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Jacobolus has complained that the guidance on this page is unclear about whether editors should use <references /> or {{reflist}}. It is clear that {{reflist}} cannot be used with list-defined footnotes, but what guidance should there be in other circumstances? Note that with {{refwidth}}, it is now possible to set column widths for <references />, but only one width per article. So what guidance should there be on this help page?

  • When not using LDRs, editors are free to choose either technique. Articles should not be changed from whatever they have now unless there is a reader-visible change (e.g. column width or numbering style) or functional reason (such as VisualEditor compatibility for LDRs, or removing deprecated parameters).
  • {{reflist}} is always preferred for non-LDRs
  • <references /> is always preferred
  • <references /> is always preferred except when styling is needed (column width, numbering style)
  • Something else?

-- Beland (talk) 04:53, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"It is clear that {{reflist}} cannot be used with list-defined footnotes,"
Except this is not actually the current consensus as far as I can tell. The current consensus, in my understanding, is that {{reflist}} should not be used with list-defined footnotes unless any other features of {{reflist}} are also used, in which case it's okay again. –jacobolus (t) 05:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223 § Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor endorsed a bot removing only instances of {{reflist|refs= when there are no other parameters, but the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 58#Should list-defined references be discouraged? endorsed fixing all such instances. I interpret this to mean that the remaining pages should drop custom column widths, stop using list-defined references, use the new {{refwidth}}, or whatever other solution is available to fix the VisualEditor incompatibility. A human decision needs to be made as to which approach is best in each case, which is why this was not left up to a bot. -- Beland (talk) 05:25, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that this discussion was closed by Beland with the summary "[...] There was 2:1 support in favor of deprecating {{reflist|refs=}} and replacing existing instances. [...]". However, this does not at all seem like a community consensus position, in the simple manner expressed by that summary. Myself and multiple other editors have called out this summary for being misleading and inaccurate. I urge interested readers to go actually read through the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 58 § Should list-defined references be discouraged? which was far from conclusive or straightforward. –jacobolus (t) 05:41, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As for the above comment, "I interpret this to mean that the remaining pages should drop custom column widths, stop using list-defined references, use the new {{refwidth}}, or whatever other solution is available to fix the VisualEditor incompatibility." – This seems completely unsupported by the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223 § Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor, and seems to me like Beland substituting their personal preference for community consensus. –jacobolus (t) 05:46, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you think the close should be overturned, please follow the steps at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE and open a closure review. -- Beland (talk) 16:34, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To elaborate, here was Beland's personal preference:
  • "My bias would be toward removing any customizations and going with the default rendering."
But I didn't notice anyone else agreeing with this opinion, and there were a wide range of opinions expressed that either opposed this change altogether or only supported it contingent on having no outwardly visible effect or other downsides. Some quotations:
  • "(a) Is the rendered result is perfectly identical what's being replaced?"
  • "I would be fine with deprecation if the tag were sufficiently responsive for shortened footnotes."
  • "Oppose This does not seem worth running a bot to make 55,000 edits over to me."
  • "Oppose VE is broken and we should not extend the damage to the rest of Wikipedia by making our templates broken and clogging up our watchlists with bot edits as well."
  • "Support deprecating {{reflist}} altogether except for instances where specific functions unique to the template are required for some reason."
  • "Support provided that no changes are made if {{reflist}} is invoked with |colwidth=."
  • "Support limited to where |refs= is the only parameter in the reflist template."
  • "Oppose. Fix the actual problem where it lies, don't ask someone else to put up with a workaround."
  • "This is a really minor change that would produce major benefits with no downsides."
  • "Support - [... as] there isn't a visual difference, we might as well."
–jacobolus (t) 06:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The RFC about what the bot should be trusted to do should not be taken as an indication of what human editors should do in more complicated circumstances. -- Beland (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One of the differences between the two is that {{reflist}} is the worse choice when the PEIS limit is hit. That's not common, but it does happen. That suggests that the tag would be the better default choice if there are no features of the template needed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 05:44, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For useful feedback I encourage a detailed comparison of the two choices. I guess many editors are unaware of every property of these two. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:36, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When hitting the PEIS limit the issues tend to appear at the end of the article, impacting references the most, but the issue is the whole article. Replacing a template with a tag, or other such work arounds, just cover up the issue until something else fails. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:36, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I lean towards <references/> but have no issues when other editors swap to {{reflist}}. When there are no parameters for the template, the output is just about the same; I think in the past the template was necessary to generate columns. When there are list-defined references the template obscures those in the Visual Editor and the WMF have been pretty upfront about having no fix planned for that. Rjjiii (talk) 06:19, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{refn|group=nb|

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Why is this being recommended? Surely

  1. {{efn}} is far more editor friendly and the notes it contains can (and often should) have their own citations using <ref>...</ref> as normal, no jumping through hoops required.
  2. footnote markers like nb 1 would seem to violate MOS:NOTE

What have I missed? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest moving to efns to make things easy and clearer. Having a default way of achieving notes might stop editors from trying to embed short form reference templates inside ref tags. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:39, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I see that example was added in Special:Diff/450182260 in September 2011, which is not too long after the ability to use custom labels (e.g. MediaWiki:Cite link label group-lower-alpha) was added. Prior to that, short labels like group=n were common, as [n 1] or [nb 1] is less obtrusive than [note 1] or [some-other-long-prefix 1]. It may be that the author just didn't know that group=lower-alpha existed when they wrote it, and later editors didn't think to update it. P.S. I note that {{efn}} and {{refn|group=lower-alpha}} will do basically the same thing, and {{refn}} also works without |group= if that sort of nested ref is desired. Anomie⚔ 15:48, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

RfC notice: VisualEditor automatic reference names

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Hi, I’m Johannes from Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team. We are considering to work on Community Wishlist/W17: Improve VE references' automatic names and reuse. This has been a long-term issue for wikitext editors (see e.g. WP:VisualEditor/Named references) which has been among the top-voted wishes in several Community Wishlist Surveys, e.g. 2017, 2019, 2022 or 2023.

Further information: m:WMDE Technical Wishes/References/VisualEditor automatic reference names

We would like your input on the solutions proposed on our project page. We are considering several options, which can be combined if desired by the community.

  • Changing the default pattern for automatically generated reference names (currently ":n", e.g. ":0", ":1"...) to use the reference type instead (e.g. "book_reference-1").
  • Providing a simple mechanism for communities to configure a different default name.
  • Generating automatic reference names based on the domain name (if it’s a web citation).
  • Generating automatic reference names based on template parameters (e.g. "title" or "last"+"first") – defined by the community.

Feedback

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Visit our project page to read about our proposal in detail and share your thoughts on metawiki.

Please note: We will only implement a solution if there’s clear consensus among the global community. Our intention is not to build the perfect solution, but to find a simple and lean one that alleviates the pain caused by auto generated names. We are aware that some experienced VisualEditor users might prefer an option to manually change reference names in VisualEditor, but such a UX intervention is difficult to achieve across reference types and thus out of scope for our team, we can only improve the auto-naming mechanism. We are happy about suggestions for improving certain details of the proposed solutions. Any other feedback and alternative proposals are also welcome – even though it’s out of scope for us, it might still be relevant for future work on this topic.

Please support us interpreting consensus by clearly indicating your opinion (e.g. by using support/neutral/oppose templates). We are aware of WP:NOTVOTE, but given that we are facilitating this discussion with users from different wikis, potentially commenting in their native language, clearly indicating your position helps us avoid misunderstandings.

Thank you for participating! --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:53, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How do we edit the text inside the refname rules template?

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The article has a VERY helpful part that says this: "The actual name used can be almost anything, but it is recommended that it have information derived from the citation or note. A common practice is to use the author-year or publisher-year for the reference name. This helps editors remember the name by associating it with the information that is visible to the reader. "

However, the bullet list auto-inserted by {{refname rules}} doesn't include that great version of the advice I quoted above, though a point in the middle of the list talks about the same thing (but less clearly).

So, I wanted to move (and re-vise/strengthen) that very helpful part into the bullet list in the spot that already talks about it, and I also wanted to clarify/strength the phrasing of some of the advice. But I can't find where the actual page/text is for the text auto-inserted by {{refname rules}}. I tried a few pages, but I don't see it. When using Edit Source, it just shows the {{refname rules}} tag. RandomEditor6772314 (talk) 01:40, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Have you visited Template:Refname rules? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
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