Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (footnotes)/Archive 5

I'd like to suggest that footnotes should be placed before the punctuation (as in everyday English grammar), and abandon the peculiar Chicago style of putting them at the start of the next sentence/paragraph. At the very least, both styles should be acceptable, rather than ordering everyone to follow the US/Chicago rules, which look ghastly and illiterate to UK users at least. - MPF 10:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

This has been debated to death (including above). If they look so ghastly, please identify a mainstream style manual that supports the positioning you suggest and perhaps a few journals or publications that actually use it. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 11:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

"As in everyday English grammar?" MPF, can you name one English-language book from a mainstream publisher that puts footnotes before periods/full stops? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

A quick look through my books soon reveals Dallimore, W. & Jackson, A. B. (1966) A Handbook of Coniferae and Ginkgoaceae (Edward Arnold, London), which does so consistently. - MPF 14:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Anything a bit more recent than that? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious if there's actually been any evidence provided that this is a UK/US issue. The Chicago style seems to be ubiquitious in the British books I have in my posession, in any case; and the Oxford & Cambridge style guides I was able to find online call for it as well. Kirill Lokshin 14:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I recently added a large section to TeX font metric. The specification is drawn from its canonical source---the documentation from the source code to TFtoPL. It's footnoted at the bottom of the Specification section now, but it really applies to all of it. I didn't want to just drop it manually into the References section. What should I do here?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Grendelkhan (talk • contribs) .

Is this a question about how to add multiple footnotes to the same source, or a question about what points in the addition would benefit from having a footnote pointing to the source you were using? Jkelly 17:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

What I have done in the past is put the citation right at the start of the relevant text. Then include in the note/reference a statement about the scope of the cited source and which sentences/paragraphs or sections of the Wikipedia article are covered by the source cited. However, you have to be ready to provide individual citations for each sentence if other editors demand it. --JWSchmidt 18:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

All of the source for that entire section really is the specification document. I can break it down further by section, but then I'd have a stack of references saying something like "TFtoPL, section 4". I've noticed that references to specific parts of works (e.g., page numbers) aren't used very often; is that a viable alternative? grendel|khan 18:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

In the case of overarching references, I say you either add a single note to the same ref for each paragraph, or you add the reference in the reference section and only use footnotes for potentially contentious statements. Circeus 18:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Nothing about is is particularly contentious, but I do want the reader to be able to see where I got all of this from. grendel|khan 18:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I had started to make a comment about this earlier today, but I guess I got distracted and forgot about it! I wanted to mention that it doesn't hurt to just mention the source at the beginning of the section. Something like, "This section is a summary of the TFtoPL guidelines.^[1]" --J. J. 03:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I went with "The canonical specification of the TFM format is embedded in the source code of the program TFtoPL", and I think it flows naturally while conveying the source information early on. grendel|khan 06:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Poll: Wikipedia:Ref reform

I'm getting tired of wasting time over the ref system, whereby articles with many refs (these are often articles listed on ITN which need to be monitored closely) makes editing difficult by virtues of the refs being cited within the body of the text itself. The ref system should be structured so that the main text simply has a ^number with the ref itself being noted at the bottom somehow, thereby leaving the text free of and seperate from lengthy citations. El_C 17:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Practical changes, please (unless you're willing to do the coding yourself, of course); vast rewrites of cite.php are probably not high on the developers' to-do list. Kirill Lokshin 17:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me? I do the editing, thank you very much. It should be a priority because it's a significant and counterintuitive time waster. El_C 18:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Given that X (for very large X) KB of discussion above and in the archives has failed to come to that conclusion, I think it's only fair to suggest that demands for extreme changes to the system are not going to be foisted on the developers anytime soon ;-)

More to the point, isn't your proposal just the {{ref}}/{{note}} system with different formatting? Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a somewhat legalistic answer, which does not respond to the problem. "More to the point," sure, why not. El_C 18:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm asking why we would need to change the cite.php system if we can already do what you're proposing with an existing set of templates. (The cite.php system isn't mandatory, as far as I know.) Kirill Lokshin 18:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

A reformed ref system should be mandatory, or editing slows down for nuaght. El_C 18:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's clear, from previous discussions on this topic, that this position doesn't really enjoy consensus support; this is partially because nobody has proposed a replacement that will (a) work in practice and (b) does not require an extreme amount of developer effort (which likely won't be forthcoming for something that doesn't appear to have wide support in the first place). Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I skimmed the documentation on the {{ref}} system, and at first glance it appears the editor must manually assign the reference numbers and reference names. The <ref> system assignes numbers and places references in the reference list automatically. Or have I misunderstood? --Gerry Ashton 18:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically it (technically, they're numbered automatically; they just need to have the same order in the text that they do at the bottom). Going from El_C's example above, though, it seems the proposal would involve that as well. Kirill Lokshin 18:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Cite.php could have its behaviour tweaked to keep the text out of the way. I have no idea if this would be easy or hard for the programmer, but the change to the interface is minor, and would make it more flexible.

Currently, the first occurrence of a reference citation must contain the reference text:

      First citation.<ref name="smith-2006">[reference text in the article body]</ref>
      Second citation.<ref name="smith-2006" />
      
      == References ==
      <references />

When an article gets dense with references, this leads to the situation where there is more reference text and markup in a paragraph than actual article text. But an alternate possibility is if cite.php allowed the references tag to be a container, and move some or all of the references down there. It would still do all the magic of automatic numbering, linking, and back-linking.

      First citation.<ref name="smith-2006" /> 
      Second citation.<ref name="smith-2006" />
      
      == References ==
      <references>
      <ref name="smith-2006">[reference text in References section]</ref>
      </ references>

This would be more flexible, and allows the best of both worlds. It might also be used to manually sort the list of references in author-alpha order, rather than by the first occurrence of a citation, with the addition of an optional attribute: <references sort=manual> ... </references>.

This is just an idea—there may be a better way to accomplish this. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 18:29 Z

Woops, looks like somebody beat me to the idea by a day: meta:talk:Cite/Cite.php#Request for extension of ref/references templates.

I think the problem of references, citations, notes and sources is the singel biggest technical problem for Wikipedia to overcome. I'm not sure why it takes such a backseat to other programming issues.

However, since we have to work with what we have, I don't think notes and references should be mixed together. In other words articles should end with a "Notes" section with the tag <references /> followed by a separate "References" section where formated bibliographic references are listed either manually or using the cite and harvardref cite templates. The notes section should include only notes without bibliographic detail. The bibliographic detail should be in the "References" section, ideally using harvard-cite templates. This means the only thing appearing in the wiki source of an article would be notes/footnotes enclosed in <ref> tags. The templates should then be arranged in the "References" section in a suitable order (in other words arranged manually). :The named referrence tags really have no place in this. First of all a text only coincidentally requires a notation/elaboration identical to a previous notation. Also the named reference tags do not provide adequate user feedback to jump back to the section in the main text that rtargeted the footnote. In other words which of the up-pointing arros do I click to get back to where I was reading before viewing the footnote. Finally, the problem ref tags solved (the problem of keeiping subordinate text editied, inserted and deleeted along with the main text they refer to) gets reintroduced by using named references. This is because the deletion of the named reference with the textual elaboration could leave another ref tag of the same name orphaned (no more text that its referring to). <nowiki> So here's what I'm suggesting. An article's source should include cite.php ref tags for notes.<ref>to provide further elaboration on an issue that doesn't need to be in the main text or to provide a citation of a source that the author doesn't want to include in the main text</ref> The end of the article would then include a section called something like:

             Notes
             <references />
      
             References
             harvard ref templates

Until the the technical problems get worked out I don't think there's a decent alternative. --Cplot 19:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Some comments:

• The named ref functionality will probably not be removed, for backward compatibility. Of course, cite.php could be forked to something like notes.php, with the exact functionality you describe.
• In simpler articles, there is no need for both notes and references sections. A simple link to each reference is sufficient.
• I do like Harvard style, which makes it easier to include more information in the reference citations, and still avoid adding a notes section, using citations like (Smith 2006:123), (Smith 2006:123–24), (Smith 2006:123, 231), (Smith 1999, 2006), "... according to Smith (2006)", or "... according to the writer John Smith (2006)". I created these kinds of citations manually in the article T-34.

—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:21 Z

As the concern is about editing, note bugzilla:2745, a general suggestion for a second edit window for citation info. Implementation is easier if citation info is gathered in one section. (SEWilco 05:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC))

In reply to El C, I think that breaking a cite into multiple lines and maybe a little indentation helps greatly with the readability in edit mode. See the Zinedine Zidane article for an example. There probably isn't anything with a denser degree of citations (one sentence has eight), but the multi-line format at least makes it easier to see the the citations start and end. Canadiana 19:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The first section of the article contains "Also, Cite.php footnotes are not the only way to make footnotes. Many articles use templates to create footnotes." When I first read this, I thought this meant that Cite.php and citation templates were competing systems to create footnotes, but I have since learned that Cite.php creates the footnote numbers and the navigation aids, the citation templates create the content of the citation, and they can be used independently. I'd like to see this passage rewritten. --Gerry Ashton 18:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's referring to {{ref}}/{{note}} templates, not to {{cite book}} and its ilk. Kirill Lokshin 18:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Footnotes#Style recommendations:

Enclosing the <references/> tag in a references-small class div, like this: <div class="references-small"><references/></div> is recommended.

I thought this was an option, and whether it is a good idea was controversial, or at least depended on the context and editors' preference. This also contradicts the statement in the next section "Resizing is not encouraged as a standard technique in all articles." —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 18:33 Z

I've changed the wording to be a bit more conservative and fit common practice. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible for website links in sentences to be put into the same style as footnotes? I was hoping to do this for BBC News, and if successful, others. Wikiwoohoo 18:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Putting the link between refs makes it a footnote with a full URL hotlink: <ref>http://mysite.com</ref> Or, use [ ] and provide an alt text: <ref>[http://mysite.com MySite] - Mine</ref> Gimmetrow 18:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help there. It works and the article looks much better as a result. Take a look: BBC News. Thanks again! Wikiwoohoo 19:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Should we recommend a usual format for reference names? I've found that using author-year with normal capitalization helps remember what to type:

 <ref name="Von Mellenthin-1956">Von Mellenthin, Major General F. W. (1956). Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War, First Ballantine Books Edition, 1971. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-34524-440-0. </ref>
 <ref name="Smith-2006">Smith, John (2006). Book title.  City: Publisher. ISBN 12345678.</ref>

—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 19:28 Z

Hmm, that might make sense for articles using Harvard refs, but if an article has citation directly in footnotes, it would need a page number in the name (or no name at all) to avoid having everything point to a single note. Kirill Lokshin 20:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point—I'm used to using simple bibliographic references, and not notes. Still, it would be a good idea to choose one or more formats, standardizing capitalization, word-separators, spacing, etc, as a suggestion or to illustrate the instructions. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 22:08 Z

Often in medical research there may be several papers published in the same year by an author (ie separate aspects of a study are published separately). Given that the studies often get referred to as "that paper in journal X", I tend to use {Journal}_{Lead author surname}{year} eg "BMJ_Smith2004". If there are several publications in the same journal in the same year by same author, then I add on a suffix letter, eg "BMJ_Smith2004b". David Ruben ^Talk 12:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That seems sensible. What are the advantages or disadvantages of using spaces, underscores, or dashes to separate the parts of the reference ID? Because these are IDs, the must not clash with other items on the page, for example subheading anchor IDs—for this reason, perhaps we should always use a standard prefix, like "Reference-" or "ref_". —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 20:10 Z

A standard prefix is not a bad idea, but let's not turn this into a cumbersome, rigid set of standards. It's hard enough to get people to obtain sources, harder to get them to cite them properly, and when they take a look at the process here, we must certainly be scaring even more people off. Two suggestions:

1. Rather than mandate yet another rigid rule, let's use osmosis to gently suggest such a prefix. If every example has "ref-" in it, newbies will probably assume it's either necessary or required anyway, and experienced editors won't need the advice.
2. Much more important than mandating something designed to avoid name collision is actually avoiding name collison. Any scheme will still experience problems, whether because it conflicts with an unexpected name outside the scheme, or just because many people don't follow it (a practice we encourage every time we burden editors with more rules). But the real issue, and the thing that must be made absolutely clear, is always test your links before you save! This is especially true of references, which introduce more complexity. Judging by the many corrections I make, we can't possibly emphasize this enough.

— Jeff Q (talk) 20:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I have just begun learning how to use endnotes. I have looked at Wikipedia:Footnotes, Help:Footnotes, and Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations. I have found what should be very simple to explain very confusing. In the hopes that my stupidity will help, I will explain my areas of confusion:

I find the use of the term footnote in this context confusing. Perhaps endnotes or notes would be a better term.

When it said, "Wikipedia's software, MediaWiki, has built-in support for footnotes.", I was under the impression I had to download a program called MediaWiki.

It is not clear that <ref name="multiple"> is a substitute for <ref>. I think that <ref name="multiple"> should be standard and then note that <ref> can be used instead for a single occurrence.

I like the templates. It is not explained how these are used. It should be. An example would be:

<ref name="multiple">{{cite book | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = | publisher = | date = | location = | url = | doi = | id = }}</ref>

Did I get this right? (except for the formating of the template)

Hope this helps.—Who123 22:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• "Footnotes" is basically an established term used for discussing these, and is used mostly because NO word properly describes what we have in such a computer environment anyway.
• With or without names are inconsequential anyway. It isperfectly acceptable to give names to all the refs. <ref name="multiple"> is only truely relevant when using the same refmultiple times
• Yes, this is the proper use of the template, although it is usually recommended to leave it on a single line within the source. (some might disagree, but I find it ostrusive, even thoughI preferit not in line when in a references section)

Hopes that helps. Circeus 01:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

You may want to look at #Overview of major changes this month to get an idea of how "simple" issues can get complicated. I do agree with you, Who123, that the WP:FN page needs updating with the latest happenings; I wore myself out just trying to understand where things currently stand to begin with!

I do not want to really get into this as I am new at WP. I just wanted to give my thoughts as someone new. I will add one additional thought about the way the system is set up. I find the current system awkward as it disrupts the article content and one can really have a mess if the order of sections of the article is changed. I think it would be much better to have all the citations in notes with a name. This would eliminate congestion in the text of the article and moving sections around would not ruin the citations. Also, deleting one portion would not lose the source.—Who123 16:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know why we recommend writing <ref name="name"> when there is no need for the quotation marks, and does anyone mind if I remove that advice? The less typing people have to do, the better, it seems to me. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Names can include spaces (which are converted to underscores in the anchor ID), in which case quotation marks are required (uncontrived example: T-34#Reference-Von Mellenthin-1956). But editors don't need to have the technical details explained; best just to recommend one simple, safe way to do it. —Michael Z. 2006-08-03 06:34 Z

Yes. <ref name="name"> works, as does <ref name=name>, but <ref name= long name> doesn't work. The only way to make it work is through <ref name="long name">. It's less error-prone to use quotes always, and less probability of error equals less probability of confusion, so that would be a good reason to recommend it. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. I didn't know <ref>ref name=long name</ref> didn't work. Though I wonder what reason anyone would have to use two words? However, point taken. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The quotes are required for the tag to be an XML tag. Older HTML renderers (i.e. web browsers) usually have a "quirks mode" that deal with not-quite-valid tags, but those are increasingly deprecated. While the WP use of kinda-sorta XML in tags like <ref> isn't exactly pure, there may well be future tools or code that are just going to be happier with actual XML tags. Moreover, without the quotes, you have no way of knowing if the second word after a space is meant as another attribute: <ref name=reference style class>. LotLE×talk 14:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm new to footnotes (today) and have used cite.php in several pages. I agree that the automatic numbering is excellent, but feel that where there are many and/or long inline citations it makes the text almost unreadable.

Why not:

Xxxxx is defined as xxxxx{ref DICT}. Xxxxx xxx xxx{ref BOOK}

References

{references}
{ref DICT}The reference details{/ref}
{ref BOOK}The other reference details{/ref} 

...or something along those lines. You would still get the automatic numbering; you would get easy-to-read paragraphs; and you would have an easy-to-understand references section.--Jonathan3 00:11, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There are so many ways to do things here at Wikipedia that it's dizzying. However, the Harvard Reference Templates provide the functionality you're looking for. You'll find them at the bottom of this page. Personally, I think the cite.php <ref> are several misnomers rapped up in one. Since they auto-number they are suitable for notes (as in footnotes or endnotes) but not particuarly well-suited for citations or references: which in my opnion should be arranged alphabetically by author not numerically as they appear inn the article. I hope that helps deal with your nightmare. --Cplot 19:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You could also keep it really simple, and not bother with the extra complication. For example, the article T-34 uses the {{wikicite}} template to create anchors in the references section, and manually-formatted Harvard-style links in the text. Very easy and effective. —Michael Z. 2006-08-06 20:56 Z

