Use wikEd (Preferences / Gadgets). The colour-coding generated by this tool is a big help in making such text readable.

True. But how then would you cite inline? It would be good if you could just have the ref tags inline and the full citation somewhere else - like when using BibTex - but that doesn't seem possible here.

The solution I always use is the Harvard method. I.e. keep the inline ref as short as possible (author's name and date of publication, using a, b, c &c if more than one in the same year), then have a separate 'references' section containing the full links.

A particular hostile editor claimed this method (the Harvard one, used in all academic referencing) was ugly and not standard Wikipedia method bla bla.

I agree a perfect system would allow inline referencing and citation list that was automatic (i.e. no need for separate notes and references) but given that does not exist, Harvard method only reasonable alternative in my view.

The solution I always use is the Harvard method. I.e. keep the inline ref as short as possible (author's name and date of publication, using a, b, c &c if more than one in the same year), then have a separate 'references' section containing the full links.

A particular hostile editor claimed this method (the Harvard one, used in all academic referencing) was ugly and not standard Wikipedia method bla bla.

I agree a perfect system would allow inline referencing and citation list that was automatic (i.e. no need for separate notes and references) but given that does not exist, Harvard method only reasonable alternative in my view.

I don't agree it's "the only reasonable alternative". It is AN alternative.

The Harvard method is acceptable in Wikipedia practice, and if I work on an article that already uses it, I adhere to it, but for articles I start (or add the initial references to) myself, I prefer inline. I like having the material close at hand, it's more convenient (I can edit in only a section instead of having to edit the whole page, I just throw a <references/> tag in temporarily to check what I added formats right). If someone adds a Harvard style ref to an article that already has a preponderance of inline, I change it unless I have reason to believe they are going to undertake to convert the rest shortly, as a mix of the two is ugly and inconvenient for the reader.

But not standard wiki method? Rubbish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harvard_referencing (not that you need anyone to confirm this)
[indent]Author-date referencing, also known as the Harvard system [...] is one of three citation styles recommended for Wikipedia. sible to create a separate section for footnotes (or maybe there is and I've overlooked it).

Frankly, get over yourself. This isn't an academic tome, its Wikipedia, and the style used on the article is the style used in DOZENS of featured articles, if not hundreds. It is the most common citation style here and extremely, widely acceptable. If you don't like looking at it, I suggest you stick to the more mundane academia topics here where the Harvard style is actually liked and common. It isn't used much anywhere else. Collectonian (talk) 19:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the programming types find it easier.

I sympathise - I don't think there is a magic editing solution, but it would be nice if there was. Perhaps if there were two side by side edit fields (or something better for the editable table of references), so as you edited you could use a reference code and then maintain a separate reference list as you wrote. Some really nice Google Calendar Ajaxing approach could solve the problem.

It seems that it is a problem worth solving. It would be interesting to know how many would be editors dropped out because they couldn't be bothered with the hassle of editing the references.

This would not be impossible to 'fix' with Wikipedia if there were some 'trust' system where editors who have earned a lot of trust had more say than any idiot.

True. But how then would you cite inline? It would be good if you could just have the ref tags inline and the full citation somewhere else - like when using BibTex - but that doesn't seem possible here.

True dat - it doesn't bother me. I would suggest that you use Harvard when adding to currently unsourced articles...general practice is to go with whatever the article's "author" used (WP:OWN and all!).

God, you're bitching about this here, too, Peter? Get over it, and stop denigrating other editors because they edit things you think are superfluous. Lots of people think Pokemon are important, ok?

You and I […] are two random guys who might be tenured professors of theology at a private college, or we might just be 24 year-old basement dwellers. The cites back up our claims. Believing that there should be a system wherein "trusted" editors are given more consideration weight is exactly the kind of elitist bullshit Wikipedia does not need any more of.

No matter the set-up, Wikipedia will always attract editors who will go full-out in one style of editing. Maybe there are people who love to make lists. Let them! Maybe some people obsess over Power Rangers. Let them! Some people like medieval philosophy. I personally don't, but I'm not going to go on a diatribe about how it's worthless and only attracts shitty editors who can't edit anything more than one line at a time. That would be immature. I sure would hate to look the fool by making ignorant comments like that, eh?

Consider the fictional characters of Pokémon, the Japanese game franchise with a huge global following, for example. Almost 500 of them have biographies on the English-language version of Wikipedia (the largest edition, with over 2m entries), with a level of detail that many real characters would envy. But search for biographies of the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and you would find no more than a dozen—and they are rather poorly edited.

Less of that boring European shit, less anything more than 25 years old, unless it is a list of the original Star Trek episodes in date order, I agree. Yes.

The cites back up our claims. Believing that there should be a system wherein "trusted" editors are given more consideration weight is exactly the kind of elitist bullshit Wikipedia does not need any more of.

What I actually expressed was amazement that an area that covers 2,500 years of history could be said to be ‘narrow’ whereas Pokemon or whatever is broad. Your comments are in any case intended as ironical, I take it, on the lines of the Defender of the Wiki?

Death to all those trolls who write that BORING EUROPEAN POOP.

Wikipedia is by far large enough for people of all stripes to edit as they please

You mean the box that says "This user would like to see everyone using inline citations. Please..."?

I made you a userbox just for you. Simply paste this into your userpage, and don't sweat it!

{{Userbox |Crimson |White |[[Image:Harvard Wreath Logo 1.svg|50px]] |This user would like to see everyone using [[Harvard citations]]. Please...}}

Well, sweat the part where I didn't feel like uploading a tiny version of that logo just for this, so it'll probably end up getting yanked within a day or two by a bot, but still. The thought that counts, right?

Is there anything about this discussion that prevents it from being conducted on the appropriate Wikipedia talk page?

Jon

Nothing at all. Unless you want to destroy Wikipedia, which this won't.

You must know, Jon, that everyone who worked on the Philosophy pages of Wikipedia regarded you as a great stinking troll. You have nothing useful to add to anything you have ever touched.

And yet they WUB my common scents so much that I can hardly get them to remove a tithe of it.

trying to destroy The Wikipedia Review's effectiveness

drowning it in utter noisome trivia

In the beginning, while it is still evident to everyone concerned that these symbols are mined from the matrix of their usual interpretations, which are generally more diverse than unique, these abstracted symbols are commonly referred to as '[[uninterpreted symbol]]s', the sense being that they are transiently detached from their interpretations simply for the sake of extra facility in processing the more general thrust of their meanings, after which intermediary process they will have their concrete meanings restored.

+ When we start to hear these abstract, general, uninterpreted symbols being described as 'meaningless' symbols, then we can be sure that a certain line in our sand-reckoning has been crossed, and that the crossers thereof have hefted or sublimated '[[formalism]]' to the status of a full-blown [[Weltanschauung]] rather than a simple [[heuristic]] device.

+ What we observe here is a familiar form of cyclic process, with the crest of excess followed by the slough of despond. The inflationary boom that raises 'formalism' beyond its formative sphere as one among a host of equally useful heuristic tricks to the status of a totalizing worldview leads perforce to the deflationary bust that makes of 'formalist' a pejorative term.

+ The point of the foregoing discussion is this, that one of the main difficulties that we have in understanding what the whole complex of words rooted in 'form' meant to Peirce is that we find ourselves, historically speaking, on opposite sides of this cycle of ideas from him.

+ And so we are required, as so often happens in trying to read a writer of another age, to lift the scales of the years from our eyes, to drop the reticles that have encrusted themselves on our 'reading glasses', our [[hermeneutic]] scopes, due to the interpolant philosophical schemata that have managed to enscounce themselves in our unthinking culture over the years that separate us from the writer in question.

I just use simple refs <ref>----url-----</ref>, and {{reflist}} at the bottom. I know some people see that as wrong, but the other ones I can never get right.

I had a look at your crappy article on Peirce and I'm glad to see you lifted some material I put into the article on Schroeder, who is Peirce's only real claim to any academic interest (him being mostly an obscure American windbag, a subject dear to your heart I am sure).