A Reference or Footnote is a data object that will live within the body content of a Page.
References on Wikipedia vs Design Proposal
References work decently well on MediaWiki (this software) as well as Substack, but they could be re-designed to be prettier and more functional.
References are shown in body text as a superscripted link, which connects to the reference card. Upon click the reference card will show as a carousel, and all other references can be swiped through which will move the scroll to center that reference.
Given this interaction pattern, is it even necessary to show references in a section below the page? Perhaps not.
Data structure
body text
behaves the same way as other body text
Images will be allowed only as the inline minimized state
datetime of original source
archive link - automatically generated?
* User
* if applicable, this will allow for forwarding of funds as a donation pool, see below
Automatic reference generation
Wikipedia has automatic reference generation, we should do that. Pull in semantic data from an article etc.
Pools and References
References could be used to populate a donation pool. That is, if a page heavily relies on some reference, and the author of that reference is on WeWrite, donations to the page could be set up to be forwarded to that reference's author.
Things to look out for
Users might abuse the "body text" part of the Data structure and use References as "notes" ... how to prevent this? is it no big deal if users do this?
Differentiating functionality
WeWrite will allow users to view a list of other pages that a reference has been used on. This is a reference backlink. This is not available in any other wiki.
MediaWiki automatically adds references to the bottom of the page, but doesn't automatically create a "references" header above them. WeWrite will not make this annoying mistake.
Citation styles
Could allow the references to be exportable to citation styles
Wikipedia uses ALA, APA, and MLA et al.
