Template:Reflistp/doc

Although this template is still somewhat experimental, it will not do major damage if used but may slow down page rendering time somewhat.

The purpose is to alleviate the inconvenience and mild irritation caused by the difficulty in verifying the way new and changed references will display when editing sections of an article. Editors often accomplish this by temporarily adding a {{Reflist}} template while they are editing, intending to remove it before saving their changes.

This template is meant to be used in the same way, but contains code to prevent displaying the {{Reflist}} output unless the article is in edit preview mode.

The template should still be removed before changes are saved, but will normally be less disruptive to the article if inadvertently left in place.

Any subsequent editor finding this template in an article should feel free to remove it as being an error. (In odd cases, a <!-- hidden comment --> can be used to request this not be done.)

Known (minor) bugs are:

• the template does not seem to work correctly after a true "null edit" (i.e. when a page is saved to purge the cache with absolutely no change having been made) – following such an edit, any template(s) in the article will work like normal {{reflist}}(s) until removed or until another actual change is saved;
  • N.B. This error might be corrected following some apparent fixes to the Wiki software around 1 March 2012.
• in some cases, leaving it in a saved article will result in unsightly extra whitespace.
  • N.B. For now (until someone provides a more sophisticated method), this can be avoided by placing the {{Reflistp}} template at the end of the last line of a section, not a separate line of its own.