Quoting Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca>ca>:
Aude wrote:
Maybe it would be worthwhile for us to do
usability testing on different
referencing methods. Some usability testing was done on the German
Wikipedia, a few years ago. This would allow us to test the interface with
general people, rather than experienced Wikipedians.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability
A method I've used a few times is to create a template for each
individual reference to make reuse easier. This had the added benefit of
making the wiki code much simpler in the article itself; instead of
having "<ref>{{cite book|title=The Timetables of Science|
first=Alexander| last=Hellemans| coauthors=Bryan Bunch| publisher=Simon
and Schuster| location=New York, New York| year=1988| isbn=0671621300
|pages=}}</ref>" embedded in the article's text all you have is
"<ref>{{The Timetables of Science}}</ref>" (or
"<ref>{{The Timetables of
Science|pages=blah}}</ref>" to reference a specific page).
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Specific_source_templates>
for other similar examples. If this were to become a widespread practice
it might make sense to create a pseudo-namespace to keep the templates
organized, much like how almost all userboxes have names beginning with
"User ".
That's a really good idea. There are a lot of sources I've used in multiple
articles and just copied and pasted my ref from to the other. I never thought
of doing it this way. The only objection is that more templates -> more
possibilities for clever vandalism. But that's a minor objection. It's a very
good idea.