[WikiEN-l] <Ref> tags s__k

Sun Dec 10 09:32:18 UTC 2006

Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Anyone else bothered by how much these clutter up and interefere with
>> editing text?
> 
> Do you have a solution? The only thing I can think of is putting all
> the references at the beginning and then just putting <ref
> name="foo"/> in the main text, but that would mean a big block of code
> at the top of every page (or at least every page that is properly
> sourced) and I'm not sure if it's possible to stop the top of each
> page looking like a numberline.

I had the notion once of a reference: namespace, used just like the
template: namespace but solely for references. That way instead of
having every last detail duplicated in every article that used that ref
you could have

<ref name="foo">{{reference:foo}}</ref>

or perhaps for larger references like books,

<ref name="foo">{{reference:foo}}, p. 21-22</ref>

If we wanted to be daring we could have the <ref> tags be automatically
generated for transclusions like this, perhaps using a bar to tack
additions on like a parameter. {{reference:foo|, p. 21-22}} for example.

This would have the benefit of:

*preventing duplication of effort between articles that use the same
reference
*maintaining a more uniform format for reference text
*allowing easier tracking of which articles use which references

It would have the downside of:

*making it harder to find the text of the reference if you want to edit
it, much like with regular templates
*requiring some sort of naming convention that is consistent, unique,
but not so elaborate as to make it pointless to put the reference in a
separate page
*cross-article references could be more vulnerable to subtle vandalism
or honest mistakes. If one article used a source to cite one fact and
another article used the same source to cite another fact, and then
someone who only knows about its use at the first article fiddles with
it, it might invalidate its use in the second article.

This is just an idea I kicked around once, there's probably all sorts of
other problems I haven't thought of yet.

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