User talk:Zephyr Foxworth

Referencing

Heyo, since I am not used to wiki work (Wikia's different), I was wondering if you could give me a small tutorial on citing and referencing. I tend to avoid editing where references are needed so it is greatly appreciated if you could give me a tutorial. Thank you -Lugia101101 (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2014 (BST)

Sure thing! Most of what I'll say can be found here, on the Cite plugin's page, but I'll explain the basics here.

The main mechanic is the use of the <ref> tag. Whatever is written between the opening and closing tag will appear at the end of the page, in a list of references. This list is generated wherever the <references /> tag is placed, and will flash a warning if you forget to place it when previewing the page. If you want to reference the same thing in multiple places, you can add a parameter to the tag: <ref name="demo"> Reference stuff </ref> for the first instance, and <ref name="demo" /> for any further instances.

Also, keep in mind how the references look when you finish. As you can see in my example below (in the 2nd reference), leaving no alt text for a link will default to a numbered bracket that might not match up with the citation number. I currently favor the second format for referencing things, but will use the third when dealing with content that has a time context. (Such as events)

As for when to cite; It's a subjective topic. I'd try to see how the page improves from adding it, before doing so. As long as the target is of good quality, (such as a staff post), it usually doesn't hurt to add it.

Since I wasn't sure exactly what you were curious about with referencing, feel free to ask more specific questions if you have any. -Zephyr Foxworth (talk) 22:58, 6 August 2014 (BST)

Thank you very much. That's all I need. -Lugia101101 (talk) 10:00, 7 August 2014 (BST)

Example

Typical sentence with typical words.

Here's a second sentence.

Third sentence to demo dated format.

Plus one more to demo multiple instances of one citation.