I have to say I think the harvard reference template is simpler and has the added benefit of adding a structured source reference to the article (the benefits of which have been pointed out here several times). I has the same results in terms of providing an easy link to the source reference list with harvard style references. --Cplot 02:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Cplot, you write above that references should be arranged alphabetically. That's correct, but not just with Harvard refs; when you use footnotes, you still require a separate References section, where everything used as a source is listed alphabetically. See WP:CITE. Jonathan, if you don't use any templates, you'll find the text must easier to edit. For example, <ref>Smith 2006</ref> will produce your footnote and hardly disturbs the text at all. You then give a full citation for Smith 2006 in the References section. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

A number of articles have no space between the punctuation and reference, a few have a space, and many have inconsistent spaces. I find the inconsistency to be aesthetically displeasing. I would like to add the following to WP:FN#Place_ref_tag_after_punctuation:

• The ref tag may follow the punctuation immediately,¹ or may follow after a space, ² but this spacing should be consistent for all ref tags within an article.

Next, in articles that use a space, the space allows the ref mark to separate from the sentence. This can produce odd floaters, either a ref tag at the beginning of a line, or worse, a ref tag alone on its own line after a paragraph. I recently saw a featured article that (in my normal window size) had three of the latter; this looked unprofessional. Therefore, I also propose that if a space is used, it be a non-breaking space similar to guidelines of WP:MOSNUM#Units_of_measurement:

• If a space is used, preferably use &nbsp; for the space (like so.&nbsp;<ref>Page 1.</ref>) so that it does not break lines.

Opinions? Gimmetrow 16:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There should be no space at all. Typographers set the footnote reference number right after punctuation, and sometimes even kern it to hang over the punctuation (but that is a bit extreme). It should be visually associated with the sentence or phrase it follows and annotates. Having spaces before and after the numbers makes them visually disassociated from the text, sitting there like flies on the ceiling. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 17:18 Z

OK. I have seen spaces used on WP so I assumed it was an accepted style here. If not, that's fine with me; I checked various books off my shelf published in a variety of countries, none had spaces. I would propose the style guide explicitly say there should be no space. Gimmetrow 17:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree that there should be no space. Punctured Bicycle 17:49, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Good, I agree with that, too. I've now looked at a number of books printed in U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and some french- and italian-language books. I checked one chapter from each book. None of them have spaces before the ref mark, except one book from Canada that had one in the chapter I looked at; I'll assume it was missed in copy-editing. Of note is a peculiar book from Ireland, which had a section commenting on a foreign text, and notes to the foreign text ³were done^{3 4}thus.⁴ Quotes were set " like this. " Very unusual, but nevertheless all footnote marks were immediately next to the word or phrase footnoted, with no spaces. So I propose the text be added:

• There should be no space between the punctuation and the ref tag, not like this, ⁷ but like this.⁸

Opinions? Gimmetrow 18:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The current text of the "Place ref tag after punctuation" section is quite redundant. How about a shorter version. Use of notes throughout the page serve as suitable examples of the implementation. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:00 Z

Heck, it looks good to me: I'm just going to do it. —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:25 Z

Whoa, there! I'm impressed that Wikipedia is so efficient these days that consensus can be achieved in less than three hours after introduction of a question. ☺ Allow me to offer an important counterpoint that no one has mentioned. The current <ref> tag styling introduces a technical problem with footnotes that none of the cited style guides need to address, but that we do. The only way to provide a ref without spaces is to cram it up against the punctuation, leading to the placement of a full citation, which can take as many as three full lines of text (more if a quote is included), inside an undifferentiated mixture of text and citation. The alternative that some articles use is to place the ref tag and its contents on a separate line, like so:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,
<ref>{{cite book
| last=Miller
| first=E.
| title=The Sun
| year=2005
| publisher=Academic Press
| pages=page 23
}}</ref>
but the moon is smaller.

so that the reference and citation material are clearly visible. Of course, that adds a space between the punctuation and the footnote. I agree that it's not ideal. But it's hard enough to get editors to add proper citations already; it's very challenging for ordinary mortals (as opposed to obfuscated-code readers) to spot embedded references in text; and it's much easier using this separate-line method to visually skip over the references when reading the actual article text in the edit window, than to mentally discard anything found behind ref tags crammed inline with the text. There is a real need to avoid style policies that undermine efforts to make editing and sourcing easier. I highly recommend against this formal no-spacing policy, at least until the technical problems with reference tags and visual separation of source lines are resolved.

And given the haste that the editors here seem to be making of this issue, I'll commit to ignoring any such policy until it is fully thrashed out and brought to the attention of the relevant developers for comment and assistance. I'm much more concerned (as should we all be) about proper sourcing that cosmetic issues. It's far easier to fix the latter than the former. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't planning to implement anything before adequate time for discussion, which I envisioned as at least a week. But at least we are actually having a discussion. Gimmetrow 20:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "woah", I thought that I improved the wording of the guideline quite a bit, without changing any of the substance. The Chicago Manual of Style clearly implies that reference numbers go immediately after punctuation, without intervening spaces, although our citation of it didn't state that explicitly. And perhaps consensus has not been proven, but it may be that we have it.

Regarding wikitext styling, Jeffq's example is new to me. It makes the reference easier to read, but it certainly doesn't look like it would make editing the surrounding article text any easier to follow or edit in the edit field. And I don't know if easy-to-read wikitext is clearly a priority over properly-formatted article text, either.

Anyway, that point is moot. I think you can achieve the same effect and also avoid the undesirable space by putting the line break at the beginning of the note instead of in the text before the ref tag. Avoiding a line break after the closing ref tag also makes this work in colon-indented text:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,<ref>
{{cite book
| last=Miller
| first=E.
| title=The Sun
| year=2005
| publisher=Academic Press
| pages=page 23
}}
</ref> but the moon is smaller.

Live example:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,^[3] but the moon is smaller.

—Michael Z. 2006-08-14 06:27 Z

Michael, if you're not sure how much easier it is to edit article text with these formatted citations, you haven't edited many paragraphs with half a dozen first-instance references. (They often wind up being 80% citation, 20% text, which is a pain to pick through when all you're trying to do is tweak the wording of the actual text. Since that's much more common than reference tweaking, I would call on Alan Kay's observation that "simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.") But I must say I feel fairly dumb for not having thought of your solution, which may be an acceptable compromise. In my defense, I started from the position that the citation should look more like this:

According to scientists, the Sun is big,
<ref>
  {{cite book
  | last=Miller
  | first=E.
  | title=The Sun
  | year=2005
  | publisher=Academic Press
  | pages=page 23
  }}
</ref> but the moon is smaller.

with the entire citation on separate lines, and the only flush text being the ref tags themselves. (I hadn't noticed before that my examples' lines are incorrectly flush, despite several different attempts to push the inner text to the right. The "blockquote" element must be defeating any whitespacing attempts. It looks correct in the preview, but doesn't in the finished product.) I'd prefer to indent even the ref tags to make the complete citation obvious, but that forces boxed monospaced text, of course. My ideal can't be achieved at this time because of an unresolved bug in the combination of ref tag and cite templates that causes the first instance of this combination on a page to treat some line breaks as significant, screwing up the formatting of the first citation on any page with this reference structure. But with your suggestion, I guess I'll holster my weapon, pardner, until I have the time to get folks to fix the various problems. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have edited articles with lots of citations in cite.php format, and that's one of the reasons I use manually-typed Harvard citations, and the very simple template:wikicite to format bibliographic entries and add the anchors (example at T-34, if you're interested). I still think cite.php has a lot of potential, so here I am trying to pitch in with the documentation. Yeehah. —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 07:53 Z

I ran into that bug Jeff Q mentioned for the first citation. My compromise to work around that was to put the opening curly brackets on the first line for the first citation only:

<ref>{{
cite news ...

I thought it was already fairly clear, at least by example that the refs should go immediately after the punctuation with no space. My problem is whether to put spaces between several consecutive citations. My instinct is to not put any spaces, but the article on Zinedine Zidane has so many that I've decided to leave them all spaced out. Particularly check the Confrontation with Marco Materazzi section where I think not allowing line breaks within the multiple refs would just look awkward. For about a week after the World Cup final, this article was getting 150 to 250 edits a day and this is the result.

For most articles, however, I still prefer multi-refs to be connected together without spaces. Any thoughts on this? Canadiana 15:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe when there are up to eight citations for one sentence, I think it's time for some editorial decision-making. Perhaps you ought to consider changing to a format with separate notes and bibliography, so that only one citation can cover all of those references. The biggest series of citations seems to be a survey of news sources, so can a single note simply describe them in aggregate, and then list all of the references (can you put a bulleted list in a note)? Or perhaps consider paring down the list of references—are all of those really necessary? Can some foreign-language sources be eliminated? Are any of them syndicated versions of the same stories? —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 16:18 Z

It is possible to combine multiple citations in the same reference. Some of the refs in Hezbollah use a bulleted list. Gimmetrow 17:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that sentence started out with eight citations. It probably started out as several sentences that later got edited into one. Anyway, with the furious pace of editing and the outrageous claims that were being made with little or no evidence, I'm just thankful that it has proper references, even if there are a little too many. There was a debate about which sources are the most trustworthy, so I think that some multiple references are certainly justified. I think it's still a little too soon to do too much editing on this section of the article, and I don't have time to see if any of them are syndicated versions of the same stories, but the bulleted list idea is a good one. I'll work on that when I get time. Canadiana 18:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The highlights are like big searchlights pointed at my eyes as I try to read this guideline. Perhaps we can tone them down, like below? —Michael Z. 2006-08-13 19:11 Z

Is the references form at new references format policy? Why is it being "pushed" on the Wikipedia: Community Portal? SteveMc 00:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I've seen the {{ref}}/{{note}} system used in conjunction with Harvard refs, and I've seen it used to separate "notes" from pure citation "references". While the cite.php system has some advantages (and some disadvantages), I thought it was somewhat controversial to change an entire article from ref/note to cite.php without prior consensus. In fact the ref/note templates say cite.php is not mandatory. Gimmetrow 02:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I added to the disadvantages section: "Incomaptible with citation templates like {{cite conference}}, which encode reference meta-information in a computer-friendly form." I was referring to citation templates. If I try to move the source text (the invocation of the cite template) into a <ref>...</ref> pair, it gets all screwed up when it renders. I assumed this was just a current limitation. Then, on my talk page, Gimmetrow wrote: "I saw your addition at WP:FN about a bug with cite conference. I looked at Sanitization and didn't see an obvious problem. Can you explain what the problem is, maybe it can be fixed easily?" So maybe I'm missing something? --DragonHawk 02:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I put in the cite templates for 4 of your refs, and I don't see the problem. (Note: I am not saying you should use them, and you are entirely welcome to revert back to how you had it. I just wanted you to point out the problem so I know what you are referring to.) Gimmetrow 02:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, apparently I'm on crack. I swear it didn't work when I tried it. I'll remove my comment from this project page. Thanks, User:Gimmetrow. --DragonHawk 03:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

"N.B. This format is not mandatory; editors are free to use a different method. See How and where to cite sources."

