Wikipedia talk:Footnote1

message: :"If the footnote involves original text of any kind, this is obviously unsatisfactory. The best solution is to put the notes as body text in a "Notes" section and then direct the footnotes to the "Notes" section as a whole1 (1). Depending, presumably, on how many notes you have. If notes are added and removed, notenumbers will have to be adjusted in the text manually."
The footnotes should autonumber.  As well there should be a way to <<bracket>> some text and have it autonumber as well.  This isn't that difficult to code in, and I think these features should be near, or at the top, of the list of priorities. --ShaunMacPherson 00:08, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Autonumbering 

message: While an above poster was incorrect in citing the reasons that footnotes are awkward in web media, it is true that footnotes work better in print than in web media: in print, the footnote is merely a siccade away at the bottom of the page, whereas on the web, the bottom of the page requires a scroll or a link.  The extra effort, though minimal, is bothersome because often the reader would like to glance at the footnote before deciding whether to read it -- is it merely a bibliographical reference, or something more substantial.
However, notes could regain their functionality if we adopted the earlier typographical convention of sidenotes: placing the note in a side margin.  This places the note out of the flow of text, but still within glancing distance of its anchor. Shimmin 14:20, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
:The vocabulary is the problem here.  What are called footnotes on this page are really endnotes(i.e. notes that come at the end of the article, chapter, book, etc.)  Actual footnotes, as you point out, go at the bottom of the page.  There have been various ways that have been tried to apply footnotes to the electronic realm, none of which (that I've seen) have worked perfectly.  Putting the bottom of the page on the side is one solution; adding a virtual bottom of the page(with a frame that shows whatever footnotes are currently on the screen) is another.  Both use up screen space, which is typically considered a wikt:Bad Thing.
I think side-notes can be made to work like this.
Doesn't look so good in edit mode, though.
Plus the fact that you have to place the note before the item it refers to could get confusing.
--Phil | Talk 17:48, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
:How would we implement sidenotes?  Would it require tweaking MediaWiki? JesseW 05:23, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sidenotes ? 

message: If someone ever gets around to hard coding this into WP, I think having title / hover text which contains the text of the footnote would be a great addition. --Alterego☺ 01:03, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes suggestion 

message: The footnote numbering issues I've noticed on Benedict XVI prompted me to come up with a named footnote system for my own wiki, like this: 
* which gives Footnote Name as the footnote link
* which gives you Footnote Name⇧ Blabla footnote. with Footnote Name⇧ the backlink.
Template code:
* []
* ⇧
Result: footnote order is totally irrelevant - no more worries. (References at the bottom of the page are ordered alphabetically, but this isn't essential, it's just helpful.) There are elements of ugliness to long footnote names, but as a benefit you can see what the ref is to. Another (slight) downside I should point out - backlinks aren't unique; more than one ref means a backlink takes you to the first one. But you can always use the Back button.
A truly automated numbering system would beat this, if it brought the ref as a hovering title for the note. For now, this works brilliantly for me on my personal wiki. Rd232 17:51, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Named footnotes 

message: If someone wants to do a lot of people a big wiki-favor, please create a macro for automated conversion of an existing article to this footnote system. For instance, Convention on Psychotropic Substances needs to be converted to footnotes, but that would be rather time-consuming to do manually. There are probably hundreds or thousands of articles in need of such conversion. Please take a look and see what you think. Thanks! Remember me 14:35, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Automated conversion of an existing article to this footnote system