DC Animated Universe:Citing sources

This page is considered an official policy on the DC Animated Universe Wiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.

Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by consensus.

If you do not know how to format the citation, provide as much information as you can, and others may fix it for you. Cite It!

Why sources should be cited

• To improve the overall credibility and professional character of the DC Animated Universe Wiki.
• To credit a source for providing useful information and to avoid claims of plagiarism.
• To show that your edit is not original research.
• To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by anyone.
• To help users find additional reliable information on the topic.
• To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.

When to cite sources

When you add content

The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions or sweeping statements. Avoid generalizations such as, "Most fans liked/disliked ..." Instead, be concise and make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that this Wikia is not a place for expressing your own opinions or for original research.

What material can be challenged?

All material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source.

Any material ranging from, but not limited to, in-universe information, real world facts, statements, and news related to the DCAU scope.

When you quote someone

You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it's a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." For long quotes, you may wish to use Quotation templates.

How to cite sources

Inline citations (references inserted into the text) may use one of the following systems.

1. Embedded HTML links
2. Footnotes (most often using <ref> and <references/> elements)

• If you are unclear as to which system or style to use, remember: the most important thing is to provide all the information one would need to identify and find the source. If necessary, put this information on the talk page, or in a comment on the main page, and ask others how to format it correctly for that article.

Embedded HTML links

Web pages referenced in an article can be linked to directly by enclosing the URL in square brackets. For example, a reference to a newspaper article can be embedded like: [http://dcanimated.wikia.com], which looks like this: [1]

Footnotes

Single insertion of a reference

For the single insertion of a reference, the "name" parameter is not needed. On the Edit page, this is placed at the insertion point of citation:

<ref>TEXT HERE</ref>

Multiple insertion of the same reference

To give a footnote a unique identifier, use <ref name="Title"> ... </ref>. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The name cannot be a number, or the extension will return an error. The ref name need not be placed within inverted commas unless it consists of more than one word.

Only the first occurrence of text in a named ref will be used, although that occurrence may be located anywhere in the article. You can either copy the whole footnote, or you can use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this: <ref name="Title"/>.

Example

This is placed at the first insertion point of citation:

<ref name="Title">TEXT HERE</ref>

This is placed at the second insertion point of citation and so forth for further insertion points:

<ref name="Title" />

Producing the reference list

To display the reference list, add the following code after the "Appearances" and "Sources" sections, but before the "See also" and "External links" sections.

==Footnotes==
{{Reflist}}

Footnotes come after punctuation

Some words, phrases or facts must be referenced mid-sentence; footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are placed immediately after the punctuation. For example: Hawkgirl would participate in the various missions with the Justice League, including the Manhunter threat to Oa, Vandal Savage's alteration of World War II, and Darkseid's attempt to kill Superman and remake the universe in his image.

Tagging unsourced material

If an article has no references, and you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template {{Unreferenced}}. Note that it is more helpful to tag individual sentences with the {{fact}} template.

If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider wrapping {{fact}} around the sentence or removing the claim. Consider the following in deciding which action to take:

1. If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article, use the {{fact}} tag to ask for source verification, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.
   
2. If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it is as very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense.

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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Wikipedia:Citing sources. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with the DC Animated Universe Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.