Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Editing/VisualEditor should use human-like names for references/Proposal

• Problem: When a reference is used multiple times in the VisualEditor, it is given a numeric name like :0, :1, etc. This makes it hard for those who do source editing to reuse the reference, because you have to remember the number instead of something more specific like the name of the publication. It would be better if VisualEditor used citation metadata to give the references more human-like names.
• Proposed solution: The original idea was to be able to change the names of references, and to do away with the numeric IDs altogether. However due to how the VisualEditor data model works, it is difficult to give the references non-numeric names, or to change them at all. While it's possible to name references when they are first added, there is concern this optional field will go unused or confuse new users.

  Following the discussion below, the idea is to compromise by using citation metadata (when available) to make the reference names more memorable, but potentially still retaining the IDs. For citations with websites, we would include the domain name and a number. For example, a reference from the Guardian website (www.guardian.com), may be "guardian-0" or "guardian-1." For citations that do not have a website, we could potentially also include some automatically generated names based on the author or book title, such as "adamslaura-0." So you still wouldn't be able to change the name of any references in VE, but the automated names would be more readable.

• Who would benefit: Those who do source editing.
• More comments: This is a counter-proposal to the 2019 wish, which had to be declined due to technical complexity.
• Phabricator tickets: task T92432
• Proposer: AleatoryPonderings (talk) 01:43, 11 January 2022 (UTC)