Forum:Separating Footnotes and References
Proposal
As someone who loves using <ref> and {{reflist}} on this wiki, I've long noticed that our current practice mixes together two distinct purposes:
- footnotes, i.e. explanatory or clarifying comments; and
- references, i.e. external links which serve as evidence for the claims, usually through {{cite web}}.
Mixing these two very different use cases results in confusion. As an example, see Faction Paradox (series)#Footnotes. Of the 68 "footnotes" on that page, 62 are source citations and 6 are explanatory comments. How quickly can you identify which is which? Spoiler: it's borderline impossible!
Other wikis have an established way to solve this problem: separating "Footnotes" and "References". As an example, see the #Notes and #References sections on Wikipedia's "Earth" page. Explanatory footnotes are listed in one section, and external links are listed in the other. This is achieved by using two parallel versions of <ref> and {{reflist}}.
Surprisingly, the tools for this already exist on our wiki as well: {{note}} and {{notelist}}! To see how these would look on Faction Paradox (series), see User:NateBumber/Sandbox/2. Isn't that much better? Besides clarity, there are several other advantages to using {{note}} in addition to <ref>:
- The pipe trick doesn't work in <ref> tags, which make them poorly suited for footnote-style commentary. {{note}} doesn't have this problem.
- You can use <ref> within a {{note}}! This is hugely helpful, for instance in Footnote 5 on the sandbox.
- There are many pages where our in-universe coverage would benefit from out-of-universe explanatory footnotes; Chubby Potato has suggested one case on Talk:Fifteenth Doctor, and Infinity Doctor is an awesome example of footnotes done right. But due to the <ref> muddle, we've been held back from using them to their full potential.
If we already have {{note}}, why haven't we been using it? Because the obvious names for the two sections are "Footnotes" and "References", and "References" was already being used on our story pages for a different purpose. However, as of Forum:References into Worldbuilding, that usage conflict no longer exists. The way forward is finally clear: all that's left is for us to take it! – n8 (☎) 18:51, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
Yeah, this seems like a good thing to do to make the wiki more usable. I Support it. Time God Eon ☎ 19:27, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- I agree with this, it's pretty much common sense. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aquanafrahudy (talk • contribs) .
- That's more or less how Wikipedia do it, isn't it? Or do they use letters? Aquanafrahudy 📢 19:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- Ah, they use "a", "b", "c" etc, see [1] for a random example I found. Aquanafrahudy 📢 20:34, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- Nate mentioned my recent reply at Talk:Fifteenth Doctor, so yeah, I am in strong support of this and have been for quite a while. [nb 1] (for nota bene) is the default by MediaWiki, but I believe it's pretty easy to change to [note 1] or alphabetically like [a]. Personally I think nb is fine, but note could work too. Alphabetical footnotes are best reserved for specific parts of a page, e.g. a table or list with its own footnotes directly under it. (It wouldn't be hard to make another template like this, I think.) Wikipedia is actually a bit inconsistent on what format they use, I think there is reason to it but I don't quite understand it. Chubby Potato ☎ 20:39, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- I give this my full support. I'm impartial on whether we use "nb", "note" or letters. I would like to correct Chubby Potato slightly, though. "nb" is not the MediaWiki default and is defined explicitly in {{note}}. It's very easy to change. I'm not entirely sure off the top of my head how to do letters but that knowledge should only be one web search away. Bongo50 ☎ 20:46, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
- I like this idea as well, but we will need to rename the current References section on story articles first. LauraBatham ☎ 02:20, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- Never mind. I now see that forum has been resolved and implemented. My bad. LauraBatham ☎ 02:24, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- Adopting "references" for citations is only logical as the code in which we currently use to make them is <ref>: references is literally in the name! 19:45, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
Conclusion
Firstly, I do need to mention that I am biased here, having participated in the thread and having used separate "Footnotes" and "References" sections in many of my recent sandbox drafts. However, this proposal did receive pretty much unanimous support with no outright objections. As such, in the interest of clearing through the backlog of threads that need closing a little, I am going to close this thread myself as succesful. Separating out references and footnotes will be a gradual and manual process across the whole wiki, but any new pages should use the two sections separately where appropriate. On the issue of whether to use "nb", "note" or letters, there was no real consensus here. As such, I will leave it as "nb" for now but this can be discussed further at Template talk:Note if required. Bongo50 ☎ 18:06, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
