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This page is a SmashWiki guideline, a principle that suggests how users should contribute and conduct themselves. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page. |
SmashWiki encourages editors to provide citation to reference their article content and corroborate it with another source. However, we recognize that much of the information found on SmashWiki can be extremely difficult to source, or demands an impractical amount of effort on the part of an editor.
What is citation?
Citation is the process by which an article references information found at another location (usually the internet in SmashWiki's case). They appear at the bottom of articles under a level 2 header called External links (i.e. ==External links==).
Provide a link to the website where the information was found in a bullet point under the External links header, preferably with the title of the target page and/or what information is being referenced (i.e. [http://www.source.com/mariosfinalsmash.html Source.com - Mario's Final Smash]). If there are multiple sources of information, each link should get its own bullet point.
On another note, you should generally archive any cited links through the Internet Archive, and cite the archived link instead of the direct link. All too often, web pages being cited are deleted or otherwise become inaccessible to the public, leaving the wiki with invalid citations, and making the sources impossible to retrieve if no one else archived it prior. This is especially important with citations of social media posts, which are volatile and frequently become inaccessible from a cited post being deleted, the user who made the cited post deactivating their account, or said user being banned from the site the cited post was on.
What requires sourcing
What requires sourcing is often up to the discretion of editors, but the following is an incomplete list of content that should always be sourced in some way:
- To prevent SmashWiki from being used to post libel or to propagate any editor's personal agenda, controversy sections on Smasher articles and the like strictly require citations to sources verifying the controversy happened and for any other claims made within these sections. Any claims of players being banned from any tournament or any other such consequence additionally require a public-accessible source, so readers and other editors can verify that it happened.
- Attributing a quote or any other claim to any real life figure requires citing a source verifying they have made said quote/claim. For example, you cannot write "Masahiro Sakurai said [X character] was initially planned to be included in Melee, but was replaced with the six clones" without citing it with a valid source.
- Tournament results on Smasher articles should link to a source verifying every result, as tournament results can be easily falsified otherwise. Sourcing in these instances shouldn't be done through citations, but rather through the format specified in the Smasher article guidelines.
- Results on tournament articles must have a source on the page verifying that the results are legitimate, which will typically entail providing the external link to a tournament's Start.gg page or any other webpage documenting the results.
- In instances where SmashWiki has the results posted for a tournament that no longer has any external documentation of the results (such as its results thread on Smashboards being taken down and no archive remaining of it, or the tournament only having its results posted on the now-defunct AllisBrawl), SmashWiki will assume being the primary source for those results. However, in these situations, any further additions or modification of the posted results on SmashWiki will require another external source being found to verify the edits.
- All power rankings posted on the wiki must have citations verifying the rankings are as reported on the wiki, as rankings can be falsified, and entirely false rankings have even been posted on SmashWiki before.
- Similar to lost tournament results, already posted rankings that no longer have an external source available will have SmashWiki assume being the primary source, and any modification of the posted rankings will similarly require another external source being found to justify the modification.
- Any other sort of claim that is extraordinary or likely to be contended should be cited with a source verifying the claim.
What doesn't require sourcing
Plenty of content on the wiki doesn't require an external source. The following is an incomplete list of content that isn't expected to be sourced.
- Any basic game knowledge, such as stating "Mario is playable in [X Smash game]" or "Bowser is the main antagonist of the Mario series".
- Any moveset and attribute data, such as a character's falling speed or the frame data of their moves. SmashWiki assumes being the primary source for this data, as the actual source for this data (the internal game data itself) typically cannot be comprehended by the general layperson and requires expertise to access, while any external website reporting the data is not inherently more authoritative than SmashWiki itself. However, any editor attempting to change established data from what's listed on the wiki will require evidence of the data being wrong.
- Descriptions, elaborations, and other sorts of article filler, like describing how a move works or explaining how a character has fared competitively. Any disputes over this sort of content should be resolved on the relevant article's talk page.
Examples
Here are some examples of well-referenced articles: