Help talk:Footnotes/Archive 1

Formatting
Having used footnotes in this form for the first time today, I think I'd prefer large ref numbers. If we aim to massively increase the number of references then a numbering system which - as this does - ruins the leading in the text is not ideal. Although the ref numbers that are the same size as the rest of the text is unorthodox I think it looks very neat on the screen. --bodnotbod 17:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Revert-warring
There has been some revert-warring on the help page (17 May 2006), a report of that has been moved to Help talk:How to use Cite.php references --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Fate of Help:How to use Cite.php references
Decision process (aka vote) currently going on at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:How to use Cite.php references --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Previous content of Help:Footnotes
was moved to Template:Ph:Footnotes

I propose to move that content (and edit history) that was moved to template: namespace, back to help: namespace, for instance to help:Footnotes by templates. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The bigger picture: use of "H:", "Phh", "Ph" and other related templates in Help namespace
The way I see it the using "H:", "Phh", "Ph" (and other templates) for managing Help: namespace pages has some advantages for those help: pages that are not well maintained, i.e. have no people attending them (on their watchlist etc.) - in that case people like Omniplex can maintain quite a lot of them without much of an effort.

Disadvantages include:
 * Usually crappy layout;
 * I second the idea that "help:" namespace pages give practical help for the ordinary non-technically-experienced user/editor, and so are primary a tool for enhancing wikipedia's usability. While the H:/Phh/Ph/... system relies on copying content from meta - which can be user-friendly, but as easily can be very technical - the H:/Phh/Ph/... system can be a usability setback.
 * The H:/Phh/Ph/... system is not very supportive of non-technical users writing easy-to-understand help descriptions, so often gets in a loop of not being helpful.
 * The H:/Phh/Ph/... system can have problems in indicating en:wikipedia-specific policy/guidelines. Usually that happens in the Ph template, but then you can get contradictions between the help displayed in the first sections of the help page and the nth section of that same help: page that gives a different instruction (at least, again, confusing the user).
 * The desirability & content of the Phh:Reader template (to which most of the Phh templates redirect) completely elude me.

Placing the help:footnotes page in this bigger picture:
 * There are people volunteering to do the maintenance on this help page (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Ph:Footnotes&action=history - contains "maintainance" history of this page prior to it being moved to template namespace); no need to use the "fall-back" scenario of the H:/Phh/Ph/... system.
 * Note that implementing the H:/Phh/Ph/... system on this page, has repeatedly erased the interwiki-link to nl:help:voetnoot, a page for which I accidently do some maintenance too. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Whilst I don't understand or agree with some of your arguments, such as meta pages being a "fall-back" for Wikipedia pages. I completely agree about Phh:Reader. For some reason blank templates seem unacceptable! The page it links to Help:Help also seems to somewhat duplicate Help:Contents. Just because it exists on meta doesn't mean it needs to exist here!


 * I think many of these meta pages come from Wikipedia originally, though many are too technical or verbose. If we were to drop the meta pages (like Wikibooks), we would need at least some recreated as Wikipedia pages. To achieve this, it would be logical to refine the meta pages. It would be even more logical to improve the meta pages, so they benefit all projects using them. Ultimately, rather than cutting and pasting, it would be better to transclude the pages, so they perform in much the same way as images from Commons (I know this would increase server load - but ultimately it is the right thing to do).


 * Btw. interwiki links can be placed on the Ph template with tags (so they don't show up on the Ph template). See Template:Ph:Edit summary. This means they don't need to be protected in the Help: page. -- Gareth Aus 00:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mbeychok's issue
I received an e-mail from Mbeychok, with following content


 * Francis:


 * I left the following message on your user Talk page almost two days ago, but have not had a response ... so I thought I would send it via this Wiki email.


 * Regards, User:Mbeychok


 * == Cite.php in Meta version is not the same as in Wikipedia version ==


 * Francis, I don't want to get between you and User:Omniplex. However, there is a problem:


 * Where my simplified writeup on how to use Cite.php was incorporated into Help:Footnotes it works very nicely.


 * But, where it was incorporated into m:help:footnotes it does not work because the Meta version of Cite.php still uses a vertical arrow instead of a caret ... and it uses 1.1, 1.2. 1.3, etc. instead of a, b, c, etc. for multiple use of the same references.


 * That difference really should be resolved somehow.- User:Mbeychok

This seems an issue to be resolved at meta to me, probably cite.php --Francis Schonken 10:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

What next?
"If" (but I don't want to run ahead of the vote result) Help:How to use Cite.php references stays, and "if" the Help on footnotes-by-templates is moved to help: namespace again, I'd propose to keep this a user-friendly help page, by making two main section headers, one for an *inclusion* of the content of Help:How to use Cite.php references, one for an *inclusion* of the content of the old footnotes-by-templates help. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The vote resulted in "redirect", that's what I tried first. Good result, because we obviously agree that its former content is better than most of the former content here. Back from 4 to 3 pages.
 * The next step should be to get the wanted content on the master help page, back from 3 to 2 pages. Details TBD, at the moment the difference is the missing cite.php "synopsis". That's helpful for those who have already used it and only forgot the precise "ref"-syntax.
 * Independent point, if you want Template:Ph:Footnotes as Help:Footnotes/3 move it, the inclusion will still work over a single redirect. I don't see the point, the edit history is preserved as is, but in theory it's possible, and "footnotes/3" as pagename makes sense.
 * The minor technical difference between cite here an on Meta is interesting, I'm too lazy to check Special:Version which site forgot to install the most recent version. It could be also a configuration issue. Actually I don't care, cite doesn't work with my browser at the moment, 5567.
 * Help master page system: Clumsy, but I've no better idea. Until January something styling itself as "Uncle G's bot" did the copy and paste. Doing it manually is odd, but better than different help pages on different projects for the same technical topic. The Ph-add-on is sometimes useful, Phh rarely. Meta has only Ph.
 * Interlanguage links for help pages are maintained on Meta, click +/- at the bottom of m:Help:Footnotes and add your language, ready. Just edit the master page and copy it back. Or anything with that effect. --&#160;Omniplex 03:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, did you have a problem with the present content of help:footnotes? I mean, I see a lot of innuendos in your comments above (for example, your assertion that interwiki-links are *also* handled at meta, which is no argument pro nor contra to have interwiki-links in help:footnotes at en:wikipedia) - but I didn't see *arguments*. Also the fact that Uncle G apparently has left en:wikipedia is an innuendo for which I don't see what basis it gives regarding a decision on the content of help:footnotes - maybe his bot operations were incompatible with what the en:wikipedia community wants, and maybe that was the reason why he left (I don't know, I'm only saying that Uncle G's departure is used as an innuendo without value in the present context). --Francis Schonken 09:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The new content was fine, therefore I copied it to the master page, and copied that back here. The only missing piece from the old content was or is the "synopsis" for a quick overview of the syntax. Anything else was 1:1 not touching a single comma in it.
 * I can't tell you how the help system as is was developed, I found out how it works, but don't know the complete history, maybe ask Patrick. Some details are obvious: One master copy with project-specific add-on templates is in theory a good idea. The few folks caring about these pages from different projects can join their forces this way. In practice it has some drawbacks, copy+paste isn't very elegant, as you've stated it destroys interlanguage links again and again. At the moment, we could improve it by managing such links on Meta.
 * In fact there is already a system on Meta, look at m:Template:H-langs:Footnotes (no translations) vs. m:Template:H-langs:Link (many translations). But this system is based on Meta's concept of "Help language = help namespace", with copy+paste we'll never get these H-langs templates here. But they are on Meta, good enough as far as I'm concerned. For a different example see the language links for ParserFunctions (again a template, only its name doesn't start with "H-langs:"), you can add links to any page in any language, the only restriction is one link per language.
 * So far the technical conditions (and differences between multilingual m: vs. monolingual w:en:) are obvious. For the political / historical reasons why the help system is as it is I've no idea, you're around here for some time, probably you know more about it. It's clumsy but simple. In doubt I like clumsy and simple better than elegant and complex. --&#160;Omniplex 10:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S.: Actually several links per language work in a H-langs-style template, but if they are displayed as say French French French that would be confusing.

Meeting 7/10
OK - I am going to call Jess and a couple of other recuriters and get some more info and also try and get a couple clients We are both going to work on the website Lets try and meet next week —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bbruckner (talk • contribs) 04:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC).

Since so many people (like me) forget the div class=references, I've added a quick and dirty template, to do it. Example at Oregon wine. --EngineerScotty 00:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

"citation needed"
Should also include template to indicate "citation needed", namely, in article. —DIV (128.250.204.118 10:50, 17 July 2007 (UTC))

Full details nolonger need be in 1st occurance of named ref
As reported on Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-13/Technology report:David Ruben Talk 03:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * When using named  tags, the one containing the contents of the reference no longer needs to be first (bug 5885).  This may help alleviate complaints that lengthy references clutter articles' wikitext and make it difficult to read.  Patch is thanks to Phil Boswell, committed by Andrew Garrett in r17382.

So lets try this out: : For 1st named empty ref, we later fully define. and here's the CSS for that:  See for example  of Drumclog railway station. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Multiple references to the same source
When a particular source is used just once in an article, you are guaranteed to be able to get back to the referenced sentence after viewing the source. When there are multiple uses of the source you have to work out whether the link you followed was from the 1st or 2nd, etc. use of that source.

For example at British National Corpus the first sentence has three supporting sources, [1], [2] and [3], Clicking on the [1] takes you to the references section where you can see it is Burnard and Ashton (1998), you can then follow the ^ link get back to the first sentence. Having clicking the [2] you have to choose from a b c to get back to where you were, in this case it's not rocket science to work out that the first sentence will be link a.

As it gets further down the article though it gets harder to work out. For example in the Spoken discourse under represented section, the first sentence is marked as being verified by source 6. Clicking the [6] you are taken to the references section where you learn the reference is Burnard (2002). After reading that you have to chose from a b c d e f g to get you back to the section you were reading. If you have read the entire article to this point and been noting each source you could possibly work out that it is link f you want. If you haven't read the entire article to this point and/or haven't been noting each source, then you are left with blind guessing. We must be able to do better than that! The only two solutions I can think of off the top of my head are either to include the usage letter in the inline reference,
 * "The proportion of written to spoken material in the BNC is 10:1.[6a]", or
 * "The proportion of written to spoken material in the BNC is 10:1.[6(a)]"

Which might get confusing if people are expecting to find source 6a but end up at source 6. The other alternative is to number the citations not the sources, so the references would either have lots of duplicates (a waste of space, potentially confusing and potentially making it seem like the sourcing is exagerated), or there would be several numbers for some sources, eg.
 * 1. 17. Brown (2000)
 * 3. 6. Schmidt (2003)
 * 4. 7. 14. 15. Smith (2008)
 * 5. Jones (1998)
 * 8. 9. 10. 12. 13. White (2010)
 * 11. Brown (2009)
 * 16. 21. Jackson (2012)

Which is bad and horrible in several ways.

Apologies if this has been discussed previously (I've looked but not found anything relevant) or if this is the wrong place. Thryduulf (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * There's not much we can do about this, it's mostly built in to mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php; a certain amount of customisation is possible (see Help:Cite messages) but this does not extend to altering [6] to either [6a] or [6(a)], so a change would need to go through -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:47, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Nothing will happen on Bugzilla without a consensus here that it's desired. Where do you suggest the best place to have that discussion is? Thryduulf (talk) 22:27, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It ought to be Help talk:Cite messages because that's where the talk pages of the relevant system messages (such as MediaWiki:Cite reference link) redirect; but that page has only eight watchers, myself included. You could post to WP:VPT, where I notice that there is an ongoing discussion related to cite.php. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:41, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, discussion now started at Village pump (technical) and advertised on the help talk page (and elsewhere).Thryduulf (talk) 00:30, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

On IE, after clicking on the superscript link to get to the note, you can then click the browser "back" button to return to where you were in the article. EEng (talk) 00:20, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The discussion continued for some time on the thread linked above (which is now archived at Village pump (technical)/Archive 113). In that it is explained why the "back button" option is not a universal solution. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:10, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Under the right circumstances (translation: used to work for me but I've somehow disabled it recently) when you click on an inline not number the browser jumps to that note and highlights it in color. Well, why don't we also highlight (or underline, or boldface) the backlink that takes you back where you came from? EEng (talk) 23:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Later thought
 * As already noted, the above discussion continued at Village pump (technical)/Archive 113. In that, you will find that your idea was suggested, and was also shown to be unfeasible: please see in particular my comments of 15:29, 16 June 2013 and 22:07, 16 June 2013 (first bullet). -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Unbracketed footnotes
Are unbracketed footnotes available? Just a thought. Bracketed footnotes clutter text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fluous (talk • contribs) 20:29, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If they're in the text, they're not footnotes but parenthetical referencing (as seen at Actuary), which are supposed to be bracketed to make it clear that they are not part of the running prose. True footnotes are not bracketed - see for example NBR 224 and 420 Classes. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:07, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that Fluous may have been asking about a way to remove the square brackets from the little blue numbers, which happen to be called WP:Footnotes here. That would produce  at the end of a sentence rather than.
 * I believe that this would require fairly serious work either with CSS changes or Javascript. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Documented at Help:Reference display customization. --  Gadget850talk 15:40, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It's easy to remove the square brackets for the whole site, all we need to do is to take the innermost pair (of three) out of MediaWiki:Cite reference link. It's possible for an individual user, using CSS (as stated by Gadget850 - it's the bit described as "Hide the brackets for the inline cite"); somewhat less easy to do for one specific page. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:17, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Can we make a formal proposal somehow to remove them for the English Wikipedia? Where could we take this? It's already been done for the French version (eg fr:Guerre_de_Trente_Ans). Just seems simpler, as we don't have brackets in anything else we read.  Wik idea  12:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The French haven't actually removed the two square brackets, they've hidden them. It may look simpler from the outside, but is more complicated on the inside. Here is fr:MediaWiki:Cite reference link in full:
 * whereas ours is:
 * What the French have done is apply  to the two  elements. On its own, this does nothing; but by also defining that class as   it hides the square brackets, and permits people who want to see them to use   which will reveal them. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What the French have done is apply  to the two  elements. On its own, this does nothing; but by also defining that class as   it hides the square brackets, and permits people who want to see them to use   which will reveal them. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What the French have done is apply  to the two  elements. On its own, this does nothing; but by also defining that class as   it hides the square brackets, and permits people who want to see them to use   which will reveal them. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, "the French" also put cites after before [corrected -- see below] punctuation e.g.
 * Il a affirmé posséder une photo du Cardinal Richelieu, jouer au badminton22.

which looks absolutely awful, so go figure. I have always thought that the bracketing made the superscripts a bit more visually intrusive than they need to be, but it's not as easy as just removing the brackets. (In coding the examples below, I faked Conventional ref syntax blah blah[1][2]Simulated using   (as are the remaining examples below) to show spacing is same blah blah⋅1⋅2 Precede each number with & #x22C5;  blah blah·1·2 Precede each number with & #x00B7;  blah blah•1•2 Precede each number with & #x2022;2  blah blah1 2 Precede each number with a plain everyday space blah blah12 Precede each number with   blah blah′1′2 Precede each number with & #x2032;

What I meant by "visually intrusive" earlier is primarily the horizontal gap in the text introduced by the footnote numbers. The last example above is surprisingly compact in that regard, and might be a good choice. However, I have no illusions about getting this changed as the default -- the resistance would be fierce, and a serious problem would be that piles of documentation / help pages would become obsolete. But it's something I've thought about on and off so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get it off my chest. EEng (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * When you put '"the French" also put cites after punctuation', I'm assuming that you meant '"the French" also put cites before punctuation'. It's us that puts them after (I don't doubt that the German, Spanish, etc. Wikipedias also have their own conventions); but WP:REFPUNC is specific to the English Wikipedia and does not apply to any other Wikipedia.
 * Anyway: you can test out some of your suggestions by adding some CSS to Special:MyPage/common.css; this will alter the appearance for you, but nobody else. To suppress the square brackets, use  which will give almost exactly the same effect as the French style (I say almost, because it won't move the refs before the punctuation). To add the   &#x2022; character before the numbers (inside the superscript but outside the link, also outside the square brackets if you didn't suppress them), use   the second one may be altered to   &#x00B7; (or any other character string) by amending the   to   etc. -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm not really interested in just changing it for myself, but improving the default for all readers (though as mentioned I doubt such a proposal could get consensus). But I did try it out. I dunno. It looks kind of funny without the brackets, probably because of the unfamiliarity of it. Well, back to editing. Thanks again. EEng (talk) 14:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

line breaks occurring in IE for refnotes
The endnote numbers are breaking lines (even though flush to other characters, no space) in IE. Look at Fluorine for some examples.

Can someone who has a bugzilla account please enter this into the system? If there is something we can do to fix this we should. IE is a substantial portion of users and it displays lots of other websites just fine. (If impossible, fine...but we should check what we can do on our end to display well in the default browser that most non-techie types use. I asked at Village Pump, but got brushed off.)

