Forum:Separating Footnotes and References

Proposal
As someone who loves using and on this wiki, I've long noticed that our current practice mixes together two distinct purposes:
 * 1) footnotes, i.e. explanatory or clarifying comments; and
 * 2) references, i.e. external links which serve as evidence for the claims, usually through.

Mixing these two very different use cases results in confusion. As an example, see Faction Paradox (series). Of the 68 "footnotes" on that page, 62 are source citations and 6 are explanatory comments. How quickly can you identify which is which? Spoiler: it's borderline impossible!

Other wikis have an established way to solve this problem: separating "Footnotes" and "References". As an example, see the and  sections on Wikipedia's "Earth" page. Explanatory footnotes are listed in one section, and external links are listed in the other. This is achieved by using two parallel versions of and.

Surprisingly, the tools for this already exist on our wiki as well: and ! To see how these would look on Faction Paradox (series), see User:NateBumber/Sandbox/2. Isn't that much better? Besides clarity, there are several other advantages to using in addition to :
 * The pipe trick doesn't work in tags, which make them poorly suited for footnote-style commentary. doesn't have this problem.
 * You can use within a ! This is hugely helpful, for instance in Footnote 5 on the sandbox.
 * There are many pages where our in-universe coverage would benefit from out-of-universe explanatory footnotes; Chubby Potato has suggested one case on Talk:Fifteenth Doctor, and Infinity Doctor is an awesome example of footnotes done right. But due to the muddle, we've been held back from using them to their full potential.

If we already have, why haven't we been using it? Because the obvious names for the two sections are "Footnotes" and "References", and "References" was already being used on our story pages for a different purpose. However, as of Forum:References into Worldbuilding, that usage conflict no longer exists. The way forward is finally clear: all that's left is for us to take it! – n8 (☎) 18:51, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
Yeah, this seems like a good thing to do to make the wiki more usable. I Support it. Time God Eon ☎  19:27, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with this, it's pretty much common sense.


 * Hmmm. How would we stylize this? Would we do it like in your sandbox, with nb X? While I'm acquainted, I don't think this is common parlance for most readers. Najawin ☎  19:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * That's more or less how Wikipedia do it, isn't it? Or do they use letters? Aquanafrahudy   📢   19:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)