Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 4

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 [4] ) - 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)


 * I totally agree with the comments made here. I like the use of parenthetical citations with some sort of &lt;ref&gt; element within the parenthesis. Or perhaps the &lt;ref&gt; element could go in a spearate &lt;cite&gt; element. This way the details could go at the bottom of the page while the summary and page citation could be visible inline or with a mouseover. In any event, adding some structure to this markup would make things more flexible too. Users could control how they wanted citations and references displayed on their preference page.


 * Perhaps this is better discussion for the development pages, but does anyone know if there's some way to do this with namespaces or some other method using the existing &lt;ref&gt; element? In particular I'd like to create two separate references lists at the bottom of the page: one for footnotes elaborating on the text and one for references proper (I guess in the order that they first appear on the page). I imagine something like &lt;references namespace="footnotes" /&gt; followed by &lt;references namespace="references" /&gt;. Any thoughts? --Cplot 21:10, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * While no consensus has been reached on any of the points mentioned in this section, they have been discussed. See the recent issues summary: (3) For differentiating citations from notes, and (5) for having more than one references list at the bottom of the page. Using the title attribute would be benificial, as well, and could be something added to my proposed /List of outstanding ref bugs and issues. --J. J. 14:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

If you want a little popup with the text of the reference or footnote, how about using the Navigation popups script? It is brilliant for exactly this purpose! --Slashme 09:43, 10 July 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, FAQ on Israeli settlements, CBC News Online, February 26, 2004. URL accessed April 10, 2006. including prominent international law expert Pomerance, Michla. The Legality of the Iraq War: Beyond legal pacifism, The Review, April 2003. URL accessed April 11, 2006. International Law: Blaming Big Brother: Holding States Accountable for the Devastation of Terrorism, 56 Oklahoma Law Review 735, __ __. Julius Stone 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. 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." 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 (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)
 * In the footnote-dense world of the physical sciences, it is reasonably common to see multiple footnote numbers cited for a single fact. This is often more useful than condensing all those sources into a single footnote, because you may need to cite those sources singly elsewhere in the article. Shimmin 17:45, 2 July 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 ''' just default to that class somehow? &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 18:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Period/Full Stop and reference location

 * See also below 

Why does the reference have to come after the period? I think this is a foolish way of doing things. In comparison, the Harvard referencing system and other style guides allow for the reference to come within the sentence. I'm not saying it should be changed the other way, but the policy should allow for both. --Robdurbar 08:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it was meant that if the footnote refers to the whole sentence, then it should be placed after the period, not before it . Of course, you can place footnotes in the middle of the sentence. Why not? This is a needed feature. --Ligulem 09:18, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Rob, the footnote should be placed directly after the point it's being used as a reference for. For quotations, it should be directly after the quote, even if the quote is in the middle of a sentence. If you have three points in a sentence, and only the first point is sourced to that particular reference, the footnote should come after that point, but if the footnote is for the whole sentence, it should be placed at the end, after the punctuation. Footnotes come after punctuation, unlike Harvard references which are usually placed before punctuation (like this: Smith 2006). SlimVirgin (talk)

User:Ligulem; thank you, but I wasn't very clear - I meant where it refers to the whole sentence, I understand the mid-sentence feature. So is this footnote after the period a standard and not just a Wikipedia thing? I always use Harvard when referencing outside of Wikipedia and it seems odd to do it out of the sentence. Could the policy be changed to suggest that they come after the period, rather than to prohibit their use before the period? It seems like an unecessary little rule. --Robdurbar 11:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe all publishers place footnotes after punctuation, and Harvard referencing before it. SlimVirgin (talk) 11:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * My personal opinion is that it is good as it is stated (footnotes after the punctuation). No clue how and where that came from. The Chicago Manual of Style (which uses non-bracketed numbers), 14th ed. 1993, writes in clause 15.8 (p. 494) "Note reference numbers. The superior numerals used for note reference numbers in the text should follow any punctuation marks except the dash, which they precede. The numbers should also be placed outside closing parantheses." So as we do it here is in line with that. --Ligulem 12:02, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It probably just came from the fact that it looks odd to have a sentence, then a number, then a dot, like this . I suppose the syntactical argument is that the number is not part of the sentence. SlimVirgin <sup style="color:purple;">(talk) 12:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I've presented the reason even on this talk page: basically, books and magazines are published using high resolution typography that doesn't exist in web browsers. Microspacing, ligatures, 1200 dpi printing, etc. make for different optima than do 72 dpi screen displays with relatively crude font rendering.  Given the latter way that a majority of readers will read WP articles, certain things are good compromises for WP that wouldn't be necessary in print.  On the web, lacking good quality superscripts and microspacing, it definitely looks a lot better to put footnotes after periods, or anything in superscript (which is why I personally dont' really like the template:ref_harv modification of template:ref_harvard all that much).  LotLE × talk  16:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The links don't work, Lulu. My mind is boggling at templates for Harvard references involving periods/full stops. SlimVirgin <sup style="color:purple;">(talk)  17:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I abbreviated when I wasn't supposed to. LotLE × talk  18:49, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * A sentence should be written like this.[2] It should not be written like this [2].

If I see a footnote after a full stop, I assume it is a footnote for all the sentences since the start of the paragraph. If I see it before the full stop I assume it is for that sentence. I do not see why this Wikipedia guideline has to be perscriptive on this. --Philip Baird Shearer 16:10, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * {The prescription was added at 05:38, 17 May 2006 by user:SlimVirgin. Before that AFAICT there was no suggestion that the citation ought to go after the stop, just examples where it did. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:11, 16 June 2006 (UTC) }


 * Gladly the tool allows you to violate that authoritarian guideline! (see below under ). There are also cases where you have 2 or more notes within one sentence, that apply only to certain terms of the sentence. As an example see Macedonia (terminology) and... ask those who support this guideline to figure out how you could do it otherwise!  N i k o S il v e r   <font size="-2">(T) @ (C) 16:20, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I also belong to the camp that believes the footnote should be within the sentence (i.e., before the closing punctuation). Likewise for quotes. I suspect this is a programmer's professional deformation: periods close sentences, and the footnote is within the sentence. Similarly, parentheses, quotes, and so forth need to be paired correctly.
 * On the other hand, the usage as expounded within these guidelines has been around for a long time. Who said natural language was logical or consistent?
 * Urhixidur 12:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I have been moving footnotes to after the punctuation on a lot of articles per the discussion here and what is on the project page. Now Philip Baird Shearer requests me to stop doing this (see his and my talk). The question is: is it forbidden to bring an article at least in a consistent state per this issue? Philip Baird Shearer reverted me twice:,. Both articles where he reverted me are again in an inconsistent state: some footnotes are before the periods, and some are after. Can't we at least agree to have a consistent style on a single article? So I could leave then those articles where the majority of the footnotes are before the punctuation as they are. Or is it possible to define areas where articles are consistently in opposition to what's specified on this guideline here? --Ligulem 19:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I am finding User:Philip Baird Shearer's actions disappointing here. Not only did he revert without giving any explanation whatsoever, but when asked to provide a justification, gave this discussion, which at best proves that there is discussion on the topic, but certainly not that there is consensus against the current statement in favor of punctuation. Circeus 20:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

This has been debated before; there are many who support this standard who do not frequent this page. On FAC, it is commonly mentioned. See Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes/archive3. --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  21:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Circeus, I did not say there was a consensus against it I said three was no consensus for it. That this discussion is taking place is an indicator of that. As I said above I do not see why this guideline has to be prescriptive on this, and it is not I who is going around articles I do not usually edit changing the footnotes to one style or another.


 * Ligulem they are not in an inconsistent state, please read what I wrote above. I am sorry if I did not make myself clear, but I think the positioning of the "note", before or after the full stop indicates if the reference is specific to the information in the sentence or to all the sentences before the reference. So the articles are not in an inconsistent state.


 * I have let a number of other similar edits of pages I have contributed to by Ligulem pass before I raised the issue here, having raised it here and had two other editors contribute to the conversation I think it is reasonable that Ligulem, does not make these changes to pages (s)he does not usually edit while we are discussing the issue. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:11, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Spangineer I read the link you gave and I do no think the discussion was about this issue. At first I could not think of a way to show you that many editors do not agree with this rule. But the number of pages which Ligulem has changed in the past few days is a good indicator  .That is 654 pages changed between 18:17, 3 June 2006 and 15:50, 13 June 2006, ranging over a large area of interest e.g.  Software patent debate, Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, Bow Wow Wow and Argentina and England football rivalry. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree to stop doing these kind of edits. I agree that there is obviously no consensus to have it as it is stated on the project page. Although I find the articles look lousy with footnotes before punctuation and there is also no semantical benefit to have it in one sentence after the period and in the other before the period, all in the same article . But well, if there is consensus to have Wikipedia look lousy, well then. If the footnote is at the end of the sentence it always refers to that sentence, not the paragraph (or at least it cannot be distinguished). BTW I'm a male. And to Philip: you could have talked to me a bit earlier about this. And once again: nearly all English books use the format as described by the Chicago Manual of Style (foonotes after punctuation except for the dash), which is compliant with what's currently in the guideline here. --Ligulem 09:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've changed the project page to reflect the current state of non-consensus. --Ligulem 09:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for seeing the other POV. I could have mentioned it to you earlier, but I did not know that you were altering so many pages, (because I only see those edits to pages I watch). Once I realised that you were making systematic changes to lots of pages I raised the issue on this talk page. I assumed as you had already added comments to this section and were quoting this guideline as a source for the changes that you were watching this article and talk page. One lives and learns. Next time this sort of thing occurs I shall leave a notice on the editors talk page as soon as I make such an observatiuon on the guidline talk page. I apologise for my presumption that lead to me not informing you earlier. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * One thing left: what is the range of articles I edited an indicator for, if not at best, that a lot of wikipedians obviously agree with what I did or at least accept it as I did? All feedback I had when doing this was positive/agreeing. One wikipedian explicitly stated that — despite his personal preferences dictate otherwise — he agrees to have it consistent on wikipedia and that refs after puncts are the majority. I also didn't have any reverts, or complaints on my talk, besides yours. And please note that there is no policy on wikipedia that requires editors to significantly contribute to an article in order to be allowed to edit that article. It rather smells like some WP:OWN problem to me (No offense intended. I fully understand that. I would probably have that myself if I had written large good articles). Also due to the fact that the diffs look horribly sparse if I only move punctuation. Nevertheless these are complicated edits I have done. And it is normal that I have to try doing this in some amount or articles to see what happens. I have 12'000 articles on my list (created from an xml-dump), which I not yet did. And which I am not going to do. And a last one (I said that other occasions already): Wikipedians do copy the style of good articles. That's why I try to change good articles from good editors, also on — for some editors — minor things like fontsizes or footnote styles. Those styles get copied by less seasoned editors. --Ligulem 12:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It's clear that there are many people who put citations before punctuation, but I'd argue that that is often an ease of use and/or inexperience issue, not an indication that it is the "right way" to do it. I am not here referring to those here who have reasoned arguments for putting citations first; I'm addressing the argument of "everyone is doing it" as support for putting citations first. First off, the 654 thing doesn't really help--I could probably find scores of words that are misspelled on Wikipedia more frequently than that. Furthermore, in my area, hardly anyone says "I should have gone to the store". They all say "I should have went to the store." Does that make it OK? Should I write like that in a paper for school? There's a difference between what people typically do without thinking and what is "correct". Obviously here, the dichotomy isn't as strong between right and wrong, but it's extremely well accepted in virtually all publications using footnotes that footnotes follow punctuation. That's just the way it is&mdash;the Chicago Manual of Style, one of the only style books still advocating superscript footnotes, says to do it that way, and professional writers agree. Even here, it's clear that few FACs pass through the process without the style getting changed to have citations follow punctuation. The editors consistently writing the highest quality articles (as judged by participation in WP:FAC) tend to agree that superscript citations follow punctuation. Ligulem isn't the only one converting the things. It's well established. As for Ligulem's point of consistency within articles, that is essential. Even as bad as it looks to put citations first, it's worse to have them haphazardly placed. And, as far as I'm concerned, he who is willing to put the effort into making the citation location consistent gets to decide which way they go, if indeed there is no consensus on a guideline (which I still highly doubt). --Spangineer[es] (háblame)  13:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There are a number of people who have contributed to this talk page who hold the same views on this as I do. I am not implying that every citation on every page which Ligulem altered was intentionally structured that way and that the count should be one editor for every page. Just that some (perhapse many) of them are structured that way intentionally, and clearly there is no consensus for prescribing citations after the stop. If someone is concerned that the locations are inconsistent within an article then I would encourage that person to use the talk page to discuss how consistancy can be reached without the bludgen of a prescriptive guideline. I don't thing the ease of use argument is correct, because I find it more difficult to place the ref before stop than after it. Also please see the section below, having a mixture of some citations before the stop and others after it is not necessarily inconsistent. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes in double columns
To my mind, footnotes in double columns looks better to the eye, and make better use of space. I've taken the liberty of demonstrating this in the double layers article, though you require Firefox. Comments? --Iantresman 19:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks pretty good with the browser window expanded, but the columns are just a bit narrow in my normal browsing width of about 850px. Font-size:95% doesn't seem to perceptibly reduce the size in my browser; I think it would look better if it was still smaller.  It may also benefit from tighter leading overall, or a bit of line space between list items.


 * Is it possible for it to switch to one column when the parent element is narrower than a certain width, without resorting to Javascript? —Michael Z. 2006-05-23 19:26 Z 


 * Too bad the citations start with the floating carat character and the floating a and b's. The left margin of the list would be emphasized much better if each simply started with the capital letter at the beginning of the entry.  —Michael Z. 2006-05-23 23:47 Z 


 * Have a look at Double layers/temp, for an example with the back-links moved to the end of the line, and an added 1/2-line of space below each entry. It's much easier to read.  —Michael Z. 2006-05-24 00:16 Z 


 * Pretty neat hack. It may be too complicated for most editors, even though it looks like all you've done is add . I'm sorry that your previous comment about back-links (more commonly link-back) was ignored. Maybe people will respond with reasons why the way it is.
 * FYI, "Notes" instead of "Footnotes" is a more standard heading. I try not to change existing ones, though, as it breaks links.
 * For your temp example, I'm assuming you've manually edited the layout to move the back-links and add extra space. Could you document the process on the /temp talk page? It may be good to centralize the discussion there. You may want to check these links for help, as well. --J. J. 13:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Usability/Areas
 * WikiProject User scripts (see Lincher's column request)

References at bottom
Is there any success in solving this problem yet? I believe LotLE had a patch, did it work? - FrancisTyers 10:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Which problem are you referring to? Section ordering? If so, see Guide to layout. --J. J. 13:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I mean, e.g.

References & Footnotes
Is it possible to have both inline refs and footnotes in an article, without the footnotes being listed in the references section. The only idea I have is using a depreciated template for the footnotes, but the usage info seems to have been removed. <font style="color:#77AAAA">smurrayinch <font style="color:green">e <font style="color:#77AAAA">ster(User), (Talk) 20:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Notes or Footnotes?
I've noticed this example page uses the heading "Notes" for the footnotes section. I think "Notes" is misleading. It confused me when I first got to Wiki, because I kept thinking it was stuff I was supposed to read.

The obvious heading for a bunch of footnotes is, like, Footnotes, isn't it?

Therefore, I think this example page should have its example reference heading entitled "Footnotes", not "Notes", to encourage people to use that expression. Gatoclass 16:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I am inclined to agree. —Centrx→talk &bull; 22:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Strictly speaking, if the article is printed, we get endnotes, not footnotes; whereas if the article is viewed on-screen, they can be regarded as footnotes. The usage of "Notes", while not necessarily optimal, at least avoids having something utterly nonsensical in either case. Kirill Lokshin 23:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, using the less specific 'notes' is adaptive to the multiple output/viewing modes the articles are subject to. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Even if the article is viewed on-screen, it is still "Endnotes", they are not at the bottom of a screenful and they are at the end of the article. However, this may be less commonly understandly terminology. —Centrx→talk &bull; 00:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

A way so footnotes do not clutter text?
Is there a way to define footnotes in their own section, then using the reference with just a short name, rather than defining them in the body of the article? —Centrx→talk • 05:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * See User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing for a semi-solution. For the complete solution, we need to convince the MediaWiki developers to implement a submitted patch in Cite.php.  Or you can use the older style  notes.  LotLE × talk  08:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Summary of poll needed
Would it help if I summarized the (particularly the Results)? I noticed that there were a couple comments to User talk:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason afterwards, but I haven't seen any kind of final proposal. I can try and round up the most recent comments over the past week or two, as well. --J. J. 13:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure, any help is good :) - FrancisTyers · 13:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully I'll get that done in the next day or two, then. Sorry that I missed out on the voting. I come back to this footnotes discussion every few weeks, but I definitely missed an important poll this time! --J. J. 20:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Hey JJ, would you like to also include the bug links as they appear here please? :N i k o S il v e r:  21:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll do that. Working on it right now! Hopefully will have it done tonight, assuming I don't get lost trying to catch up with all the little issues and bugs mentioned. --J. J. 21:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a lot of work! I've worked through a lot of the discussion and am editing a summary on my local computer right now; I'll post the completed version when I'm done (posting the working draft somewhere would just confuse you, trust me). Sorry to those who are waiting, but "you can't rush quality" ;-) --J. J. 02:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Your efforts are deeply appreciated. Take your time, we've already wasted a lot of it anyway, since nobody dared take the initiative. :N i k o S il v e r: 12:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Seconded. David Kernow 15:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)