I want to implement a footnote creation mechanism similar to the one implemented in Hebrew Wikipedia in my own MediaWiki 1.34.0 based Hebrew website (which is a personal and non communal website).
The first option that came to my mind was just to copy-paste the "footnote" and "footnote chapter" templates of Hebrew Wikipedia but it isn't possible because there seems to be a much more complicated situation:
According to my understanding, the footnote creation mechanism implemented in Hebrew Wikipedia includes the usage of at least five very complicated templates which require installing an external extension Scribunto:
template:footnote | תבנית:הערה
template:margin footnotes | תבנית:הערות שוליים
template:documentation | תבנית:תיעוד
template:parameter management | תבנית:ניהול פרמטרים
template:parameter management/content | תבנית:ניהול פרמטרים/תוכן
Contemplating these templates:
Even if I totally strip out all <templatedata> and [[category:]] ([[קטגוריה:]]) mambo jambo, I am still left with five templates which I personally find too many,very complex, very dense, very confusing and very hard to maintain;
Well,
If all that is done is creating footnotes (perhaps with footnote names and name calls) as well as corresponding footnote numbers in main article text, than why all this complexity is needed.
Why does Hebrew Wikipedia's footnote template are so complex?