[Foundation-l] Can anyone really edit Wikipedia?

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Christiano Moreschi
<moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
> The problem isn't cite templates as such. It's including cite templates in the main body of text that's the problem. The issue here is people thinking it's clever to jam their "notes" section and their "references" section together. If you have two separate sections, then all that has to go in the ref tags (and consequently in the main body of text) is the author's name and page number, as the full reference is already listed elsewhere. This makes editing the article possible.

Create a flexible citation tool that can be used both ways (inline and
out of line). Communities can decide which style of citation tool best
meets their own needs. Smaller projects like Wikibooks or Wikiversity
place a much higher premium on attracting new members and lowering the
technical barrier to entry then Wikipedia apparently does. Wikipedia,
conversely, would probably be wise to put the needs of their active
long-term maintenance people above those of random new users.

Point being, this is clearly not one-size-fits-all, and trying to
create a single solution that everybody must be forced to use is not
really tenable. Adding an ability to put references at the end of the
page (or even on a separate page entirely, as Wikibooks has been
asking for) gives the flexibility for projects to produce the results
they want from it.

--Andrew Whitworth