User:Spidern/Brainstorm

=Brainstorm and random ideas= You've found my brainstorm page! Feel free to comment on any of the ideas here.

Reference database
What if all inline citations on Wikipedia were easily accessible from a searchable database, with automatic duplication sorting in order to determine the best-formatted version of a citation? It would make the task of referencing much less daunting to new users, as well as making it more convenient to do so in general.

A more intelligent RS:N
Used in conjunction with the reference database feature described above, what if RS:N threads would be automatically linked to sources listed in the database? The reliability of a source could quickly be ascertained without the need for repeat discussion or awkwardly searching the RS:N externally.

Preserving sources for posterity
With changes in technology and in corporate and academic structures, we will witness a whole new generation of link rot. WebCite provides a service to counter such effects, by archiving online sources on their access date. Wikimedia should offer a similar service, to be used in Wikipedia on a mass-scale for web citations performed within sites belonging to compliant organizations. This will ensure that sources linked to will always accurately represent the content being sourced.

Appending page to an existing reference
A common problem I encounter is using a book source more than once for different pages; right now the best way is using to point to a page, then to a bibliographic source. I propose that page (or any other attribute for that matter) be appended outside the second ref, i.e. . For more thoughts on the matter, see this thread.

Multi-column list with n columns
A simple way to automatically split list items into n columns, without having to manually count items.