[WikiEN-l] Suggestion on how referencing system could be improved

[Soxred93]

I'm also forwarding this to the wikitech-l list.

On Dec 3, 2008, at 8:46 PM [Dec 3, 2008 ], Thomas Larsen wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The current <ref>...</ref>...<references/> system produces nice
> references, but it is flawed--all the text contained in a given
> reference appears in the text that the reference is linked from. For
> example:
>
>   It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref>David Smith. ''History of  
> Wednesdays.''
>   History Magazine, 2019.</ref>. The next day, Thursday, was cloudy.
>
>   == References and notes ==
>
>   <references/>
>
> (That's a very simple example, too. References start to become a lot
> larger once they start to include other information and/or are
> produced via a template.)
>
> Once way I could conceive of correcting the problem is to have a
> reference tag that provides only a _link_ to the note via a label and
> another type of reference tag that actually _defines_ and _displays_
> the note. For example:
>
>   It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref id="smith"/>. The next day,  
> Thursday,
>   was cloudy.
>
>   == References and notes ==
>
>   <reference id="smith">David Smith. ''History of Wednesdays.''  
> History
>   Magazine, 2019.</reference>
>
> This makes the raw wikitext easier to read, since the text of the
> actual reference is in the _references_ section instead of in the
> page's primary content.
>
> I think this could work ...
>
> --Thomas Larsen
>
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