Hi @ZauberViolino, thanks for taking the time to report this! I cannot find this mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Character_Classic does not mention that it is used as a numbering system. Could you provide some references, please?

This doesn't feel like something Cite itself should support, especially since a wiki that wants this can do it using the existing functionality of creating "cite link-label foo" messages (per https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite#Grouped_references)

@Aklapper There are some information on Chinese Wikipedia: zh:千字文#千字文编号法.

I think it's rather unlikely that someone will implement and maintain this; see the previous comment from Pppery for a realistic approach.

Thanks. I'll ask local admins to implement this by Grouped References. I'd like to ask that if we want to make this default (instead of using "group=" every time) we have to come back and file another request, right?

In T401857#11083756, @Pppery wrote:

This doesn't feel like something Cite itself should support, especially since a wiki that wants this can do it using the existing functionality of creating "cite link-label foo" messages (per https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite#Grouped_references)

My understanding of the subreferencing work is that these will go away in some measure. They may work today but may not work tomorrow. See the children of T369275.

How to redefine markers of references lists?
https://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%9C%8B&oldid=427508
Base 1000 in ref tags, but still cjk-decimal for all numbers in references.

In T401857#11431690, @ZauberViolino wrote:

How to redefine markers of references lists?
https://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%9C%8B&oldid=427508
Base 1000 in ref tags, but still cjk-decimal for all numbers in references.

Excuse me. @Pppery.

I don't know.

The reference list items are plain <li>. You will have to define a custom marker scheme with @counter-style in a site-wide CSS, and set list-style-type to it. The cjk-decimal you see is from MediaWiki:Common.css.

The default marker group is not configurable per comment in MarkSymbolRenderer.php. It also says this customization for label is deprecated, as @Izno said in T401857#11088134.

Personally I think it's a bad idea to use 千字文 for this purpose. The relative order would be hard to deduce (unless it's intended to be used as an identifier). It's not too different from using Unicode code point as an index.

"TODO: deprecate this mechanism."

That does not mean it is deprecated.