On 21/09/2007, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/21/07, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't see how. If someone's
implementing groups, they should
implement the whole lot. Groups that don't display differently in the
article are completely useless.
Not completely. Witness
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems>. In
fact, I don't like notes, and think footnotes should probably be
reserved for references only, not general-purpose notes. Those cause
you to have to jump back and forth constantly if you want to read the
whole article properly.
Ok, not completely useless. They have one use, separate notes for each section.
It is easy to overuse footnotes, and then it gets annoying having to
jump back and forth, but they do have their uses. Information that
most people won't be interested in can go in a footnote where the few
people that care can find it and those than don't can ignore it. If it
were done as a parenthetical aside, people would have to waste their
time reading it and determining that it could be ignored.