put into the same style as footnotes? I was hoping to do this for BBC News, and if successful, others. Wikiwoohoo 18:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Putting the link between refs makes it a footnote with a full URL hotlink: <ref>http://mysite.com</ref> Or, use [ ] and provide an alt text: <ref>[http://mysite.com MySite] - Mine</ref> Gimmetrow 18:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help there. It works and the article looks much better as a result. Take a look: BBC News. Thanks again! Wikiwoohoo 19:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Standard reference name format

Should we recommend a usual format for reference names? I've found that using author-year with normal capitalization helps remember what to type:

 <ref name="Von Mellenthin-1956">Von Mellenthin, Major General F. W. (1956). Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War, First Ballantine Books Edition, 1971. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-34524-440-0. </ref>
 <ref name="Smith-2006">Smith, John (2006). Book title.  City: Publisher. ISBN 12345678.</ref>

—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:28 Z

Hmm, that might make sense for articles using Harvard refs, but if an article has citation directly in footnotes, it would need a page number in the name (or no name at all) to avoid having everything point to a single note. Kirill Lokshin 20:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point—I'm used to using simple bibliographic references, and not notes. Still, it would be a good idea to choose one or more formats, standardizing capitalization, word-separators, spacing, etc, as a suggestion or to illustrate the instructions. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 22:08 Z

Often in medical research there may be several papers published in the same year by an author (ie separate aspects of a study are published separately). Given that the studies often get referred to as "that paper in journal X", I tend to use {Journal}_{Lead author surname}{year} eg "BMJ_Smith2004". If there are several publications in the same journal in the same year by same author, then I add on a suffix letter, eg "BMJ_Smith2004b". David Ruben ^Talk 12:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That seems sensible. What are the advantages or disadvantages of using spaces, underscores, or dashes to separate the parts of the reference ID? Because these are IDs, the must not clash with other items on the page, for example subheading anchor IDs—for this reason, perhaps we should always use a standard prefix, like "Reference-" or "ref_". —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 20:10 Z

A standard prefix is not a bad idea, but let's not turn this into a cumbersome, rigid set of standards. It's hard enough to get people to obtain sources, harder to get them to cite them properly, and when they take a look at the process here, we must certainly be scaring even more people off. Two suggestions:

1. Rather than mandate yet another rigid rule, let's use osmosis to gently suggest such a prefix. If every example has "ref-" in it, newbies will probably assume it's either necessary or required anyway, and experienced editors won't need the advice.
2. Much more important than mandating something designed to avoid name collision is actually avoiding name collison. Any scheme will still experience problems, whether because it conflicts with an unexpected name outside the scheme, or just because many people don't follow it (a practice we encourage every time we burden editors with more rules). But the real issue, and the thing that must be made absolutely clear, is always test your links before you save! This is especially true of references, which introduce more complexity. Judging by the many corrections I make, we can't possibly emphasize this enough.

— Jeff Q (talk) 20:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts from someone new to endnotes.

I have just begun learning how to use endnotes. I have looked at Wikipedia:Footnotes, Help:Footnotes, and Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations. I have found what should be very simple to explain very confusing. In the hopes that my stupidity will help, I will explain my areas of confusion:

I find the use of the term footnote in this context confusing. Perhaps endnotes or notes would be a better term.

When it said, "Wikipedia's software, MediaWiki, has built-in support for footnotes.", I was under the impression I had to download a program called MediaWiki.

It is not clear that <ref name="multiple"> is a substitute for <ref>. I think that <ref name="multiple"> should be standard and then note that <ref> can be used instead for a single occurrence.

I like the templates. It is not explained how these are used. It should be. An example would be:

<ref name="multiple">{{cite book | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = | publisher = | date = | location = | url = | doi = | id = }}</ref>

Did I get this right? (except for the formating of the template)

Hope this helps.—Who123 22:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• "Footnotes" is basically an established term used for discussing these, and is used mostly because NO word properly describes what we have in such a computer environment anyway.
• With or without names are inconsequential anyway. It isperfectly acceptable to give names to all the refs. <ref name="multiple"> is only truely relevant when using the same refmultiple times
• Yes, this is the proper use of the template, although it is usually recommended to leave it on a single line within the source. (some might disagree, but I find it ostrusive, even thoughI preferit not in line when in a references section)

Hopes that helps. Circeus 01:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

You may want to look at #Overview of major changes this month to get an idea of how "simple" issues can get complicated. I do agree with you, Who123, that the WP:FN page needs updating with the latest happenings; I wore myself out just trying to understand where things currently stand to begin with!

