Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

• In a normal browser window, make sure you are logged out.
• Set your window width to 1300px.
• Pin the tools menu on the right hand side.
• Visit a page with many refs and click on a reference.

Alternately:

• Set your zoom level to 125%
• Set your window width to 1680px (or full-screen for many laptops)
• Visit the same references-list

What happens?:

• You should see the default skin
• On clicking on a ref you should be taken to a References or External Links section, showing a single-column list of references.
  • (The default column width for both {{reflist}} and <references/> is set to 30em, and the body in default Vector at this window width is just under 60em.)
• This is harder to read and on average 10-15% more scrolling than a two column reflist

What should have happened instead?:

• Two-column refs with a width of 25em is preferable to single column.
• However a column width of 30em has been found preferable to 25em on en:wp.
• The default CSS for <references/> should set column width to 25em for Vector 2022, but 30em for Vector 2010.
• {{Reflist}} is used on 6 million pages, <references/> is directly used on more.

Related discussion on en:wp highlights why it's not enough for en:wp template editors to change the defaults for the reflist template used by all. What is a clean way to address this?

I'd rather see us fix Vector 2022 locally with CSS than change the reflist default that has worked well for many years. I can easily get two reflist columns on my 13-inch laptop screen in Vector 2022 with CSS that fixes the [excess] whitespace, leaving me with 69em of space for content (it is 94em in Vector 2010 on the same screen)

as somebody who doesn't use V22, I don't want to see changes to the template which will affect what I see to accomodate V22.

we would presumably also want [this css change] implemented in <references /> since there are plenty of articles with <references /> instead of {{reflist}} as the default widths are the same at the moment

the default column width seems to actually be pulled from the Cite extension: ext.cite.styles.css.