FT2 ft2.wiki@gmail.com:
One immediate if minor advantage: old references don't get lost from the text, when their first mention is removed.
Yeah, that's the practical reason for keeping refs with text. Its a valid argument against separating them.
Andrew Grayandrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
There's a bot running - or, at least, was recently - that looks for unmatched <ref name="whatever"/> comments and digs through the article history to find a matching ref. It's pretty neat.
Ah. So, AIUI a bot might be able to do the same thing - but be modified to remove the bulk of the ref tag to a separate hidden ref tags section at bottom. All [sic] that would have to be done then is to separate the 'first' ref tag (the big one) from the tag itself, leaving the tag inplace.
The only issue then [sic] is that the 'hidden refs section' (where all the ref text goes) would still show ref numbers [] in view mode. Maybe just keeping a visible section full of visible ref numbers and hidden ref text would work - even if people won't like it. Isn't there's a tag function that can <hide ref numbers> from showing?
-Stevertigo