Kirill Lokshin wrote:
This isn't perfect, since it leaves a "Notes" header in place in articles that have it; but it should suffice for the people who *really* don't like footnotes.
If you just use
.reference { display: none; }
Then the footnotes remain visible at the bottom of the article but the superscripted links within the article itself vanish. It's still not quite perfect since the footnotes' backlinks remain but no longer work, however it's getting pretty close to what I expect a preference like the one proposed would do.