This is a spin-off from the recent post Why are people foregoing inline citations and removing the <references /> tags?
1 Introduction.
This is a proposal for a single, universal solution to the entire set of causes of the current situation of (a) unsourced profiles (other than gedcom imports), (b) need for standardized style of citing sources across WikiTree, (c) unique preferences for work habits of all members, (d) requirement for clean looking pages for both view and editing, and (e) distaste of some members to master coding skills. Credit for conceiving this system belongs to Dale Byers.
1.1 Purpose.
This post identifies a system for adding sources to profile narratives in a way that:
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satisfies universal working styles of members
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meets the established policy of using footnotes to link to source citations
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eliminates the "bloat" effect interspersing citations with narrative content.
1.2 Scope.
This post includes:
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description of the appearance of profile view and editing pages that use the system
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cost/benefit analysis of implementing the system
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instruction (with no technobabble) for how to add the coded source citations to a profile page, including explanation of what the codes mean.
2 Appearance of Profile Pages.
There are two types of profile pages - the veiw page and the editing page.
2.1 Appearance of View Page.
The impact on both types of view pages (public and private) will be identical. These pages will appear identical to pages that use the current Source Style Guide with only one difference. A single line, immediately below the "Sources" heading will have a superfluous set of all the footnote numbers.
Note: this can be mitigated very easily if WikiTree chooses to add a single line to the master css file that will have no impact on anything else on the entire website, but will cause that line of footnote numbers to not be displayed.
2.2 Appearance of Editing Page.
The "==Biography==" section of the editing page will have only a single tag immediately following each statement of fact that is supported by a source. The citation itself will not be in the middle of the narrative, so that the user sees a smoothly flowing narrative.
The "==Sources==" section of the editing page will start with a list of all the source citations. Display of each citation will consist of a start (<ref name="something">) tag on its own line, followed by the citation, and finally an end (/ref) tag on the next line, so that the user sees each citation clearly separated from codes and other citations.
The "<references />" tag will be displayed on the line immediately below the last citation that supports a statement in the "Biography" section.
If the optional "See also:", followed by additional source citations that do not support statements in the biography is used, then these items will be displayed below the "<references />" tag.
3. The Codes and How They Work.
The key to being comfortable using codes is to understand what they do. Please consider this as no different from learning to communicate with a person who speaks a language you do not understand. When you try to use that person's language, it helps if you understand how they will view your use of certain words - just a "say this word when you mean that one" translation doesn't always do the job because of nuances and colloquialisms that may result in the person interpreting the word differently from your intent.
We use tags that comprise what is called a "markup language" (the acronym "HTML" stands for HyperText Markup Language). They give us a way of separating content (what we want displayed) from instructions about how to display the content. The tags constitute very specific commands to the computer about where to put things and whether they should be bold, italic, etc.
3.1 Tags, Instructions, and Content.
We use a "container" to designate that whatever is inside the container is an instruction. The computer will not display the instructions, but will follow them when it prepares the page for display, We use tags to indicate where the container starts and ends so that the computer can distinguish between the instructions and the content. We also need to make sure that the computer can distinguish between the tags themselves and the content.
(hit max size wall - to be continued)