Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki:Sourcing

This page is a style guide, describing how to create citations in articles.

As Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki does not accept original ideas or fanon, all writing should be based on reliable sources, and therefore be referenced. Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor.

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! Be Bold!

Why sources should be cited

 * 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 any reader or editor.
 * To help users find additional reliable information on the topic.
 * To improve the overall credibility and authoritative character of the MCu Wiki.
 * To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve any that arise.

Note: Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki and other wiki-based articles and categories cannot be used as sources.

Insertion of a reference
On the Edit page, this is placed at the first insertion point of citation:

This is placed at the second and all subsequent insertion points of citation:

Producing the reference list
Most importantly, add the following code after the "Appearances" and "Sources" sections, but before the "See also" and "External links" sections. This code will automatically display the reference list, showing nearly everything tagged with ref tags.

Long reference lists
As a general rule, MCU Wiki recommends reserving scroll boxes for reference lists to articles that employ no less than forty to fifty individual references. However, this is by no means a hard figure, and final decisions for the use of scroll boxes should be determined by what best suits each individual article.

To use a scroll box with a reference list, use the following code:

Notes and references
The standard scroll box size may be enlarged for certain articles, but this should be done only in rare cases for presentation purposes. Requests to do so should be made on the article's talk page or article review pages.

Rules
This list only includes the basics for the rules. For more details, please follow the footnotes provided.
 * 1) Do not reference the introductory paragraph(s).
 * 2) References go immediately after punctuation and outside of quotation marks, with no space between the end of a sentence and a reference tag.
 * 3) When naming references with, when working on long articles or collaborations, users are encouraged to use full, linkable reference names to prevent accidental duplicates of a reference, though this is not a requirement. This is not necessary on shorter articles, and abbreviations are acceptable.
 * 4) Italicize references where appropriate, as with book titles, etc.
 * 5) All articles must be completely sourced.
 * 6) Reference articles as sparingly as possible, while still sourcing all of the facts.
 * 7) Links are required in references.
 * 8) References are required in infoboxes.
 * 9) When citing social media posts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) in articles, an accompanying screenshot of the post must be uploaded to Wookieepedia and linked in the reference itself.

Reasoning
renders in the references list (generated by the tag) as:
 * ↑ Iron Man (book)


 * Reference tags do not work inside of transcluded templates. See Cite.php for more information.


 * References cannot be nested: does not render correctly.


 * For an example of how referencing works, take a look at the source code for this article.


 * In addition, you can read Wikipedia's policy at Wikipedia:Citing sources. While not all the rules are the same, most of the basics are explained in more detail on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Footnotes explains more of the "how to" and technical aspects of sourcing.