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Footnotes: using a source more than once edit

Section Help:Footnotes#Footnotes: using a source more than once describe the case where there are multiple identical citations of the same source. It does not, however, describe, e.g., the use of {{rp}} to cite different locations within the same source, quoting different passages within the same source. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:12, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

See also Help:Shortened footnotes. Using shortened footnotes you write the source citation once at the bottom, then use references to link to it. The references can include page numbers or other location information which will be collated automatically. See as an example NBR 224 and 420 Classes and note that, for instance reference 10 shows 5 references to page 66 being collected together and that there 8 different pages references in SLS (1970), yet the full bibliographic citation is only required once. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:43, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, {{sfn}} is useful, but |ps= doesn't provide the functionality of |quote=, and repurposing |loc= to provide a quote is kludgy at best.
IAC, shouldn't there be some guidance for new editors in that section? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:19, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
You can use the {{harv}} family of templates if you want to do something specific with a quote, as something like {{harvnb}} or {{harvp}} is used inside ref tags. So you can include anytext, including urls that can't be used in quote fields, after the template but before the closing tag.
I think the issue with going to far into the details of any particular way of referencing is that it's just one way of doing referencing, and none of them are more or less acceptable (apart from parenthical per WP:PAREN). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested transmissions °co-ords° 19:43, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Period at the end of a footnote edit

This guide doesn't specify whether to put a period at the end of a footnote that isn't a complete sentence. It contains some examples that do and some that don't. Something should be said about this – either that a period should or shouldn't be placed, or that this should be handled consistently within a footnote section, or that it's up to the author of the individual footnote. Joriki (talk) 12:26, 6 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Can you provide an example? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 02:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The footnote text "LibreOffice For Starters, First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18" is used several times, mostly without a period at the end, but in the section Footnotes: using a source more than once it's used with a period (twice). In the section Footnotes: embedding references, all the footnotes end in a period. In the section Footnotes: predefined groups, none of them do. In the section Footnotes: groups, the ones in the Notes section don't but the one in the References section does. Joriki (talk) 10:46, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fair point. I think in general they should have a period at the end, because that indicates more that a word set has ended rather than not having it. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Beware that this can be an issue of WP:CITEVAR. The reason some of the references have a period at the end is because they use {{cite book}}, which generates an output with a period at the end. If {{citation}} was used it wouldn't have a period at the end. Obviously when plain text is used it will be a matter of preference. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested transmissions °co-ords° 22:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fair point. References are mostly nowadays automatic. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
So, if I understand WP:CITEVAR correctly, this should be handled consistently per article, based on the prevailing style of the article? If so, I think it would be good to mention that on this help page, and to make the footnotes in the section Footnotes: groups consistent (since they're meant to be in the same article). Joriki (talk) 11:00, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Any guidance given should distinguish between explanatory footnotes and references; if the rules are the same, it should use wording like "for both explanatory footenotes and references,". -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't have a hard and fast rule to distinguish between what is a footnote and what is a reference. You can use {{efn}} or |group= and have them listed separately, or you can just mix them in with all the other references. You could even then call the article section that contains all of those explanatory notes and references "Footnotes". All of that would be acceptable by Wikipedia's standards. Trying to set one hard rule would run foul of WP:CITEVAR. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested transmissions °co-ords° 11:23, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I wasn't suggesting setting one hard rule after you pointed out WP:CITEVAR. Please see above for my suggestion. Joriki (talk) 12:02, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This was in reply to Metz's comment about clarifying the difference between footnotes and references, not your suggestion. I have nothing against making the page more consistent. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested transmissions °co-ords° 17:06, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Based on the discussion above, I removed a period in Footnotes: groups to make the example consistent. I'd suggest adding something like this: "The style of footnotes (e.g. whether footnotes that aren't complete sentences end in a period) should be consistent within an article but may vary across articles. See also WP:CITEVAR." But I don't see a good place for this – the only place that currently has this level of detail is Formatting ref tags, but this is about all footnotes, not just ref tags. Joriki (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

List-defined references in the Visual Editor edit

Hi, this page says "Note that when you use the visual editor, you will not be able to add, remove, or change list-defined references." but it seems that they now work? Was this fixed recently? They still do not work with Template:reflist. Rjjiii(talk) 00:38, 21 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

After research, this was a top request in the 2023 Survey.[1] It came up on phabricator to be resolved.[2] User:ESanders (WMF) fixed it by the end of May 2023. In the discussion on Phabricator, matmarex says, "we already have a special-case support for templates that generate a reflist. Since we already treat it like a "real" references list, any new features should work here as well. [...] However, supporting references defined using {{reflist|refs= ... }} would require rich editing of templates."
WhatamIdoing, I think you added the Note that when you use the visual editor... line a few years back. Do you consider the issue resolved now?
And a larger discussion should probably take place, I'm not sure but maybe at WP:VPT, on whether to retain or deprecate "{{reflist|refs= ... }}". Rjjiii (talk) 02:11, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Rjjiii, it looks like it is possible to remove and change list-defined references (at least when the references tag is being used directly; I didn't test it against the more common template). I don't see a way to add new ones; the normal method adds it inline.
Also, @ESanders (WMF): Please open my sandbox in the visual editor and how the references list in the first section misbehaves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the reply. After discussing this here and there,[3] I took some time to experiment and fixed up the police jury article, which previously used a single bare URL for a single paragraph.[4] I used only list-defined references and no templates in the body test to make a functional test page. I believe you're correct about there being no way to add a list-defined reference from the visual editor; there also does not seem to be a way to delete them (yet). I've held off updating any documentation as they still don't fully work in the visual editor. Rjjiii (talk) 05:50, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Names must not be totally numeric - Visual editor edit

Today I learned that "names must not be totally numeric" – isn't this out of date now that we have visual editor which automatically assigns numeric names? Perhaps that point could be reworded to make an exception fo #visualeditors? Cielquiparle (talk) 04:31, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

It would be better to change Visual Editor to not do that. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:56, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The Visual Editor's reference names are not totally numeric, as they begin with a colon. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:53, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the clarification, @John of Reading and @Nikkimaria. Agree with both. Cielquiparle (talk) 15:55, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply