[WikiEN-l] New policy proposal

[Ray Saintonge]

Neil Harris wrote:

> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
>> At 09:48 AM 12/12/2004 +1100, David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>> What we need is to encourage a culture of including references. I'm 
>>> trying
>>> to get myself better at this ... If we can get the reference syntax
>>> implemented, that would help tremendously. (And I'm dreaming of it 
>>> doing
>>> fancy reference-indexing things.)
>>
>> Once upon a time long long ago I remember putting in a feature 
>> request for a simple "footnote" markup, along the lines of adding 
>> [[Note:blah blah blah]] anywhere in the article and having it turn 
>> into a superscripted number linking to an anchor for the text "blah 
>> blah blah" down at the very bottom of the page. Something like that 
>> could be suitable for references too, though it wouldn't be nice for 
>> making multiple references to the same source scattered throughout an 
>> article. Maybe a [[Ref:blah blah blah]] markup that automatically 
>> combines identical "blah blah" text into the same reference at the 
>> bottom?
>
> <footnote>This would probably be better and more 
> intuitive.</footnote>, where the tag might be "footnote", "foot", 
> "note", or whatever. It also fits in with the way that the software is 
> designed to be extended.

I think that this approach would be more idiot proof.  It should 
parallel the category system but probably simpler since it does not need 
to be directly referenced from anywhere outside of the article.  The 
categories for an article can be made to show up together at a 
predetermined place on the page; in that regard this would be no 
different. 

I don't think that multiple references to the same source should be 
combined.  It would make it difficult to backtrace a reference to see 
just where a reference was used.  If the reference is in any way 
questionable you want to be able to see just what statements were based 
on it.  Still other references will be to the same source but may differ 
only by the page number in the work.

The default placement of footnotes should be at the bottom of the page, 
but I would add a couple of options.  In the first I would allow for 
them to be put at the end of each section with an H2 heading.  This 
would put the notes closer to where they are needed.  In some cases the 
editor may even want them at the end of each paragraph.

Another option could be to put them in a new column to the right of the 
noted text, and aligned so that the notes can scroll with the text.  In 
Wikisource this could have some very interesting applications.  In 
addition to having footnotes we have also had some talk about 
encouraging translations of the works that we carry.  A very similar 
technique could be used to anchor the translations of text sections, 
perhaps by putting the note as the first item in a paragraph.

Ec