Help:References
References (citations on pages)
This is vital to collaboration work, especially in a changeable body of text. An article is only as good as its sources. Failure to cite your sources can lead to a lack of credibility, even deletion. You should identify articles that need references. You should link to the source if available on the wiki, or cite the original source.
Also cite your sources so others can check and extend your work. The <ref> and <reference> tags are preferred, since they are the clearest, most convenient way to indicate exactly what assertations are being supplied with references.
After making a new page, it's a good idea to:
- use What links here (An option on the right side menu. Click it with your page displayed.) to check the articles that already link to it, and make sure that they are all expecting the same meaning that you have supplied;
- use the "Search" button to search for your topic title—and possible variants—to find articles that mention it, and make links from them if appropriate; and
- create redirects to your article as appropriate.
Cite Extension and its usage
The Cite Extension allows an editor to create footnotes. The basic concept of the <ref> tag is that it inserts the text enclosed by the ref tags as a footnote in a designated section, which you indicate with the placeholder tag <references />. The new format cannot be used interchangeably with the old format - you must pick one or the other.
If you forget to include <references /> in the article, the footnotes will not appear, but a red error message will be displayed at the end of the page.
This page itself uses footnotes, such as the one at the end of this sentence.[1] If you view the source of this page by clicking "Edit this page", you can see a working example of footnotes.
Example
According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.<ref>E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.</ref>
The Moon, however, is not so big.<ref>R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46 (April 1978): 44-6.</ref>
==Notes==
<references/>
Multiple uses of the same footnote
To give a footnote a unique identifier, use <ref name="name">. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The text inside the second tag doesn't matter, because the text already exists in the first reference. You can either copy the whole footnote, or you can use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this: <ref name="name" />.
In the following example, the same source is cited three times.
This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.<ref name="multiple">Remember that when you refer to the same footnote multiple times, the text from the first reference is used.</ref>
Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, if different statements come from the same source.<ref name="multiple">This text is superfluous, and won't show up anywhere. We may as well just use an empty tag.</ref>
A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end. Although this may reduce redundant work, please be aware that if a future editor removes the first reference, this will result in the loss of all references using the empty ref tags.<ref name="multiple" />
==Notes==
<references/>
The text above gives the following result in the article (see also section below):
This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.[2]
Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, when different statements come from the same source.[2]
A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end. Although this may reduce redundant work, please be aware that if a future editor removes the first reference, this will result in the loss of all references using the empty ref tags.[2]
<references />
Placing <references /> inserts the full text of all pending inline citations defined by <ref>, anywhere on the page. For example, based on the citations above, the code:
<references />
will yield:
