Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 5

Very confusing and unorganized page
This page needs a lot more clarity, and needs to be simplified. It is very hard to see what's going on. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Danianjan (talk • contribs) 01:06, 27 June 2006  (UTC)

Overview of major changes this month
Disclaimer: I have very little technical knowledge of Cite.php, so I don't know the relative ease or difficulty in making these changes. I am, however, interested in improving and using the footnote and citation systems in Wikipedia. --J. J. 10:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Purpose
User:NikoSilver initiated a " function" poll here from June 7th–14th. For those new to the discussion, hopefully this section will help clarify and summarize the issues voted on and where we go from here. While the majority of voters support all of the proposals (33 to 5), I've found the extensive discussion to be a more relevant guage for each of the issues; this is why I've opted to summarize the discussion instead of the list of proposals as a whole.

Cite.php has become a huge project, so it's been necessary to illuminate, aggregate, and create a lot of bugs this month. For the sake of simplification (and my own sanity), I've had to leave some of the minor issues and bugs out of this summary. This is, after all, only a guideline, not a policy.

As a next step, I think it would be good to create a detailed, ongoing, scratch sheet /List of outstanding ref bugs and issues. This would help to centralize issues (big and small) scattered throughout these talk archives; it could also aggregate "forgotten" problems mentioned in Footnotes and Cite/Cite.php (and its talk page). To get started on this list, take a look at this MediaZilla query: "MediaWiki extensions" > "Cite" with defaults for other options.

Procedure
The summary is ordered basically the same as the top to bottom discussion on this talk page, as well as the designated comments from this main article and Meta Cite.php pages. 'For those active in the poll, please go ahead and fix any obvious'' mistakes I may have made or use the "General responses" section at the end for more subjective opinions; I've marked my misunderstandings in italics. Also, instead of another messy round of debate below each DISAGREE/DISCUSSION point, I think extensive discussion should be centered around the linked bugs for most of the issues mentioned''' (6B below may be an exception, in which case it would probably be worth aggregating related debates on a /Same ref repetition issues subpage; e.g. Operation Auca discussion). Hopefully this will take us one step closer to integrating this summary into the main Footnotes article (and related Meta/Citations articles) depending on bug states.

Terminology
Basically, footnotes are a numbered list of supporting comments and/or citations added to the bottom of an article and referenced with a number in the main text (this is both a CMS and MLA practice, although the latter emphasizes Harvard references; can someone verify this for me? --J. J.). On paper, these would actually be called endnotes; this is why the footnotes section is often generically labeled. There are various opinions on whether or not citations/references should be mixed with footnotes/comments in the same section. While still functional in old articles, the use of templates for footnotes (Footnote3) has deprecated. Templates are still actively used, however, with Harvard references (shows short text in article instead of just a numbered footnote style; see the Harvard link above).