Why is it not mandatory? Why do we even have a manual of style if we don't even prescribe its use? Stevage 16:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Why do we allow so many different styles? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

In the entry for Bodhidharma, the numbering starts at 32 and the list of references repeats itself.
JFD 19:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm puzzled too. It looks fine in preview and history versions, and sometimes immediately after saving an edit. Gimmetrow 20:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's happened again at Gunpowder. It's not me, is it? This has never happened before. (And no, that's not something I have to tell women.)

JFD 20:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts.

JFD 20:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I see it too. Surprisingly, even with this version the footnote was repeated twice! (It's not visible in the history-directed version, even the current version is OK if viewed with an oldid link). Gimmetrow 21:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be effecting most or all articles after they are edited. Shaolin was fine, I changed one thing and the footnotes are now repeated. This suggests something separate from the article has changed, that is only incorporated when the article is saved. What could that be? Gimmetrow 21:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It keeps happening at Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy IX as well. ~ Hibana 22:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm having issues on the Jim Butcher and Jensen Ackles articles, too. It shows two of every named reference. - Debuskjt 22:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's happening on every page with references. If you edit it and save it (even if it's not to change a reference), it comes back with two of every reference. It looks fine in preview. - Debuskjt 22:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Totally messed up. Other articles that have just been edited (like Final Fantasy V) look fine to me as long as I don't edit them, but as soon as I edit them, I see the double references. If I log out and view them, I don't see the double references. If someone makes an edit after me, I don't see the references. Anyone know what's going on? - Debuskjt 22:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure yet why it's happening, but a purge seems to fix it. In order to do that, look at the page normally, then add a ?action=purge at the end of the url. I've done that to all the pages I've edited recently, and they all look correct now, at least to me. Does Bodhidharma start numbering at 1 now? (I'm surmising that articles are not being "purged" currently when saved.) Gimmetrow 01:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Bodhidharma starts numbering at 1 now.

Thank you.

JFD 01:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! The footnotes on Triggerplant appeared to have the same problem. I wonder what's going on... Well, thanks anyway for the quickfix solution. --Rkitko 05:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Storm-petrel was doing it to. Thanks for the tip. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Also being discussed at (and several sections above) Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Solution to problems with footnotes and references. (SEWilco 14:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC))

It worked yesterday, but ?action=purge is failing me today at Jaguar. Any news on when the overall problem will be addressed? I have added dozens of individual notes to this page and it's now practically impossible to search through the refs to double-check info. Marskell 09:46, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems OK now. The bug is supposedly fixed according to bugzilla:7162. Gimmetrow 11:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Should this guideline continue to link to {{Footnotes}} and {{FootnotesSmall}} ? The CSS class seems preferable, as it is consistent over WP. I think either the guideline should not mention the other ways (which lead to inconsistency), or the templates should be edited to contain the CSS codes. Gimmetrow 10:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as there are more than 1,000 pages that use this template, I think we could utilize bots like Tawkerbot (not 2) for auto-replacing. As the template is unnecessary, template being editted to contain CSS codes may further the use of this template. I vote for replacing all instances of this and deprecating although it may not be as easy as it sounds. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 15:00 (UTC)

My idea was to make {{Footnotes}} equal <references/> and {{FootnotesSmall}} equal <div class="references-small"><references/></div>. In fact, the latter could be quite helpful. In any event, some bot could subst them anytime. Gimmetrow 15:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

There's not much problem with that. Except, it's not much easier to use the template and it may be a bit easier on the servers (I have no proof behind that, so feel free to say I'm wrong). There's already the handy insert thing at the toolbox, and I think once the bot is done substituting them, we can get rid of the template. (Much the same point as the last reply) —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 15:40 (UTC)

I've tried changing FootnotesSmall to use the references-small class, but there are reasons this cannot be done yet. Mainly that it reduces to 92% while ref-small does 90%. I've tried to edit WP:FN to match how the templates actually work. The template was on TfD in April, and a few editors found it helpful. It's not a bad shorthand.

Another concern is that {{FootnotesSmall}} can take an optional parameter, and there are articles which use it with 100% (ie, no resizing), so it can't just simply be replaced with the class references-small. This came about because of substs of {{Footnotes}} - is that going to be a problem for a bot someday? Gimmetrow 16:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(moved in to avoid right-side conversation, :D) On the last note there, I'm not sure whether this would be successful in Wikipedia, but why not introduce a standard size everyone can follow. Although 92% and 100% are widely used, this template could also allow for misuse making it a lot smaller (not that there are many). I wish we could get some other editors to comment on this. We could, on the other hand, take a bot with some options and replace the 92% (or 90%) one with <div class="references-small"> <references/> </div>, while putting the plain old <references/> for the 100% ones. —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 18:26 (UTC)

FYI, the templates currently allow only 100% and 92%. Any option other than 100% becomes 92%. Gimmetrow 18:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict, repeating Gimmetrow) Both {{FootnotesSmall}} and {{subst:Footnotes}} are "foolproof" in that sense, no other resizings than 100% or 92% can be operated with them:

• {{subst:Footnotes}} makes 100% for whatever other value for the parameter than 92%
• {{FootnotesSmall}} makes 92% for whatever other value for the parameter than 100%

so neither of these *templates* could allow for misuse in the sense you describe. --Francis Schonken 18:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

(in between Schonken and Gimmetrow) Didn't know that it only took 2 options. Sorry about that, but regardless, read the "how to replace" section anyways —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 23:27 (UTC)

You removed mention of <div class="references-small"><references/></div>. It's been in the text for ages (early June). Exactly what do you say is not consensus? That footnotes may be small? Or that this is a way that many editors make small footnotes when they want them? Gimmetrow 19:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Removing this is quite senseless; class="references-small" is a de-facto standard among recently promoted FAs, for example. It's just as legitimate a method of resizing footnotes as the templates are (and perhaps somewhat more flexible for more advanced work); there's absolutely no reason why it should not be documented here. Kirill Lokshin 20:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Remove what? I think we were working towards implementing <div class="references-small"><references/></div> and somehow lowering the use of the Footnote templates, we just need to discuss how. —Jared Hunt August 30, 2006, 23:24 (UTC)

