Biocrawler:Footnote3
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
This page covers a fourth experimental automatically numbered references proposal[1] (http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Biocrawler:Footnote3#endnote_autonumber). The idea is that the footnotes should be generated using a template {{ref|<name>}} inline with the text and citation below made of a template in a numbered list # {{note|<name>}}.
Verifiability is one of the key aspects of producing good material for Biocrawler, for this reason there is a policy to cite sources. However, if full details of every source of information of every fact are kept inline text becomes unreadable. Footnotes provide a good compromise for citing sources. They allow enough detail to be stored that even if an internet source disappears from it's current URL it can probably still be verified, at the same time footnotes barely cause the reader to pause.
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How to use
Just choose a one word descriptive name for your reference and put {{ref|<name>}} where you want the footnote number to be and put a numbered list at the bottom of your document # {{note|<name>}}. Use a separate note for each reference. See the example below.
Example
This is an example of a whole document in wiki format{{ref|myref-25}}.
==Notes==
# {{note|myref-25}} and this is a note about the text from page 25
of a book. If known, give full reference including title, author, and ISBN.
It is encouraged that references use citation templates such as shown in Biocrawler:Cite_your_sources#Citation_templates.
Style recommendations
- Internal links should still be used as normal ([[like this]]).
- External links should be avoided in normal text since they break easily
- External links in external links sections are fine, but should not be needed for the article text to be complete and verifiable.
- External links should always be titled ([http://example.com like this])
- Consider using a separate bibliography section if the same book reference is used in multiple footnotes. In this case, just the page number and book name can be given in each note.
- where possible choose a name for each link which matches the author/page system used by academics use a single word and a hyphen to connect the page number (hunter-47)
- if you don't know the page number, just use a single word (field)
- with multiple books by the same author, make a difference b.g. hunterA-22, hunterA-46 & hunterB-35 for page 22 and 46 of hunter's first book and page 35 of her second book.
Instructing other editors
As the Footnote3 structure does not appear to be entirely intuitive to all editors, and as notes being placed in the wrong order can affect the order of all following notes, making notes appear as if they do not match up, a boilerplate set of instructions can be inserted at the top of the Notes section, marked off to hide it from the actual article:
<!-- Instructions for adding a footnote:
NOTE: Footnotes in this article use names, not numbers. Please see [[Biocrawler:Footnote3]] for details.
1) Assign your footnote a unique name, for example TheSun_Dec9.
2) Add the macro {{ref|TheSun_Dec9}} to the body of the article, where you want the new footnote.
3) Take note of the name of the footnote that immediately proceeds yours in the article body.
4) Add #{{Note|TheSun_Dec9}} to the list, immediately below the footnote you noted in step3.
5) Multiple footnotes to the same reference will not work: you must insert two uniquely-named footnotes.
NOTE: It is important to add the Footnote in the right order in the list.
-->
Why a new method
The benefits of this method are that
- references are automatically numbered as are the notes (though it is possible to mess up the two sequences)
- even if the sequences get out of sync, it is easy to work out how to fix it.
- references occur as a small number in the text which does not disturb the flow of the writing
- there is no need for manual renumbering as had to be done with previous proposals
This method introduces some changes to the writing of pages where it is used
- external links should not be made through numbered links ([http://example.com]), instead the text of the link should be included ([http://example.com Example]). This is good style anyway.
- footnotes cannot be reused in different places. Separate notes have to be used.
This method has the following disadvantages.
- there can only be one sequence of notes from the text.
- it's not possible to test new footnotes whilst previewing (though you can test the back link, which should really confirm both)
Other Template Names
Originally this proposal used the {{an|<name>}} template and {{anb|<name>}} template; these should be considered obsolete, though they still work in order to allow articles to be converted without anything breaking. The {{endnote|<name>}} template was used in another earlier proposal which was converted to use the same system as is listed here. Just substituting {{an| with {{ref| and {{anb| with {{note| in a text editor or wordprocessor should update your page from the first system. Substituting {{endnote| with {{note| should update pages in the second system.
Design Goals
The design goals behind this system were
- get something working with the current Wikimedia software.