I do not want to really get into this as I am new at WP. I just wanted to give my thoughts as someone new. I will add one additional thought about the way the system is set up. I find the current system awkward as it disrupts the article content and one can really have a mess if the order of sections of the article is changed. I think it would be much better to have all the citations in notes with a name. This would eliminate congestion in the text of the article and moving sections around would not ruin the citations. Also, deleting one portion would not lose the source.—Who123 16:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Quotation marks

Does anyone know why we recommend writing <ref name="name"> when there is no need for the quotation marks, and does anyone mind if I remove that advice? The less typing people have to do, the better, it seems to me. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Names can include spaces (which are converted to underscores in the anchor ID), in which case quotation marks are required (uncontrived example: T-34#Reference-Von Mellenthin-1956). But editors don't need to have the technical details explained; best just to recommend one simple, safe way to do it. —Michael Z. 2006-08-03 06:34 Z

Yes. <ref name="name"> works, as does <ref name=name>, but <ref name= long name> doesn't work. The only way to make it work is through <ref name="long name">. It's less error-prone to use quotes always, and less probability of error equals less probability of confusion, so that would be a good reason to recommend it. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. I didn't know <ref>ref name=long name</ref> didn't work. Though I wonder what reason anyone would have to use two words? However, point taken. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The quotes are required for the tag to be an XML tag. Older HTML renderers (i.e. web browsers) usually have a "quirks mode" that deal with not-quite-valid tags, but those are increasingly deprecated. While the WP use of kinda-sorta XML in tags like <ref> isn't exactly pure, there may well be future tools or code that are just going to be happier with actual XML tags. Moreover, without the quotes, you have no way of knowing if the second word after a space is meant as another attribute: <ref name=reference style class>. LotLE×talk 14:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Nightmare

I'm new to footnotes (today) and have used cite.php in several pages. I agree that the automatic numbering is excellent, but feel that where there are many and/or long inline citations it makes the text almost unreadable.

Why not:

Xxxxx is defined as xxxxx{ref DICT}. Xxxxx xxx xxx{ref BOOK}

References

{references}
{ref DICT}The reference details{/ref}
{ref BOOK}The other reference details{/ref} 

...or something along those lines. You would still get the automatic numbering; you would get easy-to-read paragraphs; and you would have an easy-to-understand references section.--Jonathan3 00:11, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There are so many ways to do things here at Wikipedia that it's dizzying. However, the Harvard Reference Templates provide the functionality you're looking for. You'll find them at the bottom of this page. Personally, I think the cite.php <ref> are several misnomers rapped up in one. Since they auto-number they are suitable for notes (as in footnotes or endnotes) but not particuarly well-suited for citations or references: which in my opnion should be arranged alphabetically by author not numerically as they appear inn the article. I hope that helps deal with your nightmare. --Cplot 19:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You could also keep it really simple, and not bother with the extra complication. For example, the article T-34 uses the {{wikicite}} template to create anchors in the references section, and manually-formatted Harvard-style links in the text. Very easy and effective. —Michael Z. 2006-08-06 20:56 Z

I have to say I think the harvard reference template is simpler and has the added benefit of adding a structured source reference to the article (the benefits of which have been pointed out here several times). I has the same results in terms of providing an easy link to the source reference list with harvard style references. --Cplot 02:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Cplot, you write above that references should be arranged alphabetically. That's correct, but not just with Harvard refs; when you use footnotes, you still require a separate References section, where everything used as a source is listed alphabetically. See WP:CITE. Jonathan, if you don't use any templates, you'll find the text must easier to edit. For example, <ref>Smith 2006</ref> will produce your footnote and hardly disturbs the text at all. You then give a full citation for Smith 2006 in the References section. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Space after punctuation before reference mark

A number of articles have no space between the punctuation and reference, a few have a space, and many have inconsistent spaces. I find the inconsistency to be aesthetically displeasing. I would like to add the following to WP:FN#Place_ref_tag_after_punctuation:

• The ref tag may follow the punctuation immediately,¹ or may follow after a space, ² but this spacing should be consistent for all ref tags within an article.

Next, in articles that use a space, the space allows the ref mark to separate from the sentence. This can produce odd floaters, either a ref tag at the beginning of a line, or worse, a ref tag alone on its own line after a paragraph. I recently saw a featured article that (in my normal window size) had three of the latter; this looked unprofessional. Therefore, I also propose that if a space is used, it be a non-breaking space similar to guidelines of WP:MOSNUM#Units_of_measurement:

• If a space is used, preferably use &nbsp; for the space (like so.&nbsp;<ref>Page 1.</ref>) so that it does not break lines.

Opinions? Gimmetrow 16:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There should be no space at all. Typographers set the footnote reference number right after punctuation, and sometimes even kern it to hang over the punctuation (but that is a bit extreme). It should be visually associated with the sentence or phrase it follows and annotates. Having spaces before and after the numbers makes them visually disassociated from the text, sitting there like flies on the ceiling. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 17:18 Z

OK. I have seen spaces used on WP so I assumed it was an accepted style here. If not, that's fine with me; I checked various books off my shelf published in a variety of countries, none had spaces. I would propose the style guide explicitly say there should be no space. Gimmetrow 17:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree that there should be no space. Punctured Bicycle 17:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Good, I agree with that, too. I've now looked at a number of books printed in U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and some french- and italian-language books. I checked one chapter from each book. None of them have spaces before the ref mark, except one book from Canada that had one in the chapter I looked at; I'll assume it was missed in copy-editing. Of note is a peculiar book from Ireland, which had a section commenting on a foreign text, and notes to the foreign text ³were done^{3 4}thus.⁴ Quotes were set " like this. " Very unusual, but nevertheless all footnote marks were immediately next to the word or phrase footnoted, with no spaces. So I propose the text be added:

• There should be no space between the punctuation and the ref tag, not like this, ⁷ but like this.⁸

Opinions? Gimmetrow 18:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The current text of the "Place ref tag after punctuation" section is quite redundant. How about a shorter version. Use of notes throughout the page serve as suitable examples of the implementation. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:00 Z

Place ref tag after punctuation

The ref tag should be placed directly after punctuation marks, without an intervening space. The exception is a dash, which should follow the ref tag. This is the format recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style.

Example

According to scientists, the Sun is big,<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun.", page 23. Academic Press, 2005</ref>
but the moon is smaller.<ref>Smith, R: "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46(78):46</ref>

==Notes==
<references/>

Heck, it looks good to me: I'm just going to do it. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:25 Z

Whoa, there! I'm impressed that Wikipedia is so efficient these days that consensus can be achieved in less than three hours after introduction of a question. ☺ Allow me to offer an important counterpoint that no one has mentioned. The current <ref> tag styling introduces a technical problem with footnotes that none of the cited style guides need to address, but that we do. The only way to provide a ref without spaces is to cram it up against the punctuation, leading to the placement of a full citation, which can take as many as three full lines of text (more if a quote is included), inside an undifferentiated mixture of text and citation. The alternative that some articles use is to place the ref tag and its contents on a separate line, like so:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,
<ref>{{cite book
| last=Miller
| first=E.
| title=The Sun
| year=2005
| publisher=Academic Press
| pages=page 23
}}</ref>
but the moon is smaller.

so that the reference and citation material are clearly visible. Of course, that adds a space between the punctuation and the footnote. I agree that it's not ideal. But it's hard enough to get editors to add proper citations already; it's very challenging for ordinary mortals (as opposed to obfuscated-code readers) to spot embedded references in text; and it's much easier using this separate-line method to visually skip over the references when reading the actual article text in the edit window, than to mentally discard anything found behind ref tags crammed inline with the text. There is a real need to avoid style policies that undermine efforts to make editing and sourcing easier. I highly recommend against this formal no-spacing policy, at least until the technical problems with reference tags and visual separation of source lines are resolved.

And given the haste that the editors here seem to be making of this issue, I'll commit to ignoring any such policy until it is fully thrashed out and brought to the attention of the relevant developers for comment and assistance. I'm much more concerned (as should we all be) about proper sourcing that cosmetic issues. It's far easier to fix the latter than the former. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't planning to implement anything before adequate time for discussion, which I envisioned as at least a week. But at least we are actually having a discussion. Gimmetrow 20:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "woah", I thought that I improved the wording of the guideline quite a bit, without changing any of the substance. The Chicago Manual of Style clearly implies that reference numbers go immediately after punctuation, without intervening spaces, although our citation of it didn't state that explicitly. And perhaps consensus has not been proven, but it may be that we have it.

Regarding wikitext styling, Jeffq's example is new to me. It makes the reference easier to read, but it certainly doesn't look like it would make editing the surrounding article text any easier to follow or edit in the edit field. And I don't know if easy-to-read wikitext is clearly a priority over properly-formatted article text, either.

Anyway, that point is moot. I think you can achieve the same effect and also avoid the undesirable space by putting the line break at the beginning of the note instead of in the text before the ref tag. Avoiding a line break after the closing ref tag also makes this work in colon-indented text:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,<ref>
{{cite book
| last=Miller
| first=E.
| title=The Sun
| year=2005
| publisher=Academic Press
| pages=page 23
}}
</ref> but the moon is smaller.

Live example:

According to scientists, the Sun is big, but the moon is smaller.

—Michael Z. 2006-08-14 06:27 Z

Michael, if you're not sure how much easier it is to edit article text with these formatted citations, you haven't edited many paragraphs with half a dozen first-instance references. (They often wind up being 80% citation, 20% text, which is a pain to pick through when all you're trying to do is tweak the wording of the actual text. Since that's much more common than reference tweaking, I would call on Alan Kay's observation that "simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.") But I must say I feel fairly dumb for not having thought of your solution, which may be an acceptable compromise. In my defense, I started from the position that the citation should look more like this:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,
<ref>
  {{cite book
  | last=Miller
  | first=E.
  | title=The Sun
  | year=2005
  | publisher=Academic Press
  | pages=page 23
  }}
</ref> but the moon is smaller.

with the entire citation on separate lines, and the only flush text being the ref tags themselves. (I hadn't noticed before that my examples' lines are incorrectly flush, despite several different attempts to push the inner text to the right. The "blockquote" element must be defeating any whitespacing attempts. It looks correct in the preview, but doesn't in the finished product.) I'd prefer to indent even the ref tags to make the complete citation obvious, but that forces boxed monospaced text, of course. My ideal can't be achieved at this time because of an unresolved bug in the combination of ref tag and cite templates that causes the first instance of this combination on a page to treat some line breaks as significant, screwing up the formatting of the first citation on any page with this reference structure. But with your suggestion, I guess I'll holster my weapon, pardner, until I have the time to get folks to fix the various problems. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have edited articles with lots of citations in cite.php format, and that's one of the reasons I use manually-typed Harvard citations, and the very simple template:wikicite to format bibliographic entries and add the anchors (example at T-34, if you're interested). I still think cite.php has a lot of potential, so here I am trying to pitch in with the documentation. Yeehah. —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 07:53 Z

I ran into that bug Jeff Q mentioned for the first citation. My compromise to work around that was to put the opening curly brackets on the first line for the first citation only:

<ref>{{
cite news ...

I thought it was already fairly clear, at least by example that the refs should go immediately after the punctuation with no space. My problem is whether to put spaces between several consecutive citations. My instinct is to not put any spaces, but the article on Zinedine Zidane has so many that I've decided to leave them all spaced out. Particularly check the Confrontation with Marco Materazzi section where I think not allowing line breaks within the multiple refs would just look awkward. For about a week after the World Cup final, this article was getting 150 to 250 edits a day and this is the result.

For most articles, however, I still prefer multi-refs to be connected together without spaces. Any thoughts on this? Canadiana 15:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe when there are up to eight citations for one sentence, I think it's time for some editorial decision-making. Perhaps you ought to consider changing to a format with separate notes and bibliography, so that only one citation can cover all of those references. The biggest series of citations seems to be a survey of news sources, so can a single note simply describe them in aggregate, and then list all of the references (can you put a bulleted list in a note)? Or perhaps consider paring down the list of references—are all of those really necessary? Can some foreign-language sources be eliminated? Are any of them syndicated versions of the same stories? —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 16:18 Z

It is possible to combine multiple citations in the same reference. Some of the refs in Hezbollah use a bulleted list. Gimmetrow 17:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that sentence started out with eight citations. It probably started out as several sentences that later got edited into one. Anyway, with the furious pace of editing and the outrageous claims that were being made with little or no evidence, I'm just thankful that it has proper references, even if there are a little too many. There was a debate about which sources are the most trustworthy, so I think that some multiple references are certainly justified. I think it's still a little too soon to do too much editing on this section of the article, and I don't have time to see if any of them are syndicated versions of the same stories, but the bulleted list idea is a good one. I'll work on that when I get time. Canadiana 18:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Distracting highlights

The highlights are like big searchlights pointed at my eyes as I try to read this guideline. Perhaps we can tone them down, like below? —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:11 Z

Example

According to scientists, the Sun is big,<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun.", page 23. Academic Press, 2005</ref>
but the moon is smaller.<ref>Smith, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 46(78):46</ref>

==Notes==
<references />

New references format

Is the references form at new references format policy? Why is it being "pushed" on the Wikipedia: Community Portal? SteveMc 00:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the {{ref}}/{{note}} system used in conjunction with Harvard refs, and I've seen it used to separate "notes" from pure citation "references". While the cite.php system has some advantages (and some disadvantages), I thought it was somewhat controversial to change an entire article from ref/note to cite.php without prior consensus. In fact the ref/note templates say cite.php is not mandatory. Gimmetrow 02:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Cite templates

I added to the disadvantages section: "Incomaptible with citation templates like {{cite conference}}, which encode reference meta-information in a computer-friendly form." I was referring to citation templates. If I try to move the source text (the invocation of the cite template) into a <ref>...</ref> pair, it gets all screwed up when it renders. I assumed this was just a current limitation. Then, on my talk page, Gimmetrow wrote: "I saw your addition at WP:FN about a bug with cite conference. I looked at Sanitization and didn't see an obvious problem. Can you explain what the problem is, maybe it can be fixed easily?" So maybe I'm missing something? --DragonHawk 02:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I put in the cite templates for 4 of your refs, and I don't see the problem. (Note: I am not saying you should use them, and you are entirely welcome to revert back to how you had it. I just wanted you to point out the problem so I know what you are referring to.) Gimmetrow 02:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, apparently I'm on crack. I swear it didn't work when I tried it. I'll remove my comment from this project page. Thanks, User:Gimmetrow. --DragonHawk 03:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Why, god, why?

"N.B. This format is not mandatory; editors are free to use a different method. See How and where to cite sources."

Why is it not mandatory? Why do we even have a manual of style if we don't even prescribe its use? Stevage 16:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Why do we allow so many different styles? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Help! Footnotes gone crazy!

In the entry for Bodhidharma, the numbering starts at 32 and the list of references repeats itself.
JFD 19:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm puzzled too. It looks fine in preview and history versions, and sometimes immediately after saving an edit. Gimmetrow 20:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's happened again at Gunpowder. It's not me, is it? This has never happened before. (And no, that's not something I have to tell women.)

JFD 20:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts.

JFD 20:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I see it too. Surprisingly, even with this version the footnote was repeated twice! (It's not visible in the history-directed version, even the current version is OK if viewed with an oldid link). Gimmetrow 21:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be effecting most or all articles after they are edited. Shaolin was fine, I changed one thing and the footnotes are now repeated. This suggests something separate from the article has changed, that is only incorporated when the article is saved. What could that be? Gimmetrow 21:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It keeps happening at Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy IX as well. ~ Hibana 22:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm having issues on the Jim Butcher and Jensen Ackles articles, too. It shows two of every named reference. - Debuskjt 22:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's happening on every page with references. If you edit it and save it (even if it's not to change a reference), it comes back with two of every reference. It looks fine in preview. - Debuskjt 22:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Totally messed up. Other articles that have just been edited (like Final Fantasy V) look fine to me as long as I don't edit them, but as soon as I edit them, I see the double references. If I log out and view them, I don't see the double references. If someone makes an edit after me, I don't see the references. Anyone know what's going on? - Debuskjt 22:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure yet why it's happening, but a purge seems to fix it. In order to do that, look at the page normally, then add a ?action=purge at the end of the url. I've done that to all the pages I've edited recently, and they all look correct now, at least to me. Does Bodhidharma start numbering at 1 now? (I'm surmising that articles are not being "purged" currently when saved.) Gimmetrow 01:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Bodhidharma starts numbering at 1 now.

Thank you.

JFD 01:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! The footnotes on Triggerplant appeared to have the same problem. I wonder what's going on... Well, thanks anyway for the quickfix solution. --Rkitko 05:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Storm-petrel was doing it to. Thanks for the tip. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Also being discussed at (and several sections above) Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Solution to problems with footnotes and references. (SEWilco 14:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC))

It worked yesterday, but ?action=purge is failing me today at Jaguar. Any news on when the overall problem will be addressed? I have added dozens of individual notes to this page and it's now practically impossible to search through the refs to double-check info. Marskell 09:46, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems OK now. The bug is supposedly fixed according to bugzilla:7162. Gimmetrow 11:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Template FootnotesSmall

Should this guideline continue to link to {{Footnotes}} and {{FootnotesSmall}} ? The CSS class seems preferable, as it is consistent over WP. I think either the guideline should not mention the other ways (which lead to inconsistency), or the templates should be edited to contain the CSS codes. Gimmetrow 10:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as there are more than 1,000 pages that use this template, I think we could utilize bots like Tawkerbot (not 2) for auto-replacing. As the template is unnecessary, template being editted to contain CSS codes may further the use of this template. I vote for replacing all instances of this and deprecating although it may not be as easy as it sounds. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 15:00 (UTC)

My idea was to make {{Footnotes}} equal <references/> and {{FootnotesSmall}} equal <div class="references-small"><references/></div>. In fact, the latter could be quite helpful. In any event, some bot could subst them anytime. Gimmetrow 15:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

There's not much problem with that. Except, it's not much easier to use the template and it may be a bit easier on the servers (I have no proof behind that, so feel free to say I'm wrong). There's already the handy insert thing at the toolbox, and I think once the bot is done substituting them, we can get rid of the template. (Much the same point as the last reply) —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 15:40 (UTC)

I've tried changing FootnotesSmall to use the references-small class, but there are reasons this cannot be done yet. Mainly that it reduces to 92% while ref-small does 90%. I've tried to edit WP:FN to match how the templates actually work. The template was on TfD in April, and a few editors found it helpful. It's not a bad shorthand.

Another concern is that {{FootnotesSmall}} can take an optional parameter, and there are articles which use it with 100% (ie, no resizing), so it can't just simply be replaced with the class references-small. This came about because of substs of {{Footnotes}} - is that going to be a problem for a bot someday? Gimmetrow 16:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(moved in to avoid right-side conversation, :D) On the last note there, I'm not sure whether this would be successful in Wikipedia, but why not introduce a standard size everyone can follow. Although 92% and 100% are widely used, this template could also allow for misuse making it a lot smaller (not that there are many). I wish we could get some other editors to comment on this. We could, on the other hand, take a bot with some options and replace the 92% (or 90%) one with <div class="references-small"> <references/> </div>, while putting the plain old <references/> for the 100% ones. —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 18:26 (UTC)

FYI, the templates currently allow only 100% and 92%. Any option other than 100% becomes 92%. Gimmetrow 18:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict, repeating Gimmetrow) Both {{FootnotesSmall}} and {{subst:Footnotes}} are "foolproof" in that sense, no other resizings than 100% or 92% can be operated with them:

• {{subst:Footnotes}} makes 100% for whatever other value for the parameter than 92%
• {{FootnotesSmall}} makes 92% for whatever other value for the parameter than 100%

so neither of these *templates* could allow for misuse in the sense you describe. --Francis Schonken 18:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(in between Schonken and Gimmetrow) Didn't know that it only took 2 options. Sorry about that, but regardless, read the "how to replace" section anyways —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 23:27 (UTC)

You removed mention of <div class="references-small"><references/></div>. It's been in the text for ages (early June). Exactly what do you say is not consensus? That footnotes may be small? Or that this is a way that many editors make small footnotes when they want them? Gimmetrow 19:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Removing this is quite senseless; class="references-small" is a de-facto standard among recently promoted FAs, for example. It's just as legitimate a method of resizing footnotes as the templates are (and perhaps somewhat more flexible for more advanced work); there's absolutely no reason why it should not be documented here. Kirill Lokshin 20:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Remove what? I think we were working towards implementing <div class="references-small"><references/></div> and somehow lowering the use of the Footnote templates, we just need to discuss how. —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 23:24 (UTC)

Footnotes missing

I've pretty familar with footnotes so this is not a matter of the top footnote not being described. They worked fine and still do work fine if viewed via history (even the current). Please take a look and advise. FairTax is missing 1,2, & 4. Go to the same page via history (current version) and the footnotes are fine. What's up?! I've never seen this problem before and I've tested it on two computers. Morphh 17:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

See above; fixed with a ?action=purge Gimmetrow 17:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

That did it - Thanks! Very Weird - Hope they fix this bug. Morphh 17:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla:7162 fixed. Mangled articles may require another edit to be repaired. (SEWilco 15:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC))

Same problem with Bosnian_pyramids, but can't get them to appear using purge. Suggestions? --Ronz 00:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Different problem. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Gallery tag messes up references refers to bugzilla:6164. (SEWilco 02:53, 11 October 2006 (UTC))

jump-back bug?

In McCarthyism there are a lot of footnotes, some of them using <ref name=whatever>. The feature wherein clicking on the "^" or the "abc etc." of a named ref isn't working in all cases, and I can't see that anything's wrong with the way the refs are written. To see this in (non)action, click on a footnote in the McCarthyism#Victims of McCarthyism section and then try to hop back up to the main text. Most (but not all) of the jump-back links don't work. KarlBunker 19:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

(Two minutes later) Aaaand now it IS working. Same article, no edits since it wasn't working... Oh well; never mind, I guess :-) KarlBunker 19:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Again not working for me (wasn't working yesterday either). Waiting for it to sort itself out again. -- Миборовский 02:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Note that as as the case yesterday, purging the cache will fix the bug. However, it's painfully slow for graphic-intensive articles (like the one I'm writing now). -- Миборовский 02:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Two column forms

I'm seeing these codes fairly often now:

• <div class="references-2column"><references/></div>
• <div style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"><references/></div>
• <div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"><references/></div>

What do editors think about mentioning them here as options? Some browsers don't display them as two columns. Gimmetrow 21:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but nothing's lost if they don't, right? I don't see the harm. JulesH 09:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this a guideline?

Hi, I'm wondering if the editors of this page consider this to be a full guideline. The tag at the top is different from more accepted guidelines, and that makes me wonder. Also, this page notes that it is entirely optional. Guidelines are not "optional" per se, but are flexible. This really doesn't look like a guideline to me. However, if it really really is a guideline one thing i'm proposing is that you use the Template:guideline, rather than the tag you have now. Please discuss it here (i'll be posting this message on other pages that have this same tag). Thanks! Fresheneesz 20:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

• Well spotted, a how-to page is not a guideline. I suppose some people might be interested in adding this to the MOS, but then this page should first list a consensual standard of some sort. >Radiant< 10:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

This guideline is "optional" because the use of footnotes is optional. I object to the removal of the guideline tag. Gimmetrow 10:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

For reference: see prior discussion at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/archive2#"How-to guideline" template (December 2005). For my opinion, that hasn't changed since that discussion then. The "consensus" was complete then (... well, with only two people taking part in the talk then, it was of course easy to have a consensus). --Francis Schonken 11:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Spacing of multiple references

Sometimes a phrase has multiple references. While they could be combined into one note (using a bulleted list), many editors keep them separate so the individual references can be named and reused, and it seems many editors put a space between each reference mark.^{[1] [2]} For some window size, this will cause the ref marks to split on two lines, or produce a floater at the end of a paragraph. ^[3][4] This guideline says that the ref marks should come after puncutation with no spacing; I would like to add that this applies to additional references too, so that notes don't look like 1/2 or 3/4, but like this.^[5][6] Gimmetrow 14:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

"Notes" versus "References" section title

Regarding the How to use section:

Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be generated here.

The Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Notes differentiates between "Notes" and "References" sections—something with which I am in agreement. I would like to, if possible, change the above line changed to read

Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be generated here.

to conform to this, in order to reduce confusion, and to provide a more definite guide. Comments? DocWatson42 05:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• I believe there are useful distinctions to be made between references, notes and footnotes which could lend more consistency to Wikipedia, whether or not those consulting it are aware of them: "references" as in its academic use (to cite books, journals, papers, etc); "notes" for notes immediately below e.g. tables within articles; and "footnotes" as in those (usually numbered) notes found at the bottoms of pages. Currently cite.php uses "references" and "ref" in the sense of the latter, so I'd suggest this was amended to "footnotes" and (say) "fnote" along with the direction to use the heading "Footnotes" for the section where the list of footnotes is generated. The guidelines/policy could then reserve "references" and "notes" for the other uses described. Regards, David Kernow 02:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• These sections are used various ways in different articles. Some use the cite.php refs for additional text expansion ("footnotes"). Others use cite.php refs for "short" citations and have a separate bibliographic section for the full reference. Sometimes footnotes are combined with short citations, or the footnotes are kept distinct using the {{ref}}/{{note}} system. Yet other use cite.php refs for full bibliographic references, possibly with or without separate footnotes. All these variations are rather difficult to capture in one section name. Gimmetrow 15:39, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Despite the name, <ref>...</ref> tags can contain either notes or just references, and therefore can generate a list of either. I think it's important to make this clear in the text, and refer the editor to the technical details elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2006-09-16 16:00 Z

Thanks for your thoughts, Gimmetrow, Michael. Might cite.php be programmed to interpret any/all "<ref>"/"<references />", "<note>"/"<notes />" and "<fnote>"/"<footnotes />", so no one use might appear to be favo/ured of any other...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 03:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the distinction between notes and references. As we're beginning to get increasing numbers of notes citing specific pages, we might consider recommending short title style (e.g., <ref>Butzer, ''Science in Carolingian Times'', p. 195.</ref>) for repeated notes citing different pages of the same book, leaving the full bibliographical details in a reference list sorted by author and title. (The last differs from a reference list for Harvard parenthetical references, (Butzer 1993; 195) which are sorted by author and date.) --SteveMcCluskey 17:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Is or might there be any consensus or will to widen cite.php's scope, however...? (i.e. add "<note>"/"<notes/>" and "<fnote>"/"<footnotes/>"...?)  David (talk) 01:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me, at least for 'note'. Not sure about the necessity for footnote, as all notes will by definition be footnotes...? JulesH 09:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess so, but some folk prefer <references>, some <footnotes>, some <notes>, ...  Regards, David (talk) 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Would be neat if <ref>/</ref> produced numbered comments, and <note>/</note> produced lettered comments (a-z, then aa-zz). Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of parallel cite.php for ref/notes etc with numeric/lettering previosuly discussed (without any input from the software writers) - see archive Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/archive4#Poll where discussion over 3 systems: references, bibliography and footnotes (I had suggested refB, refN and refR) David Ruben ^Talk 00:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Guideline for formatting when there are general references?

How should I handle the case where a page has an existing general reference that covers a large amount of content scattered throughout the page, but a specific reference needs to be inserted for a fact that isn't covered by it?

Example here: Microdot

Any suggestions? Everything I can think of trying just looks stupid. JulesH 09:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Why can't you cite the specific fact to a specific reference using your system of choice (Harvard, footnote or html link)? Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes and References

Given that the <ref> and <references /> tags can be used for both references and additional-information (non-referential) footnotes, is there a manner in which the system can be used for both whilst having separate sections for the two distinct uses?

That is, can we have separate "footnotes" and "references" sections, both using the <references /> mechanism?

I appreciate that this has likely been answered somewhere already; if so, please point me to the appropriate document. Thanks.

Fourohfour 13:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think the cite.php technology currently supports distinct sections using the same mechanism. There are various proposals which would allow cite.php to support such a thing, see Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes/archive4#Poll. Editors who want to separate text expansions from simple citations typically use the cite.php system for the citations, and the {{ref}}/{{note}} system with letters for the text expansions. Another option is to use Harvard for citations (see WP:CITE), and cite.php for text expansions. Gimmetrow 15:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Does combining {{ref}}/{{note}} and cite.php on the same page work? Wikipedia:Footnotes#How to use says "The new format cannot be mixed on a page with the old Footnotes3 format—you must pick one or the other." There's a list article that currently has Footnotes3-style text expansions that I'd like to add cite.php citations to, but I'm wary of doing the work if the two systems are fundamentally incompatible. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be confusing to have two systems using numbers. The basic ref/note uses numbers, so in that sense it is incompatible. However, ref/note contains options to use symbols other than numbers, plus the {{ref label}}/{{note label}} templates. For a recently-featured article using both ref/note and cite.php, see Alcibiades. Gimmetrow 19:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Gimmetrow! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Aesthetic Issues

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, an FAC I have in the process, has a pretty well-referenced reception section. However, I'm worried that some might object on basis of ugliness (I've already got a neutral on it). What's the precedent? Should I investigate alternative ways of referencing, or does precedent favor utility over appearance? --Zeality 16:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. --Zeality 14:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

ref tags and Cite.php

Is it true that

• most writers who read this page just want to know how to write a footnote ASAP?

• writers do not need to know about the implementation underneath the ref tags (except to see the name so they won't get confused and think it's something different if they see Cite.php mentioned elsewhere)?

• writers certainly don't need to know the implementation (MediaWiki) under the implementation (Cite.php) of the only thing they need to know (ref) to get the job done?

Thanks.

TH 03:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would anyone who goes looking for WP:FOOT ever expect to end up at WP:Footnotes?

Kirill,

I don't undertand. Why would anyone who goes looking for WP:FOOT ever expect to end up at WP:Footnotes?

Is there any connection except an etymological connection (unimportant for our purposes) between foot and footnote?

Isn't the connection between foot and any form of football a thousand times stronger than any connection between foot and footnote?

Why not just redirect from WP:FOOT to WWikipedia:WikiProject Football and get Footnotes out of the way?

TH 19:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Umm, because WP:FOOT has always redirected here, and thus anyone using it expects that? (In any case, etymological connections are perfectly valid; shortcuts are a convenient shorthand—for which "foot" is quite suitable for "footnote"—rather than something with a deep meaning to it.) Kirill Lokshin 20:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Kirill,

I've seen you make stronger arguments than that.

Could you answer the rest of my questions?

Bottom line: since the connection foot-football is 1000 times more likely than foot-footnote, why don't we redirect WP:FOOT to Wikipedia:WikiProject Football, and there we can say -- WP:FOOT redirects here; you may also be looking for Wikipedia:Footnote --  ?

TH 20:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you offering to correct the many incoming links to WP:FOOT (which most certainly are not referring to football)? I don't particularly care where the shortcut points to in the long term—although common sense suggests that major guidelines ought to get priority over individual WikiProject pages, because they're far more likely to be linked to in conversation (and thus need the shortcut)—but you can't simply switch the target of a long-standing shortcut on a whim. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, now I see. I thought FOOT->FOOTNOTE was a connection we were expecting to find in the mind of the populace at large. But now I realize it's one of these arbitrary WP shortcuts for quick-typing.

Thanks.

TH 21:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Just as arbitrary a shortcut as WP:BALL or WP:SOCCER. (SEWilco 03:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC))

Right -- thank you both, KL and SEW. I got off on the wrong track and misunderstood this for a day or two.

I think I got off on the wrong track because in some countries, so I've heard, they use the word "foot" to mean what Americans call soccer.

TH 04:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)