I think I'm sliding to the "nay" side on
this one again.
If we simply use <REF> and demand that only one of them have the body
(which is true today), then we eliminate the need for another tag.
Editors could take advantage of the feature simply by adding
"section=" (or whatever) params to existing REFs with no other
changes. And there's nothing saying you couldn't add one of these
params to the "body ref" either.
But using <ref> for the "body ref" results in an unwanted [1] at the
end of the article, and an unwanted extra letter in the references
section linking to it. If people are going to be able to put all the
references at the end so they don't clutter the article (something
people seem quite keen on), there has to be a difference between how
you give the body of a ref and how you create an inline citation. That
can be different tags, or different parameters, either would work.
Personally, I prefer different tags, since they are doing different
jobs (and it's shorter that way).