Greetings from WMDE Technical Wishes! In September 2025 we deployed sub-referencing to German Wikipedia to make re-using references with different details easier. Thanks for piloting and helping to improve the feature!

We recently published our insights and next steps in our report. Some highlights:

• Over 6,000 Wikipedia articles use the new feature, with a total of over 15,000 sub-references created to date.
• There are both experienced editors in featured articles (e.g. de:Explosion des Oppauer Stickstoffwerkes) and relatively inexperienced VisualEditor users (e.g. in de:Schmerzhafte Muttergottes (Guido Cagnacci)) using the feature. The majority of all sub-references (approx. 90%) are created in wikitext, yet over 300 editors have used the function in VisualEditor alone.
• Workarounds like <ref name="Miller" /><sup>p. 44</sup> (in the reader view ^{[1] p. 44}) have been replaced entirely by sub-referencing, which means that the complete reference information – including the page number – is now visible in both the reference list and in Reference Previews.
• Sub-referencing is used with lots of different citation details – predominantly page numbers, but also details such as chapters, paragraphs, quotes or video / audio timestamps.

What has happened since September?

• We ensured that re-used sub-references actually appear as re-used in the reader view and in VisualEditor.
• We've made some cosmetic changes to the reference list: Initially, multi-line sub-references (e.g. quotations) were not displayed ideally, and two-digit sub-reference numbers were not indented correctly.
• In VisualEditor, we have provided a feature to choose whether changes to re-used sub-references should affect all uses of the same sub-reference or only the one currently edited.

What's next?

• We will deploy sub-referencing to additional pilot wikis next week: Polish Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipdia and seven smaller wikis (phab:T414094). All of these projects have been notified in advance.
• We are working on technical adjustments to make sub-referencing usable in all wikis that use variants of the {{Reflist}} template.
• We are continuing to address community feedback: Among other things, we are currently exploring various ideas for visually improving reference lists with lots sub-references (e.g. de:Liste der Straßen in Bad Honnef#Einzelnachweise und Anmerkungen).
• In addition to sub-referencing, we are looking at other reference-related improvements: We are considering general improvements to Reference Previews or solving issues with automatically created reference names in VisualEditor – there will be announcements and community consultations on this in the near future.

More information about sub-referencing on our project page, more about our learnings and next steps in our report. All the best from WMDE Technical Wishes!