- make a very short easy to use template
- get rid of complex renumbering edits (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J%F6rg_Friedrich&diff=10262311&oldid=10260170)
- avoid disturbing the flow of text too much
- maintain nice features of fn/fnb template (back link from footnote to text & simplicity for example)
- remain reasonably accessible[2] (http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Biocrawler:Footnote3#endnote_fn_on_web)
- provide semantic markup to help future proofing.
Possible Extensions
The template could be altered so that it is easy to switch off footnotes using CSS if anybody doesn't like the look of them.
Migration strategy
There is a perl script numlink2note.pl available which automatically converts a numbered URL links in a page into footnotes with this system. The references should still be hand checked, but at least part of the work is done.
Migration from old footnote systems should be reasonably easy to automate. As an intermediate measure, the embedded footnote numbers can be used as temporary footnote names until better ones are generated manually.
The {{fn|<name>}} template and {{fnb|<name>}} template can be simply changed to match an and note templates. The following substitution (untested perl code).
m/\{\{fnb/ && /s/^\*/\#/ ;
will provide automatic numbering of footnote comments.
The following code will warn about pages which use links without text.
m,\[[a-z]://\W*\],i && warn "unprotected url in text";
Future proofing
- this section is somewhat speculative. further comments needed from those who have ideas about future systems
- Development of future systems probably should be done at: Biocrawler:WikiProject Wikicite
Reference semantics
Since the system more or less corresponds to semantic mark up, migration to future systems should be easy. The use of correct name tags according to the style recommendations should allow automatic generation of author / page information and nice titles.
- As shown in Biocrawler:Cite sources#Citation templates, at present different templates are needed for book, journal, and web references due to existing programming. However, there should be a single "Reference" template which can be given many fields.
Footnote features
If a wikimedia feature turns up which provides footnotes it is likely to be possible to simply change the templates to use it. This would allow templated material to appear similar to material using the new feature (until templated material is converted to use the new feature).
- As previously suggested, there would be advantages to Biocrawler maintaining a citations database. References would be stored in standard format and articles would then use links to stored references. If we can identify components of references now, within existing methods, the info could later be automatically converted. See: Biocrawler:WikiProject Wikicite
How does it work?
The {{ref|<name>}} template uses tricks listed in m:Help:Variable to create an external wiki link back to a section in the same page (like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Page.html#footnote]). This external link is then automatically numbered by the normal numbering system for external links without link text. The link is surrounded in a sup tag which makes it look like a footnote and gives a reference that the footnote can link back to.
{{ref|footnote}}
becomes
<sup id="fn_footnote_back" class="plainlinks>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Page.html#fn_footnote]</sup>
The {{note|<name>}} template is a bit simpler, and is basically a copy of the older {{fnb|<name>}} template. This just creates a section link back to the location of the footnote.
# {{note|footnote}}
becomes
# <cite id="fn_footnote">[[#fn_footnote_back|Note]]: </cite>
Normal link and list numbering then gives us our automatic numbering of the footnotes.
Script support
There are a couple of scripts available to support this system. These are stored online more for discussion than for download. If you want to use them on your system be very careful to check you get a version which has been uploaded by a trusted person.
Biocrawler:Footnote3/numlink2note.pl is a script which converts numbered links in a page ([http://example.com]) into footnotes with the link in the footnote. It automates a fairly simple repetative task, but afterwards all of the notes have to be improved with comments and proper names. See the talk page for more info.
Biocrawler:Footnote3/order-footnote.pl is a script which fixes the order of the notes at the bottom of the page to match the order of the references in the page. It inserts additional notes wherever they are missing and moves notes which are not referenced to the end of the notes list. Again, see the talk page for more info.
See Also
- cite sources
- Biocrawler:Footnotes
- Biocrawler:Footnote2
- Biocrawler:Footnote4 - a complementary manually numbered proposal
- Biocrawler:References
- verifiability
- Biocrawler:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
References
- ^ there have been several other footnote proposals so far. See also Biocrawler:Footnotes, Biocrawler:Footnote2, and Biocrawler:References
- ^ If footnotes are too small, then they are difficult for some people to use. See Footnotes (or endnotes) on Web pages (http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/fn.html), Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, 2003-08-22, retrieved 2005-02-19 from http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/fn.html
