MarioWiki:Citations

This policy covers the rules of Citing Sources and References in articles.

Why Sourcing?

On the Super Mario Wiki, we mainly take our information we put in the article from those it is all about - the Mario Games, TV & Movies, Publications and the likes. However, in quite some places, we also take information from official gameplay guides, official websites and press & fan websites reporting on unreleased games. In recent times, we have got a flood of unofficial information regarding new games, namely Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and they have been added to the site. Thus, the information in the article is a mixture of official information and speculation by fans. In order to ensure our credibility and style, but still be able to use press as a source, we need to give our sources.

What needs References, what not?

References are needed when you take information that is not directly from the game (replace: TV episode, comic etc. for game), which would be the manual, Nintendo Power Official Guide, the Prima Official Game Guide, an official or unofficial website and similar sources. NOTE: Prima Guides are official as of 2007, when Nintendo Power Guides were discontinued. Earlier Prima guides are not considered official.

There is no need to cite the game itself. Any information you have on the game by simply playing it can be put in the article as previous - we do not want to flood the articles with references.

What to put into References?

To cite a written source, which you cannot provide a link to, you only need to state it exactly. For example:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ..." ~ Super Mario Sunshine manual, page 9.

To cite websites, you add a link to the page, a date when the info became published on that site (when available), and use the page's title as the link name:

Smash Bros. DOJO!! (Retrieved on 2008-1-26)

How to add References

We have a system of references that is quite similar to Wikipedia, if you are familiar with it. (This does not mean we go to the same scale as Wikipedia, but rather we use the same code.) The special tags you will need are <ref></ref> and <references/>.

Using the Reference System

Take the Bowser Crush article as an example. It features a paragraph of information which was not present in the game at all, but came from Nintendo's official guide. A reference is given in the first sentence of this paragraph:

The gigantic Bowser Crush Mecha-Koopa was developed by Koopa researchers in a top-secret laboratory located deep within Bowser's Keep^[1]. These Koopas worked long shifts for months on end designing this powerful weapon. However, their ultimate goal was to not to create a battlefield weapon, but to create a device that could crush flowers and frighten butterflies. This giant Mecha-Koopa was finished just as the Smithy Gang invaded Bowser's Keep and the Mushroom World. Initially, King Bowser was disappointed he could not immediately use his new weapon to squish flowers as he had more pressing matters to attend to, such as reclaiming his keep, rebuilding the Koopa Troop, and defeating Smithy. However, he soon discovered that the Mecha-Koopa could be used to smash enemies and members of Smithy's gang. Bowser enjoyed this revelation immensely, and took pleasure in crushing opponents after learning to summon this giant Mecha-Koopa.

The end of the page features the reference section, where the reader can see the source of this text:

1. ^ As portrayed in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

When looking at the code of this example, you can see that the content of the note is not given at the end of the article under the References header, but directly in the text:

The gigantic Bowser Crush Mecha-Koopa was developed by [[Koopa]]
researchers in a top-secret laboratory located deep within [[Bowser's Keep]]
<ref>As portrayed in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide of ''Super Mario
RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars''.</ref>.

The end of the article, the Reference header, just features a single line:

== References ==
<references/>

As you can see, the reference given between the <ref></ref> text is automatically placed at wherever <references/> is put in the text. This allows you to keep the overview of where you have put your sources. You do not have to care about the links that are provided to the footnote, they are automatically created by the system.

Multiple Citations of the Same Source

In long articles, you could come across the problem of needing to give the same source twice. To do this, you do not need to say the same things twice and add it to the References list two times, but can reuse your previous reference and give it again. For this, you need to give names to your references:

If you give two or more references the same name<ref name="test">Only
the description in the first ref with the name (that is, a) is
shown</ref>, they will have the same number<ref name="test"/>

The first time you give the reference, you have to use the name= parameter to give a specific, preferably descriptive name (e.g. "official_guide"). The second time you use the reference, you simply use an empty <ref/> tag with the same name given as your previous. Both references will then share the same number, and in the list of references at the bottom of the page, there will only be one entry, with links back to each part of the article from where it is linked, so that the reader can continue to read exactly where they have clicked on the reference:

If you give two or more references the same name^[2],

they will have the same number^[2]
[...]

2. ^ ^{a b} Only the description in the first ref with the name (that is, a) is shown

Requesting a Source

To request a source, we use a workaround. Add {{refneeded}} (Template:Refneeded) to statements which seem source-worthy for you:

Mario is able to fly in ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl'' {{refneeded}}.

The result is this:

Mario is able to fly in Super Smash Bros. Brawl .

...with a link to this page.