List of issues mentioned

 * 1) Footnotes is similar to the proposals and comments in this poll, but it needs to be updated. See particularly the mentioned 5810 (still open): possibility when wanting more than one Notes section. Bug 6271, mentioned below, is a "grouping" work around to this problem.
 * 2) Cite/Cite.php also mentions several open bugs that haven't been mentioned here. These are just a few: 2257 template numbering; 4529 ref can't take template arguments; 5567 should have id and name (for legacy); Meta:Talk:Cite/Cite.php is related to bug 5885 below; FYI, Ævar's (the Cite creator) contributions are sparse.
 * 3) REJECTED 1 (but bug still open): Mix in one list, but differentiate footnotes and Harvard references e.g. . While rejected in the poll, the related 6272 is still open. (Correct me if I've misinterpreted this one. --J. J.)
 * 4) REJECTED 2: Have choice to use, exclusively, either footnotes style or Harvard style in one article.
 * 5) Discussion 1 (DISAGREE, but bug still open): Separate and e.g. sections. DISAGREE, although it is AGREED to support 6271 which proposes designating two or more . 5384 resolved (as evidenced by my successful test).
 * 6) Discussion 4 (DISAGREE, but but still open): (A) Ability for hard returns in the edit box to affect final results within tags (instead of having to use  ). (B) To allow easier reading within the edit box, have the parser ignore the [enter]s before and after the ref tags (see the commenting technique and spacing technique for details and a couple of satisfying workarounds). DISAGREE for both; they would require major changes to MediaWiki edit box code, although note the workarounds for 4B. Even though this group disagrees, 6311 is still open.
 * 7) Discussion 5 (AGREE, bug still open): Ability to use refs in templates. See 6312 for details.
 * 8) Discussion 6 (AGREE, bugs still open because of code complexity): (A) Ability to move text within selective refs to a central location, similar to the old Footnote3 mentality (see ). 5997 includes 6A, as well as (B) Fixing non-1st ref content (archived discussion); 5885 is specific to 6B; by consensus, this is one of the most important unresolved issues. Meta:Talk:Cite/Cite.php is a similar, alternative bug (although I don't think there is a MediaZilla bug for it yet).

General responses
Wonderful job! Only one important comment regarding the poll: All points have been agreed by 33vs5 users. The poll is in, and not in discussion. Those "disagree" comments were posted by users after the initiation of the poll. I apologize for rushing the poll and not giving the chance to these users to express their disagreement, but I guess the end result justifies my impatience. JJ, could you please amend your own text accordingly? Also, a suggestion: care to make ===Resolved=== and ===Rejected=== sections to get rid of those from the other ===Non-Resolved=== issues? :N i k o S il v e r:  21:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oooh. Well, silly me. Guess I need to polish up on my WP poll-reading skills; kind of sad that I managed to miss the point after reading through everything so thoroughly. However, Straw polls reads, "Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting." I'll see what I can do to revise; we should be getting paid for this, Niko ;-) --J. J. 04:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've decided to keep the summary mainly the way it is with a couple of exceptions. I've added a justification to the end of the first paragraph of Purpose. I've also added strikeouts to the resolved issues (only two of them). Even though they've been voted on, several of the "resolved" and "rejected" ideas still have active bugs and/or are still being discussed. Leaving the list the way it is makes it easy to refer to the issues by number, too. --J. J. 13:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Inline references suck!
Holy f**king cow! What happened? Guys, I don't know how you managed to get consensus on this issue, but inline references utterly suck! They make it extremely difficult to author articles, they make it hard to maintain articles, they make it difficult to reference the same work more than once! This has got to be the most horrid style possible for managing references, and I am utterly disappointed to come to this page, to discover that its somehow been promoted as official policy! WTF! Who did this S**t? I'm sorry, but there is so much B.S. on W.P. already, that I certainly don't want the B.S. percolating upwards into the reaches of WP policy! Sorry for the foul language and exclamation marks, but really, this one takes the cake! Get a grip, folks, revert, and ban the inline-refrence style! Arghh! linas 15:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, inline references are a bitch. They make paragraphs look like they're double spaced, and make editors go "huh, wheres the text I wanted to edit" cause theres so much garbage inline. Fresheneesz 20:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Err, what? Could you please be more specific what you mean by "style"?  If it's inline citation in general, your complaints are likely to be as effective as beating your head against a brick wall; if it's footnotes in particular, you might note the disclaimer at the top of the page: "N.B. This format is not mandatory; editors are free to use a different method. See How and where to cite sources." Kirill Lokshin 15:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Kirill, I think it is clear that Linas is referring to Cite.php and the - FrancisTyers · 16:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it would be even worse to cite something like that Harvard-style (since you'd not only have the really long list of authors in the markup, but in the final article text as well), so I'm not sure what he's proposing as an alternative. Kirill Lokshin 16:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not proposing harvard style, although what you describe wouldn't be a problem, e.g. (Firstguy et al. XXXX) and then in the references section you can give the full list. My complaint is solely that it is currently impossible with Cite.php to put full text references outside the body of the article, e.g. in a References or Notes section, like with Footnotes3. - FrancisTyers · 16:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that depends on what you mean by "full text". You're correct insofar as there's no intuitive way to reduce the in-text references to single tags (e.g. ) in all cases (although I do recall that someone had found a clever, if complicated, way of doing so); but neither is there anything preventing the use of short-form citations in footnotes (e.g. ) with the bulk of the reference information contained in a separate "References" section. Kirill Lokshin 17:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Nothing prevents you if you discount the almost unbearable ugliness of the resulting layout (a pseudo-footnote to point to a Harvard reference that is not directly linked to the citation itself... yuck! It's hard to imagine anything uglier).


