Template talk:Reflist

reflist template is being systematically removed

The bot User:DreamRimmer bot II is doing a mass removal of this template from articles. Is there some discussion/approval for that indicating broad consensus among Wikipedia editors? If not, I would recommend the bot's recent edits be mass reverted pending a wider discussion. The current bot behavior is not explicitly justified anywhere I can see, and seems disruptive. –jacobolus (t) 11:28, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

The relevant BRFA seems to be Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DreamRimmer bot II 6, unless you're seeing it remove reflist where it's not using LDR. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:15, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

Replacement of {{reflist|refs=...}} with <references>...</references> is following an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223#Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor. See also Wikipedia:Bot requests#c-Anomie-20250903154600-Alenoach-20250903152500, where I predicted exactly this sort of complaint. Anomie⚔ 13:32, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

The bot just started making mass change, with the edit summary "Standardise list-defined references format" and no link anywhere in sight to a discussion.

The proposal was frankly poorly thought through, poorly written, incompletely discussed, and is being poorly implemented. In particular there is a lack of communication about what is being done and why, and none of the changes is reflected in the 4+ relevant documentation pages across the site.

If you predicted this, it would have been nice if more careful and considered action was taken up front to make less of a mess. –jacobolus (t) 13:50, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

If that's the edit summary the bot is using, a polite request to the bot op would likely get results without all the melodrama. Regarding the documentation, {{sofixit}}. Anomie⚔ 14:07, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

I believe I have done my best to explain the task. It felt like comments were being added without fully reading my replies. I was working on something else, but when I received an email about your ping on the bot talk page, I opened my system to respond. I stopped the bot twice and clearly explained the situation each time. If you still feel that I missed something, I apologise. You are welcome to suggest any changes to the process if you feel it is being poorly implemented. – DreamRimmer ■ 15:06, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

Maybe it would help for the edit summary to link to the RFC?

Anyway, fwiw: this replacement is intended to make little or no visible change to articles but to work around a never-going-to-be-fixed visual editor bug that makes it difficult to edit templates nested inside other templates. List-defined reference citation templates inside the references tag can be edited by VE. List-defined reference citation templates inside a reflist cannot. And they come out looking the same. So we should use the more flexible option. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:49, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

This question has been resolved, and the bot has resumed this task with a better edit summary.

There is now a follow-on discussion about what our documentation should recommend (<references /> vs. {{reflist}}) outside of the case of list-defined references. See Help talk:Footnotes § Tag or template preference if interested. -- Beland (talk) 05:30, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Why is it never going to be fixed? Ringtail Raider (talk) 21:11, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Did the recent change somehow break VE?

Using VE, it is no longer possible to click on references in the reflist to edit them (it just brings up the template dialog). I had assumed this was a VE bug, but I've checked other wikis on the same MW version as enwiki (specifically itwiki and eswiki) and they worked fine. I have no idea how it could have broken this, but I figured I'd ask here anyway. And no, this does not have to do with list-defined references, it's for every article using "normal" references with the reflist template, which used to work; just look at Seattle for one example among many. Pinging @Anomie, who made the change. Jay8g [V•T•E] 07:47, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

WTF VE? Apparently it chokes when {{#tag:references}} isn't wrapped in a div? ... Also, VE seems to get ridiculously confused by Template:Reflist/testcases. Anyway, as far as I can tell Special:Diff/1328019882 fixed it. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Remaining LDR compatibility fixes

Since we've been talking about cases of incompatibility between list-defined references and Visual Editor that the bot can't handle, I checked the 2025-12-01 database dump to see how many of these there are.

• 20,624 cases where the column width is being set to 30em; these can be straightforwardly converted because this is the default.
• 6,324 cases where the number of columns is being specified. This no longer works, and can be replaced by {{refwidth}} or just converted to the default, depending on the number.
• 458 + 329 + 188 = 975 cases where there's empty parameters or malformed syntax, which can be converted to the default.
• 2,955 cases where a group name is specified, almost all of which are "Note"; these can be converted to <references>...</references> with a group name parameter.
• 7,090 cases where some other column width is explicitly specified, which could be converted to the nearest value for {{refwidth}}. The only complication would be if there are multiple instances on the same page. The only articles using LDRs which have multiple reflist instances are:
  • 2016 National Rugby Championship
  • Antonio de la Mora
  • Billy Higgins (vaudeville)
  • Bob Lively
  • Chocolate Williams
  • Electromagnetic mass
  • Epsilon Eridani
  • Ford Dabney
  • Ginny Gibson - waiting for lower-alpha fix
  • Hugues Panassié
  • Indo-European migrations - uses both short and long citations, needs to be converted to one or the other
  • Jamie Records
  • Jazz Hot
  • Kaj Gynt
  • Little Joe (singer)
  • Mae Doelling Schmidt
  • Martin Rundkvist
  • Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge
  • My Greatest Mistake
  • Onyx Records
  • Peninsula Theatre
  • Prairie View Co-eds
  • Rang Tang
  • Rhododendron subsect. Ledum
  • Richard Hayman
  • Saints Row
  • The Bashful Elephant
  • The Buddha in Hinduism
  • The Jolly Postman
  • There'll Be Some Changes Made
  • William J. Tennyson Jr.

-- Beland (talk) 18:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I have fixed some in the list above, which I have struck through. -- Beland (talk) 18:48, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

What do you consider "empty parameters or malformed syntax"? I see only four pages in Category:Pages using reflist with unknown parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:49, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I see a lot of pages with "refs" but no "=" (this seems to work), "||" or "| |" instead of "|", a few invalid values for "colwidth" (like "2" and "35"), and a handful of invalid unnamed parameter values like "columns", "!", "35", "em30", and "em". -- Beland (talk) 20:25, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

If anyone wants to help! A lot of the individually-listed articles above just have crazy referencing where the multiple lists can be consolidated into a single normal list. A common problem is that copyright references are separated out from other references to avoid repeating the collection name, but repeating the collection name in each individual reference is the right thing to do for downstream ingestion and reader convenience. -- Beland (talk) 09:35, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

6,324 cases where the number of columns is being specified. This no longer works, Like {{reflist|2}}? Specifying 2, when the article has >10 refs, is the same as the default behavior (except probably in Minerva, which uses 25em by default but |2 will use 30em). When the article has 10 or fewer, |2 will still do columns where <references /> won't. Specifying 1 is equivalent to <references responsive=0 />. Specifying any other number uses 25em or 22.5em depending on the skin. Anomie⚔ 20:02, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Right, there are some effects, I just mean this no longer actually results in the specified number of columns being rendered. So these should probably be replaced regardless of VE compatibility issues, to avoid confusion. I would assume replacing {{reflist|2}} with the default <references /> is OK because having columns when there are fewer than 10 items will look bad on wide screens. -- Beland (talk) 20:29, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I'd agree, but some people might complain that they really really want the columns anyway. 😅 Anomie⚔ 20:57, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Heh, I mean some people complain if you give them free money. Not a reason not to proceed unless there's a good articulated reason. 8) -- Beland (talk) 23:36, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

The only complication would be if there are multiple instances on the same page. I don't know if VE would be happy with it, but a {{refwidth-wrap}} template could probably handle that. Also, did you check for articles with {{notelist}} or variants? Anomie⚔ 20:02, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're proposing for {{refwidth wrap}}? VE cannot adequately handle situations where lists of references are inside of a template.

After I started manually fixing pages, yeah, I realized that we need to fix both instances of {{notelist}} using LDRs on its own, and deal with instances of notelist + reflist on the same page. I did a database grep and will report back after enjoying a bit of time in the great outdoors. -- Beland (talk) 20:19, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I should have said {{refwidth begin}}. Sorry. 🙁 The idea being that {{refwidth begin}} would output an unclosed <div class="refwidth-short"> or the like, and the styles would target .refwidth-short .mw-references-columns, so as to keep the different <references /> separate. Anomie⚔ 20:27, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I believe that would work if paired with a {{refwidth end}}, though given all the moving parts I'm not 100% certain until seeing a working implementation. 8) -- Beland (talk) 20:31, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

On the VisualEditor though? {{Refbegin}} and {{refend}} don't work well on VisualEditor. They have the same problems that {{reflist|refs=}} has. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 22:53, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Best way to find out is to try it. -- Beland (talk) 00:02, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

I checked this just using the {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} tags. Those 2 opening and closing templates obscure the references. I also tried just wrapping the references section in arbitrary <div>...</div> tags. The html tags did not obscure the references. It's something about the div coming from the templates. I don't know a way around it, but there are loads of folks here more knowledgeable than I am. Also, if anybody want to see what I am talking about try editing the references section in the two links below using the Visual Editor to see the difference:

• Police Jury ← uses <references>...</references>
• User:Rjjiii/sandbox3 ← uses <references>...</references> wrapped in {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} templates.

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:39, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

These may be overcounts if "refs=" appears with no value but the close braces are not on the same line. When I say {{notelist}} below, I'm including all the notelist-XXX variants.

• I find 166 articles that use {{notelist}} more than once, with at least one having LDRs. This happens a lot for notes at the bottom of a table. (This seems like a place where having multiple columns is not a good idea.)
• I find 542 articles that use both {{notelist}} and {{reflist}} with LDRs for at least one instance of each template.
• This is out of at most 4,049 articles that use {{notelist}} with LDRs and 144,552 articles that use {{reflist}} with LDRs.

-- Beland (talk) 04:50, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 20 June 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. We do not appear to have consensus in either direction here. A couple of replies note the possibility of this creating a lot of work, and others dispute either the relevance of that concern or whether any work beyond creating a redirect will be necessary in the first place, which puts us in crystal ball territory for the purpose of interpreting this discussion, not fully knowing how the community will respond to this change.

