Template talk:Refideas
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 | Template:Refideas is indefinitely protected from editing as it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify a template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.
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See the box that begins "The following ...".
[edit]See the box that begins "The following ...".
The above is from the edit notice one sees upon opening the edit window in an article using this template.
The edit notice sends you to the talk page. On my talk page the references banner is covered up by a dropdown title (in Vector 2022).
On many talk pages the suggested references list will be in a closed box. "The following" is seen only when the box is open.
It might be better to have the edit notice tell people to search for "Reference ideas for ..."
. That is in the title of the open or closed box. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:52, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- Always provide a link when describing or reporting an issue. When I go to Talk:Ambiguity, I see a box that begins "The following ...", and I do not see
"Reference ideas for ..."
. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2026 (UTC)- Oops. I assumed that what I was seeing when I manually opened the closed box on a talk page was what I would see when the box was open by default. See here:
- Talk:Killing of Renee Good
- I removed the edit request.
- Here is the open and closed banner:
 | The following reference(s) may be useful when improving this article in the future:
|
| The following are reference ideas for Template:Refideas. Click [show] for details. The following reference(s) may be useful when improving this article in the future:
|
- --Timeshifter (talk) 22:39, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- Maybe, like many/most(?) collapsed sections, both the open and closed templates should have the same top-line text: "The following reference(s) may be useful when improving this article in the future:". The collapsed template could add something like "(click [show] for details)". – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:11, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95: Those sound like good ideas. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:29, 16 January 2026 (UTC)
- Maybe, like many/most(?) collapsed sections, both the open and closed templates should have the same top-line text: "The following reference(s) may be useful when improving this article in the future:". The collapsed template could add something like "(click [show] for details)". – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:11, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- --Timeshifter (talk) 22:39, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
Edit request for implementing ideas of Jonesey95:
 | This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
--Timeshifter (talk) 13:53, 18 January 2026 (UTC)
Done. The new header text is a bit awkward. Reasonable edits that still keep the start as "The following ..." are welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:27, 18 January 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks Jonesey95. I give you blanket permission to make it better. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 16:27, 18 January 2026 (UTC)
Edit request 1 February 2026
[edit] | This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Description of suggested change: Add |alt=icon to the icon, because linked images need alt text – per MOS:ALT.
Diff:
| − | [[File:Nuvola apps package editors. | + | [[File:Nuvola apps package editors.png|50px|alt=icon]] |
{{Lemondoge|Talk|Contributions}} 15:46, 1 February 2026 (UTC)
- Done. ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 19:42, 1 February 2026 (UTC)
Statistics and observations on template use
[edit]I wrote a quick script to help better understand how this template is being used on English Wikipedia by randomly sampling just over 1% of the pages that use this template, with the results below. It did seem like video games and pop culture were more likely to use this template, and the data seems to bear that out. Happy to re-reun this with other parameters or modify the script to find more insights. Code for this can be found on github here:
- Fuzheado | Talk 12:21, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
Total articles analyzed: 380 Total reference entries: 1,395 Average refs per article: 3.7 Template errors found: 54 --- Reference Type Distribution --- url : 724 ( 51.9%) archive : 362 ( 25.9%) citation_template : 218 ( 15.6%) news_organization : 25 ( 1.8%) other : 20 ( 1.4%) book : 14 ( 1.0%) social_media : 13 ( 0.9%) wiki_article : 13 ( 0.9%) academic_journal : 5 ( 0.4%) government : 1 ( 0.1%) --- Top 20 Domains (from URLs) --- punknews.org : 47 (music/punk rock news) allmusic.com : 28 (music reviews) thegazette.news : 20 (newspaper) articles.mcall.com : 18 (Allentown Morning Call) altpress.com : 16 (alternative press) mmegi.bw : 14 (Botswana newspaper) mtv.com : 11 (music/entertainment) books.google.co.uk : 10 (Google Books UK) polygon.com : 9 (gaming) sundaystandard.info : 9 (Botswana newspaper) ign.com : 8 (gaming) sportskeeda.com : 8 (sports) exclaim.ca : 7 (Canadian music) timeextension.com : 7 (retro gaming) laut.de : 7 (German music) ftbl.com.au : 7 (Australian football) snl24.com : 7 (news) newspapers.com : 6 (newspaper archives) gamespot.com : 6 (gaming) kotaku.com : 6 (gaming) --- Top 20 Article Topics --- Culture.Media.Media* : 81 Culture.Media.Music : 66 Culture.Internet_culture : 54 Culture.Media.Video_Games : 44 Culture.Sports : 19 Culture.Biography.Biography* : 18 Culture.Literature : 13 STEM.STEM* : 9 Geography.Regions.Americas.North_America: 8 Culture.Visual_arts.Comics_and_Anime : 7 Culture.Visual_arts.Visual_arts* : 5 Geography.Regions.Europe.Europe* : 5 Geography.Regions.Asia.East_Asia : 5 Geography.Regions.Asia.Southeast_Asia : 4 Geography.Regions.Oceania : 4 History_and_Society.Politics_and_government : 3 Culture.Media.Television : 3 STEM.Biology : 3 Geography.Regions.Asia.West_Asia : 2 Culture.Philosophy_and_religion : 2
Fuzheado | Talk 12:21, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
- It would be nice to have a bot that regularly runs this script and posts the results to a maintenance page that can be watchlisted. Cooljeanius (talk) (contribs) 14:37, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
Use the SVG version instead of the PNG version as the icon
[edit](This is an edit request not made using the "Request edit" button)
Use File:Nuvola apps package editors.svg instead of File:Nuvola apps package editors.png, since SVGs are preferred for icons like this. Thanks. Hason-LEK-🇸🇬 ● 💬 ● 🧱 ● 🧪 13:12, 12 August 2026 (UTC)
