Help talk:References

Punctuation

What is the proper punctuation, "word¹." or "word.¹"? Erasculio 14:55, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I personally prefer the latter because I don't like the gap between the word and the full stop/other punctuation, but I've seen both around. I'm not sure what the "official" English rules are, but Wikipedia seems to have them after punctuation as well. pling 15:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Personally I would differ two situations: If the 1 references to only the word, then the first is to be used; if the reference applies to the sentence (or multiple), then the reference should be placed after the sentence. poke | talk 17:30, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia style is definitely after the punctuation (I've been corrected a few times. :) Either consistently in or consistently out because it is easier to maintain. Slight preference for outside for the same reasons as Pling. -- Aspectacle  23:18, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

If we were to follow the punctuation rules of other punctuations - such as quotation makes - it would be after the period as we have x." and not x". However, I would have to agree with Poke. That said, I can't think of a situation where we'd be referring to a single word and not multiple words - with the exception being a list. I.e., just put it on the outside of the period or comma. -- Konig/talk

Citing official sources

I think we should stop citing the official website and other official sources. References should be used sparingly for an article to look decent, so we should assume that people will read official sources in order to lower the number of references.-- Shew ♠♠♠ 20:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Until GW2 is released, references will be used a lot. I think we shouldn't use it for the official website though. It should be used for interviews, articles, and fan-sites. But once the game is released, we can remove a vast majority of the references. More than 90%, I'm sure, as most of the stuff are rather point-blank information from interviews and the official site about skills. -- Konig/talk 22:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't need to do references for the stuff off the official site. I've removed a few from the elementalist page already. :) -- Aspectacle  23:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Which IMO wasn't a good idea. The information we have on the wiki is often flawed as it's someone's interpretation of what has been read somewhere else; when we are all using the game as the source different interpretations are easily checked, but with the current number of places where a piece of information may be found, double checking what people have been written is not that easy. I wouldn't be surprised if many people didn't notice that the elementalist article on the official site has been updated, and were thus left wondering where the information about the elementalist's weapons came from.

I would rather continue using references for everything until the game is released, and then remove references about content seen in the game (keeping them for content such as GW2's development history, of course). Erasculio 00:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Wait, the Elementalist article on the official site was updated? Before I go to check that, I would say that we should only remove references to the official site some time after its release. I would say just saying "Source: <website name>" in the summary would be good enough for official site sources, but not everyone checks the summary or the history. I would think that after a month of an information being released on the official GW2 site (and no where else, not even the blog site - wherever that is...) the reference tags could be removed. But no matter what, after the release, there's no need to reference anything if it mentioned somewhere in the game (anywhere) - especially if it is in the manual or something. -- Konig/talk 00:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes sneaky updating has been going on... I went to look to see how they'd formatted the weapons and they'd changed. :D

Eras - The references I removed were for how the elementalist is a confirmed profession and that elementalists duel wield daggers. The former is common knowledge, the latter pretty damn close to. Another was a reference to the abilities of the elementalist, but as that was from the official page and the rest of the page is practically copied verbatim from the official site without a reference I didn't think it was necessary. -- Aspectacle  01:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

If there is a source, reference it! Even when the game is released, being able to find where the information came from will be a strong indication of how reliable the information is. A fair amount of trash exists on the old Guild Wars wiki simply because someone added a bit of speculation and other people took it as Gospel. --Max 2 01:33, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

If by "the old Guild Wars wiki" you mean the wikia (unofficial) one, then yes - but not so on the GW1 official wiki. But referencing isn't necessary when the game is released if it is something that is very obvious. That is, skill descriptions and what they do (every skill article here seems to have a reference tag), or the abilities of professions, etc. On the other hand, when talking about lore related things, reference tags are not needed unless referencing an out-of-game and unrecorded-on-the-wiki source. The gww doesn't have much - if any - speculation in the lore (though there is a need of updating based on new information). -- Konig/talk 01:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I agree with Eras. I think that references, even those from the official site, should be added until the game comes out. As for when the game comes out, absolutely not, as per Koing's points. --hnzdvn 01:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

We probably won't need to cite the game (just use normal wikilinking or something if necessary). I don't think we should cite the official website before release, but I don't feel strongly enough to oppose it. pling 16:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent)

I do mean that GW1 is messed up. Not badly, but there is some stuff there that does not describe the game as it is. Weeding out the misinformation is very difficult because the speculation and opinions have not been tagged properly.

Once the game is released, cross links within the wiki should suffice for references to the actual game content, but even then, having screen shots of dialogue and other specifics would help keep things accurate. Other material, like comments by ArenaNet and NCSoft staff or the Official Web Site, should also be preserved. It might be prudent to include this kind of material on a sub-page to keep the main articles clean.

Since there is no publicly available game at this point, direct documentation does not exist. That means all the information we have at present is indirect and references to the intermediate sources are necessary to assure accuracy.

I do understand the desire to keep the articles uncluttered. May I suggest that we start creating 'sources' sub-pages. They should contain sections on the various items that have references. Each section would contain a description of the material with screen shots and supporting material including references. The main article would link to the section on the sub-page, keeping the main article free of details that most readers would not find interesting, even distracting. What should not go on 'sources' pages is opinions and speculation. Those belong on the discussion page.

Please do not use 'it is obvious' as an argument. It may be obvious to one person and not to another. It is also the 'obvious' that conceals mistaken assumptions.

--Max 2 00:34, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Citation needed for the "stuff there that does not describe the game as it is". It is a wiki - if you've identified actual problems why not simply fix them? You are great at creating elaborate schemes and rules for small problems. I'd rather just have you help in the mainspace and fix the problem without those, tbh.

My reason for hating extreme use of references is that they are the most anal, least fun part of the whole wiki/wikipedia thing. From my experience with wikipedia, references and excessive rules are intimidating and if things are too complex (cf. your suggestion, Mtew) they become a barrier to relaxed contribution to the wiki. This is a game wiki not an encyclopedia britannica wanna be.

I think your scheme is over the top, Mtew. For blogs and interviews from other than the official site you'll probably have copyright issues. You also have to consider than many articles could reference the same material which will result in duplication. However, if others think the idea is grand I won't stop you, I just won't help you. -- Aspectacle  07:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

What is obvious, Mtew, is things like a skill's description from in game. These things, along with character dialogue, etc. - basically anything taken right from the game (dialogue, descriptions, plots, situations, etc.) do not need citations. Things in interviews that talk about the game which isn't in the game is what should be referenced. And I agree 100% with what Aspectacle said. Mtew, your suggestion is, indeed, over the top and unnecessary. It actually even sounds confusing in terms of how to link to that page - you can't just wikilink an entire sentence or paragraph which comes from that, which will mean you'll end up having a reference tag anyways, which means that it is unnecessary work to add in the summary page when you can link directly to what is being summarized. The only purpose your suggestion has is a measure to keep information should things get removed, like how the Abaddon pre-exodus lore got removed from a site because the entire language site went down (it was in gw's Taiwanese version and that was completely removed) - but even then, we still got people going "is this actually official information?" and thus making the only purpose irrelevant and redundant. -- Konig/talk 10:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Just fixing the problem – I tried that and was reverted with minimal discussion. Nobody bothered to see if the change was justified. It was one of the usual crew that did it, and I have learned that it is useless to argue with them.

Who is talking about rules? This would be a convention that makes doing a particular kind of thing easier.

I think you are thinking I want more than I really want. The basic idea is no references in top level articles. Instead, put some details in a section on the 'sources' sub-page, put the references there, and link to that section where the reference currently is. The 'details' would be a summary of the relevant information from the reference, not the complete (or even partial) text of the reference. That stays well clear of copyright issues.

Also, the screen shots and so on would be optional. They would just be easier to get and be more accurate than transcriptions. In fact they should be what is used to make the transcriptions in the main article.

--Max 2 20:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary, the current system (references on the same page) works fine. The cite extension won't work in your system - the references need to be on the same page. pling 20:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be some dislike for references in main articles. With this convention, all citations would be on the 'sources' sub-page. The places where references/citations currently appear would become links to the sub-page section where the actual reference/citation would be provided. There would be a <reference/> tag on the same sub-page as the actual citation, not on a different page. --Max 2 21:00, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

You may repeat your idea, but it still won't work. poke | talk 22:18, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

It isn't that there is dislike for references, it is that there is a dislike for every page having references. This won't be a problem once the game is released because a vast majority of the references are things which will be obvious or just simply unnecessary and thus the references can be removed. So there really isn't a need to do anything at this moment except continue what we're doing then once the game is released, remove the unnecessary references. -- Konig/talk 00:23, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Formatting

I think we should add a note about how references should not be shown as http links when possible, rather as the name of what they are linking to. Instead of a reference like here, references like here. Erasculio 00:45, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

That's basically what the "reference list" section says. pling 14:41, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

A centralized format for references

Each time a reference is mentioned, it has a different format; for example, the main Ranger article on the official site is often refered just as a link, or as "Ranger article on the official site", or "Ranger, official Guild Wars 2 website", or "Ranger at the official website" and so on.
Since even within the acceptable wiki-code format there are multiple ways to describe a reference, is it possible to make a centralized list of references from which we would draw from in order to add references to articles? So instead of typing "Ranger, official Guild Wars 2 website" at one article only to find out everywhere else it has been written as "Ranger, official website", we would only use something like <ref name="rangerofficialsite"/> and it would automatically fill the rest. I don't know if that kind of functionality is possible, but it would help in adding consistency to the references. Erasculio 12:07, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Move proposal

I disagree with the move proposal to Guild Wars 2 Wiki:References formatting. This article is about references as a whole, including when to use them and the technical aspects, as well as how to format them. In other words, this isn't just a formatting article. (To be honest, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with having Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Images either.) pling 14:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This might be a better location for porposals on where to move things. :) - Infinite - talk 14:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This is unrelated to categorisation. Besides, it's better to discuss an individual move proposal on that individual article's talk page. (That said, this change would be so minor, I'm not really sure I care.) pling 14:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I meant for the images cat as well. :P Renaming is part of reorganization and you might want to disagree on other planned moves. You know, rather aware in advance than half-reverting everything after. - Infinite - talk 14:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy with the page being kept as it is. There's no reason why we can't list formatting examples on this page, anyway. Ge4ce has a good start here: User:Ge4ce/reference

Intra-wiki

"If the source of information is from within the game, editors can use wiki-linking to the source article, such as the dialogue for an NPC. This is much easier for readers than accessing the page through the reference list at the bottom of a page."

As our lore articles are growing, we are constantly putting in more and more information from the game - without adding references. The History sections do very often contain a lot of info gathered from various in-game books, NPCs, storyline info, etc., and it is not always very relevant to write "[[This NPC]] states that". If we did that, it would look even more messy than having reference tags and a list at the bottom.

Should we revise the policy of intra-wiki references within our lore articles? How could we make this better? I often find myself wondering "where does this info come from?" and having to run several searches to find the NPC source can often be quite cumbersome. Titus 14:10, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Pedantic note: the prefix you want is intra-, meaning "within," to refer to links to other pages on this wiki (inter- means "between" and would be correct for e.g. interwiki links to GWW). —Dr Ishmael 17:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out Ishmael. Fixed :) Titus 20:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I personally don’t mind adding references to other wiki articles if it helps the article. What I wouldn’t want to see however is a references section being added to every little article. These things should probably be left to those articles that are actually lore-relevant and contain bundled information. poke | talk 21:54, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Let's try running a "test-project" shall we? What is the most (in-game based) lore heavy article we got? Elder Dragon or Sylvari perhaps? Titus 20:44, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! poke | talk 22:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)