Help talk:Footnotes

{{refn|group=nb|

Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Why is this being recommended? Surely

  1. {{efn}} is far more editor friendly and the notes it contains can (and often should) have their own citations using <ref>...</ref> as normal, no jumping through hoops required.
  2. footnote markers like nb 1 would seem to violate MOS:NOTE

What have I missed? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would suggest moving to efns to make things easy and clearer. Having a default way of achieving notes might stop editors from trying to embed short form reference templates inside ref tags. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:39, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I see that example was added in Special:Diff/450182260 in September 2011, which is not too long after the ability to use custom labels (e.g. MediaWiki:Cite link label group-lower-alpha) was added. Prior to that, short labels like group=n were common, as [n 1] or [nb 1] is less obtrusive than [note 1] or [some-other-long-prefix 1]. It may be that the author just didn't know that group=lower-alpha existed when they wrote it, and later editors didn't think to update it. P.S. I note that {{efn}} and {{refn|group=lower-alpha}} will do basically the same thing, and {{refn}} also works without |group= if that sort of nested ref is desired. Anomie⚔ 15:48, 2 January 2026 (UTC)Reply

RfC notice: VisualEditor automatic reference names

Latest comment: 5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi, I’m Johannes from Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team. We are considering to work on Community Wishlist/W17: Improve VE references' automatic names and reuse. This has been a long-term issue for wikitext editors (see e.g. WP:VisualEditor/Named references) which has been among the top-voted wishes in several Community Wishlist Surveys, e.g. 2017, 2019, 2022 or 2023.

Further information: m:WMDE Technical Wishes/References/VisualEditor automatic reference names

We would like your input on the solutions proposed on our project page. We are considering several options, which can be combined if desired by the community.

  • Changing the default pattern for automatically generated reference names (currently ":n", e.g. ":0", ":1"...) to use the reference type instead (e.g. "book_reference-1").
  • Providing a simple mechanism for communities to configure a different default name.
  • Generating automatic reference names based on the domain name (if it’s a web citation).
  • Generating automatic reference names based on template parameters (e.g. "title" or "last"+"first") – defined by the community.

Feedback

Visit our project page to read about our proposal in detail and share your thoughts on metawiki.

Please note: We will only implement a solution if there’s clear consensus among the global community. Our intention is not to build the perfect solution, but to find a simple and lean one that alleviates the pain caused by auto generated names. We are aware that some experienced VisualEditor users might prefer an option to manually change reference names in VisualEditor, but such a UX intervention is difficult to achieve across reference types and thus out of scope for our team, we can only improve the auto-naming mechanism. We are happy about suggestions for improving certain details of the proposed solutions. Any other feedback and alternative proposals are also welcome – even though it’s out of scope for us, it might still be relevant for future work on this topic.

Please support us interpreting consensus by clearly indicating your opinion (e.g. by using support/neutral/oppose templates). We are aware of WP:NOTVOTE, but given that we are facilitating this discussion with users from different wikis, potentially commenting in their native language, clearly indicating your position helps us avoid misunderstandings.

Thank you for participating! --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:53, 19 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

How do we edit the text inside the refname rules template?

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The article has a VERY helpful part that says this: "The actual name used can be almost anything, but it is recommended that it have information derived from the citation or note. A common practice is to use the author-year or publisher-year for the reference name. This helps editors remember the name by associating it with the information that is visible to the reader. "

However, the bullet list auto-inserted by {{refname rules}} doesn't include that great version of the advice I quoted above, though a point in the middle of the list talks about the same thing (but less clearly).

So, I wanted to move (and re-vise/strengthen) that very helpful part into the bullet list in the spot that already talks about it, and I also wanted to clarify/strength the phrasing of some of the advice. But I can't find where the actual page/text is for the text auto-inserted by {{refname rules}}. I tried a few pages, but I don't see it. When using Edit Source, it just shows the {{refname rules}} tag. RandomEditor6772314 (talk) 01:40, 20 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Have you visited Template:Refname rules? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

Example with both names and groups

Latest comment: 8 hours ago6 comments2 people in discussion

I provided an example with both names and groups. Improvements are welcome. I made the bold assertion "But unlike regular named references, which can be list-defined, group named references have to be defined in the running text." Based on experiments, I believe this is correct. However, if it is incorrect, it should be removed and instead, an example should be provided that shows how to use list-defined group named references. This is a real issue; I was editing Liga Bet to convert hand-made references into proper Wiki markup, and I was unable to get list-defined group named references to work. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:07, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

If you're talking about Special:Diff/1370398412, I see two errors in there. First, it's <references group=note>, not <references|group=note> (i.e. space, not pipe). Second, in the table you did like <ref group=note name="r1"</ref>, missing a >. It should be either <ref group=note name="r1"></ref> or <ref group=note name="r1" />, with the latter more usually used. Anomie⚔ 01:57, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Anomie: No, that edit accidentally saved while I was experimenting, and I reverted it. I hope you are OK with Special:Diff/1370402672. This version includes one group named reference in running text. Please let me know if you see any issues with it. —Anomalocaris (talk) 03:05, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You said you had tried to convert Liga Bet and failed to get it to work. Special:Diff/1370398412 was the only edit I saw attempting to do so, so I gave it a quick look to see what went wrong. Anomie⚔ 10:55, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Anomie: You removed the sentence "But unlike regular named references, which can be list-defined, group named references have to be defined in the running text." Please insert an example showing how to do list-defined group named references. It isn't obvious, and I tried to get it to work. —Anomalocaris (talk) 03:10, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Anomie: Never mind, I figured out how to do it and created an example showing how to do list-defined group named references. —Anomalocaris (talk) 03:50, 21 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

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