Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Supernova/archive1

Citation style

Dementia with Lewy bodies: (uses sfns); HTML document size: 553 kB; Prose size (including all HTML code): 129 kB; References (including all HTML code): 178 kB; Wiki text: 133 kB; Prose size (text only): 59 kB (9019 words) "readable prose size"; References (text only): 16 kB

Tourette syndrome: Uses ref name= AuthorDate; HTML document size: 568 kB; Prose size (including all HTML code): 97 kB; References (including all HTML code): 365 kB; Wiki text: 134 kB; Prose size (text only): 48 kB (7432 words) "readable prose size"; References (text only): 44 kB

Supernova: Fully spells out all authors within text with no discernible ref naming system; HTML document size: 877 kB; Prose size (including all HTML code): 92 kB; References (including all HTML code): 560 kB; Wiki text: 190 kB; Prose size (text only): 58 kB (9476 words) "readable prose size"; References (text only): 67 kB

These examples show that for the same size article (in terms of readable prose), Supernova is unnecessarily hard to edit because of citation clutter. Relative to word count, it has four times the citation clutter as DLB, which is a densely cited article.

It also helps to name refs in a way that the editor in edit mode can see the date (a script will do some of that, but can't fix the old ref names that have no date). Using list-defined references is another option if you don't like sfns.

None of this is an actionable reason to oppose; it is only my explanation for why I find it hard to engage the article.

An additional benefit of moving to sfns (besides the built-in error checking and the lack of clutter to edit around), is that one can much more easily specify where in the journal article to find the content. With very long journal articles, WP:V might not be met if it is too hard to find where the content occurs, and you can end up with OR questions like we see now on the article. I converted dementia with Lewy bodies from named refs to sfns in under a day; haven't yet done Tourette syndrome, 'cuz, shiny things keep getting in the way. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the right place? I generally place the reference definitions inside the reflist: the citations can almost be as clumsy as you like and the article is still easy to edit. It becomes possible to leave stranded (ie. unused) references, but much less likely to accidentally orphan one. For naming convention, I prefer first editor surname followed by year. It is usually unique enough and it is somewhat intuitive. I don't mess with quotes or caps. I generally don't alter the existing style of articles to match this since there are different styles that are manageable and in most cases the style is not too difficult to work with. Is the consensus here to change the reference style? Lithopsian (talk) 21:24, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

By placing them inside the reflist, you mean list-defined references? Yes, even that would be an improvement over having to work around lengthy citations in edit mode. At least that moves them to the bottom of the article. I agree with leaving out quotes and caps: I usually name refs like ref name= Smith2005, no quotes, no spaces. That is, where the ref namer script did ref name="Hoffmann-2020", I would do more simply, ref name=Hoffmann2020. I understand the refnamer can be configured to work that way. Then if you also cut down on the list of editor names, the article will be more workable. But this decision is up to those of you who regularly edit the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't see the benefit of a wholesale style change. Moving everybody into the reflist makes it harder to edit section-by-section, in my experience, and it just gets messed up over time as new citations are added that aren't put in the reflist. XOR'easter (talk) 15:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]