Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 3


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Footnotes: ref-tag
Partially copied from the MOS -- Ec5618 02:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Recently, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason has been working on a new software footnote system. to, and put a negative sign in front of the value of the   property. Alan Pascoe 17:08, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

What to do with separate footnotes and references
It has been my stylistic approach to separate references and footnotes into two sections. For examples, see Jello Biafra, Grunge music, or Fight Club. Under Footnote3, this worked perfectly fine. However, I'm not sure how it will work out under this new format. It may work out well if Footnote3 is still available to use separately, but I'm not entirely sure if that will work. -- LGagnon 23:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There's no reason you can't do this. It's just that doing it would sort of defeat the purpose, since the new system allows quick maintenance of footnotes and addition of new sources. But still, there's no reason you can't do it. Just do instead of . Johnleemk | Talk 01:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean the page numbers, though that would be an issue too. I meant the separate "Notes" and "References" sections that appear in those articles. What would result is that they would be integrated, which in my opinion would be stylistically ugly. -- LGagnon 01:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What's the problem? Just do this: ==Notes== tags on the HTML for the entire page in the browser window. However, the  tags in the edit window don't appear as tags in the page, which means it is not possible to distinguish between the reference text and the rest of the text. Alan Pascoe 20:45, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Alan, sorry if I'm being dense, but are you saying it's impossible to make the refs look different when editing? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

A debate developed over…
 * I wouldn't say impossible—I'm not an expert—but the straightforward way of using CSS to change the appearance of the text within the

However, I've seen two problems with this. First, since there is a line break between the article text and the ref element, there will be a space between the article text and the footnote in the rendered text, which some people don't like. More importantly, there seems to be a bug with the whitespace squeezing, at least with my browser configuration (Firefox 1.5.0.1 on WinXP, no CSS customization). When I did some major footnote restructuring to fix Team B's broken ref/note footnoting with now-functional ref/reference tags, the first Tom Barry citation (name="remember") interpreted the initial space as a call for a PRE tag, placing it first in the 9 footnotes and messing up the format. I experimented but couldn't get it to behave, even though all 8 of the other tags were so formatted but rendered properly. The potential for browser bugs (vs. MediaWiki bugs) spooked me, so I abandoned the strategy. But if it is a MediaWiki issue, fixing it would be a convenient way to provide visual formatting hints to set off the new ref tags. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Coloring the ref text selectively would be possible with Javascript. Wikipedia tends to be leery about implementing new Javascript, but you could try asking at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.js. &mdash;Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

citation location
This may be obvious, but the proper location of the citation is after the punctuation,[1] like this.[2] This is supported already by the examples in the page, and is further supported by the first example on this page that cites the Chicago manual of style. I don't have an explicit guideline directly from the Chicago MOS, but I have never seen footnotes in a print source formatted like this[3]. Also, I know of at least two people who have supported this format in the past: Bishonen and Fallout boy. In the name of maintaining consistency on Wikipedia and looking professional, any objections to stating that the proper location is immediately after the punctuation? —Spangineer (háblame)  06:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree should be positioned after punctuation, but there is a editing style consideration. Some have suggested (above) placing However many disagreed with this in the past.   The solution was found in 2003.''


 * Placing each citation on its own line however causes a problem as to what to do with the space after the punctuation: Placing after the closing its existance is not apparent (space at the end of a line), and it can't appear at the start of the next sentance appearing on the next line (wiki-markup indents lines starting with a space). The fudge is to place citations before the punctuation, and the punctuation at the begining of the next line which highlights the continuation of the text. Hence for the example given:
 *  This is well proven 
 *  . However many disagreed with this in the past 
 * . The solution was found in 2003.
 *  . However many disagreed with this in the past 
 * . The solution was found in 2003.
 * . The solution was found in 2003.


 * I know which one I find easer to read whilst editing. I agree (in advance) that the only purpose of wikipedia is to have a good encyclopedia to read, not have something nice to edit with, but still have a look at how much clearer the editing markup is for Epilepsy or look at the whole complex Lyme disease article to realise that there is a need for some help with clarity when editing (these are good articles with well verified & cited sources, but trying to copyedit read the markup is difficult). David Ruben Talk 14:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I see the editing advantage, but the problem with that is that there will be spaces between the citations, causing the possibility of text wrapping to the next line. In my opinion, it's even more important to avoid spacing throughout to prevent that from happening, because having a random citation floating at the beginning of the next line looks even worse than having a citation like this[1]. As you said, reading is the most important consideration. I think it makes more sense to make editors get used to skipping everything between ref tags than make the readers put up with an unconventional and ugly citation style. —Spangineer[es]  (háblame)  16:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't this work (creativity with html commentary tags): This is well proven. However many disagreed with this in the past. The solution was found in 2003.


 * without the "nowiki" tags

(sorry for other references on this page showing up also:) tag out into and allows you to put the reference text inside the tags. Also lots of other optional changes, but that's the main idea. — Omegatron 15:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * references section

You still need to edit two different parts of thearticle to add a note


 * My proposal solves this by allowing you to add a note in a single place, and it is moved into the references section when you save the page (and possibly auto-named, if you don't give it a name.) — Omegatron 15:42, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with Evilphoenix. In some articles, some editors prefer a different look, one which is approved by Wikipedia, unless someone wants to change that too. There seems to be a steamrolling effect here, where a relative few have gone and started altering articles, without discussing the changes in the article talk page. I am most concerned about the upsetting of an article I worked on, namely Retreat of glaciers since 1850. While the article is on the main page, the citation style was changed completely and when I reverted back, I was reverted again...I'm not pleased with this manner of behavior, especially after seeing that there are others that do not like this new style. Retreat of glaciers since 1850 used the Harvard (or I should say Harv_ style which automagically superscripted the author's name in article text) and we changed over to this style after the article was in ref|note style because we wanted it to look scientific by having the end notes in the cited references section all be alphabetical. Our article also has a lot of numbers and figures that are confusing enouh for new editors to grasp...adding a pile of reference material eats up a lot of the editing window, and alongside the and other formats, to anyone not used ot editing here, it must look almost like code and not text. But mostly, I'm pissed that a relative few seem to think they have the best thing going and have decided to deprecate templates and march into article space and shove this down our collective throats. I may be convinced that this new style is best, but that's going to be hard if the manner in which the evidence to prove it's better is going to be delivered to me in this take it or file an Rfc approach.--MONGO 12:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I echo MONGO's comments. The manner in which this is being pushed into implementation is disturbing.  Placing the reference text inline is not only disruptive of the flow of text, it is also a bigger hassle to deal with when adding additional inline references to the same reference as the entire text of the first reference must be located and moved if the new inline reference precedes the first.  In addition to issues with the mechanics of the new reference format, it does not support different styles of reference, such as the harvard reference style.  There also seems to be a number of outstanding bugs with the style itself that would further suggest against mass conversion of existing references. —Doug Bell talk•contrib 18:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I third the comments of MONGO and Doug Bell. There are good things about m:Cite.php, but there are also a number of distinct disadvantages with it.  Shoving it down the throats of editors who actually work on a specific article is obnoxious and in bad faith.  Claiming that Harvard references are suddenly deprecated, in the absence of any WP process, but simply because a tool has been written to do conversions, is even worse.


 * The right thing to do is place a comment on a particular article's talk page letting editors who may be unaware of it that m:Cite.php exists, and that an automated conversion tool exists, should editors wish to convert the style. Out of however many millions of editors WP has, obviously a lot of them are unaware of the current state of technology changes underlying WP.  But in the case of Retreat of glaciers since 1850, we actually had this specific discussion several months ago, and made a conscious, consensus decision to go with Harvard referencing.  We're not idiots: we made that decision for specific reasons... maybe consensus can change with discussion, but not by fiat. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Nobody has properly addressed the really bad problems inherent in ref/note that Cite.php solves perfectly. These things tend to get terribly out of date. Oftentimes an editor may remove a sentence from an article (and, understandably, its ref). Now, all of a sudden all of the notes after it are misnumbered. Or even worse, suppose someone moves something around in an article. You'd have to spend awhile recording the new ordering and then moving all of the notes around in the references section accordingly. And many articles have problems with old notes that are no longer referenced still sticking around. And I've seen a fair number of refs whose corresponding notes have either been renamed or deleted. The old system is an unmaintainable mess. -- Cyde Weys   18:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The problems that m:Cite.php introduces obviously need to be balanced against the different problems it solves. For many uses, the newer system is better; for many other uses, the new system is worse.  I know Cyde that you are proud of your automated conversion tool, but the work you did on it is apparently blinding you to the several fairly serious problems that continue to exist with m:Cite.php.  Just covering your ears and chanting "la la la" doesn't solve the problems with m:Cite.php (though I have hopes that they will eventually be solved by software changes. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Lulu, what was your point, other than to insult Cyde by accusing him of "covering [his] ears and chanting 'la la la'"? I presume you are actually trying to understand the varying issues people have with both systems, discuss possible remedies and approaches openly, and work together with other editors to acheive consensus? I humbly suggest that your arrogant insulting demeanor might be counter-productive. KillerChihuahua?!? 14:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Interesting discussion! You may be interested in how this relates to Wikipedia talk:Citing_sources, as well. --J. J. 21:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Good job
This is a smart approach, Francis. — Encephalon 12:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

multiple references to the same source, but with different page numbers
For example, see quasi-finite field. Check the history too, we tried a few different options. I would like to have just one entry in the "references" section, and give different page numbers in the text itself. It seems a bit clunky to do this with a separate "notes" and "references" section. Is there an option with /

with any extra paramaters being passed through using |'s. --MilkMiruku 01:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Such a setup is well outside the reach of usefulness for wikipedia. However, there is a template that can be subst'ed for the bottom references: footnotes Circeus 01:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * i would argue that it would be easier for newbies and others to use familiar template code to cite references, rather than having to use an html style code syntax. footnotes contains so that's kind of what i'm talking about, but why subst it plus some hidden text describing how to use it in rather than just using footnotes on an article? --MilkMiruku 01:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess the template system (double curly-brackets) isn't used because jumping back and forth between number and note is too sophisticated for it. If it is possible without being too clunky, then yes, I wonder why the new system isn't implemented that way. I think I'd like there to be better discrimination between footnotes and references, though. I'd say that superscripted numbers link to footnotes, not references. Regards, David Kernow 11:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Question about clarity of the vertical arrow
I am a Wikipedian who has written quite a number of chemical engineering articles. I have been using   to define my references and then   to get them displayed in the References section.

I notice that when I use a reference only one time, the vertical arrow in the Reference section listing is very thin and spindly and hard-to-see. But when I use a reference multiple times, the vertical arrow and the accompanying superscripts (a b c ..) are quite bold and really stand out well. My question is why can't the arrow for a single-use reference look just as bold and well-defined as the arrow for a multiple-use reference?

As an aside, I must say that the how-to-use discussions at both footnotes and at Cite.php need to be completely re-written by a non-computer guru so that we ordinary mortals can understand them. They are virtually incomprehensible at the moment.- mbeychok 18:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm partially responsible for the page. I hoped to make it more accessible when I edited it, so I'd like to know what parts are unclear. The part I can identify that's unclear now is the lead section, which talks about a .php file and a MediaWiki extension, instead of, you know, footnotes.
 * I tried to get this called the "ref-tag" system, so that we're not exposing a pointless technical detail (the fact that its code resides in a file called Cite.php on the server) in the very name of the system, but unfortunately Cite.php seems to have stuck.
 * The article Cite.php is really about the code in Cite.php, on the other hand. It is a technical document aimed at developers. If anything intended for Wikipedia users is linking to that page without clarifying that it's not written for users, that should be changed.
 * Finally, I don't like the vertical arrow either, but there were a lot of people clamoring for it for some reason. It's fuzzy for most people because it's not one of the characters font designers put a lot of effort into designing well. It's particularly fuzzy for some people when it's blue (as a link), which probably has something to do with anti-aliasing working differently in color. But since people didn't like the caret (^), I'm not sure what we should do.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  20:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Just in case there may be others reading this dialogue who can be helpful, here is a screen shot ==> Image:Footnote arrow screenshot.jpg of what the references section looks like in TA Luft using my WindowsXP browser and my flat-screen LCD monitor.


 * As for it possibly being caused by Microsoft ClearType anti-aliasing, I'm no computer guru but I must say that this has not ever occurred for any other live hyperlinks (which are also blue) on any of the multitude of web sites (or anywhere in Wikipedia) that I have visited ... so why does it occur only when using Cite.php?? There must be something that can be done to correct this. - mbeychok 00:02, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

More about cite.php's poor rendering of reference arrows
If we look at the cite.php references in Tourette syndrome, they render as daggers and straight vertical lines, and they are all bold and well defined ... but they are at 80% font size. I changed them to 100% font size and then they looked exactly like the poorly defined vertical arrows I've been seeing on my IE browser. Look at these two screen shots of the Tourette references, one is using regular 100% font size and one is using 80% font size ==> image:Tourette references 100%.jpg and ==> image:Tourette references 80%.jpg

There is no question but that the font size changes the appearance entirely! It is somewhat ridiculous for us to see entirely different looking references depending on the font size. Cite.php should abandon the arrows and go back to using the caret. - mbeychok 17:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, mbeychok, neither for the TA Luft article, nor for the Tourette syndrome article things look that way in "my WindowsXP browser and my flat-screen LCD monitor" when applying wikipedia's usual skin - might I ask whether:
 * You use another skin (I mean: not wikipedia's default "MonoBook"); or standard skin with non-standard settings?
 * You changed CSS settings and/or font size in your browser and/or applied other browser options/settings?
 * ...which I sort of think as no "hyperlink" line shows under the links (standard MonoBook has such lines for links) --Francis Schonken 18:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Francis, I use the standard MonoBook skin. No, I have not changed any CSS settings ... I don't even know what that means. Have you looked at my screen shots of the Tourette article references?  If so, how do you explain the difference just from changing font sizes?- mbeychok 19:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I have also noticed the issue when Footnotes are reduced to sizes lower than 85%. It is quite serious and I think a warning should be placed in the page about it. The issue is not with Cite.php, which has no control over how exactly the character is displayed (I have no doubt that macs can display just right at 80%), but with the exploitation system. Circeus 21:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a browser rendering bug, which varies as you change the font size (try ctrl+scroll wheel), and I see it in both IE 6 and Firefox 1.5.0.2 (though the default size renders fine in Firefox)
 * Just so people aren't arguing about where the fault lies... — Omegatron 21:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Omegatron, assuming you are correct and I have no reason to believe otherwise, should this bug not be resolved somehow?? After all, IE is probably the most used browser in existence. Again, I never had this problem with the caret (^) that was used, instead of arrows, with the Ref Label and Note Label system of footnoting. Why not go back to the caret? - mbeychok 23:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Changed back to caret
Since it fixes a usability bug, I've been bold and restored the caret instead of the arrow. Hopefully nobody was so attached to the arrow that this will become a big deal.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  19:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The caret looks absolutely awful. I really hope that it's changed back to an arrow. I've found that using the normal arrow (without bold) yields proper results in most browsers (that I've tested) on 100% size and 85% size. Really, you don't need other sizes besides these two. Simply use 100% for a few references and 85% for a lot; this works well in all the setups that I've tested. I really hope that it is changed back soon. —Michiel Sikma, 20:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ugh, the caret is ugly as hell; what's wrong with the arrow? -- Rory 0 96 (block) 20:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Below a given size, the arrow becomes a pipe. Also, the arrow has distinctly differing aspects when linking and not linking. Circeus 00:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Good for you, rspeer!! I am all in favor of the caret!! It looks much better than the spindly, faint arrow for did for single-use references on my IE browser. - mbeychok 01:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The arrow symbol is not supported well by many fonts. See the discussion above. Demanding specific percentages is not going to make a difference; it really depends on how many actual pixels high the arrow is going to be on someone's screen, and whether their font rendering system tries (and utterly fails!) to smooth it.
 * The arrow looks distinctly less readable than the caret on many systems, including (accordng to Mbeychok) the default setup of Windows XP Home, so this is a usability bug that affects many Wikipedia readers. Remember to keep readers in mind; editors may be more technically advanced and able to tweak their fonts, but they aren't the entire audience of Wikipedia.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  04:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't get it. The arrow looks fine on the default Windows XP Home setup (without Cleartype) if the arrows are non-bold and at either 100% or 85% size. 85% size seems to have become the dominant "small" size among editors, and most featured articles that I've seen use it. Rather than enforcing a different (and less correct, arguably) character for all articles, we should make all arrows non-bold and make it policy to have the references either at 100% size or at 85% size. —Michiel Sikma, 06:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't care about what's "correct". Both an arrow and a caret do a perfectly fine job of pointing upwards. If you want to argue over the semantic meaning of symbols, try joining the silly debate at C Sharp about whether # is an acceptable way to write the sharp symbol. Anyway, maybe Mbeychok has changed his font sizes or screen resolution at some point, or maybe you have, but the point is that the moment an anti-aliasing system (it doesn't have to be Cleartype-style) hits the arrow, it smudges it, because the arrow has no hinting. And if an anti-aliasing system doesn't hit it, you've got a 50% chance of getting something wonky and lopsided. Until there's a font designer who wants to do the thankless job of hinting symbols that people almost never use, and that font becomes standard across operating systems, the caret works much better.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  17:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Like I said, both with and without Cleartype, the arrow without bolding looks fine, at both sizes 100% and 85%. I've found that the only situations in which they are not rendered correctly occur when an unreasonable font size is used (such as 75%) or when the arrow has been bolded (there is no bold information for the arrow, which means it will be rendered as faux bold). —Michiel Sikma, 08:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Michiel, it also depends on the fonts installed on people's systems. Note that some computer manufacturers bundle fonts with computers, and a lot of computers come with word processing packages that install their own fonts (MS Office, MS Works, Lotus SmartSuite, Corel WordPerfect, to name a few).
 * How is this relevant? This site uses the "sans-serif" font. Internet Explorer and Firefox use Arial as default font on Windows, and usually Bitstream Vera on Linux. Helvetica is a widely used default on Mac, and then there's Opera which uses Verdana by default. Are these exotic fonts? No, they're not. They render the arrow pretty well in most cases. —Michiel Sikma, 08:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * By the way, I should add that I think usability is the most important factor. If there's no good way of getting an upwards arrow to show up correctly in most important operating systems, then I guess a caret is the only solution. I just think it looks a bit bad. —Michiel Sikma, 08:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The caret looks horrible. :-)  Sure, the arrow doesn't render correctly on my machine some of the time (Firefox bugfix?), but the caret is worse. Is there a middle-ground compromise?  Perhaps an image of an arrow?  What are we really trying to say with the arrow/caret?  We're trying to say that you can click it to go back to the point in the text where the reference was cited.  Is there a better way to notate this? — Omegatron 17:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Here are a few symbols that may work:
 * &Delta; &Delta; &Delta; &Delta; (Delta)
 * &Lambda; &Lambda; &Lambda; &Lambda; (Lambda)
 * ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ (black up-pointing triangle)
 * » » » » (right-pointing double angle quotation mark)
 * ~ ~ ~ ~ (tilde)
 * … … … … (ellipsis)
 * For comparison:
 * ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ (up arrow)
 * ^ ^ ^ ^ (caret)
 * None of them look that great to me. Evil saltine 23:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * An image would definitely fix any kind of anti-aliasing problems. Downside is that it doesn't scale along with the page when viewing it in a different font size, but all normal lists have images as well, anyway. —Michiel Sikma, 12:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd definitely avoid images. I mean, just a few days ago the size-reducing template for footnotes ({{subst:FootnotesSmall}}) was voted keep, and FA review often leads to footnotes being reduced in size (if they weren't already), so unavoidably we're going to see more of that in the future. --Francis Schonken 13:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What does arbitrary resizing of text have to do with images? I think an image would be a good choice.  The triangle would work, too.  ▲  Looks fine at all sizes in both browsers that I use.  — Omegatron 13:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 Footnotes mock-up ▲ a b c d Biafra, Jello. "Platform for 2000 Green Party Presidential Primary". March 7, 2000. ▲ a b "Biography of Jello Biafra" (2001). AlternativeTentacles.com. Retrieved Feb 19, 2005. ▲ a b Huey, Steve. "Jello Biafra". All Music Guide. Retrieved Feb 20, 2005. ▲ a b Vander Molen, Jodi. "Jello Biafra Interview". The Progressive. February 2002. ▲ Biafra, Jello. "Running for Mayor". I Blow Minds for a Living. San Francisco: Alternative Tentacles. 1991. 


 * I don't like any of them much. I would much prefer to have the footnote's number being a backlink, with no additional symbol between that and the footnote text. That is unobstrusive, gives a large, clickable area, and is semantically just as meaningful as having a caret or up-arrow (or whatever other symbol we want to invent here.) The only case where this makes no sense is if there is a many-to-one relationship (several places referring to the same footnote); this is rare and we must do something special in that case anyway. Arbor 17:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The ▲ looks good to me ... just as good as the caret. If we get a consensus to use the ▲, then I strongly suggest that it apply to all of the footnoting methods across-the-board that currently use either the caret or the arrow. For example, the  and  method was changed a few weeks ago from the caret to the arrow ... it is one of the methods that should be included in my across-the-board suggestion. - mbeychok 18:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Just voicing my support for the caret. The triangle looks too bulky, and the arrow too spindly. The "right-pointing double angle quotation mark" looks nice, too.
 * » Biafra, Jello. "Running for Mayor".
 * -- Ec5618 10:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that the ▲ looks awful. —Michiel Sikma, 06:03, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ugh, I really hope someone changes it back to the arrow, which was much better IMO. How many complaints have there been from people not having the correct fonts installed? If it aint broke, don't fix it. jaco ♫ plane  08:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed; but, since revisting the above, it seems the arrow too is not universally favored, the solution might be to include setting the footnote link-back character among user preferences. Any chance this might ever happen? Regards, David Kernow 13:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I much prefer the upward-pointing arrow to the meaningless carat too, but it seems to be too problematic in Windows' font rendering. Perhaps a graphical arrow would be a better solution.

But I think this would be much less of an issue if the back-link were moved to the end of the citation. The back-link would be less graphically prominent at the end of the line, where it belongs. Whether mis-rendered arrow or inappropriate carat, it would be less of a visual blot on the page in its proper place. —Michael Z. 2006-05-08 15:19 Z 
 * 1) The back-link is not a label for the citation (the number is), it is a supplementary control, which would be typically used after reading the citation.
 * 2) The back-link at the front degrades the visual representation of a list of citations, by destroying the uniform line of author names following their number labels.
 * 3) The back-link is an optional helper link, not a critical interface element: in typical use the browser's back button already fulfils the same function.

Request for Comments
I have opened Requests for comment/Cyde to try to resolve some ongoing problems with conversions of articles in other reference formats to m:Cite.php, where contrary to consensus. I welcome your input. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Mongo, for adding the non-mandatory note
Mongo, thanks for adding that alert at the start of this article that use of the Cite.php method is not mandatory and that we are free to use other methods. - mbeychok 01:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed "How to use Cite.php" section for beginners
Below is a proposed "How to use" section that I believe is a better explanation for people not knowledgeable in computerese jargon (like myself, for example). Any comments? And before anyone raises objections to my use of bolded text in places, I firmly believe it enhances the explanation very much. - mbeychok 22:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse;"

Multiple insertion of the same reference
On the Edit page, this is placed at the first insertion point of citation:



This is placed at the second insertion point of citation:



This is placed at the third insertion point of citation:


 *   ..... and so forth for further insertion points

Single insertion of a reference
For the single insertion of a reference, the "name" parameter is not needed. On the Edit page, this is placed at the insertion point of citation:



What is produced at the points of insertion
These are what is produced and note that the reference numbers in blue are automatically generated. Clicking on any one of the reference numbers causes the screen display to scroll down to that reference number in the Reference List section:


 * First text word referenced to Perry's Handbook


 * Second text word referenced to Perry's Handbook


 * Third text word referenced to Perry's Handbook


 * The only text word referenced to the Excel book.

Producing the reference or footnote list
On the Edit page, this is placed in the References or the Footnotes section:



This is what it produces and note that the list numbers are automatically generated:

Notes on the Cite.php method

 * Clicking on any of the reference markers like [1] inserted in the text of an article causes the screen display to scroll down the point where that reference is located in the Reference List.


 * Clicking on the blue superscript a on a reference in the Reference List causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the first reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted. Clicking on the blue superscript b causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the the second reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted. Clicking on the blue superscript c causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the the third reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted ... and so forth.

- mbeychok 22:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Clicking on any caret ( ^ ) on a reference in the Reference List that has no associated superscripts causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where that single-use references was inserted.
 * }


 * Maybe a good idea to have such less complicated "manual" on help:Footnotes, and link that page more clearly from this more detailed guideline page. --Francis Schonken 09:19, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Francis, how about an additional section both here on Footnotes and on Help:Footnotes entitled "How to use footnotes for Beginners" or "Footnotes for Dummies" or "Footnotes for Newbies" or ??? - mbeychok 02:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to have to inform you all about this incident, but user:omniplex just put Help:How to use Cite.php references up for deletion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:How to use Cite.php references.

I thought it a good idea to have the Help:How to use Cite.php references page with a short and easy intro to cite.php footnotes, but others apparently prefer messy pages where technical manuals and short intros are all pasted next to each other on the same page... Anyway, you'll have to go vote at MfD if you want to keep the separate "for beginners" help page. --Francis Schonken 19:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Please help test Citation Tool
The tool (semi-bot) that I have been working on, Citation Tool has reached a usable and useful state, I believe. The purpose of this tool is several fold, but the main (and implemented) goal is the detection and guided correction of errors in Cite.php markup.

As of this exact moment, the tool does the correct diagnosis of two types of errors. By later today, it should also be able to propose specific modified text that corrects the errors (sometimes requiring operator decisions). The web page for the tool also links back to the edit page for a given corrected article. Notice that any modification made based on the advice of Citation Tool is made under the user's own WP username. The two types of problems currently identified are:


 * 1) Multiple <ref name=...> tags with the same name but different contents (hence hiding all but the first in the rendered page).
 * 2) Empty <ref name=...> tags that occur before ones with content.  Same basic problem, but this is especially easy to inadvertantly create if articles are reorganized.

These type of errors seem to occur quite frequently "in the wild".

The proposed changes made by Citation Tool do not change the referencing style or technology used on a page (currently: plans are underway to aid insertion of Harvard references as an adjunct to footnotes, where a mixed style is appropriate). So as far as I can see, the changes proposed by the tool should be non-controversial. The only possible issue I can see is that editors might disagree about whether a currently hidden footnote content is or is not better than the one that had been visible; but that's a pretty regular editorial/content issue, per article.

Well... the other issue is that the tool might be buggy, since it hasn't been banged on by anyone other than me yet. That's why I'd appreciate some other people using it, and paying attention to results. If the diagnosis or proposed solution seems to be wrong for certain pages, that matter needs to be identified and fixed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Citations and punctuation
A line has recently been added to say that citations should go after punctuation. Why is this? It means that a citation is in a different clause or sentence to what it's referring to. It looks completely illogical. Is it a UK/US difference in preference? If it is, the general practice of not mandating either way but requiring consistency within an article should be followed. Worldtraveller 09:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I wondered about this myself...what I usually do is end the sentence with a period, immediately add the reference and then ensure a space exists after the end of the reference and before the next sentence...either way though, having the refence inside the sentence is probably better.--MONGO 10:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * In the recommended form, the citation is not in a sentence or clause at all; it's between the sentence or clause which it supports and the next sentence or clause.  The citation is not, logically, part of the sentence it supports (since it can't support itself ;)).   Personally, however, I couldn't care less where you put the citation as long as you're consistent. HenryFlower 10:31, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

See above (Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes) for the reasoning. I felt that it's pretty well established that citations follow punctuation, based on my interactions with others here and the Chicago Manual of Style. Personally, I've never seen a published document where superscript footnotes/endnotes are placed before the punctuation. I'm not sure what you mean about it being in a separate clause&mdash;there's no space between the punctuation and the citation, and there's a space following the citation. I would think that that makes it clear that the citation is refering to what precedes it. To me, it looks much neater this way. --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  17:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

One more thing that might perhaps show that consensus exists for this standard&mdash;often, the citation style in FACs is totally disorganized, with spaces and punctuation thrown around haphazardly. I have changed many articles to reflect the location standard currently in the MOS, and have only been challenged on it twice that I can recall. One of those times, I was reverted but another editor (User:Eternal Equinox) came through several weeks later and changed it back (see ), and it's been like that ever since. The other time was on a current FAC, so I'm waiting on that one to see where this discussion goes. --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  18:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

As much as national conventions or specific external style guides, I think WP guidelines on puncutation and notes are optimized for presentation on the WWW (while not being anything terrible for print presentation). Some conventions that look pretty good in books printed at 2400 dpi, and that use micro-spacing, typographic quotes, and proper ligatures, just don't render so well on computer screens. Obviously, display technologies vary and generally improve; but keep in mind people in poor countries who likely have relatively crude computer displays, as a baseline (my sub-pixel anti-aliased 1440x900 MacBook LCD is pretty state-of-the-art... how would a WP page look at 800x600 on a CRT with mediocre convergence?)

For example, to my mind, the first of these is vastly more readable as a web document:


 * 1) Dr. Joseph Wu comments that, "All foos are bars".[17]
 * 2) Dr. Joseph Wu comments that, "All foos are bars."[17]
 * 3) Dr. Joseph Wu comments that, "All foos are bars"[17].

YMMV. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Practice varies with respect to the placement of reference citations before or after punctuation; most writers wisely opt to place them after (as in example 1), for the logical aspects pointed out above, and for visual neatness. The latter is particularly problematic when more than one citation appears before a punctutation mark.

With respect to the placement of the stop before or after the closing quote marks, many North American writers prefer the before option, which is, IMV, not logical. The practice is common for direct quotes in fiction throughout the English-speaking world, but extending this to other registers is a regrettable practice.

You could lose the dot after 'Dr'.

Tony 02:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the first sentence of the paragraph. This is the second and final sentence of the paragraph[1].
 * At the risk of throwing (another) spanner in the works, I find instances where a distinction between placing a footnote marker before or after a period (full-stop) can be useful. For instance:

This is the first sentence of the paragraph. This is the second and final sentence of the paragraph.[1] In the context of text where footnote marking is position-sensitive, I would read the footnote marker in the first paragraph as applying only to the second sentence of the paragraph. In the second paragraph, however, I'd read the marker as applying to the whole paragraph (or, if not at the end of a paragraph, to more than the single sentence preceeding it). Subtle, but something I've seen and appreciated. Regards, David Kernow 20:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

PS I note that at present the link-back character has been changed to a caret (^). This is an insubstantial character at normal font-size which becomes very insubstantial at the reduced font-size footnotes tend to use. Would someone with the means to restore the up-arrow or another more substantial character please do so? Thanks, David
 * It wasn't long ago that it was changed from a caret to an arrow. ;) HenryFlower 20:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * In theory, however, one would never see the first example, because the author should put a citation after the first sentence of the paragraph to indicate the source of that sentence. As it is currently, only half of the paragraph is properly sourced. --Spangineer[es]  (háblame)  22:20, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Let's remember that we're talking about footnotes on Wikipedia, not footnotes in general. In a Wikipedia article, most sentences are not and should not be sourced with footnotes.  We source specific categories of statements (such as quotations and contentious propositions).  It's unlikely that a whole paragraph will require sourcing. (And that kind of system for distinguishing paragraph from sentence citations, while elegant, is not something that could ever be consistently used on a wiki with thousands of editors passing through). HenryFlower 22:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * There we disagree. Even general information should be sourced, but to do that, the best way is to get a general reference and use that one reference for an entire paragraph.  If more than one reference is used to write a paragraph, put in two citations.  If done properly, it's usually pretty simple to cite every fact in an article while only using 1-3 citations per paragraph. Remember that we here at wikipedia have an even greater need to cite our sources than Encyclopedia Brittanica, because I'm just a college student writing articles way outside my course of study.  I've got to prove that it's not just me talking, and to do that, I have to cite published works. --Spangineer[es]  (háblame)  22:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, if I'm bouncing back and forth between sources within the same paragraph, I'll just put both sources at the end of the paragraph, rather than putting repeat citations after each sentence. --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  22:38, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem with that is that it's not very wiki. It's fine if the reader knows that "this is a Spangineer article, and that's the way Spangineer does it" (but then those people will already know that Spangineer is sound, and won't worry about his sourcing).   But once, in the wiki way, someone else edits the article, or the reader moves on to another article, the system breaks down and no-one (except Spangineer) knows what the references are meant to be referencing.   Sourcing selected specific points is the only system that can reasonably work across the wiki. HenryFlower 22:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Unless of course everyone sees the light and realizes that I'm the one doing it right, and they follow my lead =). You're right though&mdash;there have been times where people add stuff to articles I've written without providing sources.  That makes me have to either revert or find a source for their contribution.  Eventually we might have something cool where editors attach a reference to each addition (like in a separate edit box) so that it's always clear what came from where, but at this point, there will always be some ambiguity. The goal ought to be to reduce that as much as possible, but we've got to have readability too.  Perhaps we could use inote in certain cases, to provide specific details that might not warrant an appearance in the references section. --Spangineer[es]  (háblame)  23:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Resizing footnotes - what is going on?
Could someone tell me what is going on re. the resizing of footnotes?

AFAIK,
 * 1) there was NO consensus to resize all footnotes to a uniform format via wikipedia's stylesheet, when this was discussed at Village Pump/proposals (section now archived);
 * 2) When the template for resizing ({{subst:FootnotesSmall}}) was proposed at TfD, it SURVIVED the vote, and there are many articles that apply resizing of footnotes to, e.g., 85%, 90%, 92% (smaller than 90% is discouraged, but some articles still have 85%, etc...)

Now apparently, someone PUT A RESIZING IN WIKIPEDIA'S CSS (or in cite.php? I don't know)... which, when combined with the ALLOWED template for resizing, leads to unreadable small fonts.

Could someone stop this nonsense, which has been overriding community consensus, thanks! --Francis Schonken 10:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This is the most stupid thing ever. Who has done this? There are a gigantic amount of articles which set the size outside of the reference tags. A lot of articles, including the one I'm actively contributing to, simply put a div at size 85 around their references if needed. A lot of FA do this, too. It baffles me how anyone could have made this change in his right mind without realizing that it would break a LOT of featured articles. For now, please just roll this back! —Michiel Sikma, 06:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems that the change was done by User:R. Koot. See here: Village_pump_%28technical%29 (if you, too, disagree with this change, please let them know there). Here is a diff. —Michiel Sikma, 06:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * see this (even if this looks OK on your screen, believe me, it is NOT OK)...

This edit to MediaWiki:Common.css is responsible, in part, for the change. I suggest taking the matter up on MediaWiki_talk:Common.css. Rob Church (talk) 06:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Link-back character
Also, would someone please restore the up-arrow or another more substantial link-back character than the caret currently being used. The caret character is already pretty small at normal fontsize, so at 90% or less... Thanks, David Kernow 09:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Ideas about overcoming m:Cite.php problems
Now that I've got Citation Tool to pretty much automate fixing actual errors in m:Cite.php referenced articles, I've started thinking more (with some helpful suggestions provided to me) about the usability problems of inline tags.

Basically, many editors find that long citations in the middle of wikitext disrupt the appearance of the edit window, and make it more difficult to edit articles. A number of editors have expressed an interest in being able to group reference contents together in one place and refer to them where needed using. Maybe that just means that the templates really aren't that bad; but there's something to be said for a more unified referencing system.

I've played around a bit with what can be accomplished still using m:Cite.php, even in its current form. I'd be very interested in what editors think of either this modification of a real article:


 * User talk:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters/Shoshone National Forest

Or look at this test case with a bit more explanation of what's going on:


 * User talk:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters/Hidden refs

LotLE × talk 02:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been looking this over and I like it...it minimizes the space it takes up in the editing window text...again, can the refences be at the end of the article rather than the beginning and is there anyway to eliminate the "a" and "b" in the cited section, unless it is a multiple thing. I know you gave me answer on this already, so I'm just being redundant for the sake of being so. The format is not as complicated as Harvard style and I think can be quickly learned.--MONGO 03:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting idea, but there's an obvious problem: editing the citations requires editing the entire article, since they're contained in "section" 0 instead of either the "References" section or the section being cited. Sort of the worst of both cases in terms of section editing ;-) Kirill Lok s  h in 03:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that is what I meant, trying to fumble my way through it...if the cites are subsectioned, can they be placed in the end.--MONGO 03:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I pretty much agree with Kirill Lokshin here. If it were possible to put this block of references at the bottom of the article rather than at the top, that would be a lot nicer. I don't think the main complaint is about editing the whole article as such, but rather about the first occurrence being hard to find, and often looking disruptive when the content interrupts text flow. Unfortunately, m:Cite.php currently insists on first occurrence being the definitive one. Something like looking for "first non-empty occurrence" would solve a lot of this. Then we could but the whole hidden  think down in the "References" section, immediately before the actual tag. That would still allow footnotes to be defined inline where such was desired, but give the option of forward reference to names that were defined in one place (even a mixture of the two in the same article could be useful).  LotLE × talk  03:32, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I really like what has been done here and am interested if there has been any progress in changing cite.php code to allow reference lists at the bottom! InvictaHOG 02:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ooh, that's quite ingenious. I'd proposed the same thing below, but using a "hide" tag within the reference itself to avoid the superfluous backreference ("a") being generated. Stevage 12:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Live "hybrid references"
Since I posted my comment on the "hidden refs", I figured out how to properly hide them, and implemented "live" versions at Cuba and Shoshone National Forest. There's an informal "project page" at User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing. I'm still waiting on the code changes to let us move those reference blocks to a later section of the page; but if the code change is made, it should be a simple cut-and-paste to move the identical reference block down, where used. LotLE × talk 03:40, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Fixing non-1st ref content
The major remaining headache with Cite.php references is that a non-first element will not have its contents rendered by, even if all the earlier tags are empty. If this limitation was lifted it would both avoid the problems created by innocent insertion of references earlier in text (including because of section refactoring), and also allow editors the option of grouping references details in one place.

Above, I presented some attempts at grouping references within a block. This sort of works, but requires reference be specified at top, which is undesirable. If the same general style could be used with references specified at bottom (i.e. just before the tag), that would be useful for many articles (depending on style desired by editors of particular articles).

I do not have the MediaWiki software installed, nor do I know the process by which code changes are implemented on Wikipedia. However, looking at Cite.php, it appears the fix should be extremely simple:

--- Cite.php   2006-05-04 13:12:19.000000000 -0400 +++ Cite.php.new       2006-05-04 12:47:24.000000000 -0400 @@ -291,7 +291,12 @@                                                       $this->mRefs[$key]['number'] );                               } else -                                       // We've been here before +                                       // We've been here before +                                       $found_text = $this->mRefs[$key]['text']; +                                       if ( empty($found_text) and !empty($str)) { +                                          // If no text found before, use this text +                                          $this->mRefs[$key]['text'] = $str; +                                       }                                        return                                                 $this->linkRef( $key,

As I said, this is untested since I have not installed MediaWiki (and it's been a bit over a year since I touched PHP). Can someone test this for me, and especially get this or something like it added to the working code (all rights to my changes released, blah, blah...). LotLE × talk 17:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Have you heard anything back from anyone about your proposal? Any updates? InvictaHOG 02:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No, but it took me a while of falling on deaf ears here to figure out that a better place to report it was at: <http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5885>. I did that just recently; hopefully some regular developers will address it (if you know any to nudge...).  LotLE × talk  03:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fwiw, I had requested this at [bug:6997]. I had a subsequent request, that of allowing footnotes to be invisible. This would allow you to do something like this (using round brackets instead of point ones for convenience):

(ref name="foo"/) blah (ref name="foo"/) bloo ==References== (ref name="foo" hide="true")www.foo.com but actually some really long multiline footnote(/ref) <-- first definition of footnote, doesn't actually show up in rendered page (references /)
 * The goal is to address the concerns of those that hate (ref) tags because they force you to put the content of the footnote in the body of the text. Stevage 12:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

New proposal regarding resizing issue
See: MediaWiki talk:Common.css

Please give me some time to make this work technically, might be a good part of a solution. --Francis Schonken 14:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes referring to previous footnotes?
I'd like a footnote to refer to another named footnote, for example:


 * 1. A footnote
 * 2. Smith J.,, "How to rename footnotes on Wikipedia articles" publ. 2005 Wikipedia
 * 3. Another footnote
 * 4. Smith (2005) op cit, See footnote [2]

Since footnote numbers change, I'd like to name footnote 2, eg. &lt;ref name="smith2005">.. etc, but don't know if it's possible to include the generated footnote number in another as shown above? Perhaps something like, &lt;ref>Smith (2005) "op cit", see footnote [&lt;ref number="smith2005" />] &lt;/ref>? --Iantresman 10:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Nested footnotes
To give it a name, I think you're referring to "nesting" footnotes. Indeed, it doesn't seem to work! Looks like something our technical folks might be able to figure out. An alternative is to just put two footnotes in the same part of the article. See my test: User:RockOfVictory/Footnote_nesting. --J. J. 14:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that, though I think nested footnotes would provide additional functionality, whereby (a) a footnote in a footnote would create a new footnote, rather than (b) referencing an existing footnote. Nice workaround though. --Iantresman 21:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Tooltips
The superscripted numbers should have a title= tooltip containing as much of the text of the reference as will fit. 70.18.14.233 23:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

References/Citations/Footnotes - and a 'while you're reading' idea
I really like this system, but the results at the bottom of a well-referenced (and noted) article is a mess. Intermixed references/citations/Footnotes are not really benificial for 'quick' comprehension that should be the web... there must be some way of splitting this same system between different uses. And if you applied the same code between and tags? (and why not while you're at it?) This would be the simplest way of providing users of this system a few more sorting options - and a cleaner pagebottom!

Also, how about a little addition to end this very 'paper-esque' habit of having to flip to the page bottom to see references? Since the tag content is already extracted during the php page assembly, why not add an extra line to insert it into the 'reference number's "title" tag? (As in [<a href="#anchor_five" alt="whatever" title="reference_from_tag_here">4</a>] ) - this would make the reference appear while the mouse is over the wee inline reference number that remains small enough to be unobtrusive. Thus, if the reader wants that reference desperately enough he can click down to it, but if not he can continue reading uninterrupted. The wee floating tag may be a bit small (long) to contain all reference text in some cases, but on the other hand I wouldn't suggest using the very obtrusive 'floating div' system. But to each his own tastes. Just my two cents.

-- T HE P ROMENADER  07:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

No space between period and ref
Per the most recent edit, I agree that putting a space between a period (or other punctuation) and the following tag looks bad. At the least, we should not recommend doing so; I'd actually rather specifically advice against it. LotLE × talk 07:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is also that such a space makes the footnote wrap to the next line. To avoid that we would have to use &amp;nbsp; instead of a simple space char. I don't think this is worth the trouble. See also my testpage at User:Ligulem/work/fn1. --Ligulem 09:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't make it wrap to the next line for me. Perhaps it depends on the browser. If we didn't have the square brackets, it wouldn't look so bad without a space, but with the brackets, it's very crowded. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It wraps to the next line in Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer 6.0 (both running on Windows XP Pro, patched with all SP's and security fixes). Which browser does not wrap to next line? --Ligulem 09:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm using Firefox on a Mac. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is that when editing, it looks very messy to have the whole thing running together on one line. This is yet another case of suitability for readers clashing with suitability of editors. :( Johnleemk | Talk 09:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. It looks messy in edit window. That's really bad. HTML comments could help, but they are a pain to use also. Sigh. --Ligulem 09:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I just noticed that we could insert a space between " " (example ). This would make the text flow to the next line in the edit window only. --Ligulem 09:42, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It's generally hard to edit with these refs inserted, particularly when there are several in one paragraph. Is there any way of making the words inside the ref tags look different in edit mode from the rest of the text? SlimVirgin (talk) 09:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Not to my knowledge. But that would be cool. With an external editor, that would not be too hard to program. Maybe there is even one out there that could be configured to do so. There are a lot of editors for programmers that can do syntax highlighting (html for example). The edit window is generally a real pain to use for larger text anyway (it also laks some important editor capabilites like a decent undo/redo). The inline refs are making that even worser. --Ligulem 09:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I wonder how we could find out whether it's possible. I love these refs but they make copy editing really hard. I'm pasting an example below: if you look at it in edit mode, it's practically impossible to see where one sentence ends and the next begins. SlimVirgin (talk) 10:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Some legal scholars have argued that the settlements are legal under international law, including prominent international law expert Julius Stone and Eugene Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School, Under Secretary for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and one of the dafters of UN Security Council Resolution 242. According to Rostow "the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there."

In reply to SlimVirgin: I fully agree with you. Editing this kind of stuff is awful. The edit window is technically too limited to help out here (and my programmer knoweldge hints to me that this won't change anytime soon). The only thing that comes to mind is that we could add some spaces/newlines or html comment. For example this would be ok (at least wiki-technically, see wiki source in edit mode):


 * Some legal scholars have argued that the settlements are legal under international law, <ref

>FAQ on Israeli settlements, CBC News Online, February 26, 2004. URL accessed April 10, 2006. including prominent international law expert <ref

>Pomerance, Michla. The Legality of the Iraq War: Beyond legal pacifism, The Review, April 2003. URL accessed April 11, 2006. <ref

>International Law: Blaming Big Brother: Holding States Accountable for the Devastation of Terrorism, 56 Oklahoma Law Review 735, __ __. Julius Stone <ref

>Lacey, Ian, ed. International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (pdf) - Extracts from Israel and Palestine - Assault on the Law of Nations by Julius Stone, Second Edition with additional material and commentary updated to 2003, AIJAC website. URL accessed April 10, 2006. and Eugene Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School, Under Secretary for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and one of the dafters of UN Security Council Resolution 242. <ref

>Rostow, Eugene. "Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies", The New Republic, October 21, 1991. According to Rostow "the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there." <ref

>American Journal of International Law, 1990, volume 84, page 72.

