StrategyWiki:Guide/References

Using  tags and reflist allows you to apply a uniform style to referencing either citations or notes. References are useful for cleaning up content that uses excessive amounts of parentheses to give extra information, or in smaller page elements such as tables or sidebars where extra text creates a cluttered look. And obviously they are used purely to cite actual references to avoid copyright or plagiarism.

Typically, references should not be used for external links.

Basic usage
If there is some information which should be cited to the original author or you want to give more information, either in a footnote or as a link to another page, you can use the  tags to create a numbered link in superscript that navigates to the reference or notes section at the bottom of the page. For unique citations or notes, continue adding notes between the tags like so:

Using just  tags, a new entry in the list will be created with the reflist template. Place the template where you want the numbered list of references to go, such as under a  or   heading.

Reusing citations
Occasionally you may be able to use the same reference more than once, such as when you are citing the same external link for multiple pieces of information. In that case, you can create a named reference which can be referred to by all tags using the same note or citation. This is accomplished by adding the  parameter to the tag:

Now any tags with  in them will use the same reference. Each reference in the body of the page will use the same number, and multiple references in the  are displayed by sublisting in the superscript. In other words, if the first note was referenced three times using the same group, you would see:

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 A note on further information.

It is only necessary to put the note between the  tags on the first named reference. On subsequent references, just use the following self-closing tag:

Formatting the
There is an optional parameter for the reflist template. This holds how many columns should be used to display the. If the list of citations if extremely long, use this parameter to split it up into two columns. Right now, multiple columns only display correctly in FireFox, but it can still be used as it just displays a single column in Internet Explorer.