Talk:Community Wishlist/W249

Dziękujemy za zgłoszenie/Thank you for your submission

Hedger z Castleton, dziękuję za to szczegółowe zgłoszenie.

Jeśli dobrze rozumiem, problemy są następujące:

1. Przypisy nie informują czytelników, która część zdania lub akapitu jest weryfikowana. Jest miejsce na błąd.

2. Gdy treść w zdaniu lub akapicie jest rozszerzana, przypisy nie są przyklejone ani zakotwiczone, a obecnie nie mają funkcji zapamiętywania tego, co mają weryfikować po przeniesieniu.

Czy mam rację?

(Not a native Polish speaker so adding response in English if helpful where my translator failed):

Hedger z Castleton, thank you for this thorough submission.

If I understand you correctly, the problems are:

1. Footnotes don't reliably inform readers which part of a sentence or paragraph is being verified. There is room for error.

2. When content in a sentence or paragraph is expanded, footnotes are not sticky or anchored, and currently don't have the functionality to remember what they are supposed to verify when moved.

Am I correct?

–– STei (WMF) (talk) 13:00, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

@STei (WMF):, Yes, exactly :) Hedger z Castleton (talk) 06:35, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@STei (WMF) @Hedger z Castleton maybe this would help solve some of the problems with articles. RoodyAlien (talk) 06:23, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Similar problem mentioned in Community Wishlist/W155

Not the same solution, but a similar problem is described in Community Wishlist/W155 Shushugah (talk) 11:57, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Why this wouldn't work well & Citation-anchors

Here is one of the reasons why this wouldn't work nearly as good as you may envision it:

This is some text verified but in between there is a part not verified and this part is verified by the same source.^ref

Here the whole sentence would be marked as verified by the source, at least most commonly and there's far more complex cases than that. For example, the small unverified things may be very small parts and one reference is used for a reference to a whole long paragraph except for several parts in it and a few additional refs in between for just these parts.

Also I don't see how this would be used widely in practice, not only because there's lots of text on Wikipedia already. but also because it would be too difficult and cluttered for editors to add this.

Lastly, by the title "Cite-anchors" I first thought this was maybe about permanent links to citations so you could for example link a Wikipedia article with the anchor for the source in a discussion about the source so people can see the text about the source in the article. Let's say you see a mastodon/reddit/twitter post about a scientific study and Wikipedia has some interesting/relevant text on it but it's in a large section where people can't find/see it if you just link it with the section anchor. A citation anchor would help with that. Maybe I'll create a separate wish about it but it's probably better to add a mention of this in W440: Unique and useful automatic reference names instead of ref name=":1" etc as the citation anchor uses the refname if one is present instead of a counter that changes with edits to the page (except if you use the article revision permalink with that citation anchor). Prototyperspective (talk) 12:27, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: This would work similarly to etherpad. If you add text to an already-sourced fragment, that fragment is marked with a different color or not colored/underlined. This would work similarly to the change comparison mechanism. The anchor would apply to all text included in the citation. In the case of editorial changes, the differences would also be visible, but reviewers would be able to see whether they can accept or revert the changes. The marking should be subtle for readers. Hedger z Castleton (talk) 12:33, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Haven't reread the full wish any my full comment but I think there is a false assumption there that the text is added at a different time. Additionally, I'll add this example from my comment at related wish W155:

<reference source="source six">Fulfilled direction use continual set him propriety continued. Saw met applauded favourite deficient engrossed <reference source="source seven">concealed</reference> and her. <reference source="source one"><reference source="source two">Concluded boy perpetual old supposing. Farther related bed and <reference source="source three">passage comfort</reference> <reference source="source four">civilly.</reference> Dashwoods see frankness objection abilities the. As hastened oh produced prospect formerly up am. Placing forming nay looking old married few has. Margaret disposed add screened rendered six say his striking confined.</reference></reference></reference>

It may sound nice on paper but it wouldn't work. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:38, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Request for clarification

Do I understand that this proposal assumes that citations always (or almost always) vouch for the content that was added on that same edit? I don't think that is at all a good assumption. Many of us often add citations that cover statements that were already there and had lacked adequate citation (or even add a second, independent citation for something already decently cited). I personally think that for anything like this to work decently, the editor would have to have a way to mark explicitly which content any particular citation covers.

If replying to me, please ping, I don't maintain a watchlist on meta. - Jmabel (talk) 05:36, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: You can only mark text with an anchor/anchor template if its content is confirmed in the cited source:

{{canchor|Text sourced|Author|2025}}. Text unsourced. {{canchor|Text sourced|Author2|2022|p=54}}

This applies to both new text and old text that you can verify. This also applies to those fragments that are sourced, but it is not clear which fragment is covered by the citations - the last sentence, the entire paragraph? Hedger z Castleton (talk) 12:53, 5 March 2026 (UTC)