 * Btw. For an example of a way to group references and used named tags, see User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing. It's not perfect, until the MediaWiki developers act on a patch I've provided.  But it's pretty good for some situations.  It will be better when we can do the same thing, but with references at bottom.  LotLE × talk  17:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Considering that the format I suggested is the one recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style for footnotes, I suspect the ugliness may be a matter of opinion ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Do you have evidence of that? I don't have a Chicago Manual, but I certainly can't recall it ever recommending such a dreadful thing. I agree about the form of the short citation, which is just Harvard referencing.  But putting a Harvard ref in a (pseudo-footnote)?!  LotLE × talk  17:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, sure. From the fifteenth edition: "The short form, as distinct from an abbreviation, should include enough information to remind readers of the full title or to lead them to the appropriate entry in the bibliography..." (16.41), "The most common short form consists of the last name of the author and the main title of the work cited, usually shortened if more than four words..." (16.42), and "First note citation in a work with full bibliography: 1. Doniger, Splitting the Difference, 23." (16.3, emphasis theirs).  The fourteent edition, if I recall correctly, suggested omitting the title and only using the author name and page number.
 * (A possible source of confusion: I intended the number above to be a page reference, not a publication year. Sorry if that wasn't very clear.) Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that part of the issue, incidentally, is the proliferation of templates like cite book. I can see where heavy use of them would cause the resulting layout to appear utterly absurd.  For those of us who just write up the references by hand, however, it looks much simpler, as there's no need to point from templates to other templates. Kirill Lokshin 17:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't understand the question. The very first example on this page, Footnotes, is an example of an inline reference. I am trying to say that not only are inline references bad, but they are so bad that they should be banned from WP. There could not possibly be a poorer design for adding references to a text. Thus, I was utterly aghast to find that somehow this style had become "recommended". I used swear-words, because this idea is so mind-bogglingly bad that I was left speech-less, jaw-agape, unable to find any other words that captured my feelings. linas 16:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think you'll find much support for your view, frankly. Despite the occasional flaws in implementation, the inline reference system has finally allowed us to begin working on properly sourcing all of the various things in Wikipedia without depending on fragile and difficult-to-use template schemes. Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly support your view Linas, unfortunately I think your stand-off-ish approach will cause more problems than it will solve :) Try and enunciate your complaints in slightly more reserved language ;) - FrancisTyers · 16:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The stand-off seems unavoidable. Clearly, 30 people voted for this thing, and five against. To reply to Kirill, template schemes are neither fragile, nor are they difficult to use. For example, in Principle of least action, we had


 * '' ...is often given to Pierre Louis Maupertuis, who wrote about it in 1744 and 1746. However, scholarship indicates that ...

''

I find the above to be eminently readable and editable. The markup is robust against error; there's nothing fragile about it. Its certainly not difficult to insert a reference. Then some anonymous editor did a drive-by conversion of the above, and turned it into:


 * '' ...is often given to Pierre Louis Maupertuis, who wrote about it in 1744 and 1746 . However, scholarship indicates that ...

''

I can't begin to imagine why Kirill thinks that the later is less fragile, or is easier to use, than the former. Its just begging for typesetting errors, grammatical errors, poor flow. Its just plain eye-throbbingly difficult to read. Whenever one has something difficult to read, it will lead to errors and mistakes. Reference markup should be easy, clear, simple to use and convenient for the author. It should not be some machine-like monstrosity invented by some computer programmer who doesn't actually author articles, and has no sense of usability or ease-of-use issues. linas 17:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You're discounting the other portion of the citations here, of course. For your examples, they would be:


 *  P.L.N. de Maupertuis, Accord de différentes lois de la nature qui avaient jusqu'ici paru incompatibles.'' (1744) Mém. As. Sc. Paris p. 417.

P.L.N. de Maupertuis, Le lois de mouvement et du repos, déduites d'un principe de métaphysique. (1746) Mém. Ac. Berlin, p. 267. ''


 * versus:




 * This would be more flexible, and allows the best of both worlds. It might also be used to manually sort the list of references in author-alpha order, rather than by the first occurrence of a citation, with the addition of an optional attribute:.


 * This is just an idea—there may be a better way to accomplish this. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 18:29 Z 


 * Woops, looks like somebody beat me to the idea by a day: meta:talk:Cite/Cite.php#Request for extension of ref/references templates.


 * I think the problem of references, citations, notes and sources is the singel biggest technical problem for Wikipedia to overcome. I'm not sure why it takes such a backseat to other programming issues.


 * However, since we have to work with what we have, I don't think notes and references should be mixed together. In other words articles should end with a "Notes" section with the tag &lt;references /&gt; followed by a separate "References" section where formated bibliographic references are listed either manually or using the cite and harvardref cite templates. The notes section should include only notes without bibliographic detail. The bibliographic detail should be in the "References" section, ideally using harvard-cite templates. This means the only thing appearing in the wiki source of an article would be notes/footnotes enclosed in &lt;ref&gt; tags. The templates should then be arranged in the "References" section in a suitable order (in other words arranged manually).


 * The named referrence tags really have no place in this. First of all a text only coincidentally requires a notation/elaboration identical to a previous notation. Also the named reference tags do not provide adequate user feedback to jump back to the section in the main text that rtargeted the footnote. In other words which of the up-pointing arros do I click to get back to where I was reading before viewing the footnote. Finally, the problem ref tags solved (the problem of keeiping subordinate text editied, inserted and deleeted along with the main text they refer to) gets reintroduced by using named references. This is because the deletion of the named reference with the textual elaboration could leave another ref tag of the same name orphaned (no more text that its referring to).

So here's what I'm suggesting. An article's source should include cite.php ref tags for notes.&lt;ref&gt;to provide further elaboration on an issue that doesn't need to be in the main text or to provide a citation of a source that the author doesn't want to include in the main text&lt;/ref&gt; The end of the article would then include a section called something like: Notes &lt;references /&gt; References harvard ref templates

Until the the technical problems get worked out I don't think there's a decent alternative. --Cplot 19:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Some comments:
 * The named ref functionality will probably not be removed, for backward compatibility. Of course, cite.php could be forked to something like notes.php, with the exact functionality you describe.
 * In simpler articles, there is no need for both notes and references sections. A simple link to each reference is sufficient.
 * I do like Harvard style, which makes it easier to include more information in the reference citations, and still avoid adding a notes section, using citations like #|(Smith 2006:123), #|(Smith 2006:123–24), #|(Smith 2006:123, 231), (Smith #|1999, #|2006), "... according to Smith #|(2006)", or "... according to the writer John Smith (#|2006)". I created these kinds of citations manually in the article T-34.
 * —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:21 Z 


 * As the concern is about editing, note 2745, a general suggestion for a second edit window for citation info. Implementation is easier if citation info is gathered in one section. (SEWilco 05:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC))


