One of the major advances in wiki editing in the last few years has been support for the short template-based referencing systems like SFN. I've made it a basic rule to use SFN if a reference is used more than twice within the article, and an inline only in the rare case where it is used once or twice. I realize my editing patterns are not normal, but I think support for these templated refs would improve the editor greatly.
Perhaps a "toolbar-like" editor to one side of the main editor could list of global references created so far, and allow the user to drag a handle from them into the article to place the ref in the body.
Even better, perhaps the use could drag URLs or text into the bar to create semi-filled out master refs.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement