[WikiEN-l] Why are URLs numbered?

[RLS]

On 9/5/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> There really are two separate issues.  That the numbering schemes
> clash is one valid issue.  That the English Wikipedia has deprecated
> the use of these types of links is another.
>

The numbering scheme for URLs without labels definitely needs to change.  A
less-than-clueful reader may be confused when there's a properly cited <ref>
#1, and later on in the article an unlabelled URL, also numbered [1].  If
they clicked on the reference footnote, then they may not subsequently hover
on or click the URL with the same number; or, if they didn't click the
reference footnote, they may click the URL and believe that the URL was
being used to source both the first and second statements.

A useful change as far as unlabeled URLs goes would be to either eliminate
the numbers in mainspace, perhaps replacing them with a globe icon a la
MoinMoin-powered wikis; or to number them in sequence with <ref> tags,
although if we were to do that, we may as well convert them to
<ref>URL</ref> instead.

A more useful change, though I'm unsure about how to implement it, would be
to more thoroughly educate contributors that the [url] format is indeed
deprecated for use as a citation format.

--Darkwind