Template talk:Notelist

Error when on same line as semicolon header

I was having a strange issue where my notelist wasn't listing as lower case even though my prose refs were. I like to have my notelist on the same line as the semicolon heading to save space, but it looks like that was what was causing this issue. I was able to fix it → see the diff. I'll be fine if it I leave it like this, but if you go back one revision, you'll see what I'm talking about. Someone maintaining this template want to fix it? czar ♔ 17:14, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

It's a problem (bug?) with HTML Tidy, and there's not much we can do about it except to say "the {{notelist}} template must be at the start of a line". Technically speaking, the <div class="reflist" style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;">...</div> that is supposed to enclose the <ol class="references">...</ol> is being removed from its proper position, and instead placed inside a <dd>...</dd> which is part of the preceding <dl>...</dl> leaving the <ol class="references">...</ol> unenclosed. It is that <div>...</div> which alters the figures to letters. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:31, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Bullets rendering numerically on mobile

There applies an inline style `list-style-type: lower-alpha;` on the div with class reflist. To work in mobile this inline style should be on the list element itself or you should add a class the to the element and a css rule to MediaWiki:Mobile.css. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:29, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

This also happens with upper-alpha, and probably with all the other list-style-types.

@Jdlrobson: Can you please give an example of how to do this for both the note place in the text and the list? I can't get it to work in mobile (List of people from Pennsylvania#Radio and television), and the directions seem to be contradictory. --Thnidu (talk) 04:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by the link you post to. I don't see the {{Notelist}} template used anywhere...

I suspect the best way to fix this for mobile is to do something like <div class="lower-alpha-list" style="list-style-type: lower-alpha;"> in conjunction with .lower-alpha-list ul {list-style-type: lower-alpha;} in MediaWiki:Mobile.css Jdlrobson (talk) 01:37, 30 September 2015 (UTC) (ping Thnidu)

Copied for information

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Notelist query

Regards Keith-264 (talk) 15:37, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Columns?

Is this thing now doing auto-columns, like {{Reflist}}? Why? It's horrible. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Seconded. The notes are entirely unhelpful when columned. Undo it.

At minimum, clearly explain in the notes how to turn it off. — LlywelynII 08:10, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley and LlywelynII: There have been no changes to {{notelist}} for over ten years that might alter its behaviour in this manner. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:18, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I note at Andy Dingley's post was made in 2018, about six months after Template:Reflist was changed to allow the then-recently added mw:Extension:Cite responsive columns feature to activate by default. As this template is a wrapper for {{reflist}}, it followed along. As for the documentation, Template:Notelist/doc is not protected, so anyone interested could update it to link to or copy relevant information from Template:Reflist/doc if they think the existing text isn't clear enough. Anomie⚔ 12:46, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64: & @Anomie: Better idea: whatever this template does to {{reflist}}, adjust it to turn off the columns by default every time in all cases, unless specifically told otherwise. Yes, that's exactly what we were both talking about. Notes will generally be much longer than citations and require different formatting generally. [Edit: Please and thank you on my own behalf and on behalf of the 99.99999999998% of Wikipedia's visitors who don't know how to find template talk pages and request fixes to problems like this.] — LlywelynII 13:12, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

When there are no columns, on wide screens, the line length becomes excessive and difficult to read, IMHO. I support keeping the column CSS. Columns only kick in if there are more than a few notes; I think 10? -- Beland (talk) 00:58, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

The group= parameter is not working as documented

I'm finding that |group= doesn't work as documented. See, e.g. this edit in which I put four accessibility- and mobile-related {{efn}} footnotes into {{efn|group=A|1=...}} form with a corresponding {{notelist|group=A}} to group them, and it failed. They continued to appear in the main {{notelist}} output. I ended up have to self-revert that aspect of the edit (which included a lot of other cleanup); this partial-revert diff will make the exact changes in question clearer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

PS: Here's a clean sandbox test demonstrating the problem: User:SMcCandlish/sandbox3.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:25, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Per the template code groups can only be one of note, upper-alpha, upper-roman, lower-alpha, lower-greek, or lower-roman. This appears to have been the case ever since the option to have a group was added. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:39, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Here is an example of |group= not working as documented, even when it is applied only to lower-alpha.
In this example, {{efn}} was used across sections in an article, and {{efn|group=A, B, C, etc}} were used in specific sections. Some notes without |group= were listed in {{notelist|group=}} as if they belonged to a group. Yiba (talk | contribs) 01:20, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Your example - {{efn|See [[1914 French Grand Prix]] for details.}} - does not use |group=. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:06, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Right. So, it should not be included in a {{notelist|group=2, 3, etc}}, but it is. It should be included in a {{notelist}} without |group=, but it is not. I had to use {{notetag}}{{notefoot}}-pair to work around this problem. Yiba (talk | contribs) 08:02, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

There should never be any need to use {{notetag}} and {{efn}} in the same article. I've made suitable amendments to eliminate the one with fewer uses, also to use only valid values for |group=. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:36, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate your effort. However, it does not change the fact "The group= parameter is not working as documented". As a goodwill response to your effort that hides this fact, I compiled a simple sandbox page demonstrating the problem: User:Yiba/sandbox/group=. Together with @User:SMcCandlish's sandbox example, the problem should be clear. The value for |group= is defined as 'String' in Template:Notelist and Template:Notelist/doc. Yiba (talk | contribs) 05:22, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I've updated the documentation to note that |group= is restricted to certain values, as was already explained above in 2018. Anomie⚔ 13:26, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It took me a while to make sense out of your edits until I looked at the source code.

This is going to be a bit long, so please bear with me. {{Reflist}} is far more often used than {{Notelist}} (21 times more, according to stats), so the likelihood of the average newbie editor to assume {{efn}} and {{notelist}} to take group=groupname like <ref> and {{reflist}} do is extremely high when he/she is told "{{efn}} supports |name= and |group=, which work the same as the parameters in <ref>" (In the bullet points just below the Template use by reference groups table.) But in fact they don't work the same as described in Help:Footnotes#Footnotes:_groups because "predefined groups" are different from 'groups' as explained in Help:Footnotes#Footnotes:_predefined_groups, and {{efn}} / {{notelist}} -pair takes only predefined groups (I hope my understanding is correct). I realized I have been such a newbie for the last 17 years.
Another source of the problem is the expression "non-empty values in the table above". When a table is fully populated, all the entries in the table (likely except descriptions) are non-empty values. So please change the bullet points (in Template:Notelist, Template:Notelist/doc and Help:Footnotes#Footnotes:_predefined_groups) to read:

• {{efn}} supports |name=, which work the same as the parameter in <ref> (see, for instance, the 3rd and 4th examples below). However, |group= does not take the format |group=groupname, and is restricted to one of 'lower-alpha', 'upper-alpha', 'lower-roman', 'upper-roman', 'lower-greek', or 'note'. Do not enclose values in quotes.
• {{notelist}} supports the |colwidth=, and |refs=, which work the same as the same parameters in {{reflist}}. However, |group= is restricted to one of predefined group types ('lower-alpha', 'note', etc. as explained above). Do not enclose values in quotes.
  

Also, please change the first line in the Description column for Group parameter in Template parameters table on Template:Notelist#TemplateData from:
 Styled group to which the note belongs. Unrecognized values are treated as "lower-alpha".
to:
 Name of predefined style group to which the note belongs. Unrecognized values are treated as "lower-alpha".
If you could take a moment to evaluate that "group= must be lower-alpha" and "group= must be 'lower-alpha'" have two totally different meanings, and note the former is the way written in 2018, you might see why I totally misunderstood what was explained in 2018.
Additionally, is it too much to ask for a change in the code to accommodate the way {{efn}} is used in @User:SMcCandlish's and my sandbox examples? I would much prefer to use only lower-alpha for the sake of consistency and a clean look. In my opinion, the long Formula one engines article looks so much more cluttered and difficult to read than before Redrose64 applied the effort. This echoes the opinion of the Teahouse editor mentioned in Template_talk:Reflist/Archive_34#liststyle and group (see the last paragraph). And the fact I have been using {{efn}} with |group=groupname without problems for over a decade tells me the code is almost there already. I will be incorporating the above changes to Template:Notelist/doc for your perusal. Yiba (talk | contribs) 02:49, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

None of the pages involved in the documentation are protected. You can edit them, and I see you already have.

As for the code change requested, no, that's not possible. The best that might be done would be to create another predefined group like "lower-alpha2" that would work the same as "lower-alpha", but I suspect such a proposal would get rejected because it would encourage use in a way to cause reader confusion as to which reference list might be referring to, particularly in an example like User:SMcCandlish/sandbox3. As for {{reflist|liststyle=}}, I think I agree with User:Izno there that it should be removed. Having correspond to item "a" in the references list seems similarly confusing; "1" at least partially corresponds. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I realized as soon as I started editing. Thank you. Yiba (talk | contribs) 06:18, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 17 November 2019

I would add an additional reference to note b, that provides a link to a primary source document confirming the article's subject's birthdate. It is a reference to a 1901 Canadian Census page. The 1901 census asked for a full date of birth. The census page states the subject's birthdate as June 23, 1884. I have not edited for several years. I am not familiar with the new protocols for editing. The following is the suggested addition to the note:

"Reference: RG31 - Statistics Canada; Item No. 3268977; Microfilm:T-6490". Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved Nov. 17, 2019.

The URL address for the document is: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1901/Pages/item.aspx?itemid=3268977. The Web page uses an incorrect surname for indexing. It refers to "Sayles" when it should be "Taylor." It is an obvious transcription error if you look at the source document. I have posted a correction on-line to Library and Archives Canada, pointing out the error. The page has links to .jpg and .pdf versions of the census page. Macman1956 (talk) 23:33, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template {{Notelist}}. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:15, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Large gap between notelist and next section

On User:Sr88/sandboxbrazil#Notes I have defined the notes in the notelist. However, there is a large gap between the notelist and the next sub-heading (References). Can this be removed or modified somehow? Sr88, talk. 17:42, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Sr88: In that place, I see two red error messages, as follows:

- do you see them in this page? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, got it. Sr88, see H:SHOWCITEERROR. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Cite errors when using refs parameter with notes that contain citations

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T253596

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T22707

I wanted to use the |refs= to keep the text more readable, but when I add more than one explanatory note that contains a citations to such a list, I get cite errors saying "A list-defined reference names ... is not defined in the content". However, I do define these citations in the content. Please see example in James Hamilton (English army officer) or Alexander MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim. What I am doing wrong? With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 19:29, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with this template, it seems to be a MediaWiki bug where it gets confused if you try to use references for a different group inside list-defined references. Anomie⚔ 01:46, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Dear User:Anomie. Thank you very much for your quick reply. I looked up Phabricator T253596. It says the errors are thrown when {{Notelist|refs=...}} and {{Reflist|refs=...}} are used together. This does not seem to be my case. I try to use {{Notelist|refs=...}} but just plain {{Reflist}}. Besides, despite the errors, the references seem to be displayed correctly. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 09:31, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It's a long-standing problem, see e.g. Help talk:List-defined references and Template talk:Efn (and other places). Basically: Efn doesn't play nice with LDR, so don't put them together. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:24, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Redrose64, just to be clear, when you say don't put them together, is that to say that we just shouldn't have notelists that use LDRs at all? Seems like something that should be taken out of the doc. (I've just come across this issue in this version). — HTGS (talk) 04:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

It has

{{Notelist|refs=
{{efn|name=zh-name|{{zh|s=赵婷|t=趙婷|p=Zhào Tíng}}}}
{{efn|name=nationality|Zhao's nationality is unclear, but media including [[Disney]] and the [[Communist Party of China]]'s ''[[Global Times]]'' report that her nationality is Chinese.<ref>{{cite news ...}}</ref><ref>{{cite web ... }}</ref>}} 
}}

(content of cite templates omitted for clarity). The first of the two {{efn}} is fine (although unnecessary), but the second is not because it contains <ref>...</ref> tags - two pairs to be exact. The MediaWiki parser is being presented with at least three levels of processing, and gives up after two, hence the red error message. You need to get that second {{efn}} out of the notelist, and put it in the actual place in the text where it is used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:16, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes agree. I independently identified bug and its solution just now when I tried to add a second reference to a previous list based ref= list. As the documentation says "Note: Due to limitations in the MediaWiki software, do not use list-defined footnotes that contain references." The note could be better and more accurately written "Note: Due to limitations in the MediaWiki software, do not use list-defined footnotes that contain references but inline footnotes will work fine with multiple references."ChaseKiwi (talk) ChaseKiwi (talk) 12:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Hiding the backlinks from note to text

Where named notes are used liberally, such as at Transport for Wales Rail#Services, it's very easy to end up with an overabundance of backlinks for one note. Is there a way to hide them? Danners430 (talk) 12:23, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Weird formatting involving templates and references inside an Efn tag.

I was advised by a user on the Discord group to post this here. I came cross a formatting issue at Wikipedia:No original research with this template. As can be seen in this edit, the notes section appears to be formatted for three columns, but with a completely blank center column and weird spacing for the fifth note. The fifth note in particular is an Efn template that has a bulleted list template inside it that uses references. I "fixed" the formatting by setting the em spacing to 39em, which is more just masking the issue and moved the problem to a different resolution per the second user. --Super Goku V (talk) 13:55, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

• I doubt it has anything to do with this template or {{efn}} specifically. This seems more like a browser rendering bug, where it decides to split reference e over three columns and then applies break-inside: avoid-column and gets the formatting confused at some point while recalculating. Anomie⚔ 14:32, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

  Ah, I see. I do have a screenshot of what it looks like if you would be willing to confirm. (ActivelyDisinterested felt it would be more helpful for me to upload one.) --Super Goku V (talk) 11:30, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Section Notes

Having a list of footnotes in a section of a book, separately from the list of footnotes on the entire book, has a long tradition.
Currently, {{notelist}} and {{notelist-la}} are designed synonymously, so that they both list efn and efn-la footnotes. But by making notelist to list only efn notes, and notelist-la to list only efn-la notes, the creation of Section Notes becomes so much easier and appear consistent as shown in the example on User:Yiba/sandbox/notelist-la.

The current design is intended to avoid the same footnote label like ^[a] won't be used in multiple lists in an article, forcing editors to use different set of labels (like i, ii, iii, or, A, B, C, etc.). However, the use of lower-alpha labels for notes and number labels for references is very popular, including in books with Section Notes. And as Section Notes are usually listed immediately after the section, close to where the reader is reading, readers are seldom confused by the use of the same ^{[a], [b], [c], etc.} labels on different footnotes in Section Notes and the general Notes listed at the end of a book.

{{notetag}} and {{notefoot}} templates may be used instead, but this again forces the use of number labels (like ^{[note 1]}, making a long article appear inconsistent if the rest of the article uses lower-alpha), and further, those editors familiar with the above intention tends to view such a work-around inappropriate (see the long Formula one engines article as an example, discussed in Template_talk:Notelist#The_group=_parameter_is_not_working_as_documented).

So, please consider:

1. Make {{Notelist-la}} to list only those notes created with {{efn-la}}, and
2. Make {{Notelist}} to list only those notes created with {{efn}}

Yiba (talk | contribs) 04:16, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

This is the basically the same as the request you made above. The same reply applies. You can use either {{Notelist}} or {{Notelist-la}} for section notes as long as you don't also try to use them for other notes. Trying to use for both section notes and full-page notes in the same article would be confusing as to which any particular instance of applies to. Anomie⚔ 07:33, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

The response to my original request above said "that's not possible. The best that might be done would be to create another predefined group like 'lower-alpha2' that would work the same as 'lower-alpha', but I suspect such a proposal would get rejected". I am presenting an alternative (and better, in my mind) way to 'lower-alpha2', to: 1. show it is possible with two changes, and 2. solicit other opinions.

I wholeheartedly agree wikipedia should not be confusing to readers, but a markup language dictating what editors cannot do is a different matter. Judgments on what style to use should rest with the editors. If it is a wikipedia policy or guideline, I'd have easier time giving up making long articles look cleaner, consistent, and easier to read. Yiba (talk | contribs) 13:06, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't see why this request is necessary. It's possible to have separate explanatory footnote lists for each section using multiple instances of {{notelist}}. If articles have both all-article EFNs and per-section EFNs, they should use different numbering styles (e.g. lowercase letters vs. lowercase roman numerals) to avoid confusion. We already do this, for example, with table footnotes. -- Beland (talk) 01:08, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

If you revert this edit and compare the entire article before and after the diff in a Preview (you might have to include the latest minor edits for the temporary revert), you might see how different numbering styles could make a long article look cluttered and inconsistent. Also, if you could imagine how User:Yiba/sandbox/notelist-la would look if the page is 10 to 20 times longer, with 30 or more Section Notes in three sections, labeled with lower-roman, upper-roman and lower-greek (with general Notes labeled with lower-alpha, Refs with numbers), you might see what I mean by "look cluttered and difficult to read". What if there are 5 sections with Section Notes? Not so many readers can instinctively tell if [δ] comes before or after [θ], or quickly find [xxvii] or [xiv] in a long Notelist. Yiba (talk | contribs) 05:09, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I find both versions of that article cluttered, and the fact that notes appear at the end of prose-only sections to be jarring compared to typical Wikipedia articles and web content in general. Explanatory footnotes are actually hard to follow for people using screenreaders; they can show up at the end of a text with no indication as to where in the body text a note was referenced. (It would have to be decoded in context, or the reference letters would need to be memorized on the fly, which is...painful and not feasible for most people trying to pay attention to the content.) Even for people reading visually, long notes on a short section require a lot of annoying jumping around. It would be better to merge all the explanatory footnotes into linear body text or table values, and simply drop any unimportant ones that are awkward to cram in. -- Beland (talk) 07:49, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I clearly see where you're coming from. In fact, I might have expressed the same opinion 10 years ago. But today, the average article length has grown, and it continues to grow for the foreseeable future. Separation of long prose into sections, use of tables, and Section Notes, are all for making long articles easier to read and understand (often making the long prose shorter). I am against the use of Section Notes on shorter articles, say 20KB or less, for the reasons you stated. I am talking about the growing number of long, and really long articles, maybe 70 percentile and above in article size. Yes, both versions of that article are cluttered. I am saying "before the diff" version was easier to read, the style looks uniform, and easier on the eyes. Yiba (talk | contribs) 02:34, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I have mostly ironed the explanatory footnotes out of the Formula One engines article. Is there another article where you think the requested feature would be needed? -- Beland (talk) 20:14, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I love the way you edited the article, and it made me realize I may have been overly dependent on annotations. I highly appreciate your time and effort, but I still feel I'm not getting my point across. The issue is not the hardship I am experiencing on one article or two, but the limitation of {{notelist}} allowing only 5 or 6 notelists on a long article with Table Notes, Section Notes, List Notes, etc. Please take a look at User:Yiba/sandbox/NotelistLong to see what I mean. I need a day or two to consider how to respond to your comment below. Yiba (talk | contribs) 14:12, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I fail to see why you would need to do this. Please give examples of articles that would benefif from having more than two kinds of notes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Late response: Morse code and Biblical canon. Yiba (talk | contribs) 01:55, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Morse code had a lot of explanatory footnotes with content that belonged in linked articles or in table cells or the main body prose. I have cleaned it up, and it only has one remaining per-article note (for which I used the standard Latin lowercase) and one table note, for which I used lowercase roman numerals. Is that OK or would you propose some different arrangement? -- Beland (talk) 04:12, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Biblical canon is a mess of conflicting styles. I will clean it up in the next few days. -- Beland (talk) 04:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Actually, that cleanup went rather quickly. It now just uses the prefixes "O" and "N" for numeric per-table notes, and unprefixed numbers for citations. I think that's fine? -- Beland (talk) 05:15, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Morse code looks good to me. The edits on Biblical canon are very nice, but they used <references group= >, hiding the limitations of {{notelist}} I've been pointing out. However, I do clearly see your point the limitations can be avoided with good edits. Biblical canon, as it stands, may further benefit from the resetting option, but it looks very minor to me now.

I might be wrong, but Taxonomic rank appears to be an example where the editors faced the grouping or nesting issue of {{notelist}}, and were likely forced not to use multiple notelists, and I get the feeling there have been many examples like this in the past. (Finding such examples by searching through their end-result articles is very difficult.)

Through your edits, I am now seeing that limiting the freedom for editors to choose styles benefits consistent appearance, and I thank you for the lesson. Please consider my requests dropped. Yiba (talk | contribs) 11:41, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

If you want an article with 10 sections to have per-section explanatory notes in every section, you can do that by using the same numbering style for all of them. The Mediawiki software will generate unique anchors for footnotes even if they have the same number, so hyperlinks will go to the right place. (See #Test section 1 below for an example.)

