At 12:43 PM 12/12/2004 -0600, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
One problem with a simple [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup
is that it doesn't
provide a way to put wiki markup into the reference, such as italicization
or hyperlinks.
Why not? [[Image:]] tags can have all sorts of wiki markup in their
captions, we could use something similar here. Yours works too but seems a
little more "fragile" to me, since it's possible to insert references that
don't link up due to typos in the ids or because one half got deleted. On
the other hand, it does make multiple references a lot tidier. I guess it's
a personal preference.
The syntax I've described above would also make it
possible to have
multiple references in a text to the same source. For example, there might
be several places where the text references the Nolan article, e.g.,
[ref:Nolan:p. 7], [ref:Nolan:p. 12], or just [ref:Nolan]. Each reference
would point to the same note. It would also be possible to choose
different options for display of the notes. Someone who doesn't want to
see them at all could have the option of turning them off in user
preferences. In the event that a print version is published, there could
be the additional option of displaying notes as footnotes or as endnotes.
One could add additional fields to the [[Ref:blah blah]] syntax too, just
like image markup.
I think having a footnote markup is a good idea, but
the syntax should be
sufficiently robust to accommodate all of the things that are currently
done with footnotes in traditional publications such as books and academic
journals. And I sympathize with people who don't want to feel obligated to
footnote everything in Wikipedia, but personally I find references
extremely valuable. Also, references can be used to help resolve editing
disputes. I don't think anyone should be *obligated* to use references,
but it would be a step forward if the software provided this capability as
an option.
Hear hear. I'm just quibbling over minor syntax semantics; I just prefer
having the footnote or reference text be inline with the text that's being
footnoted/referenced. Since I don't imagine Wikipedia being as heavily
referenced as a scientific article I don't expect multiple references to
the same source being all that common; I guess that'll be something that
time would tell, though.