Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/Button to hide and show references in article text

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Button to hide and show references in article text

  • Problem: The problem is that some wikis use both; the classic way to mark references inside the article text, and the other way, list-defined references. The latter can't be edited with visual editor as references are marked inside the references template. This makes it difficult for those who use visual editor for editing. And those who primarily use wikitext editor, they don't like "the mess" when there are many citations next to each other in article text because it makes editing more difficult.
  • Proposed solution: Add a button that hides and shows references in article text when you click it. Only leave the reference name <ref name="xxx"/>. At least this would help some editors.
  • Who would benefit: All Wikipedia editors
  • More comments: I got this idea after reading Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Editing/Collect and move references to reference section on bottom of article.
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Stryn (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

List-defined references can actually be edited using the visual editor, but only if the references list is created using <references>…</references> rather than {{reflist|…}} or some other template. Matma Rex (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello and thanks for taking the time to write this proposal. We went and checked in with the Editing team about this and they couldn't agree on how to resolve it clearly, we therefore moved it to larger Suggestions as it's valid, but to big for us to implement. Thanks again! Regards, KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Apology for my ignorance but what is a list-defined reference? Will someone please cite a page where both forms of reference are used. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 14:43, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
References are list-defined when their definitions (<ref name="myref">…</ref> or {{r|myref|r=…}}) are located in a dedicated "References" section (inside a <references>…</references><references/> block, often wrapped into a template like {{reflist|refs=…}}) rather than interwoven with the prose in the article body. In the prose, you just "invoke" (that is, refer to) them instead of having to define them as well. The syntax to invoke a reference is exactly the same as if a single reference is used multiple times (<ref name="myref"/> or {{r|myref}}). The resulting rendering of a page is exactly the same for list-defined and inline references, so readers won't see a difference. But list-defined references make it much easier to improve the prose (because it isn't cluttered by the inline definitions of references) and also to improve the references (because you can compare them next to each other and edit them all at the same time just by editing the "References" section, instead of having to search for them in the prose), that's why many experienced editors prefer this style and many of the better-developed articles use it. See en:WP:LDR --Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining; I've learned a better way to "reference". Certainly understandable that some experienced editors prefer list-defined over primitive. Henceforth I'll use the list form. I wonder whether the primitive form might be phased out over a span of years. With the list form, hiding might not be necessary. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 18:26, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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