User:TheMG/Citations

This is a policy being drafted by MarioGalaxy2433g5. It probably isn't finished, so yeah. Also, parts of this were copied from wikitroid since it is one of the only ones I know of and it gets the point across.

What are citations
Citations (or references) are when one cites where information comes from. On The BIONICLE Wiki, this should be done through code. Information about BIONICLE comes from a variety of sources, so fact and conjecture can be easily mixed. Therefore citations should be used whenever possible. This provides integrity and verifiablility to the articles.

Marking as needing citations
You can (and should) mark information as needing citations by adding templates. To mark a whole article as needing citations, add to the top of the page. To mark a certain piece of information as needing citations add after the information, in a format like this: First sentence. Sentence containing the information you want checked. Another sentence Note that the template goes after the punctuation ending the sentence in question, but before the spaces separating it from the next sentence. If you instead want to tag a particular word or phrase, place the template immediately after the (last) word (in the phrase) unless punctuation immediately follows it, in which case you would put the template after the punctuation.

Both of the templates above add the article to the category Articles needing verification.

Of course, when possible, one should find the citation itself instead of just tagging the page/sentence as needing a citation.

If something is outright ridiculous, purely speculative, or otherwise blatantly false, just remove it. You won't need to add a citation needed template in that case.

Before adding citations
Before adding citations, make sure there is a references section at the bottom of the page. It should be below all content, but above navigation boxes, templates and categories and should look like this:

Removing and modifying citations
To remove a citation, simply remove the entire reference statement. Note that if you remove the first instance of a citation which is referenced later by its identifier, this will cause an error. Change the next instance of the citation from the "short" version to the "full" version. For example, say you have an article that looks like this: Something. Something more. Some other stuff. More stuff. Even more stuff! Removing the  citation will make the following "short" citations  output errors. You should either remove all of these or change the next short citation to the "complete" citation.

To modify a citation, you simply need to find the "complete" citation and modify the information between the  tags (you can't modify a "short" citation, since it merely points back to the "complete" citation). Note that modifying a complete citation will also modify all short citations that point to it.

Citation Templates
Citation template are pre-made formatting templates that make formatting and standardizing citations easier. You should use these whenever possible instead of just inserting arbitrary text between the  tags. Citation template are relatively simple, you just insert the template between the  tags. There are several templates, each for a different type of source:
 * Cite book (for citing books, comics, etc)
 * Cite news (for citing newspapers)
 * Cite game (for citing video games)
 * Cite journal (for citing journals and magazines)
 * Cite web (for citing websites)

Reliable Sources
Make sure you use reliable sources. Random internet forums are not reliable (unless Greg Farshtey goes there sometimes, but even then, be careful). Make sure you stick to truly reliable sources. Examples include the books, the comics, the movies, websites run by LEGO, and direct quotes from Greg Farshtey. Information from unreliable sources will be removed.