I think we already do this when we have multiple tables, each with their own notes. The fact that the notes appear immediately below the corresponding table is what we rely on to prevent visual confusion about which footnote a given reference is pointing to.

If you were to attempt to do the same thing with explanatory notes for prose, it might be more visually confusing, and I think the way to mitigate that is to avoid writing so many explanatory notes in the first place. I would look askance at any article that has more than...let's say 5 explanatory notes, and reformat it as I did for Formula One engines and 600-cell and friends. Fewer than 5 notes is small enough that notes referred to from prose can all go at the end of the article, which is currently standard practice.

I would endorse the You aren't gonna need it philosophy of not building infrastructure which is not needed by any of our seven million articles, and even moreso because the practice we'd be supporting I think is just undesirable. -- Beland (talk) 00:58, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

A part of me agrees with Anomie that labels "should be" unique in an article to avoid confusion, but your suggested solution for 10 notelists and #Test section 1 below (and my proposed changes to {{notelist-la}} and {{notelist}}, in their use cases) do not allow that. I don't think the widely used Table Notes is unique compared to List Notes or Section Notes; it is just used more often. Wikipedia did not even make a strong distinction between explanatory footnotes and source references, with statements meaning "references are a form of footnotes" (this may still prevail).

So, with one side of this discussion "if label needs to be unique" may have been made a bit clearer, I'd venture to say I am not at all insisting if the suggested change to {{notelist-la}} is the best solution. (I had to start with countering "label needs to be unique".) Considering the number of articles affected by the change, adding another template like {{efnn}} and {{nestednotelist}} to allow for footnotes/notelist pair to exist within another footnotes/notelist pair may be better, to solve the problem illustrated in User:Yiba/sandbox/notelist-la. It might be easier to grasp this point if Section Notes in this example are replaced with Table Notes in your mind. I hope the example is also showing the potential urgency.

Maybe the core of this discussion is becoming "how much value to place on the power of annotation". I consider it better not to limit the number of groupings to six, or prohibit nesting, in light of the growing average article size.Yiba (talk | contribs) 03:23, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Mathematically, growing average article size is irrelevant. There is a ceiling on article size, which our longest articles have already reached. I haven't seen data on whether our average article size is actually increasing or not, but if it is, then that is because short articles are moving toward the ceiling. If our current style of notes is working well on our longest existing articles, then there is no need to invent something that will work on articles above the ceiling size, because by definition we will never have any that long.

User:Yiba/sandbox/notelist-la is simply not realistic; its notes are longer than its prose, it has far too many explanatory notes (if that's what the footnotes are supposed to be), and it is not Wikipedia style to use explanatory per-section notes from prose. If I was going to mix end-of-article and end-of-section explanatory notes, I would choose different numbering schemes to distinguish them, but only two numbering schemes, using the same symbol as long as it is in different sections. (Just as a book might use footnote 1 for the first footnote in each chapter. It's possible to not reset footnote numbering at chapter boundaries for easier navigation; we could do that with a software fix in order to keep labels unique even if we have only one numbering scheme across a bunch of sublists.) But mixing per-section and per-article explanatory notes looks jumbled, and I think it can be avoided with smart editing.

Again, if there are any actual articles that look anything like this, please point them out, and I will fix them. -- Beland (talk) 06:35, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I do not agree with "growing average article size is irrelevant", but thank you for the explanations. I guess I'd have to leave the nesting issue out for now. Could you tell me how best to ask for the software fix? Yiba (talk | contribs) 00:14, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I never said that labels always need to be unique in an article. I did say that trying to have both section notes (or table notes) and end notes using the same label would be confusing. Anomie⚔ 14:04, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct. Sorry if I gave you the impression that I said you did. Yiba (talk | contribs) 00:14, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the first step would be demonstrating a community consensus that English Wikipedia actually desires the software change. It's unclear to me whether editors would see not-restarting the numbering of footnotes as an improvement or complain that this an error. Given that footnotes are required for nearly all articles, presumably if this feature was useful and worthwhile there should be thousands of articles that take advantage of it.

