Author: niels.oestergaard

Description:
I brought this up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29,
but was adviced to take it here.

The last heading with an ''[edit]'' link is often "See also", "External
links", "References", or the like. However, in the source this heading is often followed
by other end matter, and editing this end matter by clicking the ''[edit]'' link produced
by the last heading results in a misleading edit summary. Examples of such end matter
taken from a few random articles:

{{start box}}
...
{{end box}}
{{English Monarchs}}
{{Austria-bio-stub}}

[[:Category:English monarchs]]
[[:Category:Musicians who left Nazi Germany|Krips, Josef]]

[[es:Enrique VII de Inglaterra]]''

Could we introduce a dummy heading, say ''==Endmatter=='', to be included in the source
immediately following the stuff logically belonging under the last proper heading? It
should be suppressed by the wiki software, appearing as an ''[edit]'' link, but not as a
proper heading, and not in the table of contents. Maybe it should not appear as a heading
in the source, but as some sort of internal link template, and perhaps it should appear
not merely as ''[edit]'', but as ''[edit endmatter]''. In any case, the edit link should
open everything following it in the source for editing, and produce an edit summary
like ''/* end matter */''. One could also consider introducing a similar dummy heading or
internal link template appearing as ''[edit lead section]'' or ''[edit top matter]'',
opening everything down to the first heading for editing, and producing a corresponding
edit summary.

If such internal link templates are created (or already exist - I don't really know), or
if such wiki software modifications for suppressing dummy headings are introduced, it
would be left to the editors (perhaps assisted by suitable bots) to introduce the
required changes to the source of our 1645523 exitsting articles.

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement