Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unobtrusive Ways of Citing Authority
There are several ways of adding citations that do not clutter up the text.
A superscript which point to a footnote.
A hypertext link to the source like
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_wet] which will display [1].
- Using comments while editing that do not show up in the displayed
text:
<!-- via Wikipedia: Pierre de Fermat
last updated: 2004-01-01T18:44:37Z 193.230.240.14
Yes. Perhaps nothing more is needed. The paucity of citations is mainly due to custom and/or preference rather than to technology. However...
1) is, as far as I know, currently hard to achieve conveniently and reliably. Internal Wiki links have to point to a section (and break if the article is reorganized or the section heading is changed). This can be done in HTML but I've gotten spoiled by Wiki markup and am unlikely to put in the effort myself. Furthermore, how do you keep the superscript numerals sequential as the article gets edited?
2) only works for Website references, and there seems to be disagreement about whether it is proper to include these within the body of an article. There is certainly a preference for putting them all in an == External Links == section. (By the way: current custom is to name the section "External Link" when there's only one and pluralize it as soon as there are two, meaning a Wiki-link to this section is guaranteed to break).
1 and 2 also have the problem of how to return to where you were in the text after you read the reference. So, they're too obtrusive if you wanted to ignore the reference... and even more obtrusive if you want to read it.
3) is fine, and I'm starting to use this myself, EXCEPT that a) the presence of references isn't visible, and b) it is necessary to edit the article to see the reference.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith@alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/