 *: Placing the refs in the reference section makes a world of sense; the mechanism that evolved to have full references inline is an artifact of the route MediaWiki evolved as a piece of software. Look to real books; footnotes appear as an unobtrusive number or character in the prose and the body of it is at the foot of the page, the end of the chapter, or at the back of the book. Collecting them together is an appropriate progressive step. FWIW, I edit whole pages much of the time.  