Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 1

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I think this is a good proposal. Is it possible to get rid of the external reference symbol? Check out {{CategoryTOC}} for an example of a template that does this. Sorry, I don't quite understand how it was done so I can't be of anymore help. --Samuel Wantman 23:34, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint; I looked at the TOC template and just added class="plainlinks" to the template and they went away. Mozzerati 07:56, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

Now if we could just figure out how to get rid of the space... --Samuel Wantman 22:02, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes I'm afraid the ginormous space after the footnote makes this format distracting. Footnotes ought to be relatively unobtrusive; this proposal generates the most obtrusive footnotes of all. Another downside is the "Note 1", "Note 2" etc. display. Spelling out "Note" in the list is unnecessary and nonstandard; the other footnote proposals have eliminated the excess "note" verbiage, I believe. Correct these two flaws and then you might have something here. --Kevin Myers 18:27, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

actually it appears to be an edit war on the {{fnb}} template which seems to be being won by the side which believes that spelling out Note is the Wikipedia standard. Personally I'm completely agnostic about which is better, but if you want to change it, could you please attempt to persuade people at Wikipedia:Footnotes. When you have, here's an example of how the template can be changed to get rid of it whilst still giving easy back navigation.Mozzerati 20:05, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

1. {{Anb-feature-test-1|fakenote}} This would be a footnote, but today it is just testing.

When you say space what is it that you see? I don't get any special spaces, just the minimum for the link. See the image.

Apparently, different browsers handle this differently see: template:CategoryTOC. Here's how it looks with the latest version of IE. --Samuel Wantman 20:51, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I asked about this on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and got the following reply:

It will probably have something to do with how the CSS rules for class=plainlinks and class=external are handled. class="external" means "add a little arrow icon to mark an external link", while class="plainlinks" means "no, don't add the arrow icon". IE is apparently leaving space for the arrow icon, but not displaying the icon itself. Opera does the same thing. The problem might be due to a browser bug, or an error in the CSS, but either way it is probably something that could be fixed or worked around in the CSS. You could try asking at Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css. —AlanBarrett 15:53, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apparently the fix is known, but no admin has yet edited the CSS to implement the fix. See Mediazilla:714, Mediazilla:1516, Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css#class="plainlinks" fix. —AlanBarrett 20:36, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

so this is not a specific problem with the proposal but rather a problem with the general wikipedia style sheet and will be fixed when the bugs are fixed. In the meantime, probably best to install firefox if you can.

Excellent, I think this is the best proposal so far. I've used it to footnote Human shield action to Iraq and the only downside that I can see is that you can't have two or more links pointing to the same footnote. So you'll notice in Human shield action to Iraq that footnote 4 & 5 are identical to each other. This seems a very small price for what is achieved, and arguably makes for more accurate reading in any case. —Christiaan 22:42, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• To reduce testing by others: The behavior when trying to link to the same footnote is that each link gets its own number. So two links to the same footnote look like: item¹ and item². Unfortunately, if there are actually only two endnotes and item¹ used to point to endnote 1, now what used to be shown as item² is labeled item³ even though there is no endnote 3. This is probably a side effect of how links are handled so the Table of Contents can deal with duplicate section titles. --SEWilco 18:48, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Does anybody know of a way to fix this? It would be nice if a footnote used more than once used the same number for each instance. This would make this system the most consistent with footnote usage in literature. —Brim 11:21, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that there's any way to fix this unless you manually link it, but then it's not really autonumbering. AFAIK footnotes shouldn't repeat. If you're linking the same source, you can just use ibid. If footnotes ever become part of MediaWiki, it might fix this problem, but until then, autonumbering is 100% sequential -Frazzydee|✍ 14:59, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The {{ref_label}} template allows creating several links to the same reference. The backlinks are created with {{note_label}}. Labeling each link with "a", "b", etc., produces a list of links labeled with those letters. (SEWilco 19:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC))

Could you briefly describe how the machanism works? I couldn't find it. --Doradus 18:44, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the section. Man, that's clever. --Doradus 02:36, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

This is the best footnote recommendation I've seen so far (and that's saying something because I have proposed my own footnote system in Template:Ref and Template:endnote). I like the fact that the reference and the footnote are linked by a semantically meaningful identifier that is invisible to the reader (who just sees the numbers).

I would make some important cosmetic changes. First, the template names "an" and "anb" should be something more meaningful to the casual Wikipedia editor, such as "ref" and "endnote" (which I have already taken :-). Second, the anchor names should also be more meaningful so that they can stand alone in URLs. I chose "whatever_ref" for the ref and "whatever_endnote" for the endnote.

Can I take that as an offer? We could go and find uses of ref and endnote; move them over to the new system and take the names. If we can agree that one system is better then we should move all references over using it to minimise confusion. If there is more than one system then people get confused. The only problem is that I like {{fn}} quite alot since it is short and is also used by other software (TeX I think). I don't like {{fnb}} so much, but it also has the advantage of being short. {{ref}} is good, but what about just {{note}} instead of {{endnote}}?? We can, of course, keep redirects between templates.

Actually I have incorporated most of this idea into Ref and Endnote already. In a way, that's equivalent to what you're proposing. I pointed at this document in the edit history of those templates as a kind of lame attempt to give you some credit for it. To my knowledge, the only remaining differences are:

*Endnote includes the "#" symbol so it makes even that part of the numbering automatic. (I did this for backward compatibility with what I had before.) (This doesn't work so I removed it.)

• Endnote uses a "*" symbol for the back-link instead of the word "Note". This is purely an aesthetic thing and I don't feel all that strongly about it.

I agree that there should be one preferred system, and whatever system that is, I think it should use the names "Ref" and either "Note" or "Endnote" or "Footnote". For this reason, I hereby disclaim all ownership, real or imaginary, of those templates (for whatever that is worth). Please feel free to edit them if you think of improvements. This is a Wiki after all. --Doradus 21:40, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

More fundamentally, I'm nervous that there's no particular reason the automatically assigned reference numbers will match the automatically assigned footnote numbers. The good news is that the links will still work properly (because of that semantically meaningul identifier) but the numbers will look wrong. --Doradus 03:08, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

That's true, I even noted it myself, but at least it's easy to see and fix, so I hope that it will just be another thing which will be "automatically" maintained by the many human editors. At least on my browser, the targetted link is highlighted, so just by clicking through the references (and back if they are too far apart) I can verify all of them in a few seconds.

The most worrying thing would be that someone who doesn't understand the references might put in an old style link. As long as understanding is widespread this won't be a problem since other people will know to convert it to a named link. However, I think the manually numbered systems have an even bigger problem in this field since it's possible to make a mess of renumbering and then when you realise after a long time find it almost impossible to repair. Mozzerati 08:05, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)

Agreed completely. I think it's safe to say that your scheme makes manually-numbered schemes obsolete. Even the worst problem you mentioned, with people adding old-style links, is still relatively easy to fix. Another issue is that I strongly believe we should change the recommendations on Wikipedia:Footnotes to recommend exclusive use of the templates, rather than the inline markup text. Not only does this allow us to change all footnotes just by editing two templates; it also lets us use "what links here" to find and replace templated footnotes if we think of a better scheme. (It's also more wiki-like because it doesn't use HTML.) --Doradus 21:40, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

At first I thought this was a clever system and solved the problem of auto-numbering. It still is a clever system, but I am against its implementation for the following reason: It is too easy for footnotes to get out of order. Simply, if a Wikipedian does not enter the footnotes in the correct order in the {anb} list, it will not match up correctly. How likely is this? I believe very likely, in particular with many editors working on a project with many footnotes. At least with the original {fn} template there was no chance of inaccurate data. Auto-numbering is a stylistic concern, it is "nice" to have footnotes in correct order, but not needed. But at least with {fn} we can be assured that the numbers match up, that [1] really means [1b], that the information is accurate. I believe until the Wiki programmers implement a correct solution on the software level, we should not introduce to the world a "auto-numbering system" when in fact it is not auto-numbering, it depends on the editor to manually place the footnote in the correct order in the b list. This is not clear, and for someone without programming or computer experience, they may just assume "auto-number" means just that, and they will place new footnotes anywhere within the b-list without knowing or regard to the ordering scheme this template requires. It is too complicated and will introduce errors. Is it worth it just for a stylistic issue that will probably be resolved anyway in the future? Stbalbach 19:48, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hmm.. actually, I have been going around and checking this; I'm not convinced that with {{fn}} the numbers are guaranteed to match up. What can happen with the old system is much worse. That is to say, someone adds a new footnote and makes a mistake when renumbering (this situation is even discussed in the Footnote2 proposal and is part of what inspired my system). When this happens; especially if it isn't noticed for some time, it can be almost impossible to work out what is going on. The only certain way is to trace through the entire article history verifying at which point each footnote was added.

With the new system, the verification process is very simple. Click on the reference numbers, starting from one. Move the corresponding footnote into the correct position on the list (assuming that it's out of order). Repeat. The use of named references guarantees that this will be easy.

I do agree that the ideal case would be an inline system which automatically generated footnotes

 <{name=anthony|comment=Anthony really said this, we have it on video|webref=http://example.com/video.avi}> 

but having named references seems the easiest way to get there using what we have now.Mozzerati 23:13, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

Ok here is my concern, and I wonder if there is a solution to address it. Is the first time anonymous author (or regular Wikipedian who is not "good with computers") who contributes a footnote going to understand he/she needs to put the footnote in the list in the right order? It is not clear or intuitive. It wasn't even clear to me until I started doing the process and realized how error-prone it was. It requires an education on how to use the system, and how to check for errors. --Stbalbach 02:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The honest answer has to be "I don't know". Any footnote system is more complex than plain wiki. Only user testing can tell; so far comments from articles where I have used it have been positive. My feeling is that this will turn out to be easy enough. If this becomes common then it will become integrated into editing help etc. and will be much easier for beginners to deal with.

Having seen other articles where footnotes have been taken into serious use with older systems, such as Bombing of Dresden in World War II before change over. I'm sure that it can become a serious mess. It took me several hours of work to disentangle that article and caused an edit clash. Repair work on the new system takes a maximum of a few minutes. The hyper links allow easy checking (just jump back and forward ... always goes to the right place even if the numbers go wrong). No other system of numbered footnotes provides a way to be sure footnotes and references correspond correctly.

In the end, some new users will make mistakes (as with any other feature; I started off making by a mess of sections in articles I was working on :-) and other more experienced ones will correct them. I think this will be easy for this system. Mozzerati 07:49, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

This system has two major problems:

1. It depends on the automatic numbering of non-captioned external links to work. Therefore it effectively attempts to forbid such links in any article which uses it. This will not work: you will never convince people not to include these links, and therefore the system will break.
2. It still requires editors to organise the actual footnotes into the correct order, but without the aid of any numbers.

This will not fly. IMNSHO. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 10:30, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Got something better in mind? --Doradus 14:39, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Well the existing version here and here works pretty well, using {{fn}} and {{fnb}}; an added advantage is that you can point to the same footnote more than once (although the back-link will obviously only go to the first reference). HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:27, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

The problem with that system is that it requires and gets regular renumbering. Unfortuantely, mistakes and vandalism can creep in to this process. There is no real reason why the number 7 footnote should be linked to the number 7 reference and the only way to directly check it is to find the exact edit where the footnote was added. Thus, whilst the older system may be easier, it doesn't actually achieve our aim, which is to make easily verified facts. This is a bit of a killer fault IMRHO.

The fact that references can be used twice or more makes this even more serious, since it is very easy to do renumbering of one reference and not the other. Finally, the fact that the system allows out of order footnoting means that a future editor looking through an article has to search back and forward when checking references which is unreliable and unsafe. taken together, I think these problems make numbered footnoting a maintainance nightmare and something which has to be got rid of as soon as possible. It was coming upon these problems whilst using the {{fnb}} system on the islamophobia article which inspired the new system. Mozzerati 21:50, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)

{{fnb|7}} will always link back to the first occurrence of {{fn|7}}; all occurrences of {{fn|7}} will link to {{fnb|7}}. I am not a bot programmer but I would have thought that it would be devastatingly easy to write a bot which would:

1. Find all pages using {{fn}} and {{fnb}}
2. For each such page
   1. Find all occurrences of {{fn}} and record the parameter
   2. Sort them and note the new parameter mapping, if any
   3. Re-order the occurrences of {{fnb}} according to the new order
   4. Patch the new parameter in to each occurrence of {{fn}}
3. Make a note of when modification occurred so that a page doesn't get visited again until it changes

This would be much less disruptive in the long run than trying to impose a system which, because it leverages the automagic numbering of unlabelled external links, effectively disallows the use of such links in any article using the system.

IMNSHO. HTH. HAND --Phil | Talk 10:58, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm talking about a different issue. When I have a semantic label like johnson then a reference and a footnote obviously go together; there's no easy way to change them which doesn't keep the correct relation. When I have a number; I can change the number (e.g. renumbering notes) and everything still seems to work. But if I don't change both the reference and the note together then I will never be able to realise that the relation is wrong. The reason that I brought up double references is not that I don't understand how they could work. The reason is that they are a case where renumbering is easy to make a mess of. If I change a reference number and it's matching footnote, but don't see or forget about the second reference, the numbers can easily get out of sync. This risk implies that in the long term such footnotes become almost impossible to check, thus losing their value. Mozzerati 20:39, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

First off, problems with using the templates:

1. How do deal with vandalism on the template? If these templates become widespread use, they may inflict more harm than they do good. (i.e. Vandalism of the template may affect more than 10,000 articles)

   same way as ever; if it isn't a problem then we don't worry; If it becomes a problem then we protect the page.

2. There is a specific limit to the number of templates per article

   According to the template help page that limit went away in mediawiki 1.3.

Secondly, if we aren't using the templates, then granted, it would be much more difficult to keep track of. My proposed solutions:

1. Build the footnote system into the MediaWiki software

   This would be the ideal way to go

   I also support this. The advantage of my proposal is that it is easy to either edit the template or use simple text substitution to convert to almost any imaginable future footnote system built into mediawiki; so the two solutions complement eachother.

2. Develop a coding system with HTML comments for the bot to read

   please not, overloading comments can end up as a maintainability nightmare.

3. Create a Wikipedia project such that all subpages of the project contain the footnote sections so that they may be transincluded at the bottom of each article. Then devise a process such that it can notify the bot to update an article's page.

   don't much like bots in that case. Good for correcting and verification where randomly missing pages isn't so important. Bad for a process which needs all pages to be visited in order to work. Still a demonstration implementation (without the bot) would be interesting. Mozzerati 20:39, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)

-- AllyUnion (talk) 11:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(SEWilco 20:22, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)) In considering such references, remember to separate the appearance from the content issues.

• Presentation: This technique uses a quirk in external link appearance to produce a link with a superscripted number. This happens to resemble traditional footnote format (due to the appearance of external links being influenced by that traditional format).
• Presentation: If the endnotes (References section entries) are in the same order as the reference to them, placing the # Wiki numbered list code ahead of each entry will display numbers which happen to be in the same order as the numbers which are displayed as references.
• Presentation: Browser displays might not make it obvious which reference was the target of the link. This is a problem with browsers. If they don't show (do any?) where the jumped-to <A> anchor is, then it may be hard for the user to know what to look at.

• Content: Links still work even if numbers are wrong. The linkage between the reference and endnotes still work even if the numbers are wrong. The linkage works even if multiple references to the same endnote exist.
• Content: The big advantage of this method is that the references are symbolic names rather than numbers. An editor or bot can associate {{{anb|Carter1972a}} references and endnotes to clean up edit problems. Future conversions to better methods are simplified.

This is not a problem specific to this proposal, but to the usage of the sup-directive, ...and possibly to the CSS I stole from someone a long time ago.

On my screen, a line with a footnote gets extra space between it and the preceeding line. This is irritating, and ugly, and a strong reason for me to dislike footnotes of this kind.

Oughtn't this be solved before the footnoting scheeme is marketed and sold? :-)
--Ruhrjung 21:01, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

• It is noticed less when reading articles which use <sup> and <sub> a lot, such as ¹⁴C and CO₂. Or maybe if that makes articles irritating to read, people don't read such articles much and don't get stuff changed. (SEWilco 04:22, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC))

I don't think it has been noticed much above that the templates {{ref}} and {{endnote}} have been released by their author for improvement, and seem to have been converted to this method. Wikipedia_talk:Footnote3#Another_opinion I suggest that usage of these templates, with names which are easier to remember, be encouraged. (SEWilco 21:05, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC))

By the time you click on a footnote you realize you are about to look at a list of footnotes and really don't need to be reminded that that is what you are looking at 1, 2, 3, 15 , 20 times or more in a row. IMHO. --Alterego 18:03, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

hi, please see the discussion above; this is agreed wikipedia style. Not something I personally particularly agree with, but since it's just a matter of a quick edit to the template once the style change has consensus, it's not something I care about much either. You'll note my example using a little arrow for returning. Mozzerati 19:14, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

It insults people's intelligence in addition to being annoying. --Alterego 18:25, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Just watch Frazzydee below.. he does have a point about the up arrow being difficult to click.. But then again, you have a point about the "Note" being too big and irritating. Does anyone know how to generate a bigger up arrow which would be a nice compromise? I don't like * since it isn't so obvious what it's for. Mozzerati 18:37, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

Not to be rude, but if someone has trouble clicking, they should either get a bigger monitor, better glasses or increase their font size or screen resolution instead of imposing on the rest of the world. It's like people who set pictures to 450px so they can read them on "my screen" with no consideration that the rest of the world uses various hardware and software. Anyway, I agree, the NOTE thing is ungainly, annoying, non-standard unprofessional looking and insulting to ones intelligence. There is a general rule that 800x600 is the median resolution, I would say look at at 17" moinitor at 800x600 with 20/20 vision and see how difficult it really is, and not cater to the extremes of the bell curve. Stbalbach 20:12, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We need to make the number clickable. That is the most obvious and natural solution. --Alterego 20:29, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think the square currently being used in place of "Note" looks pretty naff. I liked the arrow. Can we not use unicode characters such as: ⇧or ⇪? Or make the number clickable, yeah that's probably the best solution. —Christiaan 20:33, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's not a square; it's an up arrow (⇑ built from '''⇑'''). If your browser doesn't render that then it has deep problems. I like your first arrow better than mine though, so maybe we should switch I wonder who else can see it properly?? Me I have galeon/Fedora Core II. Both work for me. Mozzerati 21:10, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

Not everyone has significant character sets in their browsers/cellphones. Testing with Lynx, I see it displays that &uArr; up arrow as two carets. The two Unicode characters a couple of paragraphs further up show merely as their 7-character code. (SEWilco 21:38, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Neither do we need 20 up arrows. Just link the numbers guys...KISS --Alterego 01:02, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

We heard you the first time, but you missed a step, as the number is being created outside the template. Guys, is there a reason why Template:Note can't include the List # symbol? So a list of References merely uses Note and the full Wiki Syntax standard stuff will be inserted? (SEWilco 05:04, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC))

You can put the # inside the template, at the (unacceptable?) cost of having to put all the notes on the same line, but it doesn't give you any what you want anyway, since it still needs to end up at the start of a line so can't be numbered. The problem is deeper though. I don't think that there's any way in HTML to make a link from just the number in the list (the whole list item might be possible, but that would totally ruin the point of footnotes for references). I've tried experiments with HTML breakage (see Wikipedia:Footnote3/html notes demo).. this is really strange since it works on my own testing MediaWiki when using some browsers (Galeon, not elinks), but doesn't seem to work at all inside Wikipedia. That's probably the best basis to start experimenting from. Overall, I don't think it's technically possible in any "safe" way. Mozzerati 08:15, 2005 Apr 3 (UTC)

I'm using Safari, and a little surprised that is doesn't render " & u A r r ; " correctly. —Christiaan 12:32, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm planning to change the proposal over to recommending the use of the templates ref and note. I think these are clearer in meaning and it seems that there are still reasons to keep the fn and fnb templates for use in tables such as Comparison of file systems even if everybody could be persuaded that symbolic naming is very important for futureproofing and verification.

Whilst doing this, I've made the note template taking into account discussion here and on Wikipedia:Footnotes. That is to say, I have made it without the word "note" embedded, but using an up arrow (&uarr) instead.

Articles can be changed over mechanically very quickly so there is no problem if people use an and anb in the meantime. Mozzerati 09:52, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

As the one who originated ref and endnote, I agree with the use of note instead of endnote. The only possible drawback I can see is that people might get mixed up between "ref" and "note". Arguably, it's not immediately obvious which one refers to the inline superscripted hyperlink, and which one refers to the descriptive text at the bottom of the article. --Doradus 15:12, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

I have unified the proposals and am about to start updating pages. I wouldn't worry about that kind of confusion. It's very obvious what's wrong when they do the preview. Mozzerati 15:34, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

I don't think that these are clearer in meaning. Ref and note are so similar that they can cause some confusion. A lot of people don't use preview. People who aren't familiar with how to use footnotes probably wouldn't know how to use ref or note either, since you would probably have to read about it somewhere to understand how to use it. Therefore, I think it's probably better that we stick to an and anb, since it's damn near impossible to confuse the two, and it's a lot easier to remember and type.

I'm also not very fond of those little arrows, they're quite difficult to click. -Frazzydee|✍ 15:03, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Frazzydee redirected Ref and Note to An and Anb because he finds Ref and Note hard to remember and he doesn't like their backlink symbol. I reverted that. I find An hard to remember, and the backlink symbol can be changed when issues are resolved. (SEWilco 18:14, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Frazzydee mentioned in Template talk:Ref that Ref and An are incompatible. He did not say if they are technically incompatible or if they merely produce visually different results. (SEWilco 18:34, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC))

The back and forward references between them aren't named the same. I actually don't want to have both in use in the same set of notes. That seems much worse than having two separate systems, so, I haven't fixed it even though I'm aware of it. My suggestion is that the tolerant among us just use whichever most people on a particular page prefer for now and the intolerant feel free to change from one system to the other on every edit (s/\{\{an\|/\{\{\ref|/g s/\{\{anb\|/\{\{\note|/g and vica versa.) when making other improvements to footnotes (no pure reverts allowed :-). If we get really desperate, we can always call a vote. Mozzerati 18:46, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

I meant that when they use different anchor prefixes, so you can't use an with note or ref with anb. Why do we need two different templates that do virtually the same thing? If the concern with an/anb was the name, then I don't see what harm redirecting would do. If the concern was with the arrow, then I've added arrows next to the 'note' line for Template:Anb, please let me know what you think of it (Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Anb). I hope this will please both of us. I don't see very much of a difference between an/anb and ref/note, and definitely not enough to justify having two different templates that do the same thing. It can also be potentially confusing for new editors to see different citing methods used in different places. -Frazzydee|✍ 19:57, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I find that note already takes up too much space. We should just have one big arrow. Mozzerati 21:10, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

We should just have one big arrow? OK. Template:⇑ (SEWilco 21:30, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Yes, that is better. Thanks, it's a lot easier to click now. I still liked 'note:' being before it a bit better, but this is fine in my opinion. Now, since ref/note is the same as an/anb, they shouldn't both be distinct. One should redirect to the other. Since an/anb were here first, it seems logical to me that ref/note should redirect to it. What do you think? It really makes little difference, since it'll appear the same to the reader. -Frazzydee|✍ 15:05, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can we use: ⇧or ⇪. They're prettier (plus my browser renders them properly). —Christiaan 18:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I put it in {{anb}} because there didn't seem to be any harm it in (besides, it IS prettier ;)), but none of the three arrows render properly in my ie. I use firefox, but let's not forget that ie is the most widely used browser, and we should at least make an attempt to use characters that render properly in it where possible. Are there any other arrows that'll work in ie? It's really annoying to see those boxes, we shouldn't subject people to that. -Frazzydee|✍ 22:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How about something non-graphical, like "[Back]" or "[Return]"? Even though I use Firefox, the arrow that is there now looks a bit strange, probably because it is italicized. Josh 05:08, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

I think that most people had problems with non-graphical things because they were too big. That's why "Note:" was replaced with the arrow. If you can think of something non-graphical that's shorter, then that would probably work really well. -Frazzydee|✍ 17:56, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just looked at Template:Note and it uses a bold carat. I think it would a be a great idea to use that for Template:Anb, because "^" looks much better than ("⇧"), at least in my web browser (Firefox). Josh 05:13, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that ref and note are hard to remember. But so are an and anb, fn and fnb, and so on. How many different footnote templates are there?! - Omegatron 13:44, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Just to say I think that the work you have been doing is fantastic. :ChrisG 23:03, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been helping with a different problem, and I haven't seen my solution mentioned elsewhere. I wonder if the method might be useful here, such as with a linked image.

•  US,  USA and  United States of America all display the same image through template alias files. (Don't use this template yet in articles, it is under development) (SEWilco 08:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Is there a way in a template to find the "number" of a footnote and manipulate it? For example, by using "1" to refer to "Image:note_1.png". I suspect not, and the number is generated after template handling has been completed. (SEWilco 08:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))

I have this query: I have one reference (say the same site, or on the same page of the book.) and I want to reference two or more topics/paragraphs my reference. How do I accomplish this?

eg.

18% of abc is green
--
--
Asia's largest
--
--
ABC is the safest in the world.

Say all the three are linked to the same source. How do I use the {ref|xyz} and {note|xyz} to address the above?  =Nichalp (talk · contribs)= 20:53, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

as it currently stands, you should write three separate footnotes. This isn't so bad if you make a separate references section (with the full information about the sources) and just give page numbers and specific facts in the note.

an alternative is to use {{mn}} and {{mnb}} which are designed to be manually numbered, but still use clichable links.

ha.. people follow my experiments :-) I guess I better write them up.. Mozzerati 18:42, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

Okay, now written up in Wikipedia:Footnote4. This is quite BOLD, let's gain some experience with it before pushing another system hard. Encourage people to use Wikipedia:Footnote3 still and only if they really would see a clear benefit from the newer proposal lets suggest it. Of course, some of the critics above might prefer the new system. Their comments appreciated. Mozzerati 21:41, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

[1] This is the obligatory gratuitous example.

I think many of the participants in this debate are in agreement that the ideal solution is for the MediWiki software to support a form of markup where a note is simply made where it needs to be made in the text, [1] and then the software will automagically put an unobtrusive anchor at that point in the text, along with an autonumbered == Notes == section at the end of the article. For the time being, however, this doesn't appear to be a near-term prospect. Unfortunately.

[1] Readers should not infer any lack of wikifaith in this statement.

The present solution is certainly a worthwhile one. However, it does break the ability to use external links independently of footnotes, and while I agree that under most conditions, anything you'd want to extlink to inline should be represented as a note, it seems, well, uncolaborative [1] to insist that other editors not use external links as they were intended to use, because I want to hijack their autonumbering functionality to make footnotes work.