The cited guideline does appear to favor expanding the title, however the implementation leaves questions that are yet unanswered, and we should address this before any changes are made. ASUKITE 20:59, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

---

Template:Reflist → TM:Reference listTM:Reference list – This template is a holdout to the general trend towards expanding template names for clarity per Wikipedia:Template namespace § Template names:

Template names should be made of one or more words, and describe the template clearly, as in {{Math topics sidebar}}. Template names are easiest to remember if they follow standard English spelling, spacing, and capitalization. Avoid having templates whose names differ only in case, spacing, or punctuation.

Of course, the old title will still remain a redirect so people can keep using it as a shortcut. FaviFake (talk) 11:11, 20 June 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. 1isall (talk | contribs) 18:26, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Personally, I've never liked the trend towards overly long names for templates, and for this template in particular that's used on millions of pages I can't see the point of making the job queue reprocess them all. Anomie⚔ 12:18, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

You consider Reference list to be overly long? FaviFake (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Anomie. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:31, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. Not worth the effort. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:23, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

  ... what effort? We shouldn't rename a template that clearly violates our guidelines because of the effort that it would take to click the "Move" button? FaviFake (talk) 11:22, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

  No, rather because of what happens next. See for example Anomie's comment. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:45, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

• Support per very long-standing guideline. Opposition seems to only personal dislike or misplaced concern for momentary server load. -- Netoholic @ 02:57, 29 June 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose because of all the watchlist churn that is likely to ensue once gnomes and bots start replacing the template (as we know they are going to want to do if its official name is changed). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:33, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

  Both of these are not allowed per WP:COSMETICBOT, which applies not only to bots but also to human editors [...] making such changes in a bot-like manner. You can't base your !vote on the argument that people will surely break our policies if the change is implemented... FaviFake (talk) 14:40, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

  Of course I can, and surely they will. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: While the guideline about clear names probably applies in a strict sense to this template, it is not the right place to start if one wants the guideline to apply everywhere. It is used on six million articles, according to the template's documentation, which means that any change to this template will cause at least some disruption for limited benefit and cause backlash against the guideline. It would be better to start with a list of poorly named templates that have fewer transclusions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:52, 29 June 2026 (UTC)
• Comment. While Wikipedia:Template namespace is a guidleine, it distinguishes between its guidelines in Wikipedia:Template namespace#Guidelines and Wikipedia:Template namespace#Suggested practices. Wikipedia:Template namespace#Template names is under Suggested practices so we aren't talking about conforming to a guideline here. There are things to be said for both keeping the short name and expanding it. Newer editors who might be confused by the shorter name tend to be insulated from it by their use of Visual Editor. More experienced users view this this shorter name as part of the basic Wikipedia vocabulary. On the usage side we all use the short abbreviations for most templates all the time without caring that they point to longer names. The only change that needs to happen to implement going to a longer name is one move leaving a redirect. No change is needed to existing articles or to our current using of reflist. So leave out the guideline talk and discuss the move as a move. StarryGrandma (talk) 18:56, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

  These are two novel interpretations that do not stand up to scrutiny. First, I don't see anything on the page excluding the suggested practices from the guideline. Everything on that page is part of the guideline. Second, the requested moves page explains that page moves should be supported by policies, guidelines, or both. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:40, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Marking Reflist as deprecated

I recently saw several discussions about replacing {{Reflist}}, as problems occur with the visual editor, and I think it would be helpful to make its status clearer to new users. Therefore, I propose marking {{Reflist}} as deprecated, similar to how Template:Ref label is currently marked with an informational notice. The recommendation there should probably be updated accordingly as well.

The notice could inform editors that {{Reflist}} is not the recommended way to display references and that the <references> ... </references> tag should be used instead.
Of course, this would also apply to Template:Notelist.  Miria~01 (talk) 14:34, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

It's specifically the |refs= parameter that's deprecated for causing issues with VE, and that has been marked as such since Special:Diff/1334954588. If we want to discourage or deprecate the entire template, we'd have to better advertise {{Refwidth}} as a replacement for the column width feature, and probably make a similar template for the group list styles considering the de facto rejection of MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archive 20#<references /> groups. Anomie⚔ 14:45, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Whatever is "the <references /> ... <references /> tag"? I've never heard of it. Do you mean <references>...</references>, or do you mean <references />? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:59, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Typo on my part... I've edited it now.  Miria~01 (talk) 19:01, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

It would be useful to have links to the discussions on the basis of which deprecation is being proposed. Kanguole 20:01, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 58 § Should list-defined references be discouraged? (which ended up not deprecating list-defined references but deprecating the use of reflist (with refs=) to collect them) and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 223 § Bot to make list-defined references editable with the VisualEditor (follow up on automated replacement of reflist-with-refs by references tags). It is not a current proposal and not for the entire reflist template, only for using reflist for list-defined references. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I only recently encountered this problem myself and was actually under the impression that {{reflist}}} is the most common and optimal choice for nesting footnotes in LDR, before I saw the discussions and read the documentation more closely.That’s why, in my opinion,a direct info—like in the {{ref label}} with the "stop hand icon"—would be useful, even if it only would address the LDR topic and highlights an alternative.  Miria~01 (talk) 21:18, 23 August 2026 (UTC)