[WikiEN-l] Suggestion on how referencing system could be improved

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:46 PM, Thomas Larsen<larsen.thomas.h at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The current <ref>...</ref>...<references/> system produces nice
> references, but it is flawed--all the text contained in a given
> reference appears in the text that the reference is linked from. For
> example:
>
>  It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref>David Smith. ''History of Wednesdays.''
>  History Magazine, 2019.</ref>. The next day, Thursday, was cloudy.
>
>  == References and notes ==
>
>  <references/>
>
> (That's a very simple example, too. References start to become a lot
> larger once they start to include other information and/or are
> produced via a template.)
>
> Once way I could conceive of correcting the problem is to have a
> reference tag that provides only a _link_ to the note via a label and
> another type of reference tag that actually _defines_ and _displays_
> the note. For example:
>
>  It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref id="smith"/>. The next day, Thursday,
>  was cloudy.
>
>  == References and notes ==
>
>  <reference id="smith">David Smith. ''History of Wednesdays.'' History
>  Magazine, 2019.</reference>
>
> This makes the raw wikitext easier to read, since the text of the
> actual reference is in the _references_ section instead of in the
> page's primary content.
>
> I think this could work ...
>
> --Thomas Larsen

If I may make a suggestion? That syntax is kind of clunky - maybe we
could have a simpler syntax, something like '{{ref|foo}}' &
'{{note|foo}: text'...

-- 
gwern