At the same time, without using the autonumbering functionality of external links, keeping the notes and their anchors matched up in a heavily annoted article becomes tedious, and correcting others' errors moreso. The present solution does not completely address this: while unique ID's certainly make it possible to sort things out if they go awry, editors are still required to keep the footnotes at the bottom of the page in the correct order, and with the ID's hidden in the source, there's no way to, without looking at the source, know whether the notes have become disordered.

So I propose that sidenotes may be better work-around than footnotes. One advantage of this approach are they it they does, at least in the simple implementation shown here, require editors to manually number things, it only requires editors to keep their numbers straight across a single paragraph, rather than the entire article. Secondly, the note is right there if you want to look at it, not down at the bottom of the page, where you have to click to in order to even see it, before you have any idea whether you want to read it or not. It also does away with the need for back-links.

[1] e.g., Hamer, p. 72.

[2] Like this one, which has been made gratuitously long to illustrate a point. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

A few limitations of the system: sidenotes must be short in order to track well with the main flow of text. For bibliographic references, this means that a short form of annotation [1] together with a longer bibliographic entry for the source in a == References == section at the bottom of the page. Long notes [2] will push into the potential note space of the next paragraph. Also, I am not exactly certain whether such notations can be made to play well with other things floating on the right, like infoboxes and images.

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

I really really hate them (sorry.. I'll try to be logical and clear even so :-). The following reasons.

• They seriously mess up layout; consider for example that the entire sides of articles such as Warsaw Uprising are already overloaded; there's no space.
• They aren't nice on a screen reader (device for the blind) since the position would be very difficult to plan.
• their influence will vary very much according to the size of the users screen; people writing on big screens will make side notes which are very different from those who are writing on small ones and the effect will be bad layout for each
• I think they encourage digressions since they are visible at the same time as the text. Digressions are better moved off to subsections in other articles...

But;

I can see this as a good way, in future, to layout the references when an editor is doing verification. In other words, an optional feature of some kind which lets them be turned on or off would be great. Mozzerati 05:49, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

In answer to these objections,

• Yes, how to make them play well with other floating side objects is the chief question. Articles like Warsaw Uprising, with or without notes, are already cluttered and would probably look better with a few full-width galleries than their a constant stream of sidelined images.
• That depends on the screen reader; what does the screen reader do when it comes to a floating table? It will do the same thing with the note, since it is a floating table. What does it do when it comes to an image with a caption? It will do the same thing, because a captioned image is also a floating table.

  typically screen readers are used with standard software such as elinks and do what that does, just reading a section of a standard CRT screen. In other words, tables get pushed to the end of sections and read inline. Software which attempts to work with windowed software us much more complex. Mozzerati 20:00, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

• Making their width a fixed percentage of the screen width ought to make them compatible with large and small screens
• I think footnotes are more encouraging to digression, since they can be as long as you wish without messing up layout. Sidenotes must be short, by necessity.

Shimmin 11:50, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, in any case, could you please make a template for them which is compatible with (uses the same argument structure as) the inote template. Probably you could put it at Template:snote ; the most important thing wrong with your current proposal (I keep my above disagreements, but can see that it's partly a matter of taste) is that you put inline html and don't use a template.. Using a template (or two if really needed) will let us covert to a new system much more easily in future. Mozzerati 19:58, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Unfortunately, because MediaWiki breaks a paragraph if one attempts to put a table in the middle of that paragraph, I could not figure out how to implement this in an inote-compatible way.

However, I did implement Template:hnote {{hnote|i.e., hovering notes}} which is inote-compatible and seems relatively foolproof as far as many different editors using them is concerned. Comments and suggestions would be helpful. In particular, can the browser be instructed to reduce the delay time needed to pop up the tooltip? Shimmin 11:16, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

I suggest footnotes presently be done in traditional ways, and later software changes may allow more ways to display the information. An obvious improvement for the present system would be for the Edit screen to include two windows: the present text window and a second window with the References section. (SEWilco 18:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC))

I don't know how many other sites are using Footnote 3, but probably the largest and most active test case is over at Pope Benedict XVI. I restructured the existing footnotes into Footnote 3 with these edits. The article has since been edited a good 400 times since then, and it's interesting to see how people have dealt with the new footnote structure.

Most people do not get it first off. When they add a footnote they put the reference in the wrong place, and then take another one or two edits to correct it. That's pretty good. On the other hand, the footnotes now are quite messed up. I haven't quite managed to track down where the errors have been introduced, but the numbers don't match between the footnotes at top and the list, and several footnotes don't lead anywhere. The difficulty is that, without seeing exactly who added the footnotes and when, the structure is such that it can very hard working out what is supposed to go with what. I won't be able to get to it today, but will by tomorrow unless someone else does.

But my point is that this article is an interesting test case to see how intuitive and workable to footnote 3 structure is. I think the article should be watched to see how the system scales up to a large article being edited by dozens of people at once. So far I'm not certain it's perfect, but possibly it will be easier than I thought to match up all the footnotes, and thus will vindicate itself. — Asbestos | Talk 11:41, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check's last biweekly special article used these guidelines, and it has over 20 references. You can see them at Titan (moon). I think the biggest problem is that people were beginning to get confused about where the reference should go, but that was pretty much solved by looking at what's above/below your reference, and placing it appropriately. But even if you messed up, clicking the number would still lead to the right note :) -Frazzydee|✍ 14:32, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that is an interesting test case. I never would have imagined people would screw up the footnotes the way they have. For instance, as I write this, footnote 4 is obviously an International Herald Tribune article with an ID of "nytimes". Without looking back through the history, I can't imagine why someone would make such a mistake. --Doradus 16:08, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I can imagine it now. The article was reprinted from the New York Times. --Doradus 16:17, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

most interesting is this edit which is where things go wrong for a little while. A note heading is duplicated. I made a correction myself; I think that generally I'm quite happy about how well it is going, (even most anons seem to be coping okay). In order to improve this, we probably just need to occasionally checking over ref's what links here and repairing a few broken ones with an edit message which links back to Footnote3.

If this is a test case of Footnote3, it is a disaster. Proof the system is un-intuitive and error prone to the majority of editors. The old {fn} macro methos may not be perfect, but it is intuitive and less prone to error ie. it works "better" Stbalbach 18:59, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is Template:fn really less prone to error? How do we know that? At least with the present system, the problems were relatively easily fixed. It's possible that the old system appears to have fewer problems because the problems are less obvious. --Doradus 04:21, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the idea has merit. Perhaps until F3 comes up to speed in terms of system wide learning curve, a boilerplate of instructions on how to use it could be placed in the article as a comment above the notes section so that anon editors will understand how to use it, and fix errors as they see them. This would help address the problem of garbage in. Since we are using the Pope article as a test case, if we can fix the current errors, add the boilerplate, and check it later and see how well it does. Just some ideas. Stbalbach 06:12, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Phew, all correct again. Two repeating mistakes having been causing the bulk of the problems: people adding notes to the bottom of the list, and people assuming that two footnotes could both be directed to the same source. I noticed that someone added a note cautioning people against the first error (I didn't check to see whether any new notes were added after this notice was placed), and I added an instruction #5 to the list of instructions at the top:

5) Multiple footnote to the same rerence WILL NOT WORK: you need to insert two uniquely-named footnotes.

Beyond that, it seems to be going ok, and it's not too difficult to correct errors.
One further minor question: do people think that the article's > 30-item long list of footnotes is looking ungainly? Should the notes perhaps be small fonts, like paper footnotes, or perhaps put them down below all the See Also's and everything? Just throwing that out, but there isn't really much problem with a very long list, so maybe we shouldn't worry.
— Asbestos | Talk 16:58, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ok great! Not easy to do. I had added the note on the bottom, and with step 5, it will be another test to see how it goes. I think we should leave it large for now (I agree small is better, but there is a less than 20/20 contigent that sees it otherwise). The number of notes for this article is unusual.. there may be some rare cases that need special handling but for now it's probably OK. My guess is within a year or two many of the news links will dead end and need to be removed anyway. Question: If someone adds an inline link [1] does that offset the numbering of the footnotes adversly? Stbalbach 17:09, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some people's intuition (including mine) is that Multiple footnote to the same reference SHOULD WORK. It's being used as a list of references and duplicating refs is confusing. It's less of a problem when they're actual footnotes (i.e. comments, which are inherently unique), but based on this test case, most footnotes will be refs. It may require software change, but what should happen IMO is that the ref numbers are generated automatically, so that (nytimes) and (nytimes) can go to a single footnote, and if nytimes is the eighth footnote, then all refs to it are numbered 8. (That means you can't jump from the footnote to the ref, but mostly you go there by clicking the footnote link so you can use the Back button.) OK, so maybe this would just be differently confusing, but it would require less worrying about how to do the footnotes right. Rd232 17:23, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pope article footnotes are out of sync again. Looks to be the same problem, of not adding the notes in the correct order in the list. Stbalbach 04:57, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I've added the following list of instructions to Pope Benedict XVI, at the top of the Notes section:

<!-- Please note new footnote structure:
   To add a new footnote:
    1) Give the footnote a unique name.
    2) Add {{ref|xxx}} to the body of the article, where you want the footnote, where xxx is the unique name.
    3) Look and take note of the name and number of the footnote the immediately precedes your new footnote.
    4) Insert #{{Note|xxx}} to the list, immediately below the footnote you noted in step 3.
  Please see [[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] for details
 -->

Feel free to edit this if you think it can be explained more clearly. On related note: as of right now, the footnotes at Pope Benedict XVI are now all correct. It wasn't too difficult to work out what was supposed to go where after all. We'll see how long it lasts (and if the new instructions help). — Asbestos | Talk 11:29, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hey thats excellent! Hope you don't mind I made some edits to the instructions, and feel free to edit again. Should help a lot.

<!-- Instructions for adding a footnote. 
  NOTE: Footnotes in this article use names, not numbers, see [[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] for details.
   1) Assign your footnote a unique name, for example TheSun_Dec9. 
   2) Add the macro {{ref|TheSun_Dec9}} to the body of the article, where you want the new footnote.
   3) Find the footnote name in the article that immediatly proceeds the one you are adding. 
   4) Scroll down to the "Notes" section below and decide where in the list the Footnote should be ordered. 
   5) Add #{{Note|TheSun_Dec9}} to the list, immediately below the footnote you noted in step3.
 NOTE: It is important to add the Footnote in the right order in the list.
 -->

--Stbalbach 16:03, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cool. Just as another minor edit: I removed step 4, as it seems to be redundant (you're already at Notes, and the explanation for where the note should go is in the next line). Hope that's ok. — Asbestos | Talk 16:47, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. This should be used with all articles that use this referencing style. :ChrisG 16:44, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A semi-final version is here:

<!-- Instructions for adding a footnote. 
   NOTE: Footnotes in this article use names, not numbers, see [[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] for details.
    1) Assign your footnote a unique name, for example TheSun_Dec9. 
    2) Add the macro {{ref|TheSun_Dec9}} to the body of the article, where you want the new footnote.
    3) Take note of the name of the footnote that immediately proceeds yours in the article body. 
    4) Add #{{Note|TheSun_Dec9}} to the list, immediately below the footnote you noted in step3.
  NOTE: It is important to add the Footnote in the right order in the list.
 -->

Do people think this (or a derivative) should be placed on the main project page, with instructions to add it above Notes sections? — Asbestos | Talk 16:52, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a good idea. The biggest problem with F3 is the learning curve, and this is a simple solution. Perhaps we should wait and see if people actually read and use it? The pope article is such high edit traffic it should evolve quickly (kinda like experimenting with fruit flys), maybe give it 5 or 7 days? Stbalbach 01:18, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks like things are messed up again at the Pope article (see footnote 20 for example). Oh well. Didnt take long. I really think it is too complicated for most people. Frustrating, but not unexpected. This whole footnote thing needs to be solved with a software solution, which is where she should be puting our energies IMO. Stbalbach 14:34, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nupedia had built-in note support. I am told that Magnus Manske coded it. If anyone subscribes to the mailing list (I don't), they might ask if there's any good reason that code could not be patched into MediaWiki.

FWIW, there's an article with several example note implementations here. In my opinion, the best-looking of the bunch is its implementation of pop-up notes. Unfortunately, using it requires applying styles to <a> elements and their <span> children in a way that MediaWiki will not permit (or at least, not permit in any fashion I've tried yet). Shimmin 15:34, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

From my understanding, it seems like pretty much the only reason for creating ref and note was because of the name. Since they're both autonumbering methods, and they're virtually identical, why aren't they just one template?

It seems only logical to me that one of these templates redirects to the other, and, in my humble opinion, it can only be to the detriment of ourselves if we have two seperate formats. Why not just redirect one to the other? I might be missing something big, but as far as I know, they're virtually the same.

I can only see advantages from redirecting one to the other. This way, anybody who wants to use an can use an, and anybody who wants to use ref can use ref, and it won't matter which one they use.

The only problem is that it might be confusing, which is why there should be an informal rule that each article should only use one format, and be consistent with that. Similar to the policy on American vs. British spelling, this is merely to avoid confusion.

