[WikiEN-l] External links and attributions

Sat Jan 10 17:30:12 UTC 2004

> However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and
> citations.

Not only wiki markup: Footnotes aren't easy to display and to use with html
pages and computer screens. PSs aren't useful anymore in e-mails, as one can
edit inside the text (what wasn't possible in hand written letters). I guess
that footnotes go the same way: they aren't useful anymore, as additional
info can be added inside the text itself or simply linked on.

If I do recall well, inline external links are bad because their targets can
change after a while and become obsolete. In a perfect world, citations
wouldn't point on, say, a newspaper article, but on a cached copy, or on
some archiving (and trusted) web-site, and not only carry an URI, but a
date. On wiki editor pov, this could be done simply by coding like this:

    As Untel said in LA Time, "bla bla bla" [[Citation:http://blabla.bla]]

After edit, the thing could become  [[Citation
11/1/2004:http://blabla.bla]], will simply display as [1], and would be a
link on whether the cached page or the original one (maybe depending on
whatever the original page has been modified or not). I don't know if
wikipedia could handle the caching of those pages, but I suppose this to be
legal, as google already does.

(Only a little idea poping in my head)