User:Id4abel/citationformatting

Why use sfn for citations instead ref tags?
While ref tags are more familiar, shortened footnotes offer more flexibility so that editor with conflicting objectives can get a solution that satisfies both editors. Ref tag use lead to complaints about how the ref tags force page numbers to be rolled into one giant, repeated citation and people could not figure out which page goes with which use of the reference. The only way to solve that using ref tags would be to repeat each and every reference over and over with different page numbers. This would completely defeat the purpose of named citations, which would likely lead to multiple edit wars with both sides having valid complaints.

Shortened footnotes let you have a reference that can be cited many times, yet have different page numbers for different citations all while using the same reference over and over again. More efficient and easy to understand for the reader.

This at first seems like more work for the editor, but since sfn automatically links to the reference, sfn is less work than trying to keep track of where the full ref tag is and where all the repeated ref tags are. Rather than having references all over the place, the references are collected at the end. References all in the References section in order by author then by date are many times easier to find and work with. Inside the article text all you need is, then let the automatic linking do the work.

Shortened footnotes also accommodate multiple citations rendered as one footnote number. There were complaints that several citations next to each other increases reading difficulty, which is true. Easy enough, delete several perfectly valid citations. Aside from the obvious argument that deleting perfectly valid citations is the opposite of what Wikipedia is supposed to be about, another worry is that maybe one day one or two citations could today be reliable, yet later turn out to be unreliable sources. Stephen Glass comes to mind. With many citations for each claim, no problem, just delete the ones now found to be unreliable and the claim remains because it still has other reliable sources already in place. The people who want only a single footnote for readability get that, and the people who want multiple citations to ensure reliability get what they want at the same time. Everyone wins.

Shortened footnotes instead of ref tags
Shortened footnotes look more like computer code than ref tags, but they are really just a name and a date:,  if the source has a specific page number for this claim, or  if the citation refers to more than one page of the source. The reference at the end is the same as what gets used for ref tags, with the addition of ref=harv added in. That is because these things were originally called Harvard style. The reference looks like:. The server will automatically match up the last and year of the reference with the last and year of the citations.


 * Example:


 * Template:

More than one work in the same year
Easy enough for books, but journalists are going to have more than one source with their name on it in a year. This is why the reference section is sorted by author then by date. The first reference of the author gets an "a," the second a "b," and so on like and. To be extra fancy, you can add "authormask = —— " to the second reference, but that is not required.


 * Example:


 * Template:

Explanatory footnote or nested citations
Maybe you want to explain something in a footnote or need a citation within a citation. No problem, use a nested reference.


 * Example:


 * Template:

Multiple citations rendered as one footnote number
To prevent the deleting of several perfectly valid citations you will want multiple citation collected into one footnote so the text is easy to read. If you prefer, and this is far less complicated, just use the explanatory footnote (nested citations) technique. refn then a series of sfn. Problem solved.

Another option is to use sfnm to get multiple sources in a single footnote. Not so bad for two authors,. Once I figured out that 1a1 means first citation – author – first author, 1y means first citation – year, 2a1 means second citation – author – first author of the second citation, and 2y means second citation – year this went a lot faster. Why 1a1 instead of just 1a? Many references have multiple authors and coauthor= in the reference code will not work. Instead, the reference has last1=, last2=, last3=, … this allows for the more complex:

The first citation has one author and a page number, the second has two authors and many page numbers, the third has one author and one page number. Granted, this is starting to look like computer code so feel free to use refn sfn, sfn, sfn as it will produce the same results but will be a lot less complex.

Better?
Shortened footnotes solve several problems and the vast majority of citations are going to look like either or. Abel (talk) 16:33, 2 February 2013 (UTC)