Help talk:Footnotes

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources § New proposal: deprecate {{reflist|refs= in favor of <references>?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources § New proposal: deprecate {{reflist|refs= in favor of <references>?. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 03:02, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Confusing: How to name a reference

In the section "Footnotes: using a source more than once", the method to name the reference and the one to use it is confusing. Maybe because the syntax is confusing, as the only difference is the use of "ref" when naming.

After the syntax definition:

 The syntax to define a named footnote is:
 <ref name="name">content</ref>
  To invoke the named footnote:
  <ref name="name" />

an example should be given right after to clarify this as well as underlining the subtle

Also, the Reference template allows you to specify a page or page range, which gets stuck to the full reference (right?), so a short reference to a different page will be confusing to the reader.

Adding to the possiblity for confusion, there is the Shortened Footnote. I have read the pages about three times and I am still confused what to use when. Jp1008 (talk) 04:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

@Jp1008, how is the "manchester2002" example unclear? Do you have any ideas on what would make it more clear? What pages about shortened footnotes are unclear and how? You won't often see both in one article. Named references repeat the entire foonote. Shortened footnotes can each include a separate page number or other in-source location, and point to a full citation, typically in a list at the bottom of the page. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 07:20, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

I have just added a few words to make it easier for the public to understand this.

I often use {{rp|page number(s)}} to add page numbers to a reference, including the short named refs used elsewhere on the page. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:33, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Rjj, thanks for your request for suggestions.

1) Changing:

<ref name="name">content</ref>

to:

<ref name="name">tex of full reference</ref>

would help, as I was not sure what "content" referred and messed up a few times in my edits.

2) The simple moving of the example below immediately after the definition would help as the definition requires you to parse several nestings of "modifiers" (not sure that is the right term).

I would do what I am suggesting, but still a newbie and therefore not too comfortable of messing up a Help Page ... Jp1008 (talk) 23:41, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

@Valjean: what do you think of the above idea (I saw you update the documentation a bit ago)? Personally, I have no objections. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:20, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Excellent idea, and I have added those words. Thanks for the suggestion. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:09, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I have made a few changes to make it even easier to understand. Feel free to improve. One thing that is very confusing is using the word name twice (<ref name="name">). I have used an actual example ("manchester2002"). I consider this much better than a number, but far from ideal, since "manchester" could conceivably author myriad articles during 2002. That's why I follow and recommed the practice used by all scientific publications. They use the last name of the author(s) and full date of publication. See this: A basic citation template I like to use. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:06, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

The changes improved it a lot. After many tries I made it work but they it is clearer now, thanks! Jp1008 (talk) 06:30, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Good. I suspect that there is still some unnecessary duplication, so feel free to examine it and see if it can be improved, and SIMPLIFIED!!!, even more. You started here in 2006 (but have relatively few edits), so I wouldn't call you a newbie, but if you feel you don't understand this stuff, don't feel bad. Lots of old timers don't either. So don't sell yourself short. Sometimes people who are relatively new on these pages are the ones who spot problems the rest of us gloss over without discovering, so your input is highly valued. Fresh eyes and all that. I'm counting on you to ask for more help to fix more problems you have found! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 07:10, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Tag or template preference

Jacobolus has complained that the guidance on this page is unclear about whether editors should use <references /> or {{reflist}}. It is clear that {{reflist}} cannot be used with list-defined footnotes, but what guidance should there be in other circumstances? Note that with {{refwidth}}, it is now possible to set column widths for <references />, but only one width per article. So what guidance should there be on this help page?

• When not using LDRs, editors are free to choose either technique. Articles should not be changed from whatever they have now unless there is a reader-visible change (e.g. column width or numbering style) or functional reason (such as VisualEditor compatibility for LDRs, or removing deprecated parameters).
• {{reflist}} is always preferred for non-LDRs
• <references /> is always preferred
• <references /> is always preferred except when styling is needed (column width, numbering style)
• Something else?

-- Beland (talk) 04:53, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

"It is clear that {{reflist}} cannot be used with list-defined footnotes,"

Except this is not actually the current consensus as far as I can tell. The current consensus, in my understanding, is that {{reflist}} should not be used with list-defined footnotes unless any other features of {{reflist}} are also used, in which case it's okay again. –jacobolus (t) 05:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

The RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223 § Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor endorsed a bot removing only instances of {{reflist|refs= when there are no other parameters, but the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 58#Should list-defined references be discouraged? endorsed fixing all such instances. I interpret this to mean that the remaining pages should drop custom column widths, stop using list-defined references, use the new {{refwidth}}, or whatever other solution is available to fix the VisualEditor incompatibility. A human decision needs to be made as to which approach is best in each case, which is why this was not left up to a bot. -- Beland (talk) 05:25, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Note that this discussion was closed by Beland with the summary "[...] There was 2:1 support in favor of deprecating {{reflist|refs=}} and replacing existing instances. [...]". However, this does not at all seem like a community consensus position, in the simple manner expressed by that summary. Myself and multiple other editors have called out this summary for being misleading and inaccurate. I urge interested readers to go actually read through the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 58 § Should list-defined references be discouraged? which was far from conclusive or straightforward. –jacobolus (t) 05:41, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

As for the above comment, "I interpret this to mean that the remaining pages should drop custom column widths, stop using list-defined references, use the new {{refwidth}}, or whatever other solution is available to fix the VisualEditor incompatibility." – This seems completely unsupported by the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223 § Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor, and seems to me like Beland substituting their personal preference for community consensus. –jacobolus (t) 05:46, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

If you think the close should be overturned, please follow the steps at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE and open a closure review. -- Beland (talk) 16:34, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

To elaborate, here was Beland's personal preference:

• "My bias would be toward removing any customizations and going with the default rendering."

But I didn't notice anyone else agreeing with this opinion, and there were a wide range of opinions expressed that either opposed this change altogether or only supported it contingent on having no outwardly visible effect or other downsides. Some quotations:

• "(a) Is the rendered result is perfectly identical what's being replaced?"
• "I would be fine with deprecation if the tag were sufficiently responsive for shortened footnotes."
• "Oppose This does not seem worth running a bot to make 55,000 edits over to me."
• "Oppose VE is broken and we should not extend the damage to the rest of Wikipedia by making our templates broken and clogging up our watchlists with bot edits as well."
• "Support deprecating {{reflist}} altogether except for instances where specific functions unique to the template are required for some reason."
• "Support provided that no changes are made if {{reflist}} is invoked with |colwidth=."
• "Support limited to where |refs= is the only parameter in the reflist template."
• "Oppose. Fix the actual problem where it lies, don't ask someone else to put up with a workaround."
• "This is a really minor change that would produce major benefits with no downsides."
• "Support - [... as] there isn't a visual difference, we might as well."

–jacobolus (t) 06:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

The RFC about what the bot should be trusted to do should not be taken as an indication of what human editors should do in more complicated circumstances. -- Beland (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

One of the differences between the two is that {{reflist}} is the worse choice when the PEIS limit is hit. That's not common, but it does happen. That suggests that the tag would be the better default choice if there are no features of the template needed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:44, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

For useful feedback I encourage a detailed comparison of the two choices. I guess many editors are unaware of every property of these two. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:36, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

When hitting the PEIS limit the issues tend to appear at the end of the article, impacting references the most, but the issue is the whole article. Replacing a template with a tag, or other such work arounds, just cover up the issue until something else fails. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:36, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

I lean towards <references/> but have no issues when other editors swap to {{reflist}}. When there are no parameters for the template, the output is just about the same; I think in the past the template was necessary to generate columns. When there are list-defined references the template obscures those in the Visual Editor and the WMF have been pretty upfront about having no fix planned for that. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

{{refn|group=nb|

Why is this being recommended? Surely

1. {{efn}} is far more editor friendly and the notes it contains can (and often should) have their own citations using <ref>...</ref> as normal, no jumping through hoops required.
2. footnote markers like nb 1 would seem to violate MOS:NOTE

What have I missed? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

I would suggest moving to efns to make things easy and clearer. Having a default way of achieving notes might stop editors from trying to embed short form reference templates inside ref tags. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:39, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

I see that example was added in Special:Diff/450182260 in September 2011, which is not too long after the ability to use custom labels (e.g. MediaWiki:Cite link label group-lower-alpha) was added. Prior to that, short labels like group=n were common, as or is less obtrusive than or . It may be that the author just didn't know that group=lower-alpha existed when they wrote it, and later editors didn't think to update it. P.S. I note that {{efn}} and {{refn|group=lower-alpha}} will do basically the same thing, and {{refn}} also works without |group= if that sort of nested ref is desired. Anomie⚔ 15:48, 2 January 2026 (UTC)