This bug was initially created as a clone of T63615
I think we can implement the <cite> tag into page rendering. Every <ref> tag will produce a HTML wrapped in <cite> tag, which could be much more semantic and accesible from the Web's point. I'm open for ideas how to implement it properly.
See its specification on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/cite
I forgot about the <q> tag (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/q).
Note: I think we can create a complete semantic solution for citations in MediaWiki, instead of using templates like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite
This HTML5 solution would be better and (at first) readable by machines/robots/programs. I think it's really possible.
The <time> tag could be used to insert a citation date, example:
Accessed: <time datetime="2001-05-15">May 15, 2001</time>
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time
References are mostly built using templates usually. There has some discussion about using html5 elements already on english wikipedia for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Citation/Archive_3#HTML_cite_element
I think any further discussion is probably best done there, since <ref> and the citation extension basically has no semantic knowledge about the citations that it contains, which is required for applying the proper styling elements.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/cite.html (cite is for the TITLE of a work)
Closing as invalid, since it would require implementation on the individual wiki.
@Derk-Jan: I agree that it's hard in the template-based system, but believe that it's worth considering for the longer term in the interest of better citation editing. Reopening for that reason.
We are interested in this kind of thing as part of the Parsoid project. We have a native port of the Cite extension already, and mark up semantic information using semantic HTML5 markup and RDFa.
In the next months, we are planning to research widgets for the display of structured information including data tables and perhaps citations. Additionally, we are working on a service for the quick creation of citations by retrieving citation data from online data sources.
Here's a complete example (hope so):
<ref name="blah">
<span itemprop="author">John Doe</span>,
<cite itemprop="name">
<a itemprop="url" href="http://example.com/blah">News title</a>
</cite>,
<span itemprop="publisher"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example News">Example News</a></span>
</ref>
I forgot to say about yet another important thing. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Archive_109#Allow_user_preferences_in_References_section first.
I mean customization of the references citation style. If we have a MediaWiki Web-standards-compliant solution for references, users could choose theirs citation style same like on Special:Cite page. Examples:
...just see this on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACite&page=a .
Not all uses of <ref> are <cite>-worthy; some are notes which themselves end up citing some content. This would seem to me an incorrect use of <cite>.
Basically, DJ's comment at
I think any further discussion is probably best done there, since <ref> and the citation extension basically has no semantic knowledge about the citations that it contains, which is required for applying the proper styling elements.
Per T66478#2002123, I think this should be declined. Output without semantic markup is still better than output with wrong semantic markup.