M Roberts

Thanks Jay. I put it all out there in the hope others will add and improve wherever possible.

Cheers, M

Hi Philip. Thanks. I'm still experimenting with the referencing here, so I welcome feedback. My reasoning for separating hyperlinks is to improve readability (both in the mark-up, and in the output). I find raw hyperlinks and the superscript indexing (for multiple entries), in the inline referencing particularly, to be virtually unreadable. My thinking is that the inline referencing should provide a concise and easily readable way of checking where a fact has come from as you read, while the list of sources at the bottom, in the form of a bibliography (with hyperlinks), can be readily consulted if the reader actually wants to go to the source for verification. You can see from the Peter Mosse profile (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mosse-63), which I've played around with as a template, that when there are multiple references (with different page numbers, for example) to a single source, you do not in fact get "lists of duplicate references", because the page numbers corresponding to specific facts are included in the inline reference, but not in the bibliography. This is more noticeable when books or journals are referenced, rather than websites. I think as the pages become more lengthy, the readability becomes a real issue. I have a lot of interesting biographical information I'm hoping to add to the Nickson, Hodson, and Culme families over the next few weeks and months, when time permits, so I am experimenting a little bit, with this in mind. Cheers.

Well, I can see that you have good intentions with your personal citation system, but I'm afraid that goes against the the WikiTree guidelines that you agreed to abide by. We all have to use the same system, otherwise pages would be a confusing mess of different standards, and some automated tools such as error checkers wouldn't work, same as on Wikipedia. Hence the rule: "despite their advantages, these alternative methods [...] should not be used, especially on Open profiles." Please see:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources#Repeated_use_of_the_same_source_in_the_same_profile https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Alternative_Sourcing_Methods

A good way to cite separate pages from a single source is to use blockquotes. This allows instant access to any page, but keeps them together. For example: <nowiki><ref>John Smith, The Smith History Book, 1950, https://www.smithbook.com<blockquote>page 12 "John was born in 1900."</blockquote><blockquote>page 34 "He married Jane Jones."</blockquote></ref></nowiki>

One last thing: The long website address needs to be part of the citation (as in the example above), not hidden away behind a hyperlink as you've been doing. This makes it easier to see the source of the information, and is necessary in case someone prints the page or copy and pastes the citation elsewhere. This is the same standard used by Wikipedia, FamilySearch, FindAGrave, etc.

I'm not trying to complain, I'm just pointing you toward the community rules now before you do loads of work and then have to go back and change it all.

Thanks Hilary. Just browsing around for the minute. :)