Syntax: writing references within the body of the text vs. in the reflist edit

  • I created this article and made the choice of not inserting the whole syntax of the references within the body of the article, but rather put the sources listed within the reflist template, and then insert shorter in-line syntax within the body of the text. I do that in part because it makes it easier to edit the content when it is not full of references. I see that that approached was overridden. I would like to open this to discussion here in the talk page. What are the pros and cons of each approach? (talk) user:Al83tito 3:27, 22 Feb 2014
After looking again through wikipedia guidelines, I found out the following. What I was trying to say before is that I am using "List-defined references"(WP:LDR), as a way to avoid clutter (WP:CITE), because "Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become difficult and confusing. There are two main methods that avoid clutter in the edit window: (...)". With less accurate words, that is what I was trying to say above. (talk) user:Al83tito 16:54, 22 Feb 2014
There was quite a lot of work I did on this article and with the references down in the reflist it makes it difficult to see which ones are used and which ones not, so just to make certain that I wasn't making any stupid mistakes, I put them in the text. Also, there are only three refs and none of them is used more than once. The article is short enough not to be cluttered by them and it avoids a lot of scrolling while editing. I guess it's a matter of preference and I have no strong feelings about this one way or another (with longer articles I find it quite bothersome though, if all the references are at the bottom), so feel free to put them back at the bottom. If I were you, unless you plan significant work on this article, I wouldn't bother, but that's for you to decide, of course. --Randykitty (talk) 11:39, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Reply