[WikiEN-l] Why are URLs numbered?

[FT2]

Re-examining what's best to display is no bad thing. The system for URL's
far predates cite.php for example.

The use of numbers is sensible; like footnotes you want to be able to say
*which* link of many, if notionally discussing a page. But the numbers for
URLs clash with the numbers for footnote cites, so there can be two number
1's on a page easily. That's unhelpful. Also it may be that labelling them
some better way is possible. Some ideas:

1 - give them numberings that fit in with footnote numberings, so that at
least url / cite numbers are not duplicated.

2 - give them a different look, maybe [url-1] ... [url-2] ...

3. - auto-render all [http://link.com] as <ref>http://link.com</ref>. It's
not perfect but the information's the best there is and its consistent in
style.


I like #3.


FT2.



-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Todd Allen
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 4:16 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why are URLs numbered?

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Just wondering: when external url's are used in a page, why are they
> numbered? That is, why is this:
>
> [http://foo.com]
>
> displayed as this:
>
> [1]
>
> ?
>
> I imagine that once this was a useful behaviour, before we had proper
> referencing tools, so they kind of looked like footnotes. But there's
> no list of these URLs generated anywhere, so what purpose does it
> serve?
>
> Would it perhaps be tidier to display something like a tiny [url] or
> [link] or something?
>
> Steve
> PS I'm bringing this up on this list, rather than mediawiki or
> wikitech, as it's a question of deciding what we actually want.
>
>   
Actually, I kind of like it that way. It's quite often helpful in
discussions when a series of links or diffs is presented, and they're
already identified by the context around them, since it doesn't make a
massively long page. For articles themselves, we have the <ref> system.