Thomas Dalton wrote:
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._