Of course, reading this kind of wiki-source is still awful, but the referencing content is somewhat set separate. --Ligulem 11:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a bit better, thank you. I'll give it a try. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit window formatting and wrapping
I think a couple things might be unclear in the above discussion. If a space is left between a period and a. And some more text.

By putting a space in. And some more text.

This lets the edit window wrap before 'name' if it needs to. Adding XML comments also lets you force layout without affecting rendering:

This is main text. . And some more text.

However, I find that the use of citation templates, apart from their basic advantages, also lets you be more presentable with the layout of inlined references. Here's an example I gave in a discussion on my talk page:

In the first few months after the attacks, most representatives from these professions who gave statements to media outlets lauded the "performance" of the Twin Towers, suggesting that loss of life could have been far worse if design and construction of the buildings had been of lesser quality. Radical design decisions made by the WTC team were compared to more time-tested skyscraper designs. A report entitled "World Trade Center Building Performance Study" issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in May 2002, pronounced the WTC design fundamentally safe and attributed the collapse wholly to extraordinary factors beyond the control of the builders.

I think that gives pretty good visual separation of the note, albeit occupying a bit of space in the edit window. LotLE × talk 19:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Nice description. Thanks LotLE. I just would like to add that (for those who like it, no intention to urge anybody to do so) you can add spaces and newlines between " {{ " and "cite book" (the name of the template). To the wrapping thing: it can happen also in between multi-footnotes (&larr; like these) if they are separated by normal spaces. If you want to avoid that, &amp;nbsp; must be used instead of a plain space char. --Ligulem 21:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Can someone explain the point of these citation templates? They seem to create extra work for no benefit that I've ever seen. I'm afraid I didn't get the point of Lulu's examples. The first one he said looked bad, for example, looked fine to me. I think we should do what most publishing houses do, regarding whether to leave a space before ref or not, but I'm looking through my bookshelves here, and it isn't obvious whether there's a space or not. If we could get rid of the square brackets, that would help a lot. SlimVirgin {{sup| (talk) }} 21:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * On looking bad: I suppose one part is just an aethetic thing I can't convince you of. Looking at the "Some legal scholars..." quote above, I find "...law expert [14] [15] Julius Stone ..." really jarring to look at with the spaces scattered among the text and notes.  But if you don't, you don't.  However, look at note "[13]" in the same sample.  In that, the note is on an entirely different line than the clause it supports, which is bad beyond mere aesthetics: it's directly disruptive of reading flow.  LotLE × talk  22:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no need to use those citation templates. Some like them, some not. They do have pros and cons. --Ligulem 21:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It is a somewhat separate issue from footnotes, but I see two main advantages to citation templates:
 * Consistency of reference format across articles. We can change, site-wide, the style guide used for everything that uses, e.g., a "cite book" template.  No doubt, any concrete change might raise disagreement; but think also of republishers of WP content.  Presumably someone assembling all the WP articles on, say, Geology, into a printed book or CD version (think developing world) might want all the citations to match Chicago Manual of Style.  With templates, that's doable, without them it's effectively undoable.
 * Future tool enhancements. This doesn't exist now, so it's somewhat speculative; but not improbable (i.e. I could program it later).  If you wanted to know every article that refererenced "A book written by Charles Dickens", or a "A magazine article published in The New Yorker", you'd have a pretty darn hard time extracting that from unstructured textual references.  However, some super-duper future tool can much more easily extract such information from the structured format of citation templates.  Such a tool might be something like an enhanced "what links here", or it might be some sort of indexing or citation analysis tool (or something I haven't thought of).
 * In my mind, citation templates are a really good thing. If nothing else, they help remind editors of desired data fields in references.  But YMMV.  LotLE × talk  22:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Multiple sources cited for one fact - stylistic question
This came up on the (predictably contentious) Hamas page. I may not be exactly right in my account of what happened there, but that's not really the issue. It was something along these lines: some editors wanted to state that Hamas was "best-known" outside Palestine for suicide bombings, and provided five citations supporting that - a reasonable procedure given the controversial and quantitative nature of the contention, which was somewhat diluted in later edits. If I recall correctly, other editors on the talk page remarked that this was "too many citations", and removed some or all of them.

Now clearly, having multiple footnote indicators coming together is unnecessary and ugly, but removing valid citations is not the way of dealing with it.

I would propose that this article recommend, where one fact or contention is being referenced, that all sources being cited for it be combined into one footnote. This is normal procedure in published texts, where I don't recall ever seeing something like this. (That is the result of typing:  .) This alternative which results from typing this:, also looks a good deal better. Any comments? Palmiro | Talk 12:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's what I've always done for multiple citations, for what it's worth. A problem that comes up is the case where one or more of these is a backlink to a previous footnote (  rather than ), which obviously won't work as expected when combined.  This is avoided in cases where article editors use a new footnote for each citation—common where reasonably thick books are being cited—but is going to be a problem in articles that have a significant number of backlinks (which tends to happen when heavily citing websites or newspaper articles). Kirill Lokshin 12:23, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * True, though of course this problem could be avoided were we to wean editors off websites and newspaper articles and predominantly on to reasonably thick books, and think of the other benefits ;) Palmiro | Talk 12:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * That'll never happen. Most people willing to use book sources already do, and convincing or persuading others who are more comfortable with citing their newspaper or reputable websites to dig up books to cite instead will be hard. (I'm sure there's something at WP:RAUL about this.) Johnleemk | Talk 17:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I propose adding trhe following:
 * Where possible, combine all citations for one fact or contention into one footnote, rather than adding multiple footnotes to the same place in the text.
 * Any comments, ideas, or suggestions for better ways of phrasing/explaining this? Palmiro | Talk 12:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me. Kirill Lokshin 12:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Help:How to use Cite.php references up for deletion at MfD
Just informing, the vote is going on at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:How to use Cite.php references. See also above at --Francis Schonken 19:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Comments inside ref tags
I found recently that addition of delimited comments inside the tags results in an odd error.

User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 16:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Example outside
 * gobble
 * gobbledy

Example inside
 * gobbledygook

References section


 * I've known about this problem for quite some time now, so I think the developers should know about it as well. You could always check the known issues section of Cite... Johnleemk | Talk 14:28, 19 May 2006 (UTC)