User:Phil wink/Notes and references

There are a bewildering number of methods and options for citing sources on Wikipedia. They are described in detail at Citing sources (WP:CITE). The purpose of this essay is not to explain their use, but to advocate for my own preferences. I do not pretend to be an expert in all methods, only to know what I like. If this helps clarify your thinking on citation (whether in agreement with me or not) good. Several of my preferences are based on making editors'  work easier; I am not insensitive to users'  needs, but often (in my view) competing methods yield results that are about equally useful to users, while creating different amounts of difficultly or ease for editors... so then editor ease becomes decisive.

Plain refs
I favor primarily short inline citations using plain  markup. This requires both a Notes and a References section (in that order, as exemplified below). I say "primarily" because  can accommodate various types of content, and I feel that they all have their place, but in the primary context of short references. Content includes (each is shown as full "editing" text, and exemplified by a real footnote with identical content):
 * 1) A short reference:
 * 2) Multiple short references in one note:
 * 3) A combination of short reference and text:
 * 4) Just text:
 * 5) A long reference, which may be plain text, or include its own internal markup, as in this example:
 * 6) Combinations of these.

The main virtues of maintaining a "short reference foundation" for citations are:
 * One can avoid repeating full citations over and over, making (I think) both Notes and References more legible, and reducing the scope for typographical errors.
 * Short references are much less disruptive to text flow during editing; also less likely to be accidentally broken up or misplaced. Consider the difference between working around  and working around   within the article text to be edited.

Yet, the same overall structure accommodates reference types 3-6 as noted above. Even within a "short reference foundation" I think it's perfectly acceptable — sometimes preferable — to use occasional long references, for example: In the first 2 cases, one may wish to avoid privileging these citations under References. In the last, laziness or editorial conservatism (I'm not knocking either) may cause one to leave well enough alone.
 * When the reference is not broadly germane to the article and only used to cite a single fact.
 * When the reference cites authorities in their capacity of getting something wrong (I did this in Syllabic verse).
 * When you're bringing an old "references-only" article up to this "notes-and-references" standard and wish to conserve existing references as they stood.

Fancy refs
I see more drawbacks than advantages to the additional features available with  and documented most fully at Help:Footnotes (H:FOOT). They require, not only additional work on the part of the editor setting them up, but the same additional expertise for all future editors. These features include:
 * , which allows one citation to be nicknamed and re-used. Except in cases where the same reference with the same page number(s) is used over and over again, I'm not convinced screen real estate is valuable enough for the bother.
 * , which allows one to group similar citations under distinct headings (e.g. Notes for explanatory prose footnotes, versus References for actual source citations). Possibly for some long and detailed articles, this might be beneficial. But most long footnotes I've written combine explanatory text with short citations; I value the interaction, and it would be purposeless to try to decide which side of the fence they fell on.