Can you give say, five good examples of where you think it should be used? If you don't have any in mind, I recommend browsing Wikipedia:Featured articles/By length. These articles are more or less "finished" or "finished for now" (as we await new historical events). They can be expected to be approximately at their ideal length, and have the right order of magnitude of explanatory footnotes. If you need to focus only on articles that already use explanatory footnotes, there's Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Efn, though many of these articles need cleanup. -- Beland (talk) 01:14, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Are there reasons why the fix cannot be selectable for the editors to reset or not to reset? Yiba (talk | contribs) 01:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

It could be toggleable, but if using that option is going to be prohibited by the Manual of Style, it would be a waste of precious resources to build it. So what articles would you like to see use it? -- Beland (talk) 02:11, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I am following your advice on browsing, but having a hard time finding what I'm looking for. Is there any way of listing those articles that use, say, 3 or 5 tables or more? I don't want to waste my time, either. Yiba (talk | contribs) 06:04, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Partial results, but for three tables: -- Beland (talk) 06:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I am trying to get access to AutoWikiBrowser. Yiba (talk | contribs) 08:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think your indenting may be a bit off?

I can do a database scan, if that's what you're looking to do? -- Beland (talk) 17:00, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I found Biblical canon to be very close to what I am looking for. Yiba (talk | contribs) 01:55, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Replying above to keep things in one place. -- Beland (talk) 04:10, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

In the process, I found one that would greatly benefit from {{nestednotelist}}, Morse code. Yiba (talk | contribs) 12:50, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Replying above to keep things in one place. -- Beland (talk) 04:10, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I too find it cluttered, the post I made a few weeks ago explains part of what I did. But I didn't want to bring all of the notes into a single list at the bottom, since that would almost certainly have been reverted right back to where we had been before my edits. My aims were: (i) eliminate improper use of the |group= parameter (specifically, the article was using |group=conrod |group=1 |group=2 |group=era and |group=spec); (ii) eliminate the confusing dual use of lowercase letters for both section notes and page notes, this is why I changed the section notes to |group=lower-roman; (iii) eliminate the confusing dual use of numbers for both page notes and references; (iv) eliminate the unnecessary use of both numbers and letters for page notes. The last two are why I altered the {{notetag}} to {{efn}} and removed the {{notefoot}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:22, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I appreciate your edits on the article as I said before. The article is much better, given the current {{notelist}}, correcting the wrongdoings of this newbie of 17 years. Yiba (talk | contribs) 02:35, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Given these edits, it seems the technical change you requested is no longer necessary. -- Beland (talk) 19:08, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The only way to implement this would be to do like "lower-alpha2", having one template use "lower-alpha" and the other "lower-alpha2", so it's not really an alternative. Anomie⚔ 07:54, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

That way is OK with me if you could implement them. I would much prefer to call them 'la-section1' or 'la-table2'. This would allow editors to choose lower-alpha for multiple Section Notes (or Table Notes, Graph Notes, Image Notes, etc., and combinations thereof), in addition to the popular use of number-labels for Refs and lower-alpha for Notes on long articles. Yiba (talk | contribs) 02:43, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Test section 1

Blah blah blah

Test section 2

Bleh bleh bleh

Infobox footnote CSS

I recently edited Chile so that it uses {{notelist}} instead of direct HTML markup, so that explanatory footnotes are clickable and show up as tooltips. Unfortunately, in this new version, the in-infobox footnotes render in a font size smaller than the 85% accessibility minimum specified by MOS:FONTSIZE. This is because the infobox already reduces the font size, and then the notelist template reduces it even further. The old version of Chile rendered as the same font size as the rest of the infobox.

Does anyone know the best way to fix this? It would also be nice to get rid of the added indenting in the new version, though not doing that would be consistent with main-article section styling. Adding "bodyclass=hlist" to {{Infobox country}} is not appropriate. Is there some other way for the template to detect it's in an infobox? Or would we need to add a parameter to tell it that or to override the font size change? -- Beland (talk) 02:52, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

This should remain a wrapper for {{reflist}}, which should remain a wrapper for <references />. Your best bet may be to have Module:Infobox/styles.css include something like .infobox .references { font-size: 100%; }. Anomie⚔ 08:07, 7 March 2026 (UTC)