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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 09:37, 21 November 2011 (Archiving 1 thread(s) from Help talk:Footnotes.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Archive 1Archive 2

Formatting

Having used footnotes in this form for the first time today, I think I'd prefer large ref numbers. If we aim to massively increase the number of references then a numbering system which - as this does - ruins the leading in the text is not ideal. Although the ref numbers that are the same size as the rest of the text is unorthodox I think it looks very neat on the screen. --bodnotbod 17:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Issues

Revert-warring

There has been some revert-warring on the help page (17 May 2006), a report of that has been moved to Help talk:How to use Cite.php references#Chronology --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Fate of Help:How to use Cite.php references

Decision process (aka vote) currently going on at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:How to use Cite.php references --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Previous content of Help:Footnotes

was moved to Template:Ph:Footnotes [1]

I propose to move that content (and edit history) that was moved to template: namespace, back to help: namespace, for instance to help:Footnotes by templates. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The way I see it the using "H:", "Phh", "Ph" (and other templates) for managing Help: namespace pages has some advantages for those help: pages that are not well maintained, i.e. have no people attending them (on their watchlist etc.) - in that case people like Omniplex can maintain quite a lot of them without much of an effort.

Disadvantages include:

  • Usually crappy layout;
  • I second the idea that "help:" namespace pages give practical help for the ordinary non-technically-experienced user/editor, and so are primary a tool for enhancing wikipedia's usability. While the H:/Phh/Ph/... system relies on copying content from meta - which can be user-friendly, but as easily can be very technical - the H:/Phh/Ph/... system can be a usability setback.
  • The H:/Phh/Ph/... system is not very supportive of non-technical users writing easy-to-understand help descriptions, so often gets in a loop of not being helpful.
  • The H:/Phh/Ph/... system can have problems in indicating en:wikipedia-specific policy/guidelines. Usually that happens in the Ph template, but then you can get contradictions between the help displayed in the first sections of the help page and the nth section of that same help: page that gives a different instruction (at least, again, confusing the user).
  • The desirability & content of the {{Phh:Reader}} template (to which most of the Phh templates redirect) completely elude me.
  • ...

Placing the help:footnotes page in this bigger picture:


Whilst I don't understand or agree with some of your arguments, such as meta pages being a "fall-back" for Wikipedia pages. I completely agree about {{Phh:Reader}}. For some reason blank templates seem unacceptable! The page it links to Help:Help also seems to somewhat duplicate Help:Contents. Just because it exists on meta doesn't mean it needs to exist here!
I think many of these meta pages come from Wikipedia originally, though many are too technical or verbose. If we were to drop the meta pages (like Wikibooks), we would need at least some recreated as Wikipedia pages. To achieve this, it would be logical to refine the meta pages. It would be even more logical to improve the meta pages, so they benefit all projects using them. Ultimately, rather than cutting and pasting, it would be better to transclude the pages, so they perform in much the same way as images from Commons (I know this would increase server load - but ultimately it is the right thing to do).
Btw. interwiki links can be placed on the Ph template with <includeonly> tags (so they don't show up on the Ph template). See Template:Ph:Edit summary. This means they don't need to be protected in the Help: page. -- Gareth Aus 00:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mbeychok's issue

I received an e-mail from Mbeychok, with following content

Francis:
I left the following message on your user Talk page almost two days ago, but have not had a response ... so I thought I would send it via this Wiki email.
Regards, User:Mbeychok
== Cite.php in Meta version is not the same as in Wikipedia version ==
Francis, I don't want to get between you and User:Omniplex. However, there is a problem:
  • Where my simplified writeup on how to use Cite.php was incorporated into Help:Footnotes it works very nicely.
  • But, where it was incorporated into m:help:footnotes it does not work because the Meta version of Cite.php still uses a vertical arrow instead of a caret ... and it uses 1.1, 1.2. 1.3, etc. instead of a, b, c, etc. for multiple use of the same references.
That difference really should be resolved somehow.- User:Mbeychok

This seems an issue to be resolved at meta to me, probably m:cite.php --Francis Schonken 10:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

What next?

"If" (but I don't want to run ahead of the vote result) Help:How to use Cite.php references stays, and "if" the Help on footnotes-by-templates is moved to help: namespace again, I'd propose to keep this a user-friendly help page, by making two main section headers, one for an *inclusion* of the content of Help:How to use Cite.php references, one for an *inclusion* of the content of the old footnotes-by-templates help. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

  1. The vote resulted in "redirect", that's what I tried first. Good result, because we obviously agree that its former content is better than most of the former content here. Back from 4 to 3 pages.
  2. The next step should be to get the wanted content on the master help page, back from 3 to 2 pages. Details TBD, at the moment the difference is the missing cite.php "synopsis". That's helpful for those who have already used it and only forgot the precise "ref"-syntax.
  3. Independent point, if you want Template:Ph:Footnotes as Help:Footnotes/3 move it, the inclusion will still work over a single redirect. I don't see the point, the edit history is preserved as is, but in theory it's possible, and "footnotes/3" as pagename makes sense.
  4. The minor technical difference between cite here an on Meta is interesting, I'm too lazy to check Special:Version which site forgot to install the most recent version. It could be also a configuration issue. Actually I don't care, cite doesn't work with my browser at the moment, mediazilla:5567.
  5. Help master page system: Clumsy, but I've no better idea. Until January something styling itself as "Uncle G's bot" did the copy and paste. Doing it manually is odd, but better than different help pages on different projects for the same technical topic. The Ph-add-on is sometimes useful, Phh rarely. Meta has only Ph.
  6. Interlanguage links for help pages are maintained on Meta, click +/- at the bottom of m:Help:Footnotes and add your language, ready. Just edit the master page and copy it back. Or anything with that effect. -- Omniplex 03:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, did you have a problem with the present content of help:footnotes? I mean, I see a lot of innuendos in your comments above (for example, your assertion that interwiki-links are *also* handled at meta, which is no argument pro nor contra to have interwiki-links in help:footnotes at en:wikipedia) - but I didn't see *arguments*. Also the fact that Uncle G apparently has left en:wikipedia is an innuendo for which I don't see what basis it gives regarding a decision on the content of help:footnotes - maybe his bot operations were incompatible with what the en:wikipedia community wants, and maybe that was the reason why he left (I don't know, I'm only saying that Uncle G's departure is used as an innuendo without value in the present context). --Francis Schonken 09:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The new content was fine, therefore I copied it to the master page, and copied that back here. The only missing piece from the old content was or is the "synopsis" for a quick overview of the syntax. Anything else was 1:1 not touching a single comma in it.
I can't tell you how the help system as is was developed, I found out how it works, but don't know the complete history, maybe ask Patrick. Some details are obvious: One master copy with project-specific add-on templates is in theory a good idea. The few folks caring about these pages from different projects can join their forces this way. In practice it has some drawbacks, copy+paste isn't very elegant, as you've stated it destroys interlanguage links again and again. At the moment, we could improve it by managing such links on Meta.
In fact there is already a system on Meta, look at m:Template:H-langs:Footnotes (no translations) vs. m:Template:H-langs:Link (many translations). But this system is based on Meta's concept of "Help language = help namespace", with copy+paste we'll never get these H-langs templates here. But they are on Meta, good enough as far as I'm concerned. For a different example see the language links for m:ParserFunctions (again a template, only its name doesn't start with "H-langs:"), you can add links to any page in any language, the only restriction is one link per language.
So far the technical conditions (and differences between multilingual m: vs. monolingual w:en:) are obvious. For the political / historical reasons why the help system is as it is I've no idea, you're around here for some time, probably you know more about it. It's clumsy but simple. In doubt I like clumsy and simple better than elegant and complex. -- Omniplex 10:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S.: Actually several links per language work in a H-langs-style template, but if they are displayed as say French French French that would be confusing.

Meeting 7/10

OK - I am going to call Jess and a couple of other recuriters and get some more info and also try and get a couple clients We are both going to work on the website Lets try and meet next week —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bbruckner (talk • contribs) 04:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC).

Templates

{{refs}}

Since so many people (like me) forget the div class=references, I've added a quick and dirty template, {{refs}} to do it. Example at Oregon wine. --EngineerScotty 00:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

"citation needed"

Should also include template to indicate "citation needed", namely {{Fact|date=February 2007}}, in article.
—DIV (128.250.204.118 10:50, 17 July 2007 (UTC))

Full details nolonger need be in 1st occurance of named ref

As reported on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-13/Technology report:David Ruben Talk 03:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

  • When using named <ref> tags, the one containing the contents of the reference no longer needs to be first (bug 5885). This may help alleviate complaints that lengthy references clutter articles' wikitext and make it difficult to read. Patch is thanks to Phil Boswell, committed by Andrew Garrett in r17382.

