Template talk:No footnotes

Is it appropriate to apply this to the section before the table of contents (the intro)?

It would look strange, but those sections are the most read sections on Wikipedia, and also very frequently are unreferenced. That's a bad look. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhinchey (talk • contribs) 08:29, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@Nhinchey: See WP:CITELEAD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:31, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Replace essay and WikiProject wikilinks

Please see Template_talk:More_footnotes#Replace_essay_and_WikiProject_wikilinks. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Change in wording

CFCF, where and when was the change in wording for this template discussed? I prefer the old version. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 19:36, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Would you care to elaborate as to why to prefer the older version? Mere preference is not a valid argument. I took consideration and a great deal of care in performing my edit; not to remove or change any of the information in the template. The template is no less precise and if possible only reduces the degree to which it is excessively polite. We have considerable issues of these templates being ignored, and politeness is not helpful there, because it is even more likely to be ignored. I removed a few uses of this template placed in 2007–2009, where editors had added footnotes, but the template was simply ignored. There is both independent research and reports from the WMF that show how the longer a message is, the less likely it is to be read. Carl Fredrik ^talk 19:58, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

You say that you took consideration and a great deal of care in performing my edit, yet you disregarded the note on the documentation page which says Please discuss changes on the talk page before implementing them.

The older version makes it more likely that a new editor will understand that inline citations are something derived from a list of references, related reading or external links. With the changed wording, a new editor might well simply move references into the text, adding to the articles with bare URLs or external links in square brackets in the text that I see every day. As for editors leaving a maintenance template on an article despite having resolved the issue, that's hardly a problem restricted to this template. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 20:38, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

This template was one of the longest maintenance templates, so that is why I edited it, despite the problem being prevalent elsewhere, per WP:OTHERSTUFF. I made the reasoned assumption that because my edit would not change the meaning of the message that it would not require discussion as per When to seek discussion for template changes.

I do not believe that in this day and age, any editor will have a problem understanding what an inline citation is. (It is very unlikely that would've had that problem 10 years ago either.) We can't specify every single possible way new editors could potentially mess up their edits — or we would not have anything but warning messages. It doesn't make sense to say that in this template, seeing as we don't plaster every other Wikipedia page with that information. There isn't really any reason to believe that other pages would be less likely to see that issue.
Information overload is a very real and very high priority issue on Wikipedia, and the shorter we can keep ourselves without losing the point of the message, the better.

P.S. — I'll add another point, about the "please discuss" on the talk page: I put that there yesterday, which seem like it was a pretty big mistake. I'm changing it back to "consider discussing" (it was "please consider discussing"). Carl Fredrik ^talk 21:08, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@CFCF: The new version is wrong. The references aren't unclear: they are right there. What is unclear is the source of the information in the article.

The original version declares that references are what the article has but that its sources (which can be interpreted more generally) remain unclear.

Try not to make changes like this in the future without discussing them. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 02:28, 29 March 2020 (UTC)