71.127.137.171 (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Very bad page. It needs urgent modifications
This page (Cite errors) is not ergonomic. It is an example of bad explanations. It is made only for the advanced persons but the advanced don't need help.

Somebody who have better skills on explanations has to explain again. It looks like the explanations of an ill person. Put a beginner to read and see the results !79.112.43.28 (talk) 08:06, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Undoubtedly there are problems with this page. But where should we start? How could explanations be improved? You need to provide examples. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:24, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Can ref group and ref name be combined? How?
First, is ref group restricted like ref name (if quotes are not used only letters and numbers -- no spaces)?

Second, is there a way to use ref name within a ref group, for example when the same explanatory note needs to be repeated? More text text text

Text text text More text text text


 * -- John of Reading (talk) 18:05, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't think of as a  : it's a  tag, with a   attribute. Similarly,  is not a   but a  tag with a   attribute. I believe that the   in constructs like   and   follow the normal rules for HTML attribute values: that is, they should be quoted unless they contain only letters, digits, periods and the hyphen-minus. A space outside quotes is always the delimiter between attributes - pipes are not used for this purpose. So,  is valid, as are  and, but if you use  it's taken as if there were two separate attributes:   and  . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Policy or guideline?
Someone keeps using  and the like in articles and ignores requests not to do so. Do we just have to change it and hope it sticks or can a warning be left on their talk page or what? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carolmooredc (talk • contribs) 06:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Please give examples of articles where this is being done. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, missed your response. I just found [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hans-Hermann_Hoppe&diff=582240891&oldid=582223469 another example] and this time I cannot even find the reference info in the whole html text when I click on edit. Yet it does appear in the references section. The editors have not responded to my requests on numbering, so I don't expect they'll explain what happened to reference text in edit screen either. I'm going to just add the actual text and maybe that will get an explanation, but probably just a revert with non-explanative edit summary. Thanks. User:Carolmooredc Face-surprise.svg  20:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, you mean that they have added the ref - that's simply the reuse of an existing ref which happens to be named   and is not normally a problem (see WP:NAMEDREFS). Ref names do not have to be meaningful, just unique. To find out why that ref name was used, we need to find the edit where the original ref (that is being reused) was added: it was ; notice that it was a VisualEditor edit - ref names consisting of a colon followed by an integer are something of a giveaway for VE, see e.g. VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 9. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Clarifying question: What you called WP:NAMEDREFS is the section "Footnotes: using a source more than once" which reads: Names for footnotes and groups must follow these rules:...Names may not be purely numeric... So it sounds like it was verboten at some point.
 * If it needs changing I think this needs to be a community decision because it's extremely frustrating to have to figure out what is going on even for editors of 7 years, not to mention newbies. I also wonder if people will just go and try to repeat using a number, not noticing if it's gone or what. Just too high tech.
 * Thinking about it, this page is a help page for a guideline. Therefore I assume it is guideline too. Will just check with citation page. User:Carolmooredc Face-surprise.svg  16:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, but it's not purely numeric. is purely numeric, so would indeed be invalid, but this is  - the colon is part of the ref name. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:44, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Names cannot be purely numeric because of technical issues. They don't work. It is not a policy or a guideline. They just don't work; see Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref numeric key. DrKiernan (talk) 08:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That a colon is not a number is a technicality. The point is ref names are supposed to help make editing easier, not so frustrating. User:Carolmooredc Face-surprise.svg  17:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

What is a good 'refname'?
It appears that the concern raised here regarding 'refnames' (as in "&lt;ref> name= xxxx>") is not really about numeric vs. non-numeric names, but more generally: what is a good 'refname'?

There do not seem to be any policies touching on this, but some guidance seem needed. This question is informed by the exactly analogous question of naming variables in programming. Several decades of discussion and experience there have converged on "meaningful" as the best criterion.

In regard of references I suggest that the most meaningful name for a ref tag is along the lines of a "short citation" (e.g.: "Smith 1976"), plus any specific location such as page number. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It is like choosing the name for a variable in a computer program; but a better analogy would be choosing the identifier for a named constant in a computer program. But the vast majority of Wikipedia editors are not programmers, many don't understand why some refs are named and others not, or that ref names, when used, need to be unique. Some believe that all refs must be named, or that names should be comprehensive (I've seen in the past). I often see people adding a ref to an article, but using the same name as a completely different ref that is already in the same article. They don't notice that in the reflist the content of one of them simply does not show.
 * For books I use author's surname, year (if the author alone would be ambiguous) and page, but unspaced so that they are not mistaken for the visible text of the ref. So for example Smith (2013), p. 12 For online sources I look for unique features in the URL, such as the website and a document number - see two that I did yesterday: - BBC is obviously the work/publisher/website, 25018895 is the last part of the URL and is probably unique within http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/; and  - MEN is the initials of Manchester Evening News, the newspaper/website; 6331800 is again the last part of the URL. Notice that I do not use quotes: these are unnecessary if there are no spaces, and the only characters used are letters, digits, the hyphen-minus and period.
 * But I diversify. The problem that started this section was not about hand-crafted refnames where almost anything goes. It concerned a refname that I demonstrated had originated with VisualEditor (VE) where users are not given the means for choosing a ref name. What happens is that the user wants to insert a ref, but not a new one - one that already exists in the article. They select from a list of existing refs, and if that already has a name, all well and good; but if it doesn't, VE makes up its own, and the user has no control over it. VE rules for choosing new ref names are simple - start with  and if that is in use, try     etc. until an unused name is found. If we wish VE to allocate more meaningful names, we need to ask the VE developers directly, initially at WP:VE/F but later at, since no discussion/guideline/policy on any other page is going to change anything that VE does. It's the same for other reference-generating tools. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I concur entirely. (One variation: for newspapers I find abbreviated name + date to be most useful.)


 * The fundamental issue here is that nearly all editors do not understand the need for identifiers to be meaningful, and not just to them, but to other editors. There needs to be guidance about this, for which this Help page is appropriate.


 * That VE is part of the problem — well, it would be nice if VE could become a shining example of how to do it better, but consideration of how well the VE team has taken feedback from the rest of the community leaves me under-motivated to explain it to them. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There's an open request for improvements to the general ref naming scheme in VisualEditor. Unfortunately, there are some significant restrictions, including the requirement that the naming scheme work in Wikipedias that do not use the English alphabet. If you've got ideas, then you can post them at VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Eventually, I hope that people using VisualEditor will be able to manually provide ref names according to whatever scheme they believe is sensible for the article, but there will always be a purpose to having an automatic system as a backup in case people don't choose to provide a sensible one manually. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:55, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "People", and I suspect especially those for which VE is supposed to be an easier, friendlier alternative, are not going to be manually overriding the automatic generation of refnames; that contradicts the rationale for VE. Your automatic system is as non-sensible as any people-generated scheme I have seen; it's sole arguable benefit is shielding "people" from the details of refnames. It is not difficult to think of a better system, but I leave that as a trivial exercise for the hyper-intelligent. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:31, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Refnames are visible in VisualEditor when you are re-using citations (see this screenshot), so there is value in having them be human-readable for all editors, not just people using the wikitext editor.
 * I agree that it is not difficult to think of a system that is more convenient for people writing in English, but the question is actually whether you can suggest a system that is independent of the editor's language—e.g., one that works equally well for English, Arabic, Javanese, and Chinese. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * So you made refnames less convenient in English (and other languages based on Latin or Greek characters) because you couldn't figure out how to do them in Arabic and Chinese? That is pretty lame. Alternately, since you can't devise a system that is language independent perhaps you should just abandon the effort. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, missed this discussion earlier and it would help to give more examples of good ones - and bad ones (like ). Your examples above are good. Carolmooredc (talk) 20:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It is like embedding ib in footnotes, the problem is that many editors do not think of the page they are editing as dynamic but still think in terms of paper. To people in that mindset it is obvious that the best names to use reflect the numbering of the footnotes as they appear when they see the output under "show preview" -- forgetting that in the future paragraph may be expanded with additional citation or moved about.

"". I do not think this is the appropriate place for such guidance. Although examples on this page should use meaningful names, guidance should be in WP:CITE otherwise we end up with the problem this page had before it became a help page, with guidance (sometimes contradictory) spread over two pages.

-- PBS (talk) 08:59, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I beg to differ. "Footnotes" (the topic of this page) is inherently the use of &lt;ref> tags, including named refs. And as the use of named refs requires a name, guidance should be here. If there is a problem with duplicate guidance — e.g., at WP:CITE — I think we should look at why it is duplicated there. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:51, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * This is not a guideline it is a how to manual. How to add a name is an instruction. What that name ought to be is guidance. The consensus was when this was converted from a guideline into a help page was that this should say how and CITE should say why.


 * I added some guidance on this to WP:CITE, some of it stuck some of it was removed. See what you think -- PBS (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I see. Well, this separation of how and what is a little unfortunate, as I doubt that people read both together. I think WP:CITE ought to have a slightly stronger statement that "author+date" is strongly recommended.  And even if this page does not fully explain why "author+date" makes a better refname (though a small overlap shouldn't be a problem), that should be used in the example. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

saludos!!!!! (Greetings)
Porque ase meses que no modifican Nada de esto??? Ba de parte de Gloria roman Macias ...por y para Gloria hernandez y familia ...Alfredo Roman Ruiz y Aurelia Macias Fernandez ...God bless Gloriaromanmaciashernandez (talk) 16:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC) [Google translation (Spanish assumed): Because ase months None of this does not change?? Ba from Gloria ... by roman Macias and Gloria Hernandez and Alfredo Roman family ... and Aurelia Macias Ruiz Fernandez] (translation added by &mdash; Makyen (talk) 21:17, 8 May 2014 (UTC))
 * From the Google translation it appears that you may have posted this on the wrong talk page. Did you intend for it to also be on Palacio de Bellas Artes where your other post was?
 * While it has been a long time since I studied Spanish, I believe the first sentence is better translated as "Why has there been no change in months?" However, that is just a guess. I am at a loss as to what the second sentence is really intended to communicate.
 * Please keep in mind that this is the English Wikipedia. While we desire to be helpful, English is the primary language here. Given that we will often need to use automatic translation if the information is not in English, please make sure that your sentences are clear, complete and not abbreviated. &mdash; Makyen (talk) 21:17, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * These look like pretty typical spelling errors from someone who speaks Spanish but never really learned to write it. "Ase" is "hace", "ba" is "va".  So a reasonable translation is probably, "Why hasn't any of this been changed for months?  It goes from Gloria M to Gloria H and family to Alfredo R and Aurelia F".
 * I have no idea whether this is a complaint about an article, about a request to change her username, or something outside the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Adding reference names
I take issue with the statement "You may optionally provide names even when the name is not required.". This adds unnecessary text for editors to wade through when editing an article, increases storage requirements unnecessarily, and is just bad practice. I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I'm not easily finding the discussion. I have found discussions that concluded that named references should not be added to articles that didn't already use them. (here and here); this should be made clear in this text, as well.&mdash;D'Ranged 1 talk 23:29, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Multiple references in a single footnote?
Anyone aware of articles that include multiple references within the same footnote, or any general consensus on doing so? In Featured or Good articles? --Ronz (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * See WP:BUNDLING. I don't think this is used a lot. --  Gadget850talk 20:06, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated.
 * Looks like it works best where the footnotes are separate from the references (eg WP:SRF). --Ronz (talk) 20:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It does. This is pretty common in humanities articles, less so in sciencey ones. FAC reviewers may complain if this is not done and there are many uncombined multiple refs. It is much easier if you don't use citation templates, just the basic . Then you can just put normal punctuation in. For FAs doing this, see most by my alter ego, User:Johnbod, plus many other humanities FAs. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:53, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * "Bundling" can be done several ways, about which WP:BUNDLING is unclear. Big difference whether it is full or short citations being bundled. Having multiple full citations in a footnote is so crowded that editors seem to instinctively put them into a list format, which leads to the not uncommon clunkiness of small bundles (lists) of full references scattered throughout the notes section.  So (as Ronz said) best done with the so-called "shortened footnotes". But these footnotes (or just notes) are shortened only because they are using a short citation (e.g.: Smith, 2001) instead of the full reference.  That all this is a little confusing is due to our general confusion of concepts and terms.
 * As to the original question re articles with "multiple references within the same footnote", see: Siletzia (GA), Seattle Fault (GA), Earthquake prediction, Chuckanut Formation (these are all scientific), Ambrose Channel pilot cable (technical). ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Visual Editor
VE uses a whole different way to include references and it can be confusing. See VisualEditor/Feedback. --  Gadget850talk 12:00, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Indicate the span that the citation applies to
You know how with Template:Citation needed span, you can indicate the specific span that you intend the {cn} to apply to? For example, ? Is there a way to do that with ref citations as well? If so, give me a link to the info? If not, discuss whether this should be created? Thanks, Quercus solaris (talk) 23:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Since the citation template will include an =, you need to specify the first unnamned parameter as 1=:

--  Gadget850talk 23:16, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that what is asking for was discussed quite recently at VPT. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Fascinating (re "quite recently at VPT"). Thanks so much for the link. The initial request there is exactly the same concept as I had in mind (whatever the implementation instance might end up as). I skimmed that discussion (the first half of it, anyway). Obviously implementations are technically feasible, given that Template:Citation needed span already implements the same concept for {cn}. My suspicion is that maybe 3 or 5 or 8 years from now it will have been implemented as a simple template call, just as Template:Citation needed span already has been. I guess I'll just wait till then. People point out "but later editors can carelessly break the relationship between ref and supported anchor text." But that argument is pointless, because that already happens now, anytime anyone edits anchor text with a ref citation near it. Anyway, thanks so much for the link, User:Redrose64. I'm glad I asked here. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Quercus solaris, I'm the editor who started that WP:VPT thread. In the last third of the thread, User:Makyen produced something that suits my needs. If you decide to give it a try, I'd be very interested in hearing how you get on. I think Makyen will help you to get started if anything's not clear about its use.

Example (hover your mouse pointer under the footnote marker):

Missing reference markup will no longer show an error
With the deployment of 1.24wmf12 on Jul 10, missing reference markup will no longer show an error; the reference list will show below the content. --  Gadget850talk 09:30, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * ...without adding a category, so there's no way to find and fix the affected pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:40, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be a good way to track this. Follow-on editors are going to be confused, it will not add a heading and it will often show in the wrong place. --  Gadget850talk 09:54, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This definitely needs a hidden maintenance category. Can we persuade the developers to add one? If not, individual wikis are going to have to program bots to make lists of these things, and someone is going to have to explain this odd situation on VPT every three months, which is non-ideal. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:16, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe I misinterpreted the deployment. Village pump (technical) shows this as "Future software changes" not 1.24wmf12. --  Gadget850talk 11:57, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Based on testing on test.wikipedia.org, test2.wikipedia.org, and MediaWiki something, presumably this change, is active on those sites to display references if there is no . A page with a missing references section does show the references at the end of the page.  Those sites are running 1.24wmf12.
 * However it does not show references in a preview of a section edit. I understood the reason that 129932 was abandoned was that this change would show references in section previews. &mdash; Makyen (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * --  Gadget850talk 23:27, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Now deployed. The automatic reference list is generated when reflist or is missing. The automatic reference list is not generated when there is a group; 'MediaWiki:Cite error group refs without references' is still triggered and an error shows. --   Gadget850talk 22:40, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I can confirm this. I just did a null edit on Wilderness Territory, which was in and was showing the red error message, and now it has a references list at the bottom, with no header. It does not have any sort of tracking category that shows that it still has a problem.
 * I can confirm this. I just did a null edit on Wilderness Territory, which was in and was showing the red error message, and now it has a references list at the bottom, with no header. It does not have any sort of tracking category that shows that it still has a problem.


 * This new feature also prevents erroneous edits like this one and this one from generating an error message or a category, leaving articles in bizarre states with no maintenance alert for gnomes. This problem really needs its maintenance category restored. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:12, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes. Our old friend is back to bite us. --   Gadget850talk 10:44, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Filed a report on this. This was not implemented for reference lists for groups. And upon consideration, articles with multiple reference lists are going to behave badly— need to test that. Issue are starting to be reported on the Help Desk, so I made an announcement on VPT. --  Gadget850talk 11:13, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
 * 67700 has been resolved. I presume it is running on the test wiki (It is not listed in the 1.24wmf13 change list and is listed on Tech News as a future software change). On the test wiki I added a category, but have not been able to put a test page into it. --  Gadget850talk 10:27, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Talk page problem
On talk pages which use references, and many do, all references now appear at the bottom. This is especially problematic because wiki custom is that new messages go to the bottom, and now the last message will often have confusing hanging references below it. At first look it will always appear, especially to people who do not know what is happening, that they should relate the references with whatever the latest talk message is.

Perhaps for talk pages, could there be automatic sectioning-off of the references? I have no comment about whether that would be best in all cases.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  16:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We no longer have namespace control over this. --  Gadget850talk 17:04, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * We have control to the extent of adding "Talk references" sections just to give these phantoms a home. (Though it occurs to me there has to be an explicit "reflist" or such so these phantoms don't go to roost on any subsequent sections.) Seems to me these changes were not adequately thought out. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:42, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think that separate refs sections are a good idea. If there's one for the whole page, it needs to go after the section(s) that have the s in them; this implies placing it at the bottom, with the inconvenience of moving it whenever a new section is created in the approved manner which itself will take us back to square one if that new section has s. Then, the section with the s might get archived, and since the section with the probably won't be datestamped, the archive bot will leave it alone. I think that it's better to put the  in the same section(s) that have the s, . -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:06, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * That is one of the reasons reflist-talk was developed. And yes you need an explicit reflist or variant to properly place the list which then disables the auto reflist.
 * If those of us who are knowledgeable about how works and is implemented here were consulted, then we might have had a simpler implementation. Frankly, we could have added the reference list markup by use of MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references with a bit of a to kludge to close the error class. --   Gadget850talk 01:00, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like this will be deployed with 1.24wmf14. --  Gadget850talk 15:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't be shy: having to explicitly add ref sections in Talk is a bad idea. But this new "feature" is a terrible idea. Kind of makes me wonder if more overview is needed. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:43, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Anyone can open a report on Bugzilla. Then a developer comes round and decides to fix something, but the desired fix is ill defined. I have no idea how "Page number attribute for  tags" would be implemented. --   Gadget850talk 23:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It appears that the styling of this automatic reflist has changed. It used to be a numbered list with reduced font size (90%?) - now it is a bulleted list with 100% font size. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:28, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not seeing this; User:Gadget850/1. Example? --  Gadget850talk 21:56, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * See e.g. . -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:17, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Or . -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:50, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Reported as - Cite: Markup before automatic reference list displays list style as unordered. See User:Gadget850/3 --   Gadget850talk 12:02, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * - Cite: Add namespace detection for automatically generated reference list --  Gadget850talk 15:13, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

AfD problem
If s are used in an AfD discussion, without a reflist explicitly defined, the references all float to the bottom of the log page where the individual discussions are all transcluded:. The refs from all discussions get listed together, unnumbered, and appear to be associated with the discussion that happens to appear last on the page. In, with a large number of refs, I attempted to address the issue by creating a reflist with a group. But this meant editing another editor's comments, and in any case this seems to be an uphill struggle. – Wdchk (talk) 06:09, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not specific to AfD - it can happen on any discussion page. There are two ways around it: either remove the  to leave the content of the ref exposed in the text (which will interrupt the flow), or add a, or  to the thread. Any one of these three will display all refs not previously displayed, so you need one per thread that contains refs; it needs to be after the last  of the thread, otherwise subsequent refs will drop into the reflist of the next thread. No "group" parameters are needed, and in fact, these will complicate matters because people won't understand the significance. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:18, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification that groups should not be necessary, if each individual discussion has its own . Yes, I did have a concern that using groups was over-complicated. The issue I still see though, is this: suppose discussion A has refs and (correctly) a reflist at the end, while discussion B has refs but no reflist. Editors working on the discussion B page currently see no error. However, when those two discussions get transcluded onto the same log page, the refs for discussion B presumably end up in discussion A's list (or at the end of the log page, depending on the relative order of the transcluded pages). Having the software silently attempt to fix the user error on discussion B's page really has just hidden the error by the time the page is transcluded. (I realize that most people here probably know this already, I just wanted to log the example.) – Wdchk (talk) 12:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Order of explanatory notes / citations
Hello,

I haven't seen anything about the order of explanatory notes and citations in the body of an article. vs
 * [nb 5][53]
 * [53][nb 5]

It's been my practice to use the second approach, but maybe that's my and some other's personal preference.

Is there a guideline about this?

Thanks!--<span style='text-shadow:0 -1px #DDD,1px 0 #DDD,0 1px #DDD,-1px 0 #DDD;'> CaroleHenson  ( talk ) 03:22, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Not as far as I know. Personally I would put the ref first if it supports the prior text but not the note, and last if it supports both text and note. If the ref supports the note only, it ought to go inside the note, but there are problems here, mainly connected with the MediaWiki software being unable to handle nested <ref ></ref> tag pairs. You don't say which article this is, nor which of several available systems is used to make the but I'm guessing that it's not  because that gives lowercase letters like . If the article did use, and the ref supports only the note, you can nest them like this: . See here for an example of a note ("the weight in working order") containing a ref, although that uses  instead of <ref ></ref>.-- Red rose64 (talk) 08:13, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Redrose64, I didn't know that there was so much to this (number of templates to form an explanatory note, etc.), wow! The article in question is Einar Jolin, and the notation type is  .--<span style='text-shadow:0 -1px #DDD,1px 0 #DDD,0 1px #DDD,-1px 0 #DDD;'> CaroleHenson   ( talk ) 13:35, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To make a ping that works, the target's user page, here User:Redrose64, has to be added in the same edit as your signature. More at Notifications. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:07, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, there are four in Einar Jolin, and they are shown as     Besides the three with refs after the note indicator itself, all four of these contain one or more references in <ref ></ref> which all seem to be displaying fine at Einar Jolin. Which one is giving trouble? -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:24, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Redrose64.


 * There wasn't a problem with any of them. I've always placed explanatory notes after citations - and I don't remember seeing it the other way around. So, I was just looking for clarification. Sounds like we're good! Much appreciated!--<span style='text-shadow:0 -1px #DDD,1px 0 #DDD,0 1px #DDD,-1px 0 #DDD;'> CaroleHenson  ( talk ) 14:36, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Footnotes ≠ notes
I'm not sure where to start the ball rolling on this issue, but this seems like the best place to begin. We really need to start using the general term "note" instead of the far more specific "footnote" when we actually mean the former.

Wikipedia has never had footnotes. There has only been endnotes (no traditional page structure). I wouldn't be a stickler for a brand of formality like this if it wasn't for the fact that "footnote" has become more or less synonymous with the actual meaning of "note". But really only on Wikipedia. The results are Wikpedia-exclusive examples of sub-sections with comments that can be either "Footnotes" or "Notes" that are sorted under "References" (Zog I of Albania), "Bibliography" (Passenger pigeon), "Notes and references" (John Plagis), "Notes, references and sources" (Jules Massenet, etc.

And there's the completely fictitious separation of definitions of the two terms of "commentary notes" and "reference notes" respectively. Which is which seems quite unpredictable, though: (1998 FA Charity Shield, Cyclura nubila, Aston Villa F.C.. Sometimes it's even in the same article: Nagato-class battleship.

Variation per se is not a propblem. I'm not singling out the examples as bad eggs or anything. The unpredictable and clearly erroneous definitions are problems, though. Nothing will likely ever be perfectly standardized on Wikipedia, but can we please at least rewrite our official instructions something along this example? The current solution could be summarized as "we know they're not footnotes, but we'll consistently refer to them as footnotes anyway". Which is pretty much saying that Wikipedians can define the meaning of terms that we didn't invent and that are still used elsewhere. It's a damned odd solution and quite likely a major source of much of the confusion we have now.

So can we try to adhere to what stuff actually means for non-Wikipedians and fix this once and for all?

Peter Isotalo 01:33, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Per the lead of this article: "In this context, the word "Footnotes" refers to the Wikipedia-specific manner of documenting an article's sources and providing tangential information, and should not be confused with the general concept of footnotes"
 * Per Note (typography): "Footnotes are notes at the foot of the page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter, volume, or entire work."
 * This is only one of several help pages that use the terms defined here, thus any change must be a coordinated update.
 * I don't like the term "footnote marker", but I gave up on that battle long ago. --  Gadget850talk 13:19, 1 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that we can all agree that (as illustrated by Gadget) "footnotes" and "endnotes" can be distinguished, and that, as Peter says, "footnotes" are not what we have here, and the use of that term is, strictly speaking, incorrect. As such I would be inclined to reform our usage. Yet I wonder: do we tend to use "footnote" because we understand it to be the place for comments and citations linked to from the text, where ever that place is, whereas "note" is too general, and used in other ways? Will long usage eventually confirm this particular meaning, just as we still "dial" telephones despite the lack of actual dials? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:23, 1 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree. There is only 1 page in an article, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to distinguish between footnotes and endnotes. They are footnotes because they numbered notes near the foot of the page. In web design the information at the very end is called a "footer", and that also seems like a natural adoption/adaptation of print terminology. --Margin1522 (talk) 00:27, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

(5) Footnotes: embedding references
This is pretty esoteric. I would suggest moving it to the end of the article.--Margin1522 (talk) 01:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

(2) Footnotes: predefined groups
I think this section could be skipped or shortened. notelist is used in about 8000 pages, so maybe we should explain that. But the transclusion count for Notelist-ua and Notelist-lr is only 438 and 92, respectively. I would suggest a short paragraph on predefined groups to conclude the previous "Footnotes: groups" section. Then move the markup examples for predefined groups to another page, maybe Help:Cite_link_labels. Add a cite to that page for people who want the details.--Margin1522 (talk) 01:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Help:Cite link labels is a very technical page and was never intended for novices, as noted in the lead notice. --  Gadget850talk 11:41, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a point. Perhaps we could start a new Help page to give a complete description of these obscure predefined groups. I volunteer to create it, with material taken from this page. --Margin1522 (talk)

Reusing named refs with specific quotes
In an article, we have one specific statement that is subject to IP reversions despite online sources clearly stating it. We want to have a group note that uses some of the existing citations, appeanding them with short quotes drawn from the various sources, so that the fact is indisputable. These sources all are being used in the article as named refs with the citation template system. While we could add the |quote= there, that quote doesn't apply across the rest of the uses of those sources so it might be confusing later.

I think right now we can cobble together a footnote (not citation) that makes these statements clear but is there a way to reuse a named ref and add in a quote parameter? I know that the page number thing is there for other cases, but this seems to be the only special aspect considered here. --M ASEM (t) 14:32, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Use in conjunction with, see e.g. LB&SCR A1X Class W8 Freshwater note &#91;a&#93;. That's got a  inside the note, but there is no reason why it couldn't be   -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:14, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That was my quick fix that works fine, just curious if there was a different, more integrated way. --M ASEM (t) 16:15, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This is the same sort of thing as with the more common request to use the same ref with different page numbers. Unfortunately making any changes at all to the code for Cite is a huge pain these days, because it has to be written once in PHP and then again in nodejs for Parsoid. Anomie⚔ 11:03, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * For an overview of the current methods, see Help:References and page numbers. --  Gadget850talk 11:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

(1) RefToolbar 2.0b
Since this is a Help page and not a documentation page, I think it could be reorganized to help new editors get up to speed quickly and encourage them to read the whole page. I have some some suggestions, which I'll post in separate topics for discussion.

RefToolbar 2.0b is a great tool and I think everybody should know about it. I would suggest moving it to the top of the article, right after the lead. There is a terrific video on RefToolbar/2.0, which we link to. But that page gets only about 20 page views per day, whereas this page gets 500. The toolbar is the easiest way to get up to speed quickly, so I think we should feature it. --Margin1522 (talk) 01:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Now I see that we already have a page called Help:Referencing for beginners, which is linked to hundreds of pages (perhaps thousands, how do you get link count?) via more references. That page has the video at the top and may be what beginners should read first. Perhaps we could mention it in the lead or hatnotes, instead of Fringe theories/Noticeboard. --Margin1522 (talk) 07:02, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Margin1522, there used to be a link to "Transclusion count" on Special:WhatLinksHere, but it's not there at the moment. I believe several tools broke recently.  Perhaps it'll be back soon.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I hope this gets straightened out, it would be handy. – Margin1522 (talk) 05:46, 18 October 2014 (UTC)