 * In reply to El C, I think that breaking a cite into multiple lines and maybe a little indentation helps greatly with the readability in edit mode. See the Zinedine Zidane article for an example. There probably isn't anything with a denser degree of citations (one sentence has eight), but the multi-line format at least makes it easier to see the the citations start and end. Canadiana 19:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hidden refs at the top
I have long disliked the current reference style due to the fact that the linked information is in the article text and makes editing articles much more difficult than with ref/note old style...however, I do understand that the cite.php style is beneficial from a management standpoint...but only marginally. In an effort to try and reduce the text area used by the current cite.php style, User:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters developed an alteration which is currently used in one FA which I was the primary writer on...namely Shoshone National Forest. In this style, the citation within the article text is very much reduced, but since the developers haven't impemented the changes, all the references are at the beginning of the article.--MONGO 19:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The style mentioned above appears as follows when the editing window is open...--MONGO 19:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * That also an idea I had. However, doesn't that mean the references must be listed in hide in the same order they appear in the text? And that the 'a' ref for every reference goes nowhere? It looks odd that every reference says (a b). References listed in "hidden" sections shouldn't be numbered/tagged. The other feature I want in cite.php is an optional page note, so the entire book reference doesn't need repeating. I don't have a system set up to easy test a php hook, or I would code this up myself. Is there a way to use some existing test site? Gimmetrow 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that the style may need some tweaking, but that may have been possible if the developers had bothered to implement it. I'm not good at the programming aspects of this endeavour, so I have to rely on those that are to address concerns I have. Like El C, I really think the current cite.php style make editing articles much more difficult, but I also understand that cite.php is definitely more manageable if a ref is deleted from the article since one doesn't have to track that ref down at the end of the article and remove it from there as well. Another aspect of the current system I don't like is that it isn't really a footnote in that if an article is linked appropriate it appears as a 1,3, or whatever number, sometimes repeatedly in article space...so the style is more like a reference note than a footnote in reality...I'll beep Lulu and see if he has anything else to offer on this matter.--MONGO 19:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh dear, that's a bit of an ugly hack:
 * It breaks usability:
 * It adds a confusing "a" link to every reference, which goes nowhere.
 * The only useful back-link is "b", but only an experienced editor would know why
 * It puts all of the references at the beginning of the article and hides them from visual browsers, but this probably breaks the accessibility of the article for
 * Google, which only indexes a certain amount of text at the top of the page
 * Users of alternative browsers, including text-only browsers, screen readers for the handicapped


 * Please don't do stuff like this which brings down Wikipedia's technical quality. If cite.php doesn't do what you want, either
 * Live without it.
 * Do it manually, or by the use of other templates.


 * —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:58 Z 
 * It was only implemented in that one article and, as I stated, had their been success in getting it implemented, most of the concerns you mention here would have been addressed. Lulu was trying hard to get the proposal implemented..I suppose it is time to reconvert it back to something else...which is mainly a simple revert and a readditon of newer material...not abig job...currently the article is 6th on a goggle query.... I leave it as is for a few more days and then make the corrections.--MONGO 20:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * How about a third option - work to change it. There are groups who are automatically changing reference styles over to cite.php without much discussion - it clearly is a better system, but it has some significant flaws which really should be worked on. Since there isn't much choice at this point as far as writing featured article quality pages without cite.php, we should focus on increasing its functionality. (as you have discussed above!) InvictaHOG 20:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The change has already been provided to the MediaWiki developers for a bunch of months now. I submitted the actual patch to the code that would let the reference hide at the bottom rather than top, and thereby resolve 90% of the concerns with having them at top.  I know the few developers have worked really hard, and have many balls to juggle... but I'm quite frustrated that this few lines of change to the m:Cite.php code has been so thourogly back-burnered.  There was even a "vote" on either this talk page, or maybe the one on citing sources, where a zillion editors all stridenly stated their desire for exactly the change I submitted a patch for.  Aaagghh!  LotLE × talk  21:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Is there a bug open in the MediaWiki bugzilla? Can we vote for it? Does anyone actually read the votes there, or is it just a way to let the non-developers feel like they're doing something effective with regards to development? grendel|khan 06:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 5997. Devs mainly do what they feel like doing, since only two are paid and those two are in charge of development, but something that gets a lot of votes might get slightly more attention if you're lucky. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Introductory section
The first section of the article contains "Also, Cite.php footnotes are not the only way to make footnotes. Many articles use templates to create footnotes." When I first read this, I thought this meant that Cite.php and citation templates were competing systems to create footnotes, but I have since learned that Cite.php creates the footnote numbers and the navigation aids, the citation templates create the content of the citation, and they can be used independently. I'd like to see this passage rewritten. --Gerry Ashton 18:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's referring to ref/note templates, not to cite book and its ilk. Kirill Lokshin 18:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Style recommendation
At Footnotes:


 *  Enclosing the, while putting the plain old  for the 100% ones. —Jared Hunt'' August 30, 2006, 18:26 (UTC)
 * FYI, the templates currently allow only 100% and 92%. Any option other than 100% becomes 92%. Gimmetrow 18:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict, repeating Gimmetrow) Both FootnotesSmall and {{subst:Footnotes}} are "foolproof" in that sense, no other resizings than 100% or 92% can be operated with them:
 * {{subst:Footnotes}} makes 100% for whatever other value for the parameter than 92%
 * FootnotesSmall makes 92% for whatever other value for the parameter than 100%
 * so neither of these *templates* could allow for misuse in the sense you describe. --Francis Schonken 18:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * (in between Schonken and Gimmetrow) Didn't know that it only took 2 options. Sorry about that, but regardless, read the "how to replace" section anyways —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 23:27 (UTC)

You removed mention of  is a de-facto standard among recently promoted FAs, for example. It's just as legitimate a method of resizing footnotes as the templates are (and perhaps somewhat more flexible for more advanced work); there's absolutely no reason why it should not be documented here. Kirill Lokshin 20:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Remove what? I think we were working towards implementing  tags can contain either notes or just references, and therefore can generate a list of either.  I think it's important to make this clear in the text, and refer the editor to the technical details elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2006-09-16 16:00 Z 


 * Thanks for your thoughts, Gimmetrow, Michael. Might cite.php be programmed to interpret any/all " ) for repeated notes citing different pages of the same book, leaving the full bibliographical details in a reference list sorted by author and title. (The last differs from a reference list for Harvard parenthetical references, (Butzer 1993; 195) which are sorted by author and date.)  --SteveMcCluskey 17:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Is or might there be any consensus or will to widen cite.php's scope, however...? (i.e. add " "/" " and " "/" "...?) David (talk) 01:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good idea to me, at least for 'note'. Not sure about the necessity for footnote, as all notes will by definition be footnotes...? JulesH 09:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess so, but some folk prefer, some , some , ... Regards, David (talk) 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Would be neat if produced numbered comments, and / produced lettered comments (a-z, then aa-zz). Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Use of parallel cite.php for ref/notes etc with numeric/lettering previosuly discussed (without any input from the software writers) - see archive Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/archive4 where discussion over 3 systems: references, bibliography and footnotes (I had suggested refB, refN and refR) David Ruben Talk 00:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Guideline for formatting when there are general references?
How should I handle the case where a page has an existing general reference that covers a large amount of content scattered throughout the page, but a specific reference needs to be inserted for a fact that isn't covered by it?

Example here: Microdot

Any suggestions? Everything I can think of trying just looks stupid. JulesH 09:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Why can't you cite the specific fact to a specific reference using your system of choice (Harvard, footnote or html link)? Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes and References
Given that the and tags can be used for both references and additional-information (non-referential) footnotes, is there a manner in which the system can be used for both whilst having separate sections for the two distinct uses?

That is, can we have separate "footnotes" and "references" sections, both using the mechanism?

