MarioWiki:Main Page talk archive 18

Citation Policy
Hello all philosophers of the SMWiki, who like to talk in nice, long paragraphs about Mario continuity and other issues (you know who you are :P).

With the citation proposal winning 16-3 and expiring in less than 19 hours, I'm going to go ahead and put this out: what exactly are we citing? As it stands information straight from a game is self-explanatory and has no need to be cited. So what about when unreleased games, with references to websites with confirmed info, becomes released? Do we get rid of all of those citations?

I invite anyone to discuss this matter (even those non-philosophers who make quick edits to user talk pages all the time :P) who has ideas for it. I'll take care of the templates to be used and the help pages for the inexperienced (aka all the coding I always do); I only need guidance on this so we can get started citing hopefully in a few days. 22:10, 21 January 2008 (EST)


 * Right, so here we go. Stumpers, activated.  Wayo, you know that I'm for citation but too much will cost us a bunch of users, so... here's what I'm thinking.  Traditional, real-life citation requires the citer to cite what he or she does not know from the beginning.  That's for writing where someone can cite you personally.  However, as an encyclopedia, we need to be a little more specific than that.  How about this:


 * Citation is there to prevent vandalism and people adding false information. It important because it increases credibility.  The more specific you are, the more credible you are.  However, the more focused a Wiki is, the less specific citation it requires, IMO, because everyone is pulling generally from the same sources (games, TV shows, etc.) SO!  Here it is.  Stumpers' Numbered Citation Extraveganza.


 * 1) Citing games/shows/movies/comics: Unnecesary to the extent of Wikipedia. You should not have to quote the individual line that is evidence, right?  However, I do feel that a quick note would be nice.  Example, "Princess Peach has been known to use her charms on villains, but only for the purpose of being a detriment to their plots."  Of course, this comes from Peach's initial relationship to T.E.C., but did you also know that it's from the the Mario Anime movie?  But, anything beyond this would be over the top.
 * 2) Citing official sites and material: A must for pre-release games like Brawl. If Nintendo has realeased a new press release or Nintendo Power magazine, this will save a lot of time.  For Nintendo Power, we should provide the issue, article title, pg. number, etc. where available.  You know, traditional stuff.  A URL should be sufficient for citing web sites.  Maybe a retrival date if we want to get picky.  This includes instruction booklets and boxes, by the way, because not everyone is familiar with 'em.
 * 3) Citing 3rd party sources: Same thing, but... we need to be extra careful about what we do here, because this is where things get sticky. I feel that, with any print source, the book/magazine title and pg. number (article title, too if it's an article) should be put down.  For a website, put as much down as possible.  Even a quote from the site if it's really, really weird.


 * Bottom line: the farther your source is from an official game or other medium, the more information should be placed in the citation. Let's say you get a paragraph based off of something you got from a game in a character's article.  The citation should go at the end.  In other words, "MC Ballyhoo hosts the Star Carnival blah blah blah a year's worth of candy." and then you would cite your source.


 * For citing, we should pick a uniform method. I'm going to go with Wikipedia on this one.  Here's [wikipedia:Mario#References an example] of how they cite.  It looks pretty simple actually.  Of course, no reason to get as in depth as some of their crud, like the whole quote from a certain video game thing.  I'm also leaning towards using their numbered source system, where you click a citation and it brings you to the bottom of the page.  It should be like that so only people who want to question your source can see it.


 * Ok, that's what I'm thinking. Let me know if there's a gaping hole in this idea.  22:37, 21 January 2008 (EST)

The Transformers wiki have good guidelines when it come to sourcing. We could use a similar policy. --Blitzwing 06:51, 22 January 2008 (EST)


 * When using Wikipedia's own citing environment, citing can be made very easy, apparently. You could cite like this:

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been delayed up to January 31st in Japan.


 * Then, at the end of the article, you add a section which reads:

== References ==


 * All tags' content will automatically be listed at, you don't have to create extra links for it. This is, at least, how Wikipedia's system works. - 06:53, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Blitzwing, I think you're right about your transformers... and you said it with a lot fewer words than me! ;) I think we should be using Cobold's Wikipedia system for anything that is not a primary source (game, etc.) and something similar to the "Storylink" for the primary sources... maybe. I could also see not copying TransformerWiki on that, because it looks like two kinds of citations may be a little inconsistent.  12:32, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Oh, I thought I added this last night...yes, we are using the &lt;ref> & &lt;references/> system. 16:53, 22 January 2008 (EST)
 * Okay, I've put up a demonstration in the Sandbox, looks cool. :) - 16:58, 22 January 2008 (EST)


 * I used Cobold's citation thing on the Snufit page. Is that how it's supposed to look? 20:00, 22 January 2008 (EST)
 * Yep, good job. I have one template up for use, but it's currently in beta and not working:, to save a little bit of time hopefully when I get it working. I don't think the multi-column thing for the references list is necessary since we will never have 30+ references on one page, most likely, so we're going to stick to just . Help page, fix of that template, and maybe the policy all throughout this week, at latest done by Friday. 20:59, 22 January 2008 (EST)
 * Hey, Wayo, be sure you decide on what information you want in each reference. I just did up the Masahiro Sakurai article, but I think I cited wrong, so... anyway, you can kinda see another multiple-source article there.   I think your system is working well!  23:08, 23 January 2008 (EST)