Last modified: 2012-02-28 23:58:40 UTC
There are two problems here: 1. References are usually contained within the main body of the article, and especially (a) when edited in plain text only and (b) when references are extensive (including such information as author(s), date, publication, pages, url etc), interrupt the flow of the article and make editing difficult. 2. Secondly, as noted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NAMEDREFS#Multiple_references_to_the_same_footnote named references (<ref name="foo"></ref>; <ref name="foo"> multiple references to the same footnote are possible. However, it's not necessarily apparent where the parent reference is in the article (making editing it difficult). 3. Thirdly also with multiple references to the same footnote, deletion of the parent footnote, results in the editor having to move all the details of the footnote to another place in the article in which the same footnote appears. Therefore the proposal is as follows: The detailed information in the footnotes should really be kept at the end of the main text, under the ==References== section where they can: 1. Be kept out of the main text, with only <ref name="foo"> references in the main text 2. Be easily found by an editor 3. They don't have to be moved if text needs to be deleted. The way to do this is to have a list of references in the markup that are not displayed in that place in the article, but instead are only brought into the main reference list when cross-referenced elsewhere in the article. A suitable markup may be <ref name="foo" hidden="true">details</ref>. References can thus actually be organised in a better way. Implementing this would improve flexibility when dealing with articles especially those with many, many references. Thanks
