Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing/Archive

Summary?

It's been a couple weeks since the text "A summary will be posted here soon." was added to the page. Is this still going to be posted? --Yair rand (talk) 19:48, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Yair rand: Absolutely. It's taking us longer than originally planned, but it will happen. Sorry for the delay. Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:23, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

@Yair rand: A summary plus the conclusion and next steps can now be found on the project page of the wish. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:26, 1 October 2018 (UTC) 

I like this

I suggested something similar during the Esino Lario Wikimania. Not sure where that ended up. Rich Farmbrough 20:12 5 August 2018 (GMT).

Just a little note: the syntax I proposed for ref tags (because I think it's nicer!) was something like this:

<ref name="Foo" pages="12-24" />

Rich Farmbrough 12:37 2 March 2019 (GMT).

Whatever is done the sub-reference label should not be called anything that could be confused with a template parameter like page= |pages= |at= |location= because you would have people that expect

Lorem ipsum<ref name="Smith" at="p. 12">Foo, J. (2005) ''Book of Things''</ref>

to generate

^[1] Foo, J. (2005) Book of Things, p. 12

and

Lorem ipsum<ref name="Smith">Foo, J. (2005) ''Book of Things''</ref> Foobar barfoo.<ref name="Smith" at="pp. 12-13"/>

to generate

^[1] Foo, J. (2005) Book of Things

^[1.1] p. 12-13

This is why you need to have <ref name="Foobar" subname="Barfoo"> which emphasizes that these things are labels, rather than parameters.

Headbomb (talk) 21:12, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

The 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 notation is clumsy. The outcome should be 1, 2, 3 as usual:

The Sun is pretty big.<ref name="Miller" | page=121>E. Miller, ''The Sun'', (New York: Academic Press, 2005)</ref> In fact, it is very big.<ref name="Miller" | page=123></ref> Don't look directly at the sun!<ref name="Miller" | page=42></ref>

This should result in:

1. E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), p. 121
2. E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), p. 123
3. E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), p. 42

--Pp.paul.4 (Diskussion) 01:59, 31. Dez. 2021 (CET)

Conversion

Assuming this is implemented, there is a large legacy of old systems in use - literal duplication of the book cite, various template solutions, etc.. a real treat for bot writers who want to automate conversion. Anything that can be done with conversions in mind would be appreciated (I don't know what that would be, if anything) -- GreenC (talk) 15:44, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Citation proposal

I use shortened notes linked with {{sfn}} and citation templates, styled Sudirman, (the featured article on the day I joined). The benefits I find using {{sfn}} are no large interruptions in prose when editing, and {{citation}} for the alphabetization of sources. The only detriment is the auxilliary set of references in addition to sources.

-	<ref></ref> and {{reflist}}	{{sfn}}}, {{reflist}} and {{citation}}
Prose	Within hours, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into the fire, led by the Paris Region Judicial Police.<ref>{{cite news |title=Notre-Dame de Paris : une enquête a été ouverte pour "destruction involontaire par incendie" |url=https://www.laprovence.com/actu/en-direct/5459359/notre-dame-de-paris-une-enquete-a-ete-ouverte-pour-destruction-involontaire-par-incendie.html |accessdate=15 April 2019 |website=La Provence |date=15 April 2019|language=fr }}</ref> The cause of the fire was not immediately known. The investigation most strongly suspected a case of "accidental destruction by fire", but had not ruled anything out, saying it was too early to know the cause of the fire.<ref name="ladepeche">{{cite web |url=https://www.ladepeche.fr/2019/04/15/incendie-a-notre-dame-lorigine-de-lincendie-reste-inconnue,8132982.php |title=Notre-Dame : la piste accidentelle privilégiée, les ouvriers du chantier entendus en pleine nuit |trans-title=Notre-Dame: prioritized accident investigation, construction workers heard in the middle of the night |website=La Depeche |accessdate=16 April 2019 |language=fr}}</ref><ref name="six_questions">{{cite web |url=http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/six-questions-sur-l-incendie-de-notre-dame-de-paris-15-04-2019-8054094.php |title=Six questions sur l’incendie de Notre-Dame de Paris |trans-title=Six questions about the fire of Notre-Dame |website=Le Parisien |accessdate=16 April 2019 |language=fr}}</ref> ==References== {{reflist}}	Within hours, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into the fire, led by the Paris Region Judicial Police.{{sfn|La Provence Staff|2019}} The cause of the fire was not immediately known. The investigation most strongly suspected a case of "accidental destruction by fire", but had not ruled anything out, saying it was too early to know the cause of the fire.{{sfn|La Depeche Staff|2019}}{{sfn|La Pariesen Staff|2019}} ==References== {{reflist}} ;Bibliography {{citation|author=La Depeche Staff|url=https://www.ladepeche.fr/2019/04/15/incendie-a-notre-dame-lorigine-de-lincendie-reste-inconnue,8132982.php|title=Notre-Dame : la piste accidentelle privilégiée, les ouvriers du chantier entendus en pleine nuit|trans-title=Notre-Dame: prioritized accident investigation, construction workers heard in the middle of the night|website=La Depeche|accessdate=16 April 2019|language=fr}} {{citation|author=La Parisien|url=http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/six-questions-sur-l-incendie-de-notre-dame-de-paris-15-04-2019-8054094.php|title=Six questions sur l’incendie de Notre-Dame de Paris|trans-title=Six questions about the fire of Notre-Dame|website=Le Parisien|accessdate=16 April 2019|language=fr}} {{citation|author=La Provence Staff|title=Notre-Dame de Paris : une enquête a été ouverte pour "destruction involontaire par incendie"|url=https://www.laprovence.com/actu/en-direct/5459359/notre-dame-de-paris-une-enquete-a-ete-ouverte-pour-destruction-involontaire-par-incendie.html|accessdate=15 April 2019|website=La Provence|date=15 April 2019|language=fr}}
Benefits	One-level Bibliography	Continuous prose Alphabetical, centralized Bibliography
Detriments	Interruption in prose Disordered Bibliography	Two-level Bibliography

Proposal

A script, loaded during publishing, which scans the page, and matched {{sfn}} with {{citation}}, generating a BACKREF suffix, after the appropriate citation. By using {{sfn}} and {{citation}}, built the way I've described, there will be no two-level Bibliography, saving page space, no large interruption in prose, making it easier to read, and an organized, alphabetized bibliography.

In the case of pages, or locations, they will be added in the suffix, and linked to the selected citation via CITEREF, (example, p. 25, highlighted in blue), after clicking.

*Ricklefs, M.C. (1993). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1200 (2nd ed.). London: MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-333-57689-2. , ^{^ a} p. 12 ^b p. 25 ^c p. 74

Logic

IF {{sfn|Ricklefs|1993}} AND {{citation|last=Ricklefs|date=1993}} THEN: CITEREFRicklefs1993a AND BACKREFRicklefs1993a

AND (a second reference is used)

IF {{sfn|Ricklefs|1993}} AND {{citation|last=Ricklefs|date=1993}} THEN: CITEREFRicklefs1993b AND BACKREFRicklefs1993b

For the prose: [[CITEREFRicklefs1993a|[[1]] ]]

For the Bibliography: [[BACKREFRicklefs1993a|a]]

Proposal

References AllMusic Staff (2011), "Tyler Pursel Credits", AllMusic, retrieved 27 January 2014 , ^ Apar, Corey (5 September 2007), "Ladybirds", Spin, retrieved 22 January 2014 , ^ a b c d Apple, Meiyee (16 July 2007), "Regional Community Theater", The Fader, retrieved 23 January 2014 , ^ a b c d Aubin, Paul (19 July 2007), "Videos: Ladybirds: "The Brown and Red Divide"", Punknews, retrieved 26 January 2014 , ^ Bunch, Adam (22 August 2007), "Ladybirds: Regional Community Theatre", PopMatters, retrieved 24 January 2014 , ^ a b DeAndrea, Joe (2007), "Ladybirds - Regional Community Theater", AbsolutePunk, retrieved 24 January 2014 , ^ a b c Greene, Jo Anne (2007), "Regional Community Theatre", AllMusic, retrieved 24 January 2014 , ^ a b c Hasty, Katie (17 September 2007), "Ladybirds Take Flight", Billboard, retrieved 26 January 2014 , ^ Olund, Paul (6 July 2007), "Candy-coated goodness to make you smile", Today (NBC), retrieved 22 January 2014 , ^ a b c d

Article

Regional Community Theater is the debut studio album from the American pop duo Ladybirds. After the breakup of Ley Royal Scam in 2006, Tyler Pursel returned to working with Gym Class Heroes and writing dance-pop music on the side, while Teeter Sperber relocated to Oregon. When composing, Pursel originally intended for many vocalists to be featured on the album, however, contacting his former band-mate Sperber to sing one of the tracks ultimately led Pursel to ask Sperber to sing the entirety of Regional Community Theater. Most of the album was arranged while Pursel and Sperber were in different regions of the United States, but by January 2007, they joined at a Creep Records basement studio in West Chester, Pennsylvania to put the final touches on Regional Community Theater. Tyler Pursel is credited as producer. The album was released on 18 September 2007, on Creep Records on compact disc and digital download. Regional Community Theater was reissued by Mint 400 Records digitally on 5 July 2011. While in post-production, Sperber was singing "How can we be the best, yet be failing all the time?" for the title track, which elicited uproarious laughter from Pursel. In a Billboard interview, she explains "I sang the word "best," like a total, unabashed thespian spazz, arms raised to the sky, channeling my very best Bernadette Peters [and] once we composed ourselves I said, "Geez Ty, I am so sorry for getting all Regional Community Theater on your ass" to which he said "It's okay, Teet, as long as that can be the title of our record." Regional Community Theater is an eleven track album of dance-pop, described by Corey Apar of Spin as a "Nintendo version of Candyland, where eight-bit blurps, shiny werps and ticks, and apple-colored synth beats entertain the whole way to Candy Castle." Lyrically, the album focuses on relationships; from friendship to romance. Several rock lead vocalists appear on Regional Community Theater; The Get Up Kids' Matt Pryor sings on "Cooper, Thanks for the Birds" and Max Bemis of Say Anything sings on "Maxim and the Headphone Life." Additionally, Danger O's' Justin Johnson and Fairmont's Neil Sabatino appear on the album. The opener "Slice Our Hands (We Are Blood Sisters)" is constructed with 8-bit music by Pursel. The second song, "Brown and Red Divide," was released as a single in June 2007, and accompanied by a music video. A children's chorus, the class of one of the Creep Records owner's daughters, sings the refrain on the love song "Andy Lex." On the title-track "Regional Community Theater," Max Bemis makes his first appearance assisting with vocals. The final song, "You Are The Torro King" is an instrumental track, which features distorted drums, dark synthesizers, vintage electro-accordion and bells. Template:Album ratings Reviews for Regional Community Theater were mixed to positive. Joe DeAndrea of AbsolutePunk gave a favorable review, noting the "superb" list of guest vocalists and calling it "overall a very fun listen." Similarly, in an AllMusic review Jo-Ann Greene applauds the album, saying "..so upbeat is the music, that inevitably the characters have no choice but to make peace." She goes on to explain that Regional Community Theater "work[s] on two levels, enchanting the kids whilst simultaneously capturing the imagination of adults." In a mixed review in The Fader, Meiyee Apple likens Sperber's vocals to Hilary Duff, and calls the album "cute electro-pop[,] if you like being sung to by a baby, and you are an actual baby." Sharing the same sentiment in a PopMatters review, Adam Bunch describes Regional Community Theater as a mostly straightforward album, but admires the moments of variety such as children’s choir (in "Andy Lex") and pitch-shifted vocals. However, Apple acknowledges Ladybirds admission of their "sticky sweet sound," saying that they do a "good job [in the] department of mindless fun."

Current

References Citations Online sources AllMusic Staff (2011), "Tyler Pursel Credits", AllMusic, retrieved 27 January 2014  Apar, Corey (5 September 2007), "Ladybirds", Spin, retrieved 22 January 2014  Apple, Meiyee (16 July 2007), "Regional Community Theater", The Fader, retrieved 23 January 2014  Aubin, Paul (19 July 2007), "Videos: Ladybirds: "The Brown and Red Divide"", Punknews, retrieved 26 January 2014  Bunch, Adam (22 August 2007), "Ladybirds: Regional Community Theatre", PopMatters, retrieved 24 January 2014  DeAndrea, Joe (2007), "Ladybirds - Regional Community Theater", AbsolutePunk, retrieved 24 January 2014  Greene, Jo Anne (2007), "Regional Community Theatre", AllMusic, retrieved 24 January 2014  Hasty, Katie (17 September 2007), "Ladybirds Take Flight", Billboard, retrieved 26 January 2014  Olund, Paul (6 July 2007), "Candy-coated goodness to make you smile", Today (NBC), retrieved 22 January 2014

(this way posted at WP:TPV before this post) - NorthPark1417 (talk) 20:18, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@NorthPark1417: If I understand you correctly your main problem with the <ref> is the Interruption in prose of the text by having all the information within the wiki code of the paragraph to be sourced? This is actually already fixed since quite some time by the possibility to define them at the bottom:

Within hours, the Paris prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into the fire, led by the Paris Region Judicial Police.<ref name="La Provence Staff-2019"/> The cause of the fire was not immediately known. The investigation most strongly suspected a case of "accidental destruction by fire", but had not ruled anything out, saying it was too early to know the cause of the fire.<ref name="ladepeche"/><ref name="six_questions"/> ==References== <references> <ref name="La Provence Staff-2019">{{cite news |title=Notre-Dame de Paris : une enquête a été ouverte pour "destruction involontaire par incendie" |url=https://www.laprovence.com/actu/en-direct/5459359/notre-dame-de-paris-une-enquete-a-ete-ouverte-pour-destruction-involontaire-par-incendie.html |accessdate=15 April 2019 |website=La Provence |date=15 April 2019|language=fr }}</ref> <ref name="ladepeche">{{cite web |url=https://www.ladepeche.fr/2019/04/15/incendie-a-notre-dame-lorigine-de-lincendie-reste-inconnue,8132982.php |title=Notre-Dame : la piste accidentelle privilégiée, les ouvriers du chantier entendus en pleine nuit |trans-title=Notre-Dame: prioritized accident investigation, construction workers heard in the middle of the night |website=La Depeche |accessdate=16 April 2019 |language=fr}}</ref> <ref name="six_questions">{{cite web |url=http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/six-questions-sur-l-incendie-de-notre-dame-de-paris-15-04-2019-8054094.php |title=Six questions sur l’incendie de Notre-Dame de Paris |trans-title=Six questions about the fire of Notre-Dame |website=Le Parisien |accessdate=16 April 2019 |language=fr}}</ref> </references>

Is this already doing what you want? It would also be possible to embed the refs in Templates to auto-generate the names – that would be up to the communities to do. -- Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 11:18, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Format

For those using the wikitext editor, and ref tags, the format is critical to making this easy to use.

• <ref extends="Pierson">p. 123-163 </ref> is absolutely confusing, not to mention dissimilar to anything else in Wikipedia. (And "extends" is a word that programmers use, not the vast majority of editors)

• <ref name="Foobar" subname="Barfoo"> has been suggested, but there is no reason to add another label ("Barfoo") - that not only forces the editor to define the subname (but just in one place), but also means that subsequent edits need to include a search for which subnames are in use.

• <ref name="Foo" pages="12-24" />, also suggested above, is problematical, as noted by another editor, because sometimes what is being specified is a chapter or part of a book.

Still, the overall approach in the last two examples is a good one - start with a label for the main source, then add something. This has the obvious advantage that if one editor cites <ref name="Foo"/>, it's easy for a subsequent edit/editor to add the additional specification. So, something like this would be good:

• <ref name="Foo" detail="Pages 12-24" />

Or, if that's too much trouble for the parser:

• <ref name="Foo" | detail="Pages 12-24" />

-- John Broughton (talk) 17:23, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

We don't need new technology

We can already do this (or something very similar) at English Wikipedia, see for example en:Spring Vale railway station references 3, 4 and 6, which use en:Template:Harvnb compared to refs 1 and 5 which use en:Template:Cite book. That method was already possible when I joined Wikipedia more than ten years ago. --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 20:18, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Here is how that might look with the new feature. Personally, I find the organization there easier to follow: it's clear in the article text that all the "1.x" references are to the same source, and in the references list it's easy to find every reference to that source since they're all in one place. Anomie (talk) 14:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

en:template:sfn fulfils the same purpose as well, and can easily be adapted for use with non-book sources. The template has existed since 2009 and started to gain popularity in 2011 or thereabouts. Diannaa (talk) 22:48, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

It's amazing that time and effort is being invested in this with so little community involvement. ANOTHER half-baked (or maybe 23/4-baked) referencing mechanism that sort of addresses some issue but not a bunch of others -- wow, just what we need! It's certainly better than than complicated and verbose sfn nonsense, but you'd get a better result, without the clutter in the reflist, using the {r} template [1] with the |p= option.

And when you are going to make it possible for us to control the order of items in the reflist? That would be useful. EEng (talk) 00:55, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

The use of {{r}} with its page option is flatly ugly. --Izno (talk) 01:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

There izno need to be harsh about it. How is blah blah^[2]:3 uglier than blah blah ^[2.3]? (Though, if it were up to me, I'd change the output of {r} to be blah blah^[2:3].) EEng (talk) 02:02, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

See also: Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Citations/Configurable_order_of_references_in_references_section --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:35, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

What exactly is {{R}} supposed to do? Its apparent purpose is merely as a shorthand for display instructions to be nested within an HTML tag, but the template lacks documentation. I found a couple of JavaScripts in the What links here tool on the left. I was actually looking for the Meta-Wiki equivalent of the Wikipedia en:Template:R from shortcut. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR, USA (talk) 05:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Accessibility

First I think this all looks great. I just wanted to point out that 1.2, 2.2, etc, the '.' is hard to read and I have good eyes. 1-2, 2-2, etc might be more accessible. Has any accessibility testing been done or can a consultant be hired to investigate if it would be an issue? Maybe because they are linked it is less of an issue, in which case an accessibility assessment might not be needed. Kees08 (talk) 00:09, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

An option I have thought would be to use the middot^{[13·2][23·1]} or a bullet,^{[22•3][13•1]} but the regullar dot may be just fine.^[22.1][23.2] But if I had to pick one, I would choose the middot as it makes me think they are two numbers, and not a float or decimal.^{[13·3][23·4][25·2][35·1]} —Arthurfragoso (talk) 10:55, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Using letters as mentioned by NorthPark1417 before might be even better.

*Ricklefs, M.C. (1993). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1200 (2nd ed.). London: MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-333-57689-2. , ^{^ a} p. 12 ^b p. 25 ^c p. 74

—Arthurfragoso (talk) 11:40, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

implementation date

updates to follow in 2021.

Is it usable yet?--Marc Lacoste (talk) 08:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Marc Lacoste:Thanks for hinting us to the wrong date. I will change that.

Unfortunately, the project has been delayed. We are working on a new plan and will update with more precise information soon. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you need further information. Robin Strohmeyer (WMDE) (talk) 19:43, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Robin Strohmeyer (WMDE): any update on this? Please ping me. Waddie96 (talk) 08:46, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

@Waddie96:Unfortunately, we have to delay our work on the project. We will not implement anything in 2020. Further information will be available in early 2021.

@Robin Strohmeyer (WMDE): This looks really useful. Any news? Chidgk1 (talk) 08:17, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Even though we also would really like to finish and enable this improvement we currently have no resources to fix the outstanding incompatibly of Visual Editor with this improvement. We hope to get resources for this again, but we currently don't know when this might be. We're sorry about that. Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 11:19, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Question

Doesn't the template "rp" with named long references already solve this problem, sort of? Glades12 (talk) 11:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

@Glades12: You are right, the template Rp and book referencing serve a similar purpose. The documentation on enwikipedia does even mention Book referencing as a possible improvement.

Unfortunately, Rp has some known inconveniences such as

• some readers deem the citation style decreases readability
• possibly conflicting citation styles within the same article
• lots of scrolling or clicking required to check the exact source for an information as the page number shows within the text, whereas the reference title is in the foot notes.

BookReferencing would improve the situation by displaying the book title and the page number directly in the reference preview. At the bottom you would have extra indentation and a separate list of the page numbers. Hope that helps - let me know if you have further questions. Robin Strohmeyer (WMDE) (talk) 20:22, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Okay. Sounds good. Glades12 (talk) 13:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I was just alerted by the system to comment on Book sub-referencing and noticed that the Rp template offers the same functionality already. Rp is a separate template but cooperates with <ref name= something /> citations, as you know. I use rp after each use of a named ref to add additional citations to a video, but to point to different times in the same video, so rp need not be restricted to text annotations only e.g.,<ref name= something />{{rp|minute 10:26}} . Sorry if this is late; I don't follow this specific wiki. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:50, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Inline pop-up with full reference information?

There don't seem to be any inline pop-ups showing the full reference when a citation is hovered at beta.wmflabs. I find that feature most helpful when it comes to checking references. A reader should never need to scroll up and down on a web page to get that piece of information; wikipedia is not a paper book, we can't use bookmarks, and scrolling back and forth is too inefficient and too distracting.

Citations like cit^[1.1] also seem unnecessary, because a pop-up window could show the page/chapter/section number,^[1] (like here) and when clicked, the exact page number could be highlighted in the list of references. [23] and [23.11] to a reader mean exactly the same (=almost nothing) until full information is shown. The latter form, [23.11], especially when combined with several other citations^{[23.11][3.6][52.7]} will lead to a citation-number-cluttered^{[114.2][4.1][12.7]} appearance of the text. (Hover me ^[114][4][12]) I also do not expect many readers to have any of the referenced paper books (remember also that page numbers change between editions, making them even less valuable), so all these page numbers and sub-citation numbers only mean something to those that have—most likely no one but a few wiki editors. To summarize: make better use of the web format, stop thinking of wikipedia as a paper book. Ponor (talk) 07:02, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Facility for quotes, too, please

This looks useful and elegantly-formatted. Feature request? If I am quoting a work, I'd like to be able to cite a different quote for each page reference (or even two quotes from the same page, supporting two different statements in the article text). This would be especially useful for avoiding disputes about verification in controversial content. From suitably-licensed books, reports, and articles, I might make quite long quotes, so ideally a quote should be collapsible.

I hope this is possible to implement; it would make this tool even more useful to me. The "rp" template already does page numbers, but only by duplicating citations can one get multiple quotes from one work. I've spent hours adding and translating quotes to verify disputed content, only to have the quotes removed on grounds that the formatting was ugly (well, it was). HLHJ (talk) 23:41, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

This would have been among the use cases for this extension, but now that it has been cancelled unfortunately, I have rewritten the r citation template in the English Wikipedia to feature an annotation system which allows to define various bits of information belonging to the "shortened" local references (like specific page numbers, quotes, commentary, sub-references or even other citations) as part of the local invocation of the reference (so that it can be shown in a tooltip) when hovering over the reference link, but optionally also collect the information and automatically append it at the end of the full citation defined elsewhere. This can become a simple list of annotations, but can also be formatted more fancy over multiple lines, so that the output can be made to look quite similar to what the "Book referencing" extension would have looked like, including grouping of sub-references, see r citation template#R-style shortened references.

(At present, back- and cross-links within those annotations still have to be set up manually via id=, link-id= and leadin= parameters, which is a bit cumbersome, but I'm working on making this more automatic.)

I still hope that some fine day we will also see the cancelled "Book referencing" extension to be rolled out, in which case the new R-style annotation system could be either converted to use the Book referencing extension internally or peacefully coexist with it.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:36, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

This r thing looks like a great approximation of book referencing (which, to be clear, I also want -- just saying this for future vote counting purposes). I already use rp a lot, guess this is the next step for now. Artoria2e5 (talk) 06:58, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Not just |quote=, but also, e.g., |quote-page=, |section-url=. -- Chatul (talk) 13:58, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Ongoing talk on En.wiki

Talks about {{r}} are going on here. Est. 2021 (talk) 19:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Cart before the horse (list-defined references)

I see that 2023: Work has been resumed. Current focus: Developing solutions for the VisualEditor.

Given the way that shortened footnotes are commonly used to clean the article's body text, this template will likely result in an increase of list-defined references. The documentation even gives a demonstration of that. As of right now, list-defined references don't fully work in the visual editor. (Try editing en:86-DOS in Visual Editor to see.) Isn't it putting the cart before the horse to introduce a new page number citing system, before Visual Editor can handle the list-defined references? Rjjiii (talk) 01:56, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

@Rjjiii thank you for your comment. I will consult with the team and get back to you on this. Best wishes Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 09:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

@Rjjiii thank you again for your comment and your patience on our feedback.

I have a feeling that there may be some misunderstanding here. Perhaps I can clear that up with my response. We are not working on a new or additional template. Instead, we're developing a solution within the Cite extension that will allow you to reference specific pages, chapters, etc. That solution will also work without templates. The problem you were mentioning lies outside the scope of our focus area, which is about reusing references within an article, because it relates to how the visual editor handles templates in general. Nevertheless I hope I could provide some more clarification on this topic. Best wishes Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 13:09, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Thereza Mengs (WMDE): Thanks for the detailed response. On English Wikipedia, the help pages have for years said that list-defined references can't be edited in the visual editor. I started a discussion there[2] and did some research. It looks like earlier this year, ESanders (WMF) added the ability to edit references within the reference area to the Visual Editor which is fantastic! You're correct that the references are invisible on the page that I linked earlier because they use the "reflist" template. I have intentionally done a rewrite of the Police Jury article on the English Wikipedia, using list-defined references and no templates, to test out how the visual editor would handle the format.

Check out this article in the visual editor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_jury Changing and re-using references works fine. The following things don't work:

• Adding a reference: I cannot figure out a way to add a reference into the list-defined references section. If I click there and attempt to add a reference, the Visual Editor will place it somewhere else in the article.
• Deleting a reference: There are two problems. First, I don't seem to be able to delete a list-defined reference. Second, if I delete all usages of the list-defined reference, it just becomes invisible in the Visual Editor but emits a big warning in the article output.

Hope that helps, Rjjiii (talk) 21:58, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Rjjiii,

sorry for my late reply, I was on vacation.

We absolutely understand and recognize your problems. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide or research a solution as the team is currently focused on reusing references within an article. I would suggest that you create a Phabricator ticket and ping ESanders. Since he has already worked on something in this area, you could try to see if he can find a solution to your problem. Anyway, thank you for your detailed message and I hope you will find a solution soon. -- Best regards, Thereza Mengs (WMDE) (talk) 12:18, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide or research a solution as the team is currently focused on reusing references within an article. Okay, well that's not going to work in the VisualEditor. You are characterizing this as "my problem", but I disagree. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 02:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Phabricator ticket regarding above issue: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356471 Rjjiii (talk) 04:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Call for participation: Test and co-create a new feature for reusing references with different details (sub-referencing)

Hello to everyone watching this page. Our team is seeking to look over the shoulders of some Wikipedians who predominantly use Visual Editor, or switch between wikitext and Visual Editor when editing, especially when working with references.

Sessions will take 30–45 minutes and will include testing an early prototype for sub-referencing (= reusing references with different details) with Visual Editor. Compensation is available. If you are interested, please sign up here.

Please note that most likely, we won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX designer will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g., in terms of editing experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

-- For the Technical Wishes project, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:20, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Same sub reference

Tried in "Hella" article in beta. When extending a reference you can create sub reference with exactly the same content. Geraki ^T_L 14:27, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Geraki, thanks for your feedback and for testing the feature! Yes you can indeed create sub-references with exactly the same content (see our example in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Step by step (step 2, "This is what it looks like").

We gave another example in the same section (below the "Keep in mind" box) explaining how to re-use sub-references in wikitext. WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Re-using a sub-reference describes how to re-use them with Visual Editor (the same way how you would re-use any other reference). After re-using sub-references it looks like this [3]. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:07, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Johannes Richter (WMDE),

We have trouble using the sub-reference feature on ffwiki. Here is a sample article where it's used the types of error it displayed https://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentu%C9%97e,_Khorixas De-Invincible (talk) 12:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @De-Invincible, thanks for your interest in our feature! The sub-referencing feature is still in development and can only be tested on beta-wiki. If you just wanted to re-use the identical reference in your ffwiki article, the wikitext should look like this [4]. See mw:Help:Cite#Multiple uses of the same footnote (for wikitext) or en:Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/4 (for VisualEditor) on how to re-use identical references. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 12:39, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Okay, Thank you for your help. De-Invincible (talk) 12:46, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Order

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T367749

Hi. Looks very nice. Though, I found a small inconsistency. The code

There is a great book about Mona Lisa<ref name="Kemp book">{{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kemp (art historian) |year=2006 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-280725-0 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=Vdu0ynmoRc8C}} }}</ref> It has page 261.<ref extends="Kemp book" name="Kemp book 261">page 261</ref> It also has page 262.<ref extends="Kemp book">page 262</ref> To see page 261.<ref name="Kemp book 261"/>

works, and the code

It has page 261.<ref extends="Kemp book">page 261</ref> There is a great book about Mona Lisa<ref name="Kemp book">{{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kemp (art historian) |year=2006 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-280725-0 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=Vdu0ynmoRc8C}} }}</ref> It also has page 262.<ref extends="Kemp book">page 262</ref>

works, while the code

To see page 261.<ref name="Kemp book 261"/> There is a great book about Mona Lisa<ref name="Kemp book">{{cite book |last=Kemp |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kemp (art historian) |year=2006 |title=Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-280725-0 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=Vdu0ynmoRc8C}} }}</ref> It has page 261.<ref extends="Kemp book" name="Kemp book 261">page 261</ref> It also has page 262.<ref extends="Kemp book">page 262</ref>

throws an unexpected and irrelevant error about beeing "Kemp book 261" defined multiple times with different texts, and another one about beeing "Kemp book 261" not defined at all. Both parts are reasonable by themselves, but not in the same time. Is there a purpose for such a behavior? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 12:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @IKhitron, thanks for testing the feature and leaving your feedback! We are aware of this bug and are going to fix it (phab:T367749). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 10:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Reusing the main reference

Is it possible to use both subreferences (where you know the page number), and in some cases call the main reference itself (where the page number is not known - useful eg when migrating an existing article or adding subreferences on an article that does not currently have them)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:28, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Try to move the main reference from the references section to the proper place in the text. IKhitron (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @ProcrastinatingReader, you can do it the way @IKhitron suggested (although I wouldn't recommend that, because this could currently cause bugs in some edge cases). More simpler: You can just use <ref name="Name of the main reference" /> in Wikitext or use the re-use button in the Visual Editor citation dialog to re-use the main reference in case you don't know the page number (example). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:40, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I see. It seems contrintuitive, so I believe you should emphasize this point in the instructions. IKhitron (talk) 09:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! We'll make some amendments to the page this week, including some best practices or more advanced examples, which will include something like this as well. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a similar observation so I'll put it here. It took me a few moments, and a test, to realise I had to find a reference without a page number to be the main reference. If there was no potential main reference, I assume I'd have to create one somewhere. --Northernhenge (talk) 15:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Northernhenge, if you want to use sub-referencing with existing citations, you'll likely need to follow the steps we've outlined in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#keepinmind to convert an existing reference into a main reference and then use sub-referencing. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 16:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Just saw that you used the VisualEditor for testing: We are still working on some VE workflows, converting an existing reference to main and sub-reference in VE is one of them. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 16:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. Yes, I went into VisualEditor but came straight out again to do the edit! It was all very straightforward to use. -—Northernhenge (talk) 16:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Chapters

This is great for citing chapters within a book without having to use convoluted syntax (e.g., harvnb for the book and cite book for the chapter). Great stuff!

However, for page numbers, I prefer rp, which doesn't generate additional fns. In that spirit, it would be nice to give rp refname= so you don't have to have 2 elements. And url= to take you to the page. Lfstevens (talk) 02:30, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Lfstevens, thanks for your feedback! I agree that there might be use cases where current template-based solutions appear to be simpler (especially if you're already used to them). We've intentionally designed sub-referencing to work with all kinds of different details, I'm glad you like the feature for citing different chapters of a book! Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:34, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

VE: moving main reference inside references tag

While adding a new reference using VE and then subreferences, I get a situation where a main reference is paired with a first subreference, e.g. ^[1][1.1]. There should be a way to 'hide' the main reference inside references tags (and maybe it should be a default option as it would be just a citation overkill with more references like that). Wostr (talk) 12:42, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Wostr, thanks for testing the feature and leaving your feedback. This is something we are aware of and part of the userworkflows we are still going to improve. In the final version VE should "move" the first reference as a main reference to the references section so that it doesn't create a footnote marker and only the sub-reference stays in the article section. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I'll be grateful

I'll be really greatful for getting this in Visual Editor. It will significantly shorten and clarify the reference list of the article. Kaupunkilehmus (talk) 15:25, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback! Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:06, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Wherever?

The term wherever bothers me: Elaborate please. Do we try and imply sub-references are applicable to captions, navbox, infobox, or even nest inside ==References==? IMHO, other language translators seems to try and convey the meaning but not one target. — Omotecho (talk) 03:28, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Omotecho, it should be possible to use sub-references anywhere in the article, just like you can do with regular and re-used references. If it's confusing, we could probably just shorten the sentence "Create more sub-references wherever you want to cite the source with different details in the article" and replace it with "Create more sub-references to cite the source with different details in the article"? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:09, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE), yes, that is great, and my concern is maybe through a learning users' eyeglasses in two parts:

1. Could we link to basics of referencing/giving footnotes anyhow, maybe at section == See also ==? That way, "anywhere" sounds more realistic IMHO;
2. Is the goal of Feedback Wanted this cycle set to measure feasibility how/why sub/main-reference is the best for wikipedias?

For #1, I am sure local wikis have their own way to explain things, and on meta, we are not (at some given time) caretakers of budding editors. Or, local "help" pages depends largely on meta, that is why translators are particular about minor details. q;

My feedback: more basic than what can contribute to your call.

As somebody has already pointed out above, you are facing the dilemma of choosing among referencing styles/formats.

Unmatching reference styles among language wikis trigger henpecking.

Personally, I have worried over ten years which footnote style I am safe to use when editing existing articles on jawp: henpecking starts when you apply harvnb or Rp or full citation, and ignore the style applied throughout the older revisions, or if you expand an article with translation from other languages or inter-wiki pages.

Ignoring footnotes signals copyvio for translated pages

I have been checking translated articles on jawp, mainly for checking copyvio without "translated from &odlid notes", which I find by checking articles without footnotes. It is that serious as there are users who drop/delete ref tags/references altogether when translating, afraid of being RfCed that their referencing style is irresponsible. House keeping and cutting open the jumble of harvid-harvnb/Rps/full citation and bare urls in a single article tends to be the worst nightmare to keep the encyclopedia-quality.

Referencing is not the most respected pillar among the five locally

If I may go off the track, I should admit jawp has not overcome the superstition that "translating non-ja article is the speediest way to champion edit count, and hey, there are handy machine translation apps or sites!". Contents Translation 2 (CX2) is disabled on jawp, but still referencing and translation are water to oil, and we need a good textbook-help page backed with meta wisdom. Omotecho (talk) 07:46, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Omotecho, we've linked to basics of referencing in the section WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#The problem we are solving – most of the wikilinks in that section point to mw:Help:Cite or similar pages, is that what you mean?

We've already done extensive user testing and feedback rounds over the years (see WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing/History), but in past months/years usually with smaller groups of editors. Our current goal is to a) announce to all local communities that this feature is coming in a couple of months and b) use the opportunity (while we are reaching out to more people than ever using Mass Messages, mailing lists and CentralNotice banners) to also collect feedback from a broader audience for further improvements on the current prototype (especially the Visual Editor solution, which will see major improvements in the next weeks/months).

We are aware of local help pages for referencing and will try to assist communities updating those. But that should happen at a later point, closer to the features actual deployment and not now when details of the feature will still change. We'll make further announcements in the next couple of months, so communities can prepare their help pages in time. Currently as long as users understand how the feature is going to work, how they can test the prototype at beta-wiki and how they can give feedback, I think that's all we can ask :)

Regarding referencing styles: That's one of the issues we've considered when creating sub-referencing and one reasons why we chose an approach closely related to the existing <ref name> concept, knowing that all citation templates have the disadvantage, that different communities use different templates (e.g. I'm a dewiki admin in my volunteer capacity and we don't use something like harvnb or rp at all). Of course communities can continue to use their preferred templates, but if you translate an article using sub-referencing, there should be no issue just using the same sub-reference in your translation. If that can help projects which have issues with referencing, I would be very happy about that. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:15, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Extends is an awful name

I will definitely be checking this out and testing it. But allow me to say right off the bat that the term extends is a poor choice of name for this attribute. It sounds so oriented towards the software architect, as if it came out of a page about OOP inheritance, and so utterly unrelated to how a user might think.

Consciously or unconsciously, you have already provided the natural name for it, where you explain right in the beginning, in the Nutshell section:

To cite a source more than once with different details, you need a main reference and a sub-reference.

• The main reference contains the main bibliographic information.

And there you have it: <ref main="Miller">Page 23.</ref> : a completely natural term, and one which you are already using. The other terms that come to mind are base and root, but main seems much the best of the three. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 19:00, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I like "Main" Lfstevens (talk) 19:53, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Just for the record, some other terms that came to mind just afterward, include: primary, parent, anchor, and core, but I still like main best. Mathglot (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Support. When I localized the sub-references on beta for our wiki last week, I used "main", it seems me much better. IKhitron (talk) 20:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @IKhitron, apologies, I forgot to ping you in my previous reply. Thanks for the pointer to your adaption on he-betawiki! -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:05, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

(Main) Reference and (Sub)-Reference are intuitive as a pair for both the code and citation templates?. What would the verb be? Extend, annotate, specify? Shushugah (talk) 23:01, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot, @Lfstevens, @Shushugah: Thanks a lot for your comments! Yes, we have received mixed feedback on extends, which is why there is no final decision on the attribute name yet. In user testing, we recently tested different options – including main – and the feedback was again very mixed, with no clear overall preference for one particular name. I will take your feedback to the team. And of course, if anyone wants to add their thoughts on this, please do so. -- Wishing you a good weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:49, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I am also adding my colleague Johannes' reply on the English Wikipedia's village pump here:

"We’ve done several consultations with the global community and a lot of user testing in past years where we asked for feedback and ideas on the attribute name. One takeaway is that the name is less important for many users than we initially thought, as long as they can remember it. And our user tests showed a surprisingly large number of Wikitext users switching to VE in order to use the citation dialog (for referencing in general, not just for sub-referencing) – if you do that, you don’t need to deal with the attribute name at all. We didn’t see any major issues with “extends” for people exclusively using Wikitext in our user tests. But so far there is no final decision on the attribute name, so if you have any ideas let us know (we’ll make a final decision soon)."

-- Again, happy weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:12, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, being able to remember it is probably the most important thing for me. "Extends" made complete sense to me (though I have done software in the past). "Main" is the kind of word I could easily forget. --Northernhenge (talk) 15:44, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

As for myself, "main" makes sense, and "extends" is the kind of word I could easily forget. Batrachoseps (talk) 02:36, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that "extends" is unclear about what information needs to go there, whereas "main" is unclear about what the information is doing.

I lean towards "main" myself, because it's more helpful to a new user, but something like subcite_of could be clearer than either. —Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:18, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps generating a specific "instance" of the main reference (as in "an occurrence"). Or "subcite", because we are citing a piece of the original reference as opposed to citing something bigger to create a full reference.

• I think the problem with the term "extends" is that it implies the main reference is having its scope broadened, when in fact the subreference is narrowing its scope by (at least usually) referring to specific page numbers.

And perhaps "main reference" could be "parent reference", "full reference", or "independent reference". GreekApple123 (talk) 16:38, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Override, don't show details twice

In your step four in the Keep in mind, you say:

4. Move the details of the main reference (page numbers etc.) into the sub-reference. Make sure they no longer remain in the main reference, otherwise those details will be shown twice.

Please allow duplication of the same item in the subref, and don't show them twice, but override the main one with the details from the sub-ref.

The most obvious use case that springs immediately to mind is {{cite journal}}-type references, where you will have a journal article which occupies |pages=67–102 of that issue of the journal, but where the subrefs verify assertions from, say, pages 71–72, page 69, and pages 94–96. What we want here, is |pages=67–102 in the main ref, and three subrefs mentioning only the page or range applicable to that one citation, where the full page range of the article should not be repeated, and can be found in the main link, just like all the other bibliographic info can.

A related use case would be sources that use subpart names and section numbering, like, say, the French legal code at Légifrance, where you have the criminal code, with book one, title one, chapter one General Principles, which consists of code items 111-1 to 111-5, and then you have the individual code items, like § 111-3 (the nulla poena sine lege principle). (This obviously hints at the possibility of cascading subrefs, but that's another topic.)

A different use case might be for multiple editions. Articles not infrequently end up with citations to the same item from different years, either different editions or reprints. At en-wiki, this can currently be handled, sort of, by the |orig-date= param of the cite suite of templates, but it is awkward, and involves stuffing a date, possibly a publisher and location into a date field, and if the original edition is cited as well, you still need to have two references; a much more natural way of linkage would be via a subref pointing to the earlier edition as the main ref, but the subref should not show both edition values, it should override the edition value (if any) from the main ref, and only show the subref edition. Less frequently, the publisher or location might change, or the isbn, or the name of the series or collection, and the oclc number will definitely change, but the same should apply in any of those: the subref details should override any value given in the main ref.

Another case might be for translations, or for print vs. online versions of the same resource, and there may be others. For all of these, it would be annoying to display duplicated details from the main ref in the subref that instead should be overridden, but there should be no prohibition against including them in the main ref. There is already precedent for this, in the way in which en-wiki's en:Template:Citec operates, with values in the Citec overriding the values in the main ref. Subref should operate similarly (and should ultimately replace Citec as a more native way of handling it). Mathglot (talk) 20:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of any matching parameters inside sub-reference overriding the reference -- strictly in presentation mode. We should be careful about not literally removing parameters in main reference. The case where a parent reference has a wide range of pages, but sub-reference has exact page is one use case. Shushugah (talk) 23:05, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot Thanks a lot for your suggestion and for taking the time to explain it here with much detail; it is appreciated. Our team has discussed this idea before, and it is quite complex, for some reasons, including:

• Which part of the main reference would be overridden might not be obvious to users while editing, even if it were defined somewhere. Plus, integrating this is not simple.
• If I understood your proposal correctly, it would also create some inconsistencies: If the main reference in the reference list is shown with the details, that would be inconsistent for readers – why are some details in the sub-references and others aren’t? If the main reference in the reference list shows no details, it would be inconsistent and probably confusing for editors to see the details in the wikitext.

In our approach, you have a main reference and the details are only in the sub-references:

1. Journal name, location, edition etc.

1.1 pp. 67–102
1.2 pp. 71–72
1.3 p. 69
1.4 pp. 94–96

Apart from having an alternative proposal, I would like to understand better where specifically you have problems with our proposed solution. Can I ask you to elaborate a bit more? That would be very helpful. — Thanks again, and I wish you a good weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Bug adding any template into any sub-reference on Visual Editor

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T373186

Has anyone else tried to add a template into a sub-reference with the Visual Editor? I tried on Firefox, Chrome, and Edge and had the same result for each. Windows 10 for all. Signed in and signed out. To reproduce:

1. Edit a page with the Visual Editor.
2. Click the quote mark to add a citation.
3. Select "Extends".
4. Select a main reference.
5. In the box, type "{{" or select "insert→template".
6. The "Insert a template" box appears greyed out and behind the "Extend a reference" box.

If you zoom out far enough, you can still use the faded "Insert a template" box, but this seems not how it's meant to be. Rjjiii (talk) 01:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Rjjiii. I have created a Phabricator ticket for this issue: phab:T373186. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:27, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Rjjiii (talk) 13:50, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Bug when reusing sub-references in the visual editor

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T369801

The visual editor will show the main citation for a subreference, but not if it is being re-used from a named reference. The main reference seems not to display in Visual Editor any time it is being reused. So "<ref extends="Tahera Qutbuddin" name="Tahera Qutbuddin, p. 867">p. 867</ref>" works as expected, but when reused "<ref name="Tahera Qutbuddin, p. 867" />" does not.

To reproduce:

1. Go to a page with named and reused sub-references like this one: https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Arabic_female_poets&oldid=626822
2. Click "Edit" to open in the Visual Editor
3. Click the first "[5.1]"
4. You should see the main reference and the sub-reference below it. (Works as expected for me.)
5. Click the second "[5.1]"
6. You will see only the sub-reference. The main reference is not displayed.

Tested on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Windows 10. Logged in and logged out. Rjjiii (talk) 20:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Rjjiii, thanks for pointing this out! That's a known bug (phab:T369801) and we'll of course fix it, once we've completed some necessary code cleanup for that task. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 05:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Good luck with that!

Seems like just another Wikipedia foggy edit cloud that no sane human being can understand. G41rn8 (talk) 05:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi G41rn8, would you like to elaborate what you don't like/understand about the feature? Our approach for both wikitext and VisualEditor is based on existing ways of referencing and we don't see major issues in user testing as well as community feedback – even people who prefer other ways of referencing (e.g. sfn) seem to have no problem understanding how to use sub-referencing. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 05:42, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I found the syntax easy and organized, "details" is the key word in the sub-reference. The problem will be if someone deletes the main reference. Elilopes (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback! We'll show a warning if user's delete the main reference, similar to what already happens if users delete a re-used reference. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 17:15, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Deleting a reference that is being re-used

Regarding the concern, We have yet to work on what happens when you delete a reference that is being re-used; the ideal solution should be to warn the editor and disallow deletion of a main/parent reference if the editor does not also delete all the sub/dependent references. No one wants to clean the mess left by other editors. - hako9 (talk) 18:36, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Hako9, thanks for your suggestion! That's indeed something we are considering, but we're still figuring out how the warnings should look like / at which point of the edit process they should appear. We could probably use Edit check or something similar for VisualEditor, but need to think about Wikitext as well (currently if you mess up any references (not just main- and sub-references) in Wikitext, there are no warnings and only after saving warnings like Cite error references no text are shown and the page appears in subcategories of Category:Pages with citation errors). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 13:10, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Any updates?

Hello, just a quick question. According to the "Recent changes and next steps" section: We are reaching out to potential pilot wikis and are planning to deploy the sub-referencing feature on those wikis in October. Is this feature deployed already on any wiki? How is the progress? Cheers, tufor (talk) 21:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Tufor, thanks for bringing this up. Unfortunately our work on sub-referencing is delayed. We are currently exploring changes to the sub-referencing feature based on the community feedback we got (both on this talk page as well as on many local village pumps – huge thank you to everyone who shared their perspective). We will reach out to communities soon to get more feedback on some proposed changes.

I've updated the outdated project page section [5]. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 13:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Only sub-references

Is it possible to use only sub-references without an explicit call of a main reference? Maybe, a main reference cannot contain an extends value. Or with other words: can a main reference contain both the reference and the extends value? RolandUnger (talk) 16:19, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi @RolandUnger, I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly (we can discuss this in German if you want). With the new syntax discussed above it's possible to use <ref name="Miller" details="p. 23">E. Miller, ''The Sun''. New York: Academic Press, 2005</ref> even if there are no other sub-references related to the same reference. But it's not possible to use sub-references (e.g. <ref name="Miller" details="p. 40" />) without a main reference, just like it's not possible to use <ref name="Miller" /> without a corresponding reference. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 21:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE): Thanks for the hint: The new syntax with the details parameter was new to me. It is now only in the discussion (see Request for feedback) but not yet in description of the Sub-referencing page. Without such a parameter it is impossible to pass two values (both the reference itself and the extension). And that's why the question arose to me how to use a main/first reference which already needs an extension. Now, it is a little bit confusing why sometimes the extension should be given in the details parameter and sometimes as a text between opening and closing tags. --RolandUnger (talk) 13:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

@RolandUnger exactly, that's because the project page is documenting our work so far and we have just started discussing this new approach a couple of weeks ago and haven't made a decision how to continue.

In the future, you can use both normal references as well as sub-references. While normal references will just include all the information between the ref-tags (e.g. <ref>E. Miller, ''The Sun''. New York: Academic Press, 2005. Page 23</ref>) sub-references will move the details to the new attribute (e.g. the page number -> <ref name="Miller" details="Page 23">E. Miller, ''The Sun''. New York: Academic Press, 2005</ref>).

This allows grouping multiple references using the same "main" information, just with different details. From a reader's perspective the change between normal references and sub-references will look like this: [6] -> [7] (the three references with similar details have been converted to <ref name="Miller" details="... in Wikitext). --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

By the way I prefer the list-defined references. By this way the text (only with a short refence) remains more readable. --RolandUnger (talk) 13:10, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

List-defined references work with sub-referencing, but only in projects using <references /> in the reference section. Most projects use templates like {{reflist}} instead which VisualEditor cannot properly deal with. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Why two reference sections?

Consider https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/CiteDetailsTests

There are two reference sections, "References" and "Grouped references". Why separate the sections and numbering for these two kinds of references? Is it not more conventional and intuitive to have a single reference list, regardless of some formatting differences among types of references? Bluerasberry (talk) 19:11, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Bluerasberry, that's just an example page showing how sub-references work in different contexts. There is no need to use grouped references, but we wanted to demonstrate this additional use case, given that some article's use grouped references, e.g. to differentiate between notes and references per en:H:PREGROUP / mw:Help:Cite#Grouped references (see e.g. en:Cleopatra). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:35, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

That's great. I use group references, and I know the problem of non-standard formatting when packing a few references into one citations. I like the feature a lot, but just want one reference list overall. Thanks, great answer. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:08, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Re-use of sub-ref not working

I just copied the "Example Usage for Reuse of Inline References:" from "4) Reusing an Existing Sub-reference" into a page at the beta wiki using the source editor. The preview of the references sublist is:

1.1. ^ Page 23.

1.2. ^ Page 48.

1.3. ^ Page 23.

without the two 'Page 23.' merged to a single subentry as the says it should. DMacks (talk) 11:48, 5 May 2025 (UTC)]

Hi @DMacks, thanks for testing! See our note in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#re-use or on betawiki [8], automatic merging of duplicate sub-references in the reference list currently doesn't work (it used to when I took the screenshots and will work again soon). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:49, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Great. As long as it's on radar. DMacks (talk) 11:18, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Feedback (Was unsure where to add)

Hello all, I'm currently working on several articles related to Central African and Korean history which are discussed in only a limited number of sources, and only in print or PDF edition. I've had a fair bit of trouble making use of the source editor to add shortened footnotes or even citations to a 'References' (not 'Notes'), not least because I'm familiar with the visual editor, which is equally combative when attempting to cite as a reference as opposed to a note. Whole sections of these books, which gather a variety of sources which necessarily can't be used as citations themselves, need to be used. I was directed to this page to give feedback for the system. If I can be of help, please let me know. CSGinger14 (talk) 12:39, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi @CSGinger14, thanks for leaving your thoughts! shortened footnotes are indeed difficult to use in VisualEditor, that's one of the reasons why we are working on sub-referencing. We are currently looking for VisualEditor users to get feedback on our VisualEditor designs, you can sign-up using this link [9] if you are interested. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:56, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Parsoid

Will sub-referencing work with Parsoid, too? Parsoid is now the main parser in Wikivoyages and some oher wikis. --RolandUnger (talk) 05:07, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi @RolandUnger, yes it will, we're working on it in phab:T387907 and it's linked tasks. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:21, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. --RolandUnger (talk) 13:45, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Re-use in VisualEditor

Hi! I found no mention of it: as it can be seen on the screenshot, if you try to re-use a subreference, all you see in the popup is the “sub-” part – pp. 23–26, § 42 or something similar. This is not very useful, I hope you plan to fix this before the release. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:00, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback @Tacsipacsi, we are aware of this issue, that's indeed something we want to improve. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 05:41, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

2 issues: template use, and keeping main ref inline

I tried a test in the beta that used this wikitext:

New [[flash memory]]-based media implementations, such as [[solid-state drive]]s or [[USB flash drive]]s, can cause data erasure techniques to fail allowing [[remnant data]] to be recoverable.<ref name="m.wei">{{cite paper |title=Reliably Erasing Data From Flash-Based Solid State Drives |url=https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast11/tech/full_papers/Wei.pdf |work=FAST '11: 9th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies |date=2011-02-15 |access-date=2024-08-17 |author1=Michael Wei |author2=Laura M. Grupp |author3=Frederick E. Spada |author4=Steven Swanson |page=12 |quote=For sanitizing entire disks, built-in sanitize commands are effective when implemented correctly, and software techniques work most, but not all, of the time. We found that none of the available software techniques for sanitizing individual files were effective.}}</ref>

Then again, finding someon3 3lse's data can be entertaining!<ref extends="m.wei">{{cite paper |page=7337 |quote=Hax R Fun!}}</ref>

The 2nd "cite paper" template won't expand because it insists on having |title=. We should allow template users to keep using the syntax they expect, rather than forcing them to use unformatted text in subrefs. So the template may need to become more liberal in allowing partial citations.

Also, there seems to be no reason why the main ref can't be inline in the article and can't have its own page number and quote. Most pages I've edited in enwiki use inline citations; having a separate "references" section is unusual, unnecessary, and makes pages appear to be academic, not encyclopedic. The current design's need to "move" the main ref, and split out its overridden attributes, seems cruel, unusual, and unnecessary. Gnuish (talk) 13:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Gnuish, thanks for testing the feature and providing feedback!

• Yes indeed communities might want to make some changes to allow more flexible use of templates for sub-referencing (or create new templates for sub-references which allow this flexibility). Without such templates we currently recommend using the sub-reference details as plain text.

Given that templates are community owned, it's up to local communities to change them, we don't want to interfere with that. We've talked about the feature and citation templates at the Wikimania and will contact communities with recommendations for templates and citation tools at a later point.

• The main reference can be in line, it doesn't need to move. But there are some disadvantages if you don't move the main reference, e.g. that having the main reference inline also makes it appear as an actual reference. And it's also possible to keep details like page number etc. in the main reference, but that would result in the main reference showing a page number and the sub-reference showing another page number -> ReferencePreviews would show both numbers then. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Have to agree that the main reference should be inline not in the reference section, as the problem with references in the reference section is that when section editing you cannot see the reference preview or edit it. It also makes the location of the reference difficult to find and edit. You should be able to see and edit the reference when editing a section. [See Community Wishlist/Wishes/Reference editing I have already raised.] Keith D (talk) 18:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

If I remember correctly similar wishes have already been submitted to previous editions of the Community Wishlist Survey, unfortunately without it being picked up. I agree that this is already an issue with re-used reference which are defined in other sections of the article. We'll take a look if we can improve the situation while working on sub-referencing. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:25, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the discussion. I mostly edit existing articles, rather than write new ones. Existing articles are (mostly) full of inline references. It is not a disadvantage that the main reference makes a footnote; that is exactly why it is there.

I don't exactly understand your mention of ReferencePreviews. Is this is the tooltip that appears from hovering over a ref number? There are no tooltips appearing over subrefs in articles, because subrefs don't exist yet. We can define what they would show. And we should define them to not show attributes from the main ref that were overridden in the subref (like a page number and a quote, in the example I posted).

Clearly there would need to be template development to make that happen. But did you really expect a subref facility to work well without cooperation from citation templates? < ref>Template:Cite ...< /ref>, is a hugely, hugely, hugely popular pattern in article space, at least in enwiki. Making subrefs work shouldn't require new work flows (like moving refs to a new section, or manually pulling individual attributes out into a subref). Computers are good at things like merging two lists of attributes with some overridden; we shouldn't require human editors to tediously do them.

Yes, occasional refs use plain text, sometimes intermixed with templates like Template:Isbn. If existing plain text refs that later got subreferenced show a suboptimal tooltip, that is not a major issue to me. Gnuish (talk) 20:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

mw:ReferenceTooltips is the gadget enwiki (and a couple of other projects) are using as a default gadget, most projects are using mw:Referene Previews. Both create a pop-up that appears from hovering over a ref number (the screenshots shown in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Problems for readers.)

While ReferenceTooltips can show the full content of sfn by having a pop-up on top of a pop-up, that's not possible in the mobile skin. Meanwhile sub-references will be properly displayed on all devices. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:36, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Templates are community-owned, so if enwiki or other projects want to use templates for sub-references, they can certainly do so. We've intentionally created sub-references in a way that they are working with all kinds of different details and also templates if communities choose to do so. Our examples simple don't show templates, because we wanted to explain the solution as simple as possible. I've already seen someone experimenting with a demo template they created [10] and knowing the communities I'm sure we'll see more of that.

The idea of just overriding stuff that's within templates sounds simple, but not if you consider how many different citation templates enwiki alone uses and that we are providing a feature to hundreds of Wikimedia projects and many of them have developed their own templates over the years (especially if you look at right-to-left languages). Templates are a great tool of customization for local projects, but that also makes it really hard for software features intended to serve all projects. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:42, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

This looks like something that would make me avoid using sub-referencing: the fact that there's no easy way to treat the first mention of a reference (with some page number) the same way other mentions are treated (with their own page numbers). It's a major design flaw, IMO. The solution would be to have the ref's instance data travel with its invocations (<ref name="" pages="" othersubreftypes="" />). It'd also help with translations: now, every <ref name="" extends="">Страницы 2 - 5</ref> needs to be translated manually. pon_or (talk) 14:58, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ponor thanks for your feedback. If I understand you correctly (I'm not a 100% sure) the issue you are mentioning is basically the same with the current ref name approach, where the first mention is also different to all re-uses?

We've explained our syntax choice in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Why did you choose this wikitext syntax? and I've provided more details below in #Simplicity. Your approach appears simple at first, but has some other issues. That's why decided to go for this approach, which is similar to they way people are already used to with <ref name> --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:56, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Gnuish: The feature needs its own template. Check out https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Arabic_female_poets&oldid=629222 The template there is just a demo and it's awful, but it's meant to give an idea. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 05:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Simplicity

This is definitely a huge improvement, but I wonder why this can't be even simpler. {{rp}} templates are still much easier to use than this, you just insert the template and done, while the new approach requires several steps and more complex syntax. For example, it would be simpler to define page numbers like this: <ref name="Miller" extends="page 20"/>. Also, it would be ideal if the software could detect and group duplicate page numbers automatically, so that there is no need to give the sub-reference a name. Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm thinking about somewhat similar syntax (pages in an attribute).

I think it would be useful to define a first reference and add an extensions attribute with VE. Something like this:

1. Generate a reference (e.g., from a URL/DOI/ISBN).
2. Mark the reference as extendable (activate "extension" field).
3. Add text to reference a specific page (or specific time in a video/audio file).

When saving (applying changes) in VE, this might be turned into:

<ref name=":1" extension="page 20">{{Cite web |title=UCLA Slang 2 | url=https://example.com}}</ref>

And then reuse it like so:

<ref extends=":1" extension="page 22"/>

Or reuse it like so:

<ref extends=":1">page 22</ref>

This might make sub-referencing easier than using the sfn template and similar methods because I don't have to define the reference first and then use it (I can define and use it in one go).

So, sub-referencing functionality must allow that the first reference created is both extendable and includes specific pages. Otherwise, I fear this might not be picked up by communities due to too much friction and too little gain. And I would love this to get picked up :) Nux (talk) 14:25, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Jens Lallensack and @Nux, thanks for your feedback!

• Yes {{rp}} is indeed a simpler wikitext solution for use cases like different page numbers. But it has some other limitations, e.g. those details not being included in Reference Tooltips / ReferencePreviews and the template not properly working in Visual Editor (yes it's possible to insert / edit the template in VE, but not via the citation button).
• We've tried to explain our syntax in WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Why did you choose this wikitext syntax?. In a nutshell: The approach you're suggesting only works for page numbers (or anything else that get's a defined parameter), while sub-referencing aims to allow re-uses of references with all different kinds of details.

In addition this approach can cause issues with templates and doesn't allow to re-use sub-references (the difference between non-reused [11] and re-used [12] might not seem that important at first glance, but some long lists use the same source (with different details) dozens of times, then re-using sub-references to organize the reference section is of great value for readers.

Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 14:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. So the problem with having subreferences details within the <ref> tag, which would be so much easier, are problems with templates and not being able to re-use sub-references. But are those template problems really unsolvable, or is it just that we would have to update numerous templates? I personally think that it is better to invest the work to arrive at a solution that makes editing Wikipedia a lot easier. For the second point (re-use of sub-references), I do not quite understand why an automatic solution will not do the trick. The software could group sub-references whenever strings entered in the "extends" fields are identical. We would then have to repeat these strings all over again in an article, but we won't have to define and repeat subreference-names. I understand that this automatic grouping might be tedious when the user wants to enter longer text, but those usecases are rare (and other approaches are still available for that); in almost all cases it will just be page numbers. Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:22, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

If we just look at one single project like enwiki it's surely possible to solve template issues, but given that we're providing a feature for hundreds of Wikipedia language versions and their sister projects and that all of those projects don't just use the same templates, but have created different ones (or variations of initially similar ones) over the years, our approach seems more feasible – especially considering how many kinds of different details (other than page numbers) there are which people might want to use.

Regarding auto-merging of identical references: That's something we've considered as well (because this feature is part of some larger research on how to improve re-using references). There are two main issues with that: This idea wouldn't be consistent with user expectations. When I'm using ref name (or in the future ref extends as well), I expect some kind of re-use. When I don't use any reference attribute, I'm expecting my reference to appear as a single citation in the reference list. And some users might intentionally want to separate two identical references for some reason and not make them appear as re-used reference. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:57, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE) thanks. I think it would be possible to do what Jens said if a different, separate name of an attribute would be used as an extension. To address what you said:

• You can use this do define time: `extension="1 min 53 sec."` (or extra="1 min 53 sec." or subref="1 min 53 sec.").
• Using an attribute allows you to have a clear separation when you define a first ref with pages. Easier then having a separate ref definition in references. I think it would not be possible to make an edit like that in VE alone.
• Finally when saving the page VE could still detect duplicates and add names (like Jens suggested). E.g. change: `ref extends=":1" extension="page 22"` to `ref name=":2" extends=":1" extension="page 22"` (so generate a name) and any other usages to `ref name=":2"`.

To be clear I'm not saying subrefs should be displayed as rp template, I'm just saying you could support both an attribute and ref tag content as an extension of the original reference (and that would open up some new possibilities) Nux (talk) 15:35, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Interesting idea. But wouldn't that increase the complexity in Wikitext a lot, if we added a third attribute name? And another issue: Our current approach allows for templates to be used for sub-references if communities want to do that, which would be much more difficult if the content doesn't appear between ref-tags but within a ref-tag: Something like <ref name":2" extends=":1" extension="{{subref-template|Chapter=12|Page=107|Quote=ABC}}" /> would be incredible hard to achieve if I'm not mistaken, due to the way pages are rendered. While <ref name":2" extends=":1">{{subref-template|Chapter=12|Page=107|Quote=ABC}}</ref> pretty much just works the way we are already used to with citation templates. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 07:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE) I don't see any other way to be able to define a main reference in text. Seb-ref requires that the reference is defined without pages (extension doesn't replace page argument of the template) and per Wikipedia rules I cannot add a book reference without pages. So there seem to be no good way define the main ref in text (you have to define it in references tag and so edit the references section separately). This makes sub-refs as complicated as sfn already is (in terms of initial procedure to make it work at least). And also, if I'm reading Jens proposal correctly, he considered an attribute simpler to use then content of the tag. So this is kind of simpler: <ref extends="Miller" extension="page 20"/>.

As for the templates for sub-refs... personally I wouldn't want any templates in there. I understand some might want that, but I think templates would only complicate things with very little gain... Having said that, I'm guessing it might be possible to allow both of the syntaxes (both attribute and tag content interchangeably) and so if someone would really want a template he could use a template (with added complexity of defining ref in references section). Nux (talk) 08:22, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Ahh maybe I misunderstood what you initially said. You goal is to define a main reference in line but without a footnote marker showing – basically putting something like <ref name="MainRef">ABC></ref><ref extends="MainRef">ABC</ref> in the article text but with only the sub-ref showing, so that you don't need to define the main reference in the reference section? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 09:08, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Hm... No? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think that's not what I mean 🙃... My goal would be to create two refs with pages using two ref tags. So like this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?diff=628938&oldid=628036&title=Hella

...but without using <references>. Nux (talk) 19:27, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I think I got lost somehow between the different comments, you even demonstrated how you imagine the wikitext to look like in your first comment.

We've decided against such a syntax due to the reasons mentioned above, but we are desiring a VisualEditor workflow which feels similar, allowing you to create main- and sub-reference in one go, probably without even noticing that these are two steps in wikitext. We are currently doing user tests on that for the next iterations of our VE prototype. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I hope that the old {{rp}} will always remain available.A ntv (talk) 16:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @A ntv, most projects have adopted policies like en:WP:CITEVAR. As long as communities don't change their policies (but that's up to them and nothing we'll be involved in), you can continue to use your preferred way of referencing. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 06:59, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Feedback

1. Finding how to insert sub-referencing is not as intuitive. I would expect to be able to select a citation and find a button that says "extend this reference". Instead, when editing an existing regular citation I am offered possibility to "convert to sub-reference" which makes very little sense and misleads me.
2. Once I found correct way to add a sub reference (by inserting a new citation) I still had to search down all the citations until I found the correct reference. For short articles this is acceptable, for longer ones it can be tedious. Scanning and defauling the reference to the immediate left would be an enhancement.
3. When I copy a sub-reference from one article to another article, I would expect it to copy the citation as well. It does not, it only copies the name of the named reference. With generic named references like ":0", ":1" it is likely this error will fail silently. I find named references incredibly broken/unusable (for both regular/sub references) and it hampers the experience here as well. See Community Wishlist/Wishes/Improved named references for further feedback.
4. Sub-reference is good name, but the interface only shows how to "extend", creating confusion for new users
5. Editing sub-reference should say "Extend a different reference" instead of the main "Replace citation" interface/language of a reference
6. Editing sub-references inside reference section is still not possible.
7. Make name parameter inside references and sub-reference editable. Currently it's impossible to know how to change it while using VE.
8. In short, I would absolutely love to use this and will stop using en:Template:Rp and also use this to extend different chapters of common book. It is clear/easier to edit than sourced foot notes

Shushugah (talk) 22:43, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for you detailed feedback @Shushugah!

• We are still working on many sub-referencing workflows for Visual Editor. What you've mentioned in 1) is something we are already considering, because user testing shows how important workflows other than the citation button are.
• The (already existing) issue with VE auto-generating meaningless reference names is something we are aware of as well. We cannot make a promise on that part, but we might be able to add a promt for VE users to give the reference a meaningful name. By the way: Did you know you can use the search bar to find a reference, even if the name is just a number (example)?
• Thanks for your feedback about copying a sub-reference to another article in VE, that's also something we'll look at.
• 4 & 5 will definitely be changed, that's just preliminary wording for the prototype.
• We are aware of the issue with editing sub-references directly in the reference list, that's also something we want to look at.

Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:13, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Short form with template?

Would it be possible to have a templated version of the inline placeholder that is even shorter?

I make extensive use of SFN in my writing as I find it makes future editing dramatically easier due to the limited space it takes up in the source and it being much easier to type without blowing the tags and leaving an unbounded ref.

So perhaps a "SR" (sub-ref) template? Something like SR|refname|pagenum? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:54, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Maury Markowitz, thanks for your idea! Given that templates are community-owned and that it's also up to local communities to decide which citation styles they want, it will be up to them to decide about this. Above some user already linked a test with a demo subref template they created. Being also a volunteer I could very much imagine using such sub-reference templates. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 14:28, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: There are several places you may want to bring this up on the English wikipedia. The {{r}} talk page has previously discussed trying to implement a feature like sub-referencing. That template already accepts the syntax, {{r|refname|p=pagenum}}. It currently generates superscript page numbers, like this:^[1]: 23 but could be updated to make sub-references. At Help talk:Citation Style 1, an editor floated a similar way of using templates to what you propose. The demo template mentioned above works inside ref tags, more like {{harvnb}} than {{sfn}}. (I am MercyMercy on the beta wiki, because when making an account you get this ominous message saying that no data on the beta wiki is safe?) If you want to try porting {{r}} over to the beta wiki to see how it handles sub-references, be sure to port over its 4 subpage templates. The wikitext in the template's code is pretty complex because it supports calling a bunch of references at one time, quotations in mouse-over tooltips, and some other rarely used stuff. A final note, any template that is using "#tag:ref" will create a reference not visible in the Visual Editor; this is currently an accepted downside to using sfn. Hope that helps, Rjjiii (talk) 05:03, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Possible deployment to non-Wikimedia wikis

I like the idea of sub-referencing a lot. Is this an extension of any kind? How can sub-referencing be added to my local MediaWiki installation? Or is it a good idea to wait for the feature to be refined before any attempted deployments? A diehard editor (talk) 11:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Hi @A diehard editor, sub-referencing will become part of the Cite extension. It's already possible to enable it in the configuration as an experimental feature, see mw:Extension:Cite#Configuration. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 20:54, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Update on Sub-referencing - Wikitext is available on the beta wiki.

