Help talk:Footnotes

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Siva1979 (talk | contribs) at 08:55, 21 August 2006 (added message at the top of talk page). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Ongoing redesign of the Help System is underway at the Wikipedia:Help Project.

Formatting

Having used footnotes in this form for the first time today, I think I'd prefer large ref numbers. If we aim to massively increase the number of references then a numbering system which - as this does - ruins the leading in the text is not ideal. Although the ref numbers that are the same size as the rest of the text is unorthodox I think it looks very neat on the screen. --bodnotbod 17:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Issues

Revert-warring

There has been some revert-warring on the help page (17 May 2006), a report of that has been moved to Help talk:How to use Cite.php references#Chronology --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fate of Help:How to use Cite.php references

Decision process (aka vote) currently going on at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:How to use Cite.php references --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Previous content of Help:Footnotes

was moved to Template:Ph:Footnotes [1]

I propose to move that content (and edit history) that was moved to template: namespace, back to help: namespace, for instance to help:Footnotes by templates. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bigger picture: use of "H:", "Phh", "Ph" and other related templates in Help namespace

The way I see it the using "H:", "Phh", "Ph" (and other templates) for managing Help: namespace pages has some advantages for those help: pages that are not well maintained, i.e. have no people attending them (on their watchlist etc.) - in that case people like Omniplex can maintain quite a lot of them without much of an effort.

Disadvantages include:

  • Usually crappy layout;
  • I second the idea that "help:" namespace pages give practical help for the ordinary non-technically-experienced user/editor, and so are primary a tool for enhancing wikipedia's usability. While the H:/Phh/Ph/... system relies on copying content from meta - which can be user-friendly, but as easily can be very technical - the H:/Phh/Ph/... system can be a usability setback.
  • The H:/Phh/Ph/... system is not very supportive of non-technical users writing easy-to-understand help descriptions, so often gets in a loop of not being helpful.
  • The H:/Phh/Ph/... system can have problems in indicating en:wikipedia-specific policy/guidelines. Usually that happens in the Ph template, but then you can get contradictions between the help displayed in the first sections of the help page and the nth section of that same help: page that gives a different instruction (at least, again, confusing the user).
  • The desirability & content of the {{Phh:Reader}} template (to which most of the Phh templates redirect) completely elude me.
  • ...

Placing the help:footnotes page in this bigger picture:


Whilst I don't understand or agree with some of your arguments, such as meta pages being a "fall-back" for Wikipedia pages. I completely agree about {{Phh:Reader}}. For some reason blank templates seem unacceptable! The page it links to Help:Help also seems to somewhat duplicate Help:Contents. Just because it exists on meta doesn't mean it needs to exist here!
I think many of these meta pages come from Wikipedia originally, though many are too technical or verbose. If we were to drop the meta pages (like Wikibooks), we would need at least some recreated as Wikipedia pages. To achieve this, it would be logical to refine the meta pages. It would be even more logical to improve the meta pages, so they benefit all projects using them. Ultimately, rather than cutting and pasting, it would be better to transclude the pages, so they perform in much the same way as images from Commons (I know this would increase server load - but ultimately it is the right thing to do).
Btw. interwiki links can be placed on the Ph template with <includeonly> tags (so they don't show up on the Ph template). See Template:Ph:Edit summary. This means they don't need to be protected in the Help: page. -- Gareth Aus 00:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mbeychok's issue

I received an e-mail from Mbeychok, with following content

Francis:
I left the following message on your user Talk page almost two days ago, but have not had a response ... so I thought I would send it via this Wiki email.
Regards, User:Mbeychok
== Cite.php in Meta version is not the same as in Wikipedia version ==
Francis, I don't want to get between you and User:Omniplex. However, there is a problem:
  • Where my simplified writeup on how to use Cite.php was incorporated into Help:Footnotes it works very nicely.
  • But, where it was incorporated into m:help:footnotes it does not work because the Meta version of Cite.php still uses a vertical arrow instead of a caret ... and it uses 1.1, 1.2. 1.3, etc. instead of a, b, c, etc. for multiple use of the same references.
That difference really should be resolved somehow.- User:Mbeychok

This seems an issue to be resolved at meta to me, probably m:cite.php --Francis Schonken 10:04, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What next?