I've pretty familar with footnotes so this is not a matter of the top footnote not being described. They worked fine and still do work fine if viewed via history (even the current). Please take a look and advise. FairTax is missing 1,2, & 4. Go to the same page via history (current version) and the footnotes are fine. What's up?! I've never seen this problem before and I've tested it on two computers. Morphh 17:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

See above; fixed with a ?action=purge Gimmetrow 17:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

That did it - Thanks! Very Weird - Hope they fix this bug. Morphh 17:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla:7162 fixed. Mangled articles may require another edit to be repaired. (SEWilco 15:41, 30 August 2006 (UTC))

Same problem with Bosnian_pyramids, but can't get them to appear using purge. Suggestions? --Ronz 00:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Different problem. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Gallery tag messes up references refers to bugzilla:6164. (SEWilco 02:53, 11 October 2006 (UTC))

In McCarthyism there are a lot of footnotes, some of them using <ref name=whatever>. The feature wherein clicking on the "^" or the "abc etc." of a named ref isn't working in all cases, and I can't see that anything's wrong with the way the refs are written. To see this in (non)action, click on a footnote in the McCarthyism#Victims of McCarthyism section and then try to hop back up to the main text. Most (but not all) of the jump-back links don't work. KarlBunker 19:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

(Two minutes later) Aaaand now it IS working. Same article, no edits since it wasn't working... Oh well; never mind, I guess :-) KarlBunker 19:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Again not working for me (wasn't working yesterday either). Waiting for it to sort itself out again. -- Миборовский 02:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Note that as as the case yesterday, purging the cache will fix the bug. However, it's painfully slow for graphic-intensive articles (like the one I'm writing now). -- Миборовский 02:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm seeing these codes fairly often now:

• <div class="references-2column"><references/></div>
• <div style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"><references/></div>
• <div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"><references/></div>

What do editors think about mentioning them here as options? Some browsers don't display them as two columns. Gimmetrow 21:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but nothing's lost if they don't, right? I don't see the harm. JulesH 09:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm wondering if the editors of this page consider this to be a full guideline. The tag at the top is different from more accepted guidelines, and that makes me wonder. Also, this page notes that it is entirely optional. Guidelines are not "optional" per se, but are flexible. This really doesn't look like a guideline to me. However, if it really really is a guideline one thing i'm proposing is that you use the Template:guideline, rather than the tag you have now. Please discuss it here (i'll be posting this message on other pages that have this same tag). Thanks! Fresheneesz 20:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

• Well spotted, a how-to page is not a guideline. I suppose some people might be interested in adding this to the MOS, but then this page should first list a consensual standard of some sort. >Radiant< 10:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

This guideline is "optional" because the use of footnotes is optional. I object to the removal of the guideline tag. Gimmetrow 10:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

For reference: see prior discussion at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/archive2#"How-to guideline" template (December 2005). For my opinion, that hasn't changed since that discussion then. The "consensus" was complete then (... well, with only two people taking part in the talk then, it was of course easy to have a consensus). --Francis Schonken 11:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes a phrase has multiple references. While they could be combined into one note (using a bulleted list), many editors keep them separate so the individual references can be named and reused, and it seems many editors put a space between each reference mark.^{[1] [2]} For some window size, this will cause the ref marks to split on two lines, or produce a floater at the end of a paragraph. ^[3][4] This guideline says that the ref marks should come after puncutation with no spacing; I would like to add that this applies to additional references too, so that notes don't look like 1/2 or 3/4, but like this.^[5][6] Gimmetrow 14:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the How to use section:

Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be generated here.

The Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Notes differentiates between "Notes" and "References" sections—something with which I am in agreement. I would like to, if possible, change the above line changed to read

Place the <references/> tag in a "Notes" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be generated here.

to conform to this, in order to reduce confusion, and to provide a more definite guide. Comments? DocWatson42 05:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• I believe there are useful distinctions to be made between references, notes and footnotes which could lend more consistency to Wikipedia, whether or not those consulting it are aware of them: "references" as in its academic use (to cite books, journals, papers, etc); "notes" for notes immediately below e.g. tables within articles; and "footnotes" as in those (usually numbered) notes found at the bottoms of pages. Currently cite.php uses "references" and "ref" in the sense of the latter, so I'd suggest this was amended to "footnotes" and (say) "fnote" along with the direction to use the heading "Footnotes" for the section where the list of footnotes is generated. The guidelines/policy could then reserve "references" and "notes" for the other uses described. Regards, David Kernow 02:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• These sections are used various ways in different articles. Some use the cite.php refs for additional text expansion ("footnotes"). Others use cite.php refs for "short" citations and have a separate bibliographic section for the full reference. Sometimes footnotes are combined with short citations, or the footnotes are kept distinct using the {{ref}}/{{note}} system. Yet other use cite.php refs for full bibliographic references, possibly with or without separate footnotes. All these variations are rather difficult to capture in one section name. Gimmetrow 15:39, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Despite the name, <ref>...</ref> tags can contain either notes or just references, and therefore can generate a list of either. I think it's important to make this clear in the text, and refer the editor to the technical details elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2006-09-16 16:00 Z

Thanks for your thoughts, Gimmetrow, Michael. Might cite.php be programmed to interpret any/all "<ref>"/"<references />", "<note>"/"<notes />" and "<fnote>"/"<footnotes />", so no one use might appear to be favo/ured of any other...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 03:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the distinction between notes and references. As we're beginning to get increasing numbers of notes citing specific pages, we might consider recommending short title style (e.g., <ref>Butzer, ''Science in Carolingian Times'', p. 195.</ref>) for repeated notes citing different pages of the same book, leaving the full bibliographical details in a reference list sorted by author and title. (The last differs from a reference list for Harvard parenthetical references, (Butzer 1993; 195) which are sorted by author and date.) --SteveMcCluskey 17:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Is or might there be any consensus or will to widen cite.php's scope, however...? (i.e. add "<note>"/"<notes/>" and "<fnote>"/"<footnotes/>"...?)  David (talk) 01:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me, at least for 'note'. Not sure about the necessity for footnote, as all notes will by definition be footnotes...? JulesH 09:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess so, but some folk prefer <references>, some <footnotes>, some <notes>, ...  Regards, David (talk) 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Would be neat if <ref>/</ref> produced numbered comments, and <note>/</note> produced lettered comments (a-z, then aa-zz). Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Use of parallel cite.php for ref/notes etc with numeric/lettering previosuly discussed (without any input from the software writers) - see archive Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/archive4#Poll where discussion over 3 systems: references, bibliography and footnotes (I had suggested refB, refN and refR) David Ruben ^Talk 00:35, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

How should I handle the case where a page has an existing general reference that covers a large amount of content scattered throughout the page, but a specific reference needs to be inserted for a fact that isn't covered by it?

Example here: Microdot

Any suggestions? Everything I can think of trying just looks stupid. JulesH 09:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Why can't you cite the specific fact to a specific reference using your system of choice (Harvard, footnote or html link)? Gimmetrow 00:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Given that the <ref> and <references /> tags can be used for both references and additional-information (non-referential) footnotes, is there a manner in which the system can be used for both whilst having separate sections for the two distinct uses?

That is, can we have separate "footnotes" and "references" sections, both using the <references /> mechanism?

I appreciate that this has likely been answered somewhere already; if so, please point me to the appropriate document. Thanks.

Fourohfour 13:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think the cite.php technology currently supports distinct sections using the same mechanism. There are various proposals which would allow cite.php to support such a thing, see Wikipedia_talk:Footnotes/archive4#Poll. Editors who want to separate text expansions from simple citations typically use the cite.php system for the citations, and the {{ref}}/{{note}} system with letters for the text expansions. Another option is to use Harvard for citations (see WP:CITE), and cite.php for text expansions. Gimmetrow 15:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Does combining {{ref}}/{{note}} and cite.php on the same page work? Wikipedia:Footnotes#How to use says "The new format cannot be mixed on a page with the old Footnotes3 format—you must pick one or the other." There's a list article that currently has Footnotes3-style text expansions that I'd like to add cite.php citations to, but I'm wary of doing the work if the two systems are fundamentally incompatible. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be confusing to have two systems using numbers. The basic ref/note uses numbers, so in that sense it is incompatible. However, ref/note contains options to use symbols other than numbers, plus the {{ref label}}/{{note label}} templates. For a recently-featured article using both ref/note and cite.php, see Alcibiades. Gimmetrow 19:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Gimmetrow! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, an FAC I have in the process, has a pretty well-referenced reception section. However, I'm worried that some might object on basis of ugliness (I've already got a neutral on it). What's the precedent? Should I investigate alternative ways of referencing, or does precedent favor utility over appearance? --Zeality 16:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. --Zeality 14:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it true that

• most writers who read this page just want to know how to write a footnote ASAP?

• writers do not need to know about the implementation underneath the ref tags (except to see the name so they won't get confused and think it's something different if they see Cite.php mentioned elsewhere)?

• writers certainly don't need to know the implementation (MediaWiki) under the implementation (Cite.php) of the only thing they need to know (ref) to get the job done?

Thanks.

TH 03:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Kirill,

I don't undertand. Why would anyone who goes looking for WP:FOOT ever expect to end up at WP:Footnotes?

Is there any connection except an etymological connection (unimportant for our purposes) between foot and footnote?

Isn't the connection between foot and any form of football a thousand times stronger than any connection between foot and footnote?

Why not just redirect from WP:FOOT to WWikipedia:WikiProject Football and get Footnotes out of the way?

TH 19:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Umm, because WP:FOOT has always redirected here, and thus anyone using it expects that? (In any case, etymological connections are perfectly valid; shortcuts are a convenient shorthand—for which "foot" is quite suitable for "footnote"—rather than something with a deep meaning to it.) Kirill Lokshin 20:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Kirill,

I've seen you make stronger arguments than that.

Could you answer the rest of my questions?

Bottom line: since the connection foot-football is 1000 times more likely than foot-footnote, why don't we redirect WP:FOOT to Wikipedia:WikiProject Football, and there we can say -- WP:FOOT redirects here; you may also be looking for Wikipedia:Footnote --  ?

TH 20:51, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you offering to correct the many incoming links to WP:FOOT (which most certainly are not referring to football)? I don't particularly care where the shortcut points to in the long term—although common sense suggests that major guidelines ought to get priority over individual WikiProject pages, because they're far more likely to be linked to in conversation (and thus need the shortcut)—but you can't simply switch the target of a long-standing shortcut on a whim. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, now I see. I thought FOOT->FOOTNOTE was a connection we were expecting to find in the mind of the populace at large. But now I realize it's one of these arbitrary WP shortcuts for quick-typing.

Thanks.

TH 21:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Just as arbitrary a shortcut as WP:BALL or WP:SOCCER. (SEWilco 03:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC))

Right -- thank you both, KL and SEW. I got off on the wrong track and misunderstood this for a day or two.

I think I got off on the wrong track because in some countries, so I've heard, they use the word "foot" to mean what Americans call soccer.

TH 04:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)