[WikiEN-l] Why are URLs numbered?

[Anthony]

On 9/5/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That will mangle attempts to do standard administrative history and
> > link references in the context of an inline discussion on a talk or
> > notice page, though...
>
> That's because the referencing section isn't flexible enough (yet).
> It's also not possible to have multiple footnotes sections, for
> example. Perhaps some more magic words would help:
>
> {{EXPANDREFS}} - render <ref>foo</ref> as [foo] or something, until
> further notice.
> {{URLSTOREFS}} - automatically convert [http://foo.com] to something
> like <ref>http://foo.com</ref>. This would solve the problem of talk
> pages, as that tag wouldn't be present on the talk page, so it would
> render normally...
>
> (that second magic word might have to be reworded, it's pretty unreadable :)
>
> Steve
>
Seems overly complicated.  Why not just have a bot go through and
change all the instances of [url] (in the article namespace) to
<ref>url</ref>, and add a references section if necessary?

There really are two separate issues.  That the numbering schemes
clash is one valid issue.  That the English Wikipedia has deprecated
the use of these types of links is another.