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Comments

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General comments

One obvious one: actually applying "should mainly encourage both parenthetical notes and parenthetical citations unless they become too unwieldy" will be make most newly promoted FAs utterly unreadable. We've reached a point where, on average, every other sentence will be cited, often from a number of sources; putting all of this information directly into the text will render it unreasonably convoluted for anyone not given to reading scientific proceedings. This is particularly true in cases where existing footnotes contain both source information and further commentary; ignoring the CMS and using both styles together may be acceptable in theory, but it really does tend to produce more convoluted text.

[comment from the footnote manual of style page] (I question the relevance of making this proposal here, incidentally. This is a style guide for footnotes, and it would be quite inappropriate for it to open by recommending a different format entirely.)

In general, though, I think that the most important thing is to strenuously discourage converting from Harvard to footnotes, and vice versa, without the approval of an article's regular editors. Any style guide that encourages such changes—even implicitly—will only produce massive edit-warring (which will disproportionately affect our better articles, since those tend to be the ones with heavier citation). Kirill Lokshin 21:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification on structured source referencing

One other thing I forgot to mention is the distinction between freeflow and structured source dats. BIBTeX, for example is a structure bibliographic reference. The one I use in the proposal example for Ptolemy's The Almagest is unstructured or freeflow. I didn't think to raise this at first because, I think the software enhancements I propose would abstract editors and readers alike from worrying about this distinction (except in the case of manually entered sources). Also the problems I outline in the proposal and the distinction between bookcite and Cite.php are somewhat independent of this issue. I would welcome other views on this however. Any other comments? --Cplot 21:35, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Nested notes

Comment: While restraint of the editors can be hoped for in created new texts (as on Wikipedia), it cannot be counted on in reproducing extant texts (as on Wikisource), where footnotes to footnotes are simply reality. Since all the wikimedia projects run on the same software, hopefully note support will become as general as possible. Shimmin 21:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you elaborate more on the points you're making? What are you referring to with "restraint of the editors"? What is the significance of "footnotes to footnotes are simply reality"? Respectfully, I don't understand the point you're trying to make. --J. J. 19:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the first comment in this thread is referring to nested notes as I described them in the proposal. In the proposal, I discuss continuiing or creating the technical ability for the software to permit these types of nested notes (regardless of footnote or parenthetical note), and then limiting use through manual of style policy or the like. So I think Shimmin is simply saying that the nested notation is arleady taking place and I think saying that it can't or shouldn't be stopped.

Part of what I hope to introduce with this proposal is more separation between content and presentation. By treating nested notations semantically as simply notations regardless of how they're presented (parenthetical, footnote, endnote, curor hover, etc), we can leave the presentation details to the moment of presentation. The reader can determine through preferences or changing environment settings (e.g., buttons on the top of the page) how much detail is displayed and where it is displayed.

However, I think keeping notations within the source wiki code within the body text they refer to is a good policy as well. Many complain that it makes editing the text dificult because, one has to read past all the notes and the associated tags for the notes. I think this too is something that could be improved with better editing tools so that hiding/revealing the notes could also be accomplished in an editing mode. When it comes to so many editors involved in the project it's important to keep the text and subtext together.

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