I appreciate that this has likely been answered somewhere already; if so, please point me to the appropriate document. Thanks.

Fourohfour 13:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think the cite.php technology currently supports distinct sections using the same mechanism. There are various proposals which would allow cite.php to support such a thing, see Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes/archive4. Editors who want to separate text expansions from simple citations typically use the cite.php system for the citations, and the ref/note system with letters for the text expansions. Another option is to use Harvard for citations (see WP:CITE), and cite.php for text expansions. Gimmetrow 15:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Does combining ref/note and cite.php on the same page work? Footnotes says "The new format cannot be mixed on a page with the old Footnotes3 format—you must pick one or the other."  There's a list article that currently has Footnotes3-style text expansions that I'd like to add cite.php citations to, but I'm wary of doing the work if the two systems are fundamentally incompatible. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be confusing to have two systems using numbers. The basic ref/note uses numbers, so in that sense it is incompatible. However, ref/note contains options to use symbols other than numbers, plus the ref label/note label templates. For a recently-featured article using both ref/note and cite.php, see Alcibiades. Gimmetrow 19:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Gimmetrow! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Aesthetic Issues
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, an FAC I have in the process, has a pretty well-referenced reception section. However, I'm worried that some might object on basis of ugliness (I've already got a neutral on it). What's the precedent? Should I investigate alternative ways of referencing, or does precedent favor utility over appearance? --Zeality 16:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. --Zeality 14:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

ref tags and Cite.php
Is it true that


 * most writers who read this page just want to know how to write a footnote ASAP?


 * writers do not need to know about the implementation underneath the ref tags (except to see the name so they won't get confused and think it's something different if they see Cite.php mentioned elsewhere)?


 * writers certainly don't need to know the implementation (MediaWiki) under the implementation (Cite.php) of the only thing they need to know (ref) to get the job done?

Thanks.

TH 03:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would anyone who goes looking for WP:FOOT ever expect to end up at WP:Footnotes?
Kirill,

I don't undertand. Why would anyone who goes looking for WP:FOOT ever expect to end up at WP:Footnotes?

Is there any connection except an etymological connection (unimportant for our purposes) between foot and footnote?

Isn't the connection between foot and any form of football a thousand times stronger than any connection between foot and footnote?

Why not just redirect from WP:FOOT to WWikiProject Football and get Footnotes out of the way?

TH 19:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Umm, because WP:FOOT has always redirected here, and thus anyone using it expects that? (In any case, etymological connections are perfectly valid; shortcuts are a convenient shorthand—for which "foot" is quite suitable for "footnote"—rather than something with a deep meaning to it.) Kirill Lokshin 20:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Kirill,

I've seen you make stronger arguments than that.

Could you answer the rest of my questions?

Bottom line: since the connection foot-football is 1000 times more likely than foot-footnote, why don't we redirect WP:FOOT to WikiProject Football, and there we can say -- WP:FOOT redirects here; you may also be looking for Wikipedia:Footnote -- ?

TH 20:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you offering to correct the many incoming links to WP:FOOT (which most certainly are not referring to football)? I don't particularly care where the shortcut points to in the long term—although common sense suggests that major guidelines ought to get priority over individual WikiProject pages, because they're far more likely to be linked to in conversation (and thus need the shortcut)—but you can't simply switch the target of a long-standing shortcut on a whim. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, now I see. I thought FOOT->FOOTNOTE was a connection we were expecting to find in the mind of the populace at large. But now I realize it's one of these arbitrary WP shortcuts for quick-typing.

Thanks.

TH 21:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Just as arbitrary a shortcut as WP:BALL or WP:SOCCER. (SEWilco 03:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC))

Right -- thank you both, KL and SEW. I got off on the wrong track and misunderstood this for a day or two.

I think I got off on the wrong track because in some countries, so I've heard, they use the word "foot" to mean what Americans call soccer.

TH 04:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)