User talk:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing

It's just annoying because the reader doesn't know why clicking on the "a" doesn't go anywhere. But it's pretty minor compared to the benefits of this technique. Stevage 13:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Cross namespace links

Interesting tool. I was wondering if perhaps you could change the note text, which reads in part: "See User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing for a discussion." Even though this is in a hidden block, the user link still causes any page that uses Hybrid referencing to show up on Special:CrossNamespaceLinks. Perhaps you could just leave off the brackets, or use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CitationTool/Hybrid+referencing instead. I don't know. Just a suggestion. --Gnewf 06:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm unclear about what you are describing here. LotLE×talk 07:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Which part? A cross-namespace link is when there is a link to a page in a different namespace than the page the link is on. Special:CrossNamespaceLinks lists these pages, beginning with links from the main namespace to the user namespace. Often these links are created when users sign their contributions or have links to their user page for some reason. In almost all cases this isn't desirable -- links from an article should go to other articles, not user pages or anything else. Pages that use this tool will now show up on this page since the tool puts a (hidden) User link in the article text. If this persists and the tool becomes more widespread, it will slow down editors trying to find articles that contain inappropriate user links because the listing will become filled with articles that use the Hybrid referencing tool. --Gnewf 18:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still don't really understand what you are referring to. Are there articles that mention this user namespace tool? I do not know what articles do so, but feel free to modify them as you feel is appropriate. LotLE×talk 18:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Try Cuba or Shoshone National Forest. Both are listed on top of User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing, even! On the top of both of these pages, there is this hidden text:

*********************************************************************
"Hybrid" reference style allows grouped references at top, but
uses m:Cite.php style named references in article body.  See
[[User:CitationTool/Hybrid referencing]] for a discussion.
*********************************************************************

See the user link? Do you understand now? It's also on Design pattern (computer science) --Gnewf 20:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, OK. I added that comment in the first two you mention, but not in the third. Feel free to change them all. I don't think the boilerplate is anywhere "official", I just cut-and-pasted it once; and I guess someone else did a different time. LotLE×talk 22:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, sorry for the confusion! I assumed perhaps the tool created the text. I'll just drop the brackets off, since people will have to cut-and-paste the link anyway because it's hidden. Thanks! --Gnewf 01:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry I was slow understanding what you meant. The "hybrid referencing" thing is really just an essay I wrote; it's not really a "tool" per se, just a suggestion of "Hey, here's a thing you can do". The actual tool discussed in the parent does actually analyze and process articles, but it doesn't insert the hypbrid references (though it *will* leave any existing hybrid/hidden references unmolested, and even more the contents to the top hidden block if it had been elsewhere).

If you do use the actual Citation Tool, and if you also decide to use the "automatically update article" button, the tool will propose edit history text. I don't remember off the top of my head exactly the edit comment it suggests, but it might have a link in it. However, that didn't seem like it would apply to the cross-namespace thing. LotLE×talk 02:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Extra vertical whitespace

Perhaps the extra vertical whitespace could be eliminated by using:

<span style="display: none;">
... references ...
</span>

DIV's are block-level, which is why you get the blank lines. SPAN's are inline, so if you don't mind using HTML instead of the wikicode, this may solve the problem.

Qarnos 20:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

See also

See also:

• Bugzilla:18890 A proposal to incorporate essentially this functionality into cite.php.
• testwiki for the <ref hide ...> syntax variant.
• testwiki for the <ref def ...> syntax variant.

-- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:58, 5 June 2009 (UTC)