So lets try this out: 

: For 1st named empty ref<ref name="test"/>, we later fully define.<ref name="test">Full details</ref>
<references/>

Gives:

For 1st named empty ref[1], later fully defined.[1]
  1. ^ a b Full details

Yup this works :-) I would point out that previous discussion held re trying to define all references in a separate hidden section, will presumeably leave each footnote having an additional link back to the hidden section. David Ruben Talk 03:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Template based implementation examples

Comments on template based implementation examples to overcome difficulties with editing due to our non-see-what-you-get editing interface led me to add:

to "See also". —Preceding unsigned comment added by WAS 4.250 (talk • contribs) 18:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

order of citations

With the <ref name="Perry">Perry's Handbook, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill Co., 1984.</ref> example, does it have to be the first? Will it work if it is the 2nd and <ref name="Perry"/> is the first instance in the article? Kingturtle (talk) 19:57, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes - see 2 sections up Help_talk:Footnotes#Full details nolonger need be in 1st occurance of named ref David Ruben Talk 11:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
This is helpful so citations don't burden the infobox or lead. The full citation can be later, although it can make it difficult to locate if the full citation needs to be edited. Gimmetrow 23:04, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Troubleshooting

I have a list of errors and their resolution listed at User:Gadget850/Ref errors. Should this be incorporated here? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Section: Creating the list of References or Footnotes

Comment of "At the point where you want the text of the footnotes or references to appear (usually at the end of the article in a Notes or References section), insert the tag:"

should be restate to "(must be at the end of the article in a Notes or References section, but before external link, category(s) and interlanguage link sectios.) because if the description with reference such as [1] is exist after section of footnote (reference), that reference is not shown. See my edit of Revision as of 17:02, October 23, 2008 (edit) (undo)Namazu-tron added description with reference, total three reference. The previous edition to mine had two references, but only one reference is shown and second one [2] ( in a very last sentense of "The standard author abbreviation E.H.Wilson is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.[1] ") was had hidden reference due to it was after "section reference /". See my hidden comment in the article: <!--　put "==References == & <references/>" lines at bottom to effect all referenceces. --> --Namazu-tron (talk) 11:41, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Footnotes with page numbers

This idea was raised a couple of years ago, I think, but has anyone thought of doing anything about the old page number problem? Right now I still come across articles that essentially cite the same reference over and over again, but each time with a different page number. I could easily go in and simplify things, but then all of the page number information would be lost, which some may consider a pity. Might there be a way for page numbers to be accommodated in each block of footnote code, even if they stay hidden like comments? Something like this:

  • <ref name="EfD" page="35">Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.</ref>
  • <ref name="EfD" page="iii"/>
  • <ref name="EfD" page="72"/>

Each footnote blocks would still point to the same reference at the bottom of the page. The readers would see nothing, but it would certainly help the editors. With just a little more effort, though, I can even imagine that it would be possible to display each page number with a mouseover of the individual footnote, but I don't see that as nearly so important. Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 20:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The only current ways to include unique page numbers for each cite are to:
--—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 21:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Option 1: Exactly what I am looking to avoid. Option 2: Ugly, but I suppose it's better than option 1. Thanks. Option 3: There goes your named footnotes option; bah. Example, Learned Hand#Notes: OMG!!
How come nobody wants to consider expanding the functionality of the "ref" tag? --Jwinius (talk) 21:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Where would you put the page numbers? It has to be either inline or in the references. BTW: just as you don't like shortened footnotes, other editors do not like {{rp}}. It is just one more hack on top of another. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 13:54, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
In my example, I put the page numbers within the ref tag, e.g. "<ref name="EfD" page="iii"/>" or "<ref name="EfD" page="253"/>" -- something that is not possible at the moment (it leads to an error). I don't really even care if the page information stored in this manner is only available to people who are busy editing. --Jwinius (talk) 14:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
That part I figured. I mean where would you display the page numbers? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
If we were to decide to display them (and I'm not sure we'd even want to), then I was thinking right over the reference link in the text (Want to know the name of the publication too? Click on the link). Only displaying the page number during a mouseover down in the references section would be of no use, since in that case the context would be lost. Of course, you could also go a step further and include the entire reference in the mouseover (publication + page number), but that would be kind of radical and I'm not sure everybody would be happy with that. --Jwinius (talk) 15:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
Articles going to FAC will get hit hard if the references don't have page numbers. so they are effectively mandatory. I don't know if mouseovers have ever been discussed, but every proposal I have seen for scrolling or hidden reference sections has failed. See Wikipedia:Citing sources#Avoid scrolling lists and the linked discussion. I'm not saying that it is not feasible or desirable, just that you would need to make a compelling argument. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 15:57, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

So, if you know that many other editors don't like {{rp}} and you still want to go for FA, you're basically forced to apply option 1 or 2 -- that sucks! I can see now why hidden page numbers would be considered a step backwards. I liked the mouseover solution, but I suspect that it would be criticized for its lack of any immediately apparent connection between the pop-up page number and the publication listed below that is associated with the reference link. At best I think it will be viewed as being only slightly better than the {{rp}} solution, but therefore not worth the effort to implement. Then again, I may be wrong.
All I can think of now is the more radical solution where the page number would pop-up on a mouseover along with the entire reference, so that the tags I mentioned in my first example would produce:

  • Page 25 of: Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.
  • Page iii of: Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.
  • Page 72 of: Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.

