If someone can write code for this, English Wikipedia
would dive upon
it with great glee.
As far as I understand the proposal, it's perfectly
possible to
implement immediately with no code changes. Just create a page, say
Wikipedia:Refs, and make a subpage for each reference you want.
Later, if it catches on, you can convert it to a proper namespace.
Well, I'd
make them subpages of Template:Refs, to make the code
shorter, but otherwise, it's not a bad idea.
Is this actually seriously being considered? Because I just picked up a
great book with 600 pages of timelines of scientific and technological
discoveries that I could use as a reference for literally thousands and
thousands of articles, and it would be nice to have a {{refs/Timetables
of Science 1988|pages=}} template available right now before I start
using it extensively rather than having to go back and retrofit them
later. If we start it out in a badly named manner that's not such a big
deal because redirects work okay, the important thing is just to _start._