Angela wrote:
On Dec 12, 2007 10:52 PM, River Tarnell river@wikimedia.org wrote:
so, the first thing i notice when editing Wikipedia articles these days is that they're full of <ref> tags that make it nearly impossible to find the actual text of the article. the problem seems to be that the entire reference is inline in the text. while this is useful for locality of editing, wouldn't it be nice if it would be close to the text, but not inline?
I think this, along with {{fact}} and other tags, should be moved out of the edit box completely. People should be able to add meta data, interlanguage links, references, trust values, feature stars, AfD notices, stable version flags, and whatever else they like in a separate overlay which readers and editors can turn on and off and can edit in a separate place.
I agree, though I think that a fact tag, or something like it, that is primarily there to warn the reader that there may be something problematical about the stated fact is worthwhile. In a sense it is somewhat of a disclaimer for those inclined to see everything as gospel truth. It should not be there as a red flag that signals obsessive bulls to charge. We would like it if people found substantiation, but no-one should be under any obligation to fix them all, or to remove the material that is tagged.
The other caution that I would make is not to move all this to the article's talk page. Adding various templates to talk pages has detracted from their original purpose. At one time if the discussion link was in blue I could go there with reasonable confidence that there was something there to be discussed, or that a potential POV problem was being considered. Now when most of these are filled with some kind of meta-data templates and nothing else I am less inclined to look at them. If others too are less inclined to look at them it limits an important avenue for finding a compromise solution to difficult content problems.
Ec