Maybe have something like this:

{{reflist|begin}} becomes <references> {{reflist|end}} becomes </references> {{reflist}} says as <references />

-X!

On Sep 17, 2009, at 7:55 PM, David Gerard wrote:

2009/9/18 geni geniice@gmail.com:

...

2009/9/18 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:

...

...

Hey kids! Sort out those BLOODY INSANE <ref> tags in the text! (Something to add to AutoWikiBrowser for sure ...)

...

this is going to create issues with {{reflist}} no?

...

_< There's always one, isn't there ...

Fixing {{reflist}} to make it work with this strikes me as a better idea. (or adding code to MediaWiki that does what {{reflist}} does.) If {{reflist}} makes it harder to take reference details out of the body of the wikitext, {{reflist}} needs to go.

• d.

---

WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Soxred93 soxred93@gmail.com wrote:

...

Maybe have something like this:

{{reflist|begin}} becomes <references> {{reflist|end}} becomes </references> {{reflist}} says as <references />

That's a bit ugly but doable. You might as well just make it {{reflist-begin}} though. {{reflist-begin}} <ref name="blah >...</ref> {{reflist-end}}

Oic, it's actually {{refbegin}} and {{refend}}.

Steve Bennett wrote:

Learnt about this the standard way knowledge about wiki syntax proliferates: diffs. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gippsland_Lakes_Discovery_Trail&am...

Yes, good, but {{reflist}} is also progress and needs to be made compatible.

Charles

2009/9/18 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:

...

Yes, good, but {{reflist}} is also progress and needs to be made compatible.

David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

Shirley {{reflist}} should be made options for <references>. Does it do anything other than pretty formatting?

Agree with David, and even without considering the superficial differences, a hard-coded function should take preference over a template hack. The latter doesn't appear to solve the present issue which is editing being obstructed by large in-text citations. Andrew's hack seems to be more than sufficient.

The issue then is that a bot would be relied upon to do the moves - section edits means that adding citations will continue to work in the normal in-text fashion, and even in less common full-page edits we don't necessarily expect people to manually put citations in the references section. So.. a massive wave of site-wide bot-edits followed by a persistent bot?

Be interesting to see if just leaving a site-wide worknote above the titlespace would get most of the job done with user cycles.

-Stevertigo

Out of curiosity ... Do we have to allow nested refs? Would it be better to un-nest them?

Stylistically I think it's preferred not to do that.

Or at least, un-nest them to the extent of moving the body of ref B outside the body of ref A, and replacing with a named ref callout to B?

<ref>A <ref> B </ref> </ref> => <ref name=A>A <ref name=B/> </ref> <ref name=B>B</ref>

That the code let you get away with it doesn't mean it's a good idea or that we ultimately need to support it. If we can find all instances and fix it...

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:

Apparently the new cool thing to do is {{r|foo}} rather than <ref name="foo" />. Works for me.

Now we can {{note|foo}}^W^W{{r|foo}} like it's 2005!

But seriously, I find this discouraging - a sign of dysfunctionality. All the work put in to switch to <ref> and now we're switching *back* to something I find indistinguishable from the original? I guess I'll be opting out of whatever the next switch will be...

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:

...

Now we can {{note|foo}}^W^W{{r|foo}} like it's 2005!

But seriously, I find this discouraging - a sign of dysfunctionality. All the work put in to switch to <ref> and now we're switching *back* to something I find indistinguishable from the original? I guess I'll be opting out of whatever the next switch will be...

Hmm, I don't recall how {{note}} worked - is the current template what you're referring to?

Not sure. I drank the <ref> kool-aid and haven't used {{note}} in years.

I think the key here is that the remote definition is optional. The issue arises because this:

Trees are green.<ref>http://www.trees.com</ref>

...is easier to write, but this:

Trees are green.{{r|trees}}

...is easier to read. So it makes sense to write one way and have a bot convert into the other. Both ways have their downsides, but we just have to live with in the absence of a fancier editor.

Steve

But my problem is I don't see how the new stuff buys us *anything*. You say that we can have a bot convert {{r|trees}} to <ref> stuff and reap the benefits of both styles? But then if we've solved that problem, then converting to & from {{note|trees}} is trivial and we didn't need the new feature at all.

And either way, users still need to memorize new markup ('{{r}}' is actually worse than '{{note}}' in that respect; the latter at least is an actual word).

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Surreptitiousness surreptitious.wikipedian@googlemail.com wrote:

[[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] explains it all.  I can't work out the difference, except maybe it took Dragons flight a lot of work to give us what we already had?

Interesting. I'm not sure why we tolerate so many incompatible systems. Let's just render them all obsolete except the one true one.

I do notice this crucial limitation in the {{ref}} system:

"The {{note}}'s in the Notes section must occur in the same order as the corresponding {{ref}}'s in the main text. This is an important issue to consider when adding more footnotes later."

In other words, this{{ref|foo}} doesn't{{ref|bar}} work: # {{note|bar}} A bar # {{note|foo}} A foo

The {{ref}}/{{note}} system in general looks like a hack. You have to manually create the bullet points and carefully preserve order. And trying to create multiple references to the same footnote looks like a major pain in the arse. We should kill this. It's particularly confusing that <ref> and {{r}} refer to one system, but {{ref}} is another system. Who can remember that??

Steve

2009/9/18 Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com:

More parameters to <references /> is probably the right way to go:

Undoubtedly. {{reflist}} has many thousands of transclusions; surely enough to rate software support. Go file a bug, or just code it ;-)

- d.