Editing Encyclopedia:Citing sources (section)

====Avoiding clutter====
{{Shortcut|WP:ILCLUTTER|WP:INLINECLUTTER|WP:INLINECITECLUTTER}}
Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become confusing and difficult to manage. There are two main methods to avoid [[visual pollution|clutter]] in the edit window:
* Using [[Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references|list-defined references]] by collecting the full citation code within the [[Template:Reflist#List-defined references|reference list template]] {{tlg|reflist|nolink=yes}}, and then inserting them in the text with a shortened reference tag, for example <code><nowiki><ref name="Smith 2001, p99" /></nowiki></code>.
* Inserting [[#Short citations|short citations]] (see below) that then refer to a full list of source texts

As with other citation formats, articles should not undergo large-scale conversion between formats without consensus to do so.

Note, however, that references defined in the reference list template can no longer be edited with the [[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]].