Gwern Branwengwern0@gmail.com wrote:
That was actually the thread that reminded me; but I couldn't resist the chance to point out the irony of how recent referencing discontents have come full circle from the {{ref}} days.
Ah. Unusually enough, it also appears to have been a thread that stayed on topic for most of its duration. (I read click on too many interestingly-named threads with quite unrelated or uninteresting comment).
It took about 3 years to put in place references ('01 to '04/'05), another 3 switch from {{ref}} to <ref> and grow weary of it ('05 to now), so I suppose in 2014 or 2015, people will be complaining about how opaque references in a different section are, how hard to keep in sync with the article text, and how in programming we put the docs right with the functions/methods and why-can't-we-do-that?, and suggest switching to this new referencing system...
Yes, things on teh Interweb develop v e r y s l o w l y.
-Stevertigo PS: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Move_references_out_of_the_code