Since our last update on January 31st, the Technical Wishes team at WMDE made progress in developing the new wikitext syntax for Sub-referencing. It is now available on the beta wiki, and we invite you to test it and see how it works. If you notice any bugs or inconsistencies, or want to share general feedback you can do so via the talk page or by directly scheduling a call with our UX Researcher, your feedback and experience is always very valuable for our work.

Please keep in mind that the Visual Editor solution is currently not usable, you don’t need to test it right now. This will be our next focus. As soon as we have refined the Visual Editor user flows we will reach out to you for another round of testing.

Thanks for your patience and support with this project! Lina Farid (WMDE) (talk) 10:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Templates?

Does ‎<ref name=foo details=bar /> support templates, e.g., {{braces}}, {{brackets}}, CS1, CS2, {{qi}} -- Chatul (talk) 14:23, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Chatul, The current state of the feature on the beta wiki allows you to use the template of your choice within the details attribute (as long as the template exists on the beta wiki). For example:

<ref name="foo" details="{{subref|quote=This is a quote}}" />

This template was kindly created on the beta wiki by a fellow volunteer.

Our current concern with templates is whether we'll be able to handle all the edge cases that could cause issue in the usability of Visual Editor or in the rendered reader view. Therefore, at this point in time we cannot say for sure in what form templates will be available for sub-referencing when it's rolled out. I will take note of the templates you've mentioned here so that we can test with them. Thanks for sharing them! Lina Farid (WMDE) (talk) 14:06, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Right direction, but...

<ref name="main-reference name" details="Page 23."/> is definitely a step in the right direction. However, I think now's the time to think about having a few standard details, as in:

• <ref name="main-reference name" page="23"/>
• <ref name="main-reference name" pages="23–25"/> or
  • <ref name="main-reference name" pages_from="23" pages_to="25"/>
• <ref name="main-reference name" chapter="3"/>

They would make use of the standard MediaWiki messages from translate.wiki to produce (in different languages)

• 6.1^ Seite 23
• 6.2^ Stranice 23. – 25.
• 6.3^ Chapter 3

This also helps standardize the look of the most common details; anything else can still go into that parameter. This is very important when translating from one to another wiki. Freestyle details is unlikely to be translated. pon_or (talk) 16:02, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Does it really make sense to worry about translating the details, when there is no cross-language standard on how to write the main citation? Is anyone involve in this effort educated in how to write proper citations in more than one language? I'm not; I only know English. Also, all the examples I've come across write page numbers differently depending on whether it's in the main citation or the details.

This whole approach is backward from any citation style that's ever been developed. Starting by figuring out how to do details, and leaving the main citation for later. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:15, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Structured data is better for everything, both current and future. The main reference won't be touched by this anyway. I've heard WMF doesn't really want to have anything to do with the way the main reference is written, they left it to the communities (some of which use the English Wikipedia citation templates, though without any obligation). pon_or (talk) 09:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Shorter data inputs

This looks like a vast improvement over the current system.

However, in your example <ref name="Miller" details="Page 23." />, I think "Page 23." is overly verbose input.

I would be good if users could optionally use, say, <ref name="Miller" pages="23" /> to achieve the same result, with |details= remaining available for more complex cases.

Either the output should use "Page" when a single integer is entered and "Pages" for anything else; or both |page= and |pages= should be available, for use as appropriate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:17, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I strongly support this comment. The input for page numbers should be conceptually different from everything else. Otherwise, a hundred different styles will emerge for referencing pages, which will kill machine readability and other uses of a consistent format. — Yerpo ^Eh? 18:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

P.S. Merged into the above section. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:43, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback! The downside of this proposal is added complexity to the wikitext – e.g. if you want to add a chapter to a sub-reference, you would need to change it from <ref name="Miller" pages="23" /> to <ref name="Miller" details="page 23, chapter 1" /> which doesn't feel very intuitive. A community member created a demo template for sub-references on betawiki [13] which seems like a good solution? <ref name="Miller" details="{{subref|page=23|chapter=1}}" /> feels very similar to the community approach of {{cite book}} and similar templates. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 12:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE) This would also sort nasty order-related duples for example the following should be considered the same:
<ref name="Miller" details="{{subref|page=23|chapter=1}}" /> and
<ref name="Miller" details="{{subref|chapter=1|page=23}}" /> Shushugah (talk) 16:38, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE) Unless you make <ref name="main-reference name" chapter="Antworten" page="23"/> print "Antworten. Seite 23." or whatever you choose on translate.wiki. pon_or (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

What is translate.wiki? Jc3s5h (talk) 19:12, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I think they meant https://translatewiki.net/ -- Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:10, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE): why not <ref name="Miller" page="23" details="Chapter 1 and other details" />? That is perfectly intuitive. On the other hand, using templates within HTML syntax is highly weird and difficult to learn, especially to newbies.

@Jc3s5h: translatewiki.net is a centralized platform for translating user interfaces, used by MediaWiki and other projects. — Yerpo ^Eh? 16:17, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Adding more attributes would further complicate the wikitext. The translatewiki idea appears to be similar to some ideas WikiCite has proposed – but this would require changes to the referencing system as a whole in order to be truly useful. Just making a single part of a (sub-)reference translatable via translatewiki while everything else still needs to be translated manually doesn't seem worth the extra effort. And changing the entire referencing system would require community consensus which doesn't seem likely at the moment. That's why we are creating the new feature as closely as possible to existing ways of using references.

Yes, templates within HTML syntax are unusual, but our user testing shows that wikitext users manage working with them. Newbies usually use VisualEditor to create references. In fact our user tests show that even many experience users switch to VE to use VE's auto-creation feature for references. Interestingly according to our user tests many newbies don't even realize they are using templates when filling out the "form" which creates a reference (-> cite book / cite web in VE's template editor). Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 09:59, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

@Johannes Richter (WMDE) What is the post-expand include size impact on having templates nested inside a parameter to an extension tag? Does it double-count it as if it were a parameter to another template? I've seen a lot of pages on enwiki that have hit the include size limit purely from {{cite web}} and other similar templates, but now we'd have a template on each re-use as well. -- Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:13, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Ahecht, you could actually use sub-referencing to reduce the number of templates. Take this example [14] with three cite book templates because of similar but not identical references – sub-references would allow getting rid of two templates [15]. You can of course also use templates within sub-references [16] but even that should lead to a reduction of post-expand size. To my knowledge there's no "double counting", it shouldn't matter if the template is inside or outside the "details"-attribute. We therefore don't expect sub-referencing to negatively affect parser limits. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 09:25, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Voicing significant support for the {{subref}} form of including details, though I wonder if it would be preferable to use it in place of <ref> tags in the first place? Something like {{subref|refname="REFNAME"|page=...}} might be easier to read inline than <ref name="REFNAME" details="{{subref|page=...}}"/>. Corsaka (talk) 12:25, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I will note - this concept struggles when declaring a new reference with <ref name="REFNAME" details"{{subref|page=...}}>Source name, access date, etc</ref>, and would only really shine when references are declared at the end of the article. So perhaps not. Corsaka (talk) 12:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

There can be confusion if one style of page numbers is used in the main reference, and a different style in the additional cites using details. Suppose two articles are cited using the same citation template:

{{cite journal |journal=IBM Journal of Research and Development |title=Making negatives and plates for printing by electroerosion: Introduction and overview |pages=458–465 |last1=Pennington |first1=K. S. |volume=35| issue=4 |date=July 1991}}

• Pennington, K. S. (July 1991). "Making negatives and plates for printing by electroerosion: Introduction and overview". IBM Journal of Research and Development 35 (4): 458–465. 

{{cite journal |journal=IBM Journal of Research and Development |title=The art of fractal landscapes |pages=535–540 |last1=Musgrave |first1=F. K. |last2=Mandelbrot |first2=B. B. |volume=35| issue=4 |date=July 1991}}

• Musgrave, F. K.; Mandelbrot, B. B. (July 1991). "The art of fractal landscapes". IBM Journal of Research and Development 35 (4): 535–540. 

Now consider that the details syntax is used to refer to specific pages in these articles. The format for pages will be different in the main citation compared to the detail citation. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jc3s5h (talk)

Hi @Jc3s5h, this [17] is how sub-references will look like in the reference section and in references previews (some details might still change). The main reference shouldn't contain a page number once you are using it with sub-references to avoid confusion. When testing sub-references on betawiki I don't see a visual difference with and without a template in the main reference? --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 10:27, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

In the case of citations of periodical articles, it is customary to cite the page range of the entire article in the main citation. This is so that when requesting a copy of a paper article from a distant library, the person copying the article can just go by the page numbers and not try to discern where the article begins and ends (eliminating the need to find and read the table of contents).

An example of a citation of a journal from MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Modern Language Assoc., 2009, p. 137):

Piper, Andrew. "Rethinking the Print Object: Goethe and the Book of Everything" PMLA 121.1 (2006): 124-38. Print.

Jc3s5h (talk) 11:25, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if one would even use sub-references in that case? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The example article is 15 pages long. If one paragraph in the Wikipedia article is supported by material on page 126, another paragraph is supported by page 133, and a third paragraph is supported by page 124, one would want to use subreferences to direct the reader to the appropriate page, rather than expecting the reader to search through all 15 pages to find the support for each paragraph. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In that case, leave the page numbers in the main reference and add the specific page numbers in the sub-reference, this [18] is how that would look like. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:27, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Exactly. But it's just a little jarring that the page format is different in the main citation and the details (no "p." in the main, but present in the details). Jc3s5h (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Ahh ok, communities can of course choose their own citation styles for sub-referencing and define for themselves how local templates should format the page number (or just don't use any template for sub-references). Personally I think just giving the number would be confusing, not sure if readers would understand that the numbers at 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 are supposed to be page numbers if there's no "p." or "page". Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The subreferences must state what kind of location is being given, because it could be a page, chapter, paragraph, or whatever. But many popular styles for the main citation identify the meaning of numbers by their position within the citation, so there is an inherent conflict. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:27, 8 May 2025 (UTC)