To me, it feels like ref/note is just a duplicate of an/anb, so I don't really see why one doesn't just redirect to the other. I'd really appreciate your opinions on this, because I feel that it's a bit silly to have two competing formats that do the exact same thing. -Frazzydee|✍ 18:20, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

the only reason I can think of is that it makes it difficult to end up with both in the same article since we can make them deliberately incompatible. This is a benefit. Can you guys not somehow agree on one or the other name? Toss a coin? Ice axes at dawn? Something like that? I really don't care much which name and I think that if Frazydee and P3d0 could just fight to the death and let the winner take all then we could get a choice. ( :-) for the humour impaired) Mozzerati 21:11, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

lol, don't worry, I see the humour :-) I'm sorry if I've not been reasonable, but I've tried to state my point in a calm and collected manner. I hope I haven't lit up any flames here ;) and I apologize to anybody I may have hurt. I guess it's not really too much harm to keep them seperate, and you're right that it ensures both aren't in the same article. I'm fine with having ref/note in addition to an/anb, but I have my preferences, and I'll adhere to those preferences when referencing. You can feel free to use whatever template you wish, I think that we can probably all be mature enough to agree to disagree on the matter if we can't resolve it in another way. -Frazzydee|✍ 21:52, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The two aren't being strongly kept apart. There simply hasn't been time yet to bring them together. There are a few issues which have been mentioned in here (my issue is that ref/note should be easier to remember than an/anb — although I think ref/refnote might be better). Perhaps to keep them targeted an Unresolved issues section should be added in both the Project page (with summary of issues) and a section(s) in Talk for matching discussion. (SEWilco 03:30, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))

It would be nice if you could agree; because it is a very effective footnoting method; which is already quite popular. It would be nice if we could make it the official or at least recommended standard for footnoting and depreciate other methods. :ChrisG 06:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is no major problem between the two. Look at the timestamps and you'll see this is quite new. You can help by finding some of the loose threads and helping weave. (SEWilco 07:59, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))

I'm not denying that it's an effective footnoting method. That's why I use an/anb, I just don't see the purpose of creating new templates called ref/note, since they seem to be virtually identical to what already existed. -Frazzydee|✍ 14:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

They are identical by design. It's just that "ref" and "note" are considered to be better names than "an" and "anb". --Doradus 22:48, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly my point: if they're identical, then why don't they just redirect to an/anb rather than forming a different set of standards? -Frazzydee|✍ 00:29, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see what you mean. That sounds reasonable to me. Actually I'd redirect an/anb to ref/note on the premise that the former should be considered deprecated. --Doradus 18:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I wanted to note one problem I noticed with the footnote system, which is that if you get to a page through a redirect, then the footnote links all link to the non-redirected page, causing your web browser to reload the page whenever you follow a redirect. That is, I went to Pope Benedict 16, which redirects to Pope Benedict XVI. I then clicked on one of the footnotes, and my browser loaded the footnote in the nonredirected article. I don't know if there's anything you guys can do about that. Thanks! -- Creidieki 11:52, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The backlinks in the notes section, which use the [[ ]] internal link syntax, work fine. The downlinks in the text use the [ ] external link syntax for targets on the same page, which is the source of the problem. The reason they use external links rather than internal ones is to get autonumbering to work. So I guess it comes down to whether autonumbering is worth the bug you have discovered. Shimmin 16:40, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I've changed the non-auto-numbering Template:rf (see above) to use internal links, to fix the same problem it had inherited from template:ref. Paul August ☎ 17:32, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Something seems to have changed with regard to how <cite> </cite> works causing problems with how [[#ref_{{{1}}}|^]] now works. Specifically, each new note is no longer on a new page line as before (see Atlas_Shrugged for an example. A fix might be to insert a <br> at the beginning of the template definition, but that would create an unnecessary blank line before the first note. Paul August ☎ 19:57, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Are <cite> or [[#ref_{{{1}}}|^]] supposed to put something on a new page? (where is documentation for <cite>?) Pointing at a page whose behavior changed may not be a good way to explain what you think is supposed to be happening; the page looked OK to me, although maybe I just didn't look at an interesting part of it. (SEWilco 20:25, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC))

A newline not a new page. And I don't know if they are "supposed to" but they always have, until a couple of days ago. Look at the "Other works cited" section in a previous version, (someone has now made a temporary manual fix) [2], that's where the [[#ref_{{{1}}}|^]] is being used. Formerly each note was on a new line, instead of all strung together on the same line, making the notes much harder to read. Paul August ☎ 23:16, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

You mean this [3] edit of "Other works cited"? ("notes" is mentioned in the edit summary) There are separate green boxes being shown for each reference, so they are separate lines and not strung together. Scroll down and you'll see that they are being displayed on separate lines, with a number ahead of each entry. I do note that the numbering may be mismatched, but if you run down the list you find that #24 is linked to as #25; find #24 in the text and click on it and you'll see it is a note under "Reviews". Maybe just leave it without numbers at the moment. (SEWilco 02:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

It has been discussed earlier that templates are always displayed on a new line, which results in the template being unable to include the '#' numbered-list symbol because it doesn't work unless all template:note entries are on the same line. Maybe someone was testing a change in that behavior, but I have not found mention of such a change in behavior. (SEWilco 02:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

It used to be that each note template on a separate line, would be displayed on a new line. I had supposed this had to do with how <cite> </cite> worked, but now I'm guessing from what you said above that this is just how templates work, or rather used to work. As another example look at First Macedonian War, the "Notes" section. This section uses Template:ent, with each template on a new line. The intention is for each note to be on a new line also. And this is how it worked up until recently. However today I noticed all the notes were all strung together. And this wasn't because of any edit to the article, all previous versions also were formatted the same way. Today I edited the template to insert a <br> as a "fix" to cause each note to appear on a new line, although that causes an extraneous blank line before the first note. But the point is that the template is now behaving differently than it used to. Paul August ☎ 03:28, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I found it. This edit [4] gathered the entries on May 24 into one cluster. Separate lines, but no Wiki code to indicate paragraph or list separators. So they were displayed as a single paragraph. (SEWilco 02:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

My contention is that when that edit was made, all the notes were displayed on a new line, although now they are not. Paul August ☎ 03:28, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right. The following now places the two "note" lines in one paragraph. Testing {{ref|abc}} some refs. {{ref|def}}

{{note|abc}} Testing test.
{{note|def}} Nothing ahead of each line.

(SEWilco 05:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

I thought the standard (eg George Galloway) was

* {{note|abc}} Testing test.
* {{note|def}} Nothing ahead of each line.

(or with # instead) which works fine regardless. Rd232 12:59, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the latter is the standard. At the moment the problem is that the behavior has changed and we need to learn more about that change, whether to emulate the old behavior or make use of new possibilities. I haven't found a description of any change, so I asked at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)#Template_implied_new_line_changed. (SEWilco 14:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

I don't know about that usage being a "standard", but yes if you want a bulleted or numbered list then it still works just fine. But I want to be able to have an un-bulleted list, like in First Macedonian War, (which uses the similar template "ent"). Is there a way to produce an simple list without bullets or numbers? Paul August ☎ 14:30, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think the standard is a bulleted list, per Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#References (SEWilco 14:42, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

That is the standard for a list of reference, in the sense of a a list of sources. But I'm talking about a list of footnotes or endnotes. I know of no standard for that and I don't think it would add anthing to have a bullet in front of each note listed First Macedonian War#Notes. Paul August ☎ 15:49, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Those notes look like they're mostly references, and bullet points won't help that list as it is obviously a numbered list. There are several discussions about handling references, with this ref/note system being one method. I see First Macedonian War is using rf/ent, described in #Manual_numbering_versions_of_templates_.22ref.22_and_.22note.22. The rf/ent Talk pages should include Usage instructions with links to their description. (SEWilco 17:03, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

Thanks SEWilco, for taking an interest in this problem. I think we are using some terms a bit differently. First Macedonian War has a section called "References" here, which is a bulleted list of the "reference" works used to write the article, and is the kind of list referred to in Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#References. In addition, First Macedonian War has another section called "Notes", here, which is a list of footnotes, most of which are what I would call "citations" to the "references" listed in the "References" section. The list of notes as envisioned by the "ent" template is intended to be a simple list, such that for each entry, the first thing displayed (in a smaller font and superscripted), is whatever symbol is used to identify the note (i.e. whatever is specified as the first argument of the template). In the case of this article, this happens to be numerals, but any symbol(s) might be used, for example an "*" or a "†". So the "ent" template isn't intended to generate a "numbered list" really, but just a simple list with nothing preceding what the template generates. That is the way it used to work. As I said above, I've just modified the "ent" template to insert a <br> (the only thing I could think of) at the beginning of each note, which works, except for the unfortunate consequence that there is an extra blank line before the first note. Is there any other way to fix this? Paul August ☎ 19:17, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Not until we know what changed, so an adjustment can be made which won't have effects similar to this unidentified change. Adding <br> will fix some usage, and in others it will add an extra blank line. (SEWilco 19:37, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

I noticed that you posted your query on WP:VPA, perhaps we should also (or instead) ask on WP:VPT? Paul August ☎ 20:30, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

In several hours if I don't get a reply. (SEWilco 21:02, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC))

Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#Extremely_important_problem.21: Apparently a fix involving templates within HTML is the problem. {{note}} uses a template within <cite>, which is affected by this behavior. Possible workaround: for the moment use the naked template code without <cite>? (SEWilco 03:44, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC))

What is the "naked template code" equivalent of cite? Paul August ☎ 04:14, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

No exact equivalent. Perhaps <br /> should be introduced as previously suggested. As for making HTML which can be jumped to, the only option right now are section headlines. Is it time yet to create MediaWiki code for defining an HTML target id? (SEWilco 05:46, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC))

I've fixed the "extra blank line problem" for the template "ent" by using a "div" tag instead of the "br", and I've gotten rid of the "cite" tag altogether. The same technique could be used in the template "note". Paul August ☎ 21:34, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

The "semantic linking" provided in the ref/note and rf/ent template pairs no longer seems to work. Paul August ☎ 04:43, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is because the id which is used as the link targets was generated within <cite>, and is part of what stopped working in the events discussed in the preceding section. (SEWilco 05:42, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC))

After some more testing, I don't think the problem has to do with the "cite" tag. It seems to be that that "id" inside any tag, (I tried "sup" and "div" for example), inside a template, doesn't work. Paul August ☎ 21:28, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Right. All template expansion within HTML code has been disabled. (SEWilco 22:12, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC))

The "id" tag inside templates, now seems to work again. SEWilco, can anyone provide any details on how it was broken and/or fixed? Paul August ☎ 04:28, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Hey could someone help me use this in Wikisource please. I tried implementing it on this page: Wikisource:The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam - Is Religion Possible?. Everything works fine, except for the numbering in the Notes section at the bottom. It numbers each note as "1" rather than incrementing. Thanks. --82.194.62.22 29 June 2005 14:59 (UTC)

I fixed the above. There were blank lines between list items, so they were separate lists. (SEWilco 6 July 2005 01:04 (UTC))

This continues the discussion here. I'm just a regular user, no special knowledge of computers. This makes me the ideal Wiki user. I can see you must make technology easy to use, otherwise no one will use it.

OK - My inexperienced hands have just added Footnote3 to the Jew article. It was very difficult to give each footnote names (Footnote2 seems easier in this regard).

And the results are quite miserable. The numberings for the same reference do not stay the same (hey, no one wants to do 18 ibids when you can just type the same dam number). And the back links don't even work - they point to the first occurrence of the <name> tag rather than the footnote I clicked to get there.

I find it humorous that anyone wants to engage in writing an encyclopedia without a decent footnote system...--Muchosucko 4 July 2005 10:49 (UTC)

Well, what can we say? Most people who gravitate to this page share you frustration, and have done active work to improve the no footnotes status quo. What we have now is better than nothing, and certain to improve when more people help. Anyway, you did great work with the article in question; please keep it up. Arbor 4 July 2005 11:13 (UTC)

Fair enough, I've been thinking about it and I propose we eschew numbers altogether (McDonald P12). Its a very computer oriented solution anyway. Just do everything by MLA style which puts inline references by listing the author's last name (Smith). It's all the rage in academia now (Lawrence 21). Then force all citations to be strict MLA form on the bottom via some ingenous programing that automatically files the stuff alphabetically on the footnotes section. Upside: you don't have to worry about numbers, references are static since they point to the source via last name. Downside: you might have to work out a way to alphabetize the bottom listings, and clicking on the footnote may still send you back to the first occurence of the cite rather than the one you clicked to get there (Lawrence).--Muchosucko 5 July 2005 14:35 (UTC)

This is fine for academic style, where (in most disciplines) people are used to it (though I prefer footnotes myself - it's less obtrusive and I can always mention the author specifically if it's relevant), but it's not ideal for an encyclopedia read by average Joes. Rd232 6 July 2005 07:36 (UTC)

What about citing like this, if the external link software is adapted appropriately to allow it (or make it easier)? (Clicking the link then gets the ref in the address bar, where it can be copied.) It would have the benefit of maintaining the numbering scheme with the usual web reference sources.Rd232 6 July 2005 07:43 (UTC)

I created some new templates and applied some of them to Jew. There are now forward and backward links for all the citations. (SEWilco 9 July 2005 06:59 (UTC))

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Works Cited

• Lawrence, Arabia. "I like MLA in Academia." Praises of Academia and Odes to Schooling. Ed. John Antholugiss. Chicago: Dilbert Press, 2006. 20-27.
• McDonald, Ronald. "I like Burgers, Not Numbers!." McDonald Times 1 Jun 2005, Burger ed.: P12.
• Smith, Lamont. "I Like my Boring Last Name." Wikipedia!. Internet ed. 2005.

I point out that some means of editing references should help keep references up to date. I proposed an enhancement as Bug 2745: Have References text edit window on Edit pages as a starting point. If there is the ability to edit References while editing an article section, References are more likely to be kept up to date. An obvious extension is to have edit buttons which produce citation templates. (SEWilco 23:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC))