Gwern Branwen<gwern0(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That was actually the thread that reminded me; but I
couldn't resist
the chance to point out the irony of how recent referencing
discontents have come full circle from the {{ref}} days.
Ah. Unusually enough, it also appears to have been a thread that
stayed on topic for most of its duration. (I read click on too many
interestingly-named threads with quite unrelated or uninteresting
comment).
It took about 3 years to put in place references
('01 to '04/'05),
another 3 switch from {{ref}} to <ref> and grow weary of it ('05 to
now), so I suppose in 2014 or 2015, people will be complaining about
how opaque references in a different section are, how hard to keep in
sync with the article text, and how in programming we put the docs
right with the functions/methods and why-can't-we-do-that?, and
suggest switching to this new referencing system...
Yes, things on teh Interweb develop v e r y s l o w l y.
-Stevertigo
PS:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Move_references_out_of_the_code