The reference links themselves would still lead down to a Notes/References section below with an entry for the publication without any page numbers displayed (although now I think it might be considered useful anyway if at this location the page numbers by themselves could be displayed during mouseover events of the "^" links). You would probably also want to make it so that if the ref tag contained no page variable, there would be no pop-up on a mouseover either. What do you think; any chance of success? To me this seems like a better solution than options 1 or 2. --Jwinius (talk) 01:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The more I think of this pop-up solution and its two variations (one with only the page number, the other with the entire reference as well), the more I like it. Either of them would certainly be an improvement on the current state of affairs. Where do we go to make this proposal? --Jwinius (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
See Template:Bug - Page number attribute for ref tags. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 03:03, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Ref names (with quotes)

Recently I put some "Pet Peeves" mini-essays on my user page, and identified this article as one that I have a peeve about. You can read my peeve here. I would like to change the examples in this article, and add some of the things mentioned (not the whole peeve, just the relevant points). Any comments or objections before I proceed? --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 12:00, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

ref syntax should be improved

At the moment there is no possibility to know, if a ref element is attached to a sentence or a set of sentences, e.g.
This is sentence 1. This is sentence 2.[ref]Smith (2008), p. 7.[/ref]
Instead, the following syntax should be possible:
This is sentence 1. [ref "Smith (2008), p. 7."]This is sentence 2[/ref]
Here, it is obvious, that sentence 1 cannot be found in the book by Smith. That would allow a more precise knowledge about the origin of parts of an article. Additionally, this would allow mouse-over effects that let pop up a small box with the source. I posted this idea already to the programmers, without any reaction that someone is improving this. 92.229.63.236 (talk) 11:47, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ref help

I'm not sure whether you're supposed to edit these pages directly (or whether to do it on mediawiki.org), so I'll just comment: the "list-defined references" section uses a bad example, with the references named "reference1", "reference2" etc. It would be more illuminating to use realistic examples, named after authors or websites or some such. Enumerating them like that makes it look like you have to keep the numbering of the reference names in sync with their display or something. Stevage 01:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Grouped footnotes

I was surprised grouped footnotes were not covered, so I added a section. Also mentioned closing the lists at various points. I'm sure it can be improved upon. kwami (talk) 23:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It is documented at Wikipedia:Footnotes. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Bot to do work?

Dumb question: is there a bot available that can redo the references in an article to use the list-defined reference method? Tabercil (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like this, and I nominate Warty dyskeratoma as a test case for the bot. It's just a stub, but it's about 50% ref text, which makes finding and correcting even the simplest typos a challenge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Multiple citations of the same reference or footnote

I have an issue (!!) regarding "Multiple citations of the same reference or footnote" (see WP:NAMEDREFS). The implicit recommendation is that "duplicate" citations of a refernce should be merged into a single reference – which WP:AWB enforces. (The reference then has the familiar "^a b c" links back to the different citations.)

I prefer to separate "notes" from "references", and to use Harvard style of referencing. This often leads to references duplicate in content (e.g.: "Smith & Jones 2003"), which AWB automatically combines. Which I do not want combined! (For various reasons, and partly for style. Do I need to explain these?)

The wording is: "To cite the same reference or footnote several times...." Which I read as enabling, not restrictive, and not policy. Or is it? Any comments? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand this question. Are you perhaps doing non-Harvard short citations? Proper Harvard citations don't use any ref tags at all, and AWB shouldn't be touching them. Here's the difference:
  • Harvard: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (Smith 2008:12, Wikipedia 2009).
  • NOT Harvard: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.<ref>Smith 2008:12, Wikipedia 2009</ref>
You might like to look at WP:CITESHORT if you're working with the second option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:32, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Coincidentally, I just started drafting a comparison of reference and citation styles. I find that parenthetical/Harvard and shortened footnotes are often confused. To add to the confusion, several of the templates that are named starting with "Harv" do not result in parenthetical output. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

My apologies for overlooking this for so many months (yikes), and also for not being clearer. The issue I have is where AWB automatically merges any "references" where it finds duplicate instances of <ref> .. </ref> (containing identical content), leading to the familiar "^a b c" links, and replacing the original refs with named refs. Is there anyway to prevent this? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe this has been removed from the latest version. See the AWB talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't see that discussion. Thanks, and I'll check there. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

ProveIt

I'd like to inform people of our new ProveIt reference management tool, developed by the ELC lab at Georgia Tech. It's designed to provide a convenient GUI for viewing, adding, and modifying footnote references. Superm401 - Talk 19:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Question on implimenting multiple citations of the same group

I want to have a reference linked to through the group "note" be able to be used in multiple places as it is nessasary info that may confuse the reader and I don't have to have multiple notations say the same thing. I'm not sure how to do this.

Essentially I want:

Bob is good at sports.[note n]

Bob likes to play sports.[note n]

where "note n" leads to the same notation.陣内Jinnai 22:48, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about "group" note (there is a possible complication here), but possibly you just want to do a very simple citing of a source more than once (i.e., in more than one footnote). Right?
Many editors use a "named ref", which is a way of making a footnote show up in more than one place. That has some very serious deficiencies, so I would suggest this:
  1. List all of your sources (using the {{citation}} or {{cite xxx}} templates) in one section (e.g., "References") at the end of the article.
  2. In your text, or the footnotes (in the <ref> ... </ref> tags), wherever you want to cite a source, use what are called "Harv templates", something like "{{Harvnb|Smith|1987|p=113}}". They will all "magically" link to your bibliographic reference.
Does that help? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:41, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
That doesn't work when you want to seperate out footnotes from references. What I am using is <ref group=X></ref>, or in the case of citations within ciations I have to use {{#tag:ref|text goes here|group=x}}.陣内Jinnai 01:43, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
See WP:REFGROUP and WP:REFNEST. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
(Sorry for the tardy response.) Separating footnotes from the bibliographic references is exactly what I showed above (and what I always do). The trick is to not put your {{citation}} templates in the footnotes (between <ref> ... </ref> tags), but organized as a list wherever you find convenient. The link(s) to the proper citation is made by the {{Harv}} template, which can be placed in the text or a footnote. And in multiple places, which I think is what you want. Take a look at Tacoma Fault, which shows this kind of separation.
The complication here is that you are using "group" (why?), which seems unnecessary. Also, I simply do not understand why a "citation" should contain a citation; to mind mind that is absurd. But perhaps we are not talking about quite the same thing here; could you provide an example? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Those are shortened footnotes— see WP:CITESHORT. As noted at WP:REFNEST, explanatory notes may be created with the Footnotes system and they sometimes need a reference. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:38, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that's what you mentioned before. (This starts sliding from how to why. I suspect that Jinnai is sophisticated enough to not be confused by this digression from his question.) I strongly favor separating explanatory material (such as goes into footnotes) from the bibliographic references ("citations"; the terminology here is wholly corrupted). But this "group" method described at WP:REFNEST is quite unwieldy. And inherently flawed in what it tries to do: nest a footnote inside of a footnote. Perhaps not as absurd as trying to nest a citation -- by which I mean a bibliographic reference -- inside a citation, but still quite dubious.
In my conception the footnotes (endnotes) provide the level of explanation or augmentation of anything in the text that, for whatever reason, is not satisfactorily put into the text directly. To have a tertiary level for explaining the explanation -- well, if "absurd" is too strong it certainly is not so by much. It evinces a basic flaw in the explanation. And not countenanced by any standard usage. (The only instances I recall of footnotes containing footnotes are in Terry Prachett's novels.)
The {{Harv}} templates (and pulling the citation templates out of the footnotes) allow exactly the kind of multiple reference to a source as Jinnai asks about. Which may work with group notes, but that and nested references are different issues. Which I think are unnecessary, and unuseful. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
A lot of times I'm editing articles that already have a well-established citation style. Also the problem with that style if you need to remove a source you have to an extra step in editing. I mostly use harvard style with articles that generally use multiple books or journals for citations rather than webpages or audio-visual media.陣内Jinnai 19:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Problem with "that" style? I suspect you are talking about the common practice of putting the citation templates in the footnotes (<ref> tags), which then requires "named" ref tags (<ref name=...>) to do multiple cites. And may require adjustments elsewhere in an article if a citation is removed. Well, that is why I recommend Harv. And I generally won't edit articles that are done with named refs. Or I will convert them to Harv. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
I generally name references by default unless i'm 99.99$ certain they won't be used elsewhere (ie its only being used to verify a date). The problem I was talking about is removing references in the article and people leaving references at the bottom. This does happen more often than you might think if the citations from one source are removed entirely (for whatever reason).陣内Jinnai 19:15, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
I suspect you don't mean to "name" a reference in the sense of a verb; that is, to give a name to a reference. I suspect you mean that, by default, you use "named references", meaning those <ref name=..> tags that take a name. Which is what people have to use when they have put their "citation" (the bibliographic reference, using the {{citation}} template) inside the footnote, and want to refer to (cite) it more than once.
And you are right -- if you remove the footnote (what you are calling the reference) that contains the citation, oops, any other "named refs" referring to it will break. Your choices are: 1) find one of the other similarly named refs and stuff the citation in there; 2) put the citation template in a separate list and link to it with Harv (and replacing the other named refs); 3) don't edit articles with such cumbersome. structures. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:27, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

"Id. or "ibid." equivalent for Wiki-footnotes?

I am editing a list with of necessity many (MANY) citations to one large four volume book. As per Wiki format I am using the ref name ="large four volume book" tag. But the resulting footnote won't include volume numbers or page numbers. Instead it ends up with ridiculously redundant cites to one footnote describing the book, with no way for readers to know WHERE in the book to find what they are looking for. The footnote looks like this: " a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz cacb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv cw cx cy cz da db dc dd de df dg dh di dj dk Descriptions are from the Registry database or from Mclane, Charles; Carol (1997). Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast. Tilbury House & Island Institute. ISBN 0-00448-184-0." Is there a Wiki protocol that would allow the equivalent of an Id. cite, as in "McLane at Vol. 3 p. 246?"ElijahBosley (talk ☞) 14:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

No. And should not be, because of all kinds of potential complications as explained somewhere else.
It could be said that '<ref name="xxx" />' is the equivalent of id, which partially shows the basic problem. As was discussed in the preceeding section. I think named refs are an abomination, and my suggestion is that you switch to {{Harv}}. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 16:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
An abomination? Loathed, despised, detested, abhorred, deplored--yikes. I better switch to {{Harv}} before I get lynched. I will study the example you kindly provided above and try to learn how to use it. Thanks for the suggestion. ElijahBosley (talk ☞) 21:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
I have had this issue open as Template:Bug for some time. If it is just one or two cites, I use {{scref}}/{{scnote}}. See reference [a] in List of Eagle Scouts (Boy Scouts of America) ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Named refs considered a bug? I could go with that. :-> - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:02, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
See if {{listref}} helps. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:20, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Note the "It [listref] is intended for minimal use...." It seems rather a kludge that can't overcome the basic problem: named refs. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:43, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I really don't see the issue with named refs. You could potentially use {{listref}} for every reference in an article, but its intent is only for use where backlinks are an issue. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
One problem with named refs is just as ElijahBosley stated at the top of this discussion: long strings of back links. Adding another level of complication with listref is not a net improvement. There are other problems, but was that just a passing comment, or should this be a new discussion? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
If you wish to preserve the page numbers, then you could try using this style (with separate "Notes" and "References" sections) Bluap (talk)
It was not clear to me reading the bug report mentioned above it it was a report on a bug I have found on some pages. I have noticed on several pages where there are a lot of links to the same general reference using harv (not sure what a lot is but it is grater than 40) that following references in the relist do not have the same number on the inline citation as that in the reference list. The link still works it is just that the numbering is different. Next time I come across one I'll list it here. -- PBS (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
That bug is related only to massive uses of the same named <ref> tag; see {{listref}} for an example. For Harvard templates, User:Ucucha/HarvErrors will show errors. I am working with User:Ucucha on some other template error detection. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have started a rewrite at User:Gadget850/footnotes. Please review and comment. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 03:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Why do you think a rewrite is necessary?--Kotniski (talk) 08:00, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps because there is an appalling level of confusion regarding citation? I would ask, given the lack of consensus on various key issues, is a rewrite premature? Although it could be part of a forward moving process. — J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
This is a help page, and documents how it works— I don't understand where consensus comes into it. I am actively improving the draft, so view it as you will. If there is something that is unclear, then lets discuss it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Looking at the draft at the moment, its main problem seems to be that it is too focused on citations (references), rather than the technical side of producing footnotes for whatever purpose. Though references are obviously the main use of footnotes (which we already mention), I would rather keep to the division of material that we agreed on when we eliminated the MOS/Footnotes page: the Help page is about the technical methods for producing footnotes in general, while WP:CITE is about good practice for making citations (which obviously frequently make use of the technical methods for footnotes). I'm still not really seeing why you think this page needs to undergo another major rewrite - if there's confusion regarding citation, then it's a problem to be resolved at the WP:CITE page, rather than here.--Kotniski (talk) 08:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Not sure what you are reading. Citations (notes giving bibliographic information about each cited source and placed in the <ref> tags) are mentioned in passing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 08:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, for example, at the start of your "Elements" section, you say: "The footnote system displays two elements in an article: the in-text cite (sometimes called the inline cite) and the reference list." Instead of talking generally about "footnote markers" and "footnotes", as we do at the moment, you virtually assume (by choosing the words "cite" and "references") that we're only interested in citation footnotes. Perhaps you could explain what you think is wrong with the page as it is at the moment? I'm not seeing any reason to subject it to any kind of major overhaul.--Kotniski (talk) 08:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
What is a footnote marker? Where did this term come from? Where is it used in other documentation? What style guides use it? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Hopefully you can figure it out from reading the article page, even if it’s not a common term. My Australian goverment style manual calls them “note identifiers” or “in-text note identifiers” (covering both footnotes and endnotes). Would mentioning that term help? When I renamed that section from “Creating a footnote” I was intending it would mean the superscript number in the text that corresponds with a footnote. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 14:14, 4 October 2011 (UTC).
Yes, that's the intended meaning. I'm quite happy with "footnote marker", but if there's a more standard name, we could use that instead. We shouldn't get it mixed up with the footnote itself, though; nor should we imply that it applies only in the case of citations/references; so (for both those reasons) I don't think "in-text cite" is a useful substitute.--Kotniski (talk) 14:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I am not without some experience in citation work, yet I don't recall ever hearing "footnote marker" or "note identifier"; I doubt if they are standard anywhere outside of the Australian government.
But take this back to Ed's comment that this is intended to document "how it works" – "it" is presumably "footnotes" (right?). And right here we have a problem: the discussion (documentation) is all about citation (referencing). "Footnotes" – and here this is synonymous with "endnotes", or just "notes" generally – are just containers of sorts mediated by the <ref> tags. They may contain citations/references, or they may contain explanatory comments about the text. Conversely, citations do not have to be in a footnote (between <ref> tags). And this is where I find matters very confusing, because I was taught that in-line citations are just that – in the line. I.e., not in a "note" somewhere else. (And usually in a "shortened" format, such as author-date, or some other system.) So even I, with some non-negligible experience on the topic, am immediately confused when text ostensibly about footnotes delves into citations and references, and then brings up some non-standard terms about in-line citations, which I was taught are antithetic to footnotes. My head spins!
Which I point out is a problem not so much with Ed's writing, as with the deeper confusion that seems to be imbued in Wikipedia (and even the wikimedia software) regarding "footnotes" and "citations". I think we really need to clarify the conceptual framework. Which would be (will be?) a pretty significant effort.
_ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
First problem: What is a footnote? I wish we had a different name for the cite.php footnote system, but I suppose we are stuck with it. Regardless, the Help page is not about footnotes in general, but the very specific cite.php method of creating in-text cites and reference lists. I have tried to clarify this in the lead and in User:Gadget850/footnotes#Glossary and by not using the term footnote except when referring to the cite.php system. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, the Help page is about the specific cite.php method of creating footnotes (not only cites and references), and we shouldn't adopt terminology that muddles that fact (though we're forced to accept a certain amount of muddle due to the fact that the tags are (ref) rather than (foot), say). But JJ's conceptual confusion relates more to the guideline WP:CITE than to this page - it's there that "inline citations" are defined to mean something that includes citation footnotes.--Kotniski (talk) 10:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
I think we all agree that there is confusion (muddle). And not just in the markup tags for footnotes being called "ref", or the templates for building references being called "cite" and "citation" -- the confusion extends to the underlying concepts. All this is why I think extra care should be taken in carefully defining and using these terms. I would have this topic (footnotes) carefully distinguish these concepts and terms, focus on all the uses of footnotes (not just citation/reference), and push specific citation/reference material out to more appropriate topics. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Abandoned. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

And disappointed, as I think it could use a rewrite. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:31, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Being at an impasse, I will probably come back to this in a few months. I'm off to work on technical issues with referencing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Review

Let me take a different tack and comment on the current help page:

  • Code: the proper term is markup, but the term is used on other help pages
  • Footnote markers: style guides call this an in-text cite, in-text citation; other pages calls it an inline citation
  • Footnote: footnote is used here as the name of the cite.php system and as the citation that appears in the reference list
  • File:WP-Footnotes illustration.jpg Not true for list-defined references
  • Footnote-text: style guides refer to this as the citation or cite
  • Newline: no explanation of why you would want to do this; I have not noticed that this practice is widely used
  • Footnote list: style guides and other WP documentation call this the reference list
  • What it looks like: the [citation needed] is confusing at this point. We probably need a separate help page on dealing with referencing issues.
  • Embedding references within footnotes: "Parenthetical referencing is commonly used as a workaround." That implies mixing footnotes and parenthetical referencing.
this is a partial list. Busy at the moment characterizing a cite.php bug introduced in the upgrade. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:23, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be nothing we can do to persuade you that footnotes are not necessarily references. Style guides only refer to these things as "inline citations", "reference list" etc. when they are talking about referencing/citing sources. This is what we cover at WP:CITE. But this page (the help page on footnotes generally - at least the cite.php footnotes) is not restricted to references/citations, and therefore shouldn't use terminology that suggests it is. The terminology it uses should be appropriate to all types of footnotes, not only references.--Kotniski (talk) 14:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Abandoned. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:10, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Help

WP:REFNEST was stopped working today - as you can see from the example quoted, which now says "1.^ A footnote.?UNIQ2c9fa3426d73c1e0-nowiki-00000058-QINU?1?UNIQ2c9fa3426d73c1e0-nowiki-00000059-QINU?". What's changed, and what do we need to do about it - this affects article space as well. Shem (talk) 14:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#bug in #tag:ref parser function. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:49, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I created {{Wikipedia referencing}} to tie the relevant pages together and replace the See also list in an organized manner. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Added, replacing See also. These links were removed but are not in the navbox:
  • m:Help:Footnotes, general footnotes documentation for the MediaWiki software: outdated documentation
  • mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php, technical details on the Cite.php software extension which provids the footnoting functionality: outdated documentation
  • mw:Extension:Biblio, an extension of Mediawiki which provides a citation manager (beta maturity): not installed, thus useless to editors
---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:29, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Please consider adding information about tools that assist with citations, and some don't . Jc3s5h (talk) 13:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I thought about that, but some tools need explanations about when and why to use them. There is a lot of duplication and some tools are not well documented. How about we start Wikipedia:Tools#Referencing to give an overview. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
That would certainly be a good start, although I would eventually like to see the better tools mentioned in the navigation box. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I started at User:Gadget850/Tools#Referencing, which illustrates my concern. Please add as you find. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
And jsut found Wikipedia:Citation tools. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Apparently they can be confusing, as indicated at User talk:Vadmium#Template:ISO 15924 script codes and Unicode, about footnote g. Any ideas how I could achieve footnotes[a][b] like this,[b]

  1. ^ (dummy)
  2. ^ a b but without the confusing a backlink for this b footnote?

The only ways I can think of is to avoid the lower-alpha (and perhaps the upper-alpha) groups, or use the less automated {{ref label}} and {{note label}} templates instead. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 15:01, 15 October 2011 (UTC).

No. We discussed this when we did the list styling of the custom stuff. We would have to ask the devs for an alternate table like the current one at MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels. For your particular issue, you could use one of the other groups. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:14, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me there is rather much confusion here. Is it possible that the question here is not so much using letters (alphanumerics) for the links to the footnotes, as how the backlinks for multiple references are handled? E.g., instead of a note with multiple backlinks (the "a b c" business), having multiple notes each with a single backlink? If that is the case, the solution is easy: don't use named refs. _ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but in the script code table example I gave there were a dozen references to (and back links from) the same g footnote, and also quite a few for the h note. I think turning each of them into independent footnotes would be too cumbersome. Anyways, I ended up using {{cnote2|n=0}} templates which is less automated but has the flexibility of allowing the back links to be disabled. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 03:20, 17 October 2011 (UTC).

Template:Bug ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 09:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Multiple reference lists

I updated this, but it is rather long for a technique that is not often used. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is that complicated. Let me know what you don't understand here and I will try to fix it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 09:42, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
The things I probably would have wanted information on were:
  • That it’s possible to have multiple instances of the <references> or {{reflist}} elements, especially using the same “group” (already implied elsewhere when the groups are different)
  • What it actually means and whether it’s guaranteed or “supported”. I gather that each <references> element in the text of a page, including transcluded templates, “closes” the preceding group of <ref> elements and produces the corresponding list, after which any new <ref> elements have to go into a new <references> list.
  • Point out that it doesn’t just make identical copies of a global list, as you could otherwise expect.
This stuff wasn’t really mentioned anywhere (as far as I could find) and the only reason I thought it was allowed was the help page itself used multiple lists. But the explanation of the {{reflist|close=1}} business is also nice to know. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 04:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC).
  • "Normally different reference lists would use different groups, so the reference list markup will be closed."
  • I don't know if it is guaranteed or supported, but it is how it works. We tried making {{reflist}} close refs automatically but failed.
  • This is noted.
  • See User:Gadget850/Multiple uses of reflist for a more extensive sample.
---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk archive

This page will attract a lot of discussion; propose that we set up MiszaBot to auto-archive. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

 Done ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:36, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


During the move from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes) to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Footnotes, talk archives were orphaned.

Propose that we move them to subpages here and link them in the archive box. Move Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Footnotes to Archive 13. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:45, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done I did not move the discussions, but added a separate archive box. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_talk:Footnotes/Archive_1&oldid=461741469"