Talk:Leptothecata

The reference style for this article is cumbersome. The references should be place in tags using for multiple instances.PB666 yap 18:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I did this because
 * for the scientifically-minded user, alphabetically sorted reference lists are the "gold standard". Our literature does not use footnotes of course, as it is not written for online viewing first, but no scientific journal will publish a manuscript without a proper, ordered, neat reference list. A wild hodge-podge of sources strewn about with no sort of order whatsoever like in Lion makes the article essentially unusable as a proper scientific source, and such lacklustre referencing is one reason why Wikipedia has still too little credit among scientists.
 * several sources can be collated in one footnote
 * in sorce-rich articles, the problem of the last footnotes "bottoming out" is avoided - as there are the proper references following the footnotes, each footnote, if clicked upon, will be properly jumped to to appear at the top of the page.
 * it avoids code obfuscation. One of the guiding principles of Wikipedia is that ANYONE should be able to contribute to ANY article at ANY time ("You can edit this page now!"). Obfuscated code like in Archaeopteryx (click "edit") is not understandable to novice users and is very cumbersome to edit even for excperienced users, effectively violating the fundaments of Wikipedia. Shortened notes can be understood and edited intuitively by about everyone, even if the article has dozens of references, because the code is kept simple. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)