"If" (but I don't want to run ahead of the vote result) Help:How to use Cite.php references stays, and "if" the Help on footnotes-by-templates is moved to help: namespace again, I'd propose to keep this a user-friendly help page, by making two main section headers, one for an *inclusion* of the content of Help:How to use Cite.php references, one for an *inclusion* of the content of the old footnotes-by-templates help. --Francis Schonken 09:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  1. The vote resulted in "redirect", that's what I tried first. Good result, because we obviously agree that its former content is better than most of the former content here. Back from 4 to 3 pages.
  2. The next step should be to get the wanted content on the master help page, back from 3 to 2 pages. Details TBD, at the moment the difference is the missing cite.php "synopsis". That's helpful for those who have already used it and only forgot the precise "ref"-syntax.
  3. Independent point, if you want Template:Ph:Footnotes as Help:Footnotes/3 move it, the inclusion will still work over a single redirect. I don't see the point, the edit history is preserved as is, but in theory it's possible, and "footnotes/3" as pagename makes sense.
  4. The minor technical difference between cite here an on Meta is interesting, I'm too lazy to check Special:Version which site forgot to install the most recent version. It could be also a configuration issue. Actually I don't care, cite doesn't work with my browser at the moment, mediazilla:5567.
  5. Help master page system: Clumsy, but I've no better idea. Until January something styling itself as "Uncle G's bot" did the copy and paste. Doing it manually is odd, but better than different help pages on different projects for the same technical topic. The Ph-add-on is sometimes useful, Phh rarely. Meta has only Ph.
  6. Interlanguage links for help pages are maintained on Meta, click +/- at the bottom of m:Help:Footnotes and add your language, ready. Just edit the master page and copy it back. Or anything with that effect. -- Omniplex 03:26, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, did you have a problem with the present content of help:footnotes? I mean, I see a lot of innuendos in your comments above (for example, your assertion that interwiki-links are *also* handled at meta, which is no argument pro nor contra to have interwiki-links in help:footnotes at en:wikipedia) - but I didn't see *arguments*. Also the fact that Uncle G apparently has left en:wikipedia is an innuendo for which I don't see what basis it gives regarding a decision on the content of help:footnotes - maybe his bot operations were incompatible with what the en:wikipedia community wants, and maybe that was the reason why he left (I don't know, I'm only saying that Uncle G's departure is used as an innuendo without value in the present context). --Francis Schonken 09:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The new content was fine, therefore I copied it to the master page, and copied that back here. The only missing piece from the old content was or is the "synopsis" for a quick overview of the syntax. Anything else was 1:1 not touching a single comma in it.
I can't tell you how the help system as is was developed, I found out how it works, but don't know the complete history, maybe ask Patrick. Some details are obvious: One master copy with project-specific add-on templates is in theory a good idea. The few folks caring about these pages from different projects can join their forces this way. In practice it has some drawbacks, copy+paste isn't very elegant, as you've stated it destroys interlanguage links again and again. At the moment, we could improve it by managing such links on Meta.
In fact there is already a system on Meta, look at m:Template:H-langs:Footnotes (no translations) vs. m:Template:H-langs:Link (many translations). But this system is based on Meta's concept of "Help language = help namespace", with copy+paste we'll never get these H-langs templates here. But they are on Meta, good enough as far as I'm concerned. For a different example see the language links for m:ParserFunctions (again a template, only its name doesn't start with "H-langs:"), you can add links to any page in any language, the only restriction is one link per language.
So far the technical conditions (and differences between multilingual m: vs. monolingual w:en:) are obvious. For the political / historical reasons why the help system is as it is I've no idea, you're around here for some time, probably you know more about it. It's clumsy but simple. In doubt I like clumsy and simple better than elegant and complex. -- Omniplex 10:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.: Actually several links per language work in a H-langs-style template, but if they are displayed as say French French French that would be confusing.

Meeting 7/10

OK - I am going to call Jess and a couple of other recuriters and get some more info and also try and get a couple clients We are both going to work on the website Lets try and meet next week —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bbruckner (talk • contribs) 04:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Template {{refs}}

Since so many people (like me) forget the div class=references, I've added a quick and dirty template, {{refs}} to do it. Example at Oregon wine. --EngineerScotty 00:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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