How to put links and footnotes into your articles

This page shows the various ways of putting wikilinks, extrenal URL links, and footnotes into your articles.

Plain inline wikilinks

You know all about this: Put the page name (without all the "http://www.conservapedia" stuff; just the page name) into double brackets. Like this: [[Soviet Union]]. The actual page is "Soviet_Union" with an underscore instead of a space, but you can use a space instead, to make it more reader-friendly. The wiki software will do the right thing. The result will be this: Soviet Union

The text appearing in your article at that point will just be the name of the page. If you want it to be something else, put a vertical bar after the page name, followed by what you want the reader to see, before the right brackets. Like this:

[[Soviet Union|this is the country I'm talking about]].

It will come out like this:

this is the country I'm talking about.

If you want to refer to a section within a page, rather than the entire page, Follow the page name with a "#" sign and the section name, like this:

"[[Nobel_prize#Criteria|Here are the criteria]]".

It will come out looking like this:

"Here are the criteria".

If you are doing that, you should put a comment into the actual section being referred to (e.g., the "criteria" section of the Nobel Prize article) calling people's attention to the fact that it is being referred to. This is because people move stuff around all the time, and you don't want the reference to stop working. In this case, there is a comment:

<!--NOTE! This section is referred to, by this name, in the Fred Hoyle and Robert Dicke articles. If this section is changed, please fix those references.-->

(If the section can't be found when the user clicks, the wiki software will just go to the top of the article.)

Plain inline external internet links

If you want to link to something elsewhere on the internet, put the full URL in single brackets, like this:

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html].

It will come out looking like this:

[1].

It's clickable, but it's just an ugly number. You should give it a title. This comes after the URL, but separated with a space instead of a vertical bar. (URLs never contain spaces.) So you should write something like this:

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html article on vector spaces from MathWorld].

It will come out looking like this:

article on vector spaces from MathWorld

which, when clicked on, will take the reader to that site.

Creating footnotes

You can put "footnote" (out of line) text at the bottom of the article.

First, the article must have

"<references/>" or "{{reflist}}" or "{{reflist|2}}"

at the bottom, typically in a "==References==" or "==Notes==" section. The "reflist" method is more fashionable; "reflist|2" puts the section in two columns.

Such footnotes are often external internet links (you are citing sources for everything, right?) but they can be anything. In the actual text, place the foonote between "<ref>" and "</ref>" markers, like this:

The time has come to talk of why the sea is boiling hot.<ref>Actually, it isn't.</ref>

It will come out looking like this:

The time has come to talk of why the sea is boiling hot.

The text will have a clickable footnote number in brackets. The footnote itself will have a little arrow that, when clicked on, will take the reader back to the source.

Sticklers for punctuation will tell you that, if a footnote is at the end of a sentence, it goes after the period of the sentence itself, though not everyone is in agreement on this.

Internet links in footnotes

A plain URL (no brackets) in a footnote, like this:

We're talking about vector spaces.<ref>http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html</ref>

will create a clickable footnote, in which the visible footnote text is just the URL, like this:

We're talking about vector spaces.

You can put other plain text into the footnote, like this:

We're talking about vector spaces and stuff.<ref>text before http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html text after</ref>

It will come out like this:

We're talking about vector spaces and stuff.

(You can put the URL in single brackets if you wish, but you don't need to, unless you are providing your own link text.)

You can even have multiple internet links in the same footnote. This:

We're talking about lots of stuff.<ref>like this web site: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html and this one: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertSpace.html</ref>

Comes out like this:

We're talking about lots of stuff.

The wiki software will find all URL's in your footnote text, and make them clickable.

If you want the clickable thing in the footnote to be some "link text" other than the actual URL, put the URL in single brackets, with your the link text in the brackets following a space. This:

We're talking about lots of stuff.<ref>like this web site: [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/VectorSpace.html vectors] and this one: [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertSpace.html Hilbert spaces]</ref>

Comes out like this:

We're talking about lots of stuff.

Grouping multiple internet links into one footnote

The contents of a footnote, can be anything, even text spanning multiple lines. This makes it possible to put multiple nicely-formatted internet links into one footnote. For example, this:

The Mariner spacecraft performed an extremely sensitive test of the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation<ref>Multiple references:

*Time magazine article, Nov. 23, 1970, explaining how the Mariner space probe supported plain relativity and refuted Brans-Dicke. Currently behind a "paywall". [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943324,00.html Science: A Victory for Relativity].

*[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/70s/release_1970_0566.html Jet Propulsion Laboratory memo, Nov. 13, 1970]

*[https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZuP9JQzc00C&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&source=bl&ots=Y2jhf2OjcU&sig=C8qWD1E5ukCe_5DiKObCiWjAEKg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cCw9VcfBE8HksASynoHICw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=brans-dicke%2Bmariner&f=false The Rise and Fall of the Brans-Dicke Theory]</ref>

Comes out like this:

The Mariner spacecraft performed an extremely sensitive test of the Brans-Dicke theory of gravitation

.

Using the same footnote several times

You shouldn't overdo this, but sometimes it is useful to have the same (presumably complex) footnote referred to from more than one place in the text. In that case you can give it a name when it is first written, and just invoke it by that name on subsequent occasions. When the footnote is first written, write <ref name="mylabel"> instead of just <ref>. The quotes on the label are required if the label name contains a space. Follow it by the footnote itself and the </ref> in the usual way. Then, on subsequent occasions, just write <ref name="mylabel"/>. Note the slash after the label.

This:

I like to talk of many things.<ref name="jabber">Sealing wax, etc.</ref> I really do.<ref name="jabber"/>

will come out looking like this:

I like to talk of many things. I really do.

Templates guarantee properly formatted footnotes

Official citation formats can change over time and it is a burden to have to go back and edit every article. So, we have two useful templates that guarantee that your footnotes will be in the proper form: {{cite news}} and {{cite web}}. Each supports separate parameters for date and accessdate to note both the day that the source was published and the date that you found it on the internet. For example,

{{cite news |url=http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/TR%20Web%20Book/TR_CD_to_HTML571.html | title= Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia |accessdate= June 10, 2007 | last = Hart |first =Albert B. |year=1989 |format=CD-ROM |publisher = Theodore Roosevelt Association |pages= 534–35}}

will come out looking like this:

Hart, Albert B.. "Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia" (CD-ROM), Theodore Roosevelt Association, pp. 534–35. Retrieved on June 10, 2007. 

because each parameter is identified by its name, the parameters can be given in any order, separated by vertical bars.

References

Here's the {{reflist}} thing, where the example footnotes come out.