User talk:Sperling/References

It would be convenient to have the reference text also in the hover box. The link can then be the external one; or put two links.--Patrick 12:21, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nothing is said about how this might interact with an existing ==External links== section. --Phil | Talk 15:45, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * It doesn't. Obviously one could manually put more list items into the list created by References, but there is no automatic interaction. --K. Sperling 11:21, 2004 Jul 29 (UTC)

What is wrong with using the MLA method as strongly recommended at Cite sources? That's what I've used for particular citations. It's far better than meaningless numbers which require one to scroll up and down between the main article and references at the bottom, a most timewasting and cumbersome method which is why the MLA standard is now so widely used. Put the reference in the text with full details only in the bibliography.

A template would be useful, but it should be one which allows normal MLA information giving author's last name and year rather than just a number. A reference like "There was a great amount of opposition to the proposal (Cooper, 1957, p. 205)" is far better than "There was a great amount of opposition to the proposal [5, p205]." I would never use something as ugly and hostile to readers as [5, p205] when there is a clearer and more readible method. MLA references forms and similar reference forms also allow easy reference to another Wikipedia article when the work in question has its own article, for example: "Ovid in his Metamorphoses (5.331) relates that Venus took the form of a fish to hide from Typhon." What purpose do clumsy endnote references serve? Jallan 18:27, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, admittedly the MLA notation looks nicer. It could easily be used instead of the [x] notation, which I used mainly because that's the way unlabeled links render. However, your objection about having to scroll down to the references section does not apply, as the generated reference text would be an intra-document link to that position. On the contrary, it only applies for the manually created references you seem to favor. --K. Sperling 11:21, 2004 Jul 29 (UTC)

Yes. I wanted to be sure that any template would allow easy use of MLA notation or something very similar. The numeric default in external references is nice to have for quick references on talk pages and such, but I don't think it is ever the best format to use within an article. Even on talk pages I seldom use it. I think it more courteous to provide the user with at least some hint about what the reference points to.

Let us imagine an in-text reference link that points to a no-link reference, say something like: "* Smith, John (2003). My newest rant book. Coventry: Vanity Press." Would the text in the window scroll to this, or would a new active window open pointing to the same article but with that reference as near the top or near the bottom of the window as possible (and preferrably highlighted). The second is probably better, as backscrolling won't work, especially if there is more than one reference to the same work. If I return to the main window and click on another in-text reference pointing to another line of no-link data in that reference section. Does yet another window open, or does the already open window update to indicate another line? I can see benefits either way. Jallan 18:03, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I would probably go with jumping to the references section in the same window (by way of an HTML link to #ref- ). Even though it will look like the browser just scrolled down to the References section, it will in fact create a separate entry in the browser's history, so the back button can be used to jump back to the previous position. I don't really like websites opening new windows without being asked to do so. It's very easy for the user to open a same-window link in a new window (or a new tab, which many users of browsers that support the feature prefer), but its usually not possible to open a new-window link in the same window. If some people really really prefer to have links open in a new window by default, that could be made a per-user setting.
 * Highlighting can be done using JavaScript, and does not require that a new window is used. Additionally, modern browsers allow you to specify the text of the tooltip that pops up when the mouse hovers over a link. Most information about the reference could probably be put into the tooltip, so that jumping to the References section would often not be necessary at all. K. Sperling 17:13, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)

My feeling is that the real answer should not only include a template such as you are suggesting, but also a separate Reference namespace, allowing references to be entered once only within Wikipedia with an arbitrary match-code as part of the reference. Syntax could then be created to use that code both to INCLUDE the reference in a reference section in a document and to INCLUDE it in an in-text link. One global occurrence for each reference means that correction of spelling errors or other updating could be done universally. For example, if a technical article from a journal is reprinted in an anthology, then updating the reference once to also mention the anthology reprint would automatically update every article. If the URL for a particular web document changes, one change in the master entry would update every entry referencing that web document. One could easily update for mirroring of the same document on various websites. Jallan 18:03, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * That is a very good idea, especially for references to non-web documents. We'd have to come up with a good naming convention to avoid people creating multiple Reference:* entries for a single real-world document, and have some simple way to find out if a Reference:* entry for a document already exists, even where the naming convention is ambiguous.
 * I'm not convinced its worth the extra trouble for referring to web documents like news paper articles, as those will probably be linked to from only a few articles. However, the template could be designed in such a way to allow referencing via Reference:* entries, as well as by directly including the reference information in the appropriate template invocation in the References section (as in my original proposal). That way, its easy to start out with ad-hoc references, which can then be consolidated into Reference:* entries when required.
 * On the technical side, one problem is that (right now), wikipedia documents are inherently unstructured. For including information from a Reference:* entry into a document, there would have to be a way to extract that piece of information from the body of the Reference:* entry. One way would be to say that, by convention, the first paragraph of the Reference:* page is what gets included in the References section of a page using the reference. That still doesn't help with getting the short reference information for the in-text link, though. I think a more general solution would be appropriate there. Also, it mustn't be too difficult for editors to create these Reference:* entries, otherwise they won't be used.
 * A generalization of the method used for redirects (body starting with #REDIRECT) could be employed, by defining that all lines at the beginning of a document that start with #SOMETHING (where SOMETHING is any word in capital letters) are taken to be meta-information that is not displayed by default. For the Reference:* items one could then define keywords like #SHORTNAME and #SUMMARY that would contain the relevant reference information. At a later stage, this could be augmented by providing a more editor-friendly way of editing the meta-information, e.g. by having each meta-data item appear as a separate edit box on the Edit page. However, all this is slightly beyond the scope of a simple template to ease reference creation, and will need lots more thought. K. Sperling 17:13, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)