Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Named references

This is a Wikipedia project page for those interested in the topic of allowing named references in VisualEditor.

Currently, VE automatically adds numeric ref names with a colon prefix, i.e., ":0", ":1", ":2", and so on. There has long been interest in having VE support meaningful named references. The goal of this page is to be a central location which summarizes, or links to, all information of interest on this topic.

The main project page for VisualEditor is VisualEditor, which has numerous subpages. There are similar pages on MediaWiki, starting with VisualEditor. In general, the set of MediaWiki pages are more up to date, and WMF members tend to look at and possibly respond at the pages there more than at Wikipedia.

If you find a bug or other new problem, please raise a Phabricator ticket to report it, after first searching open Phabricator tickets about VisualEditor to make sure it hasn't been reported already.

Tools
Tools available to mitigate the problem include:
 * RefRenamer – this script places a link in your Tools sidebar, and when clicked while on an article page, opens a dialog box containing all VE-style numeric references on the page, along with proposed Lastname-YYYY replacement names. It knows how to disambiguate collisions, and you can override to any named reference of your choice. A powerful tool, able to change hundreds of numeric references on a page. Presents a preview pane with diff, and if all looks good, you can Publish the changes.

How you can help
You can help, by finding articles having VE-style numeric references, and fixing them using the RefRenamer script.

You can use an advanced search to obtain a list of articles with VE-style numeric references in need of adjustment. The following link will generate a search result page containing up to 50 articles with VE numeric ref names:
 * generate search result page with VE numeric names (r=)

Click any result, to view an article that could use improvement with RefRenamer. this page to generate a different list of articles from the link, every time you purge.

History
A 2019 wishlist proposal to allow the user to name references was rejected for being too complex while the foundation proposed an alternate proposal of better automatic reference names that could be accepted if submitted in another wishlist survey.