Help:Tutorial/Citing sources

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As stated in About PathfinderWiki, "if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal." It is best to use inline citations so that other editors and readers can verify the information you add. Also, make sure that every source you use is from a canon source for setting material, or is otherwise trustworthy if about a real-world topic.

Footnotes

The easiest way to create an inline citation is with a footnote. You can create a footnote with Wiki markup, by adding ref tags around your source, like this: 

<ref>Your Source</ref>

If you're adding the first footnote to an article, you also need to make sure that there is text that tells the software Wikipedia uses to display footnotes. That text will look like this: 

{{Refs}}

That text should be immediately below the section heading == References ==. If that section doesn't exist, you will need to add it (both the heading and the "Refs" text above). Place the new section at the bottom of the article, or just above the "External links" section if it exists.

Once you have saved your edit, the ref tags will convert your citation of a source into a footnote reference (like this one[1]), with the text of the citation appearing in the References section at the bottom of the article.

If the citation you are placing between the ref tags as your source is a link to an external website, place the website address (URL) within single square brackets along with some text, which the reader will see as a link. For example: 

<ref>[https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sib6 Article on the Paizo Blog]</ref>

Citing a Pathfinder book

To add a reference to a Pathfinder book using the Visual Editor, click Insert in the editing bar, then click Template...
...enter Ref to select that template...
...then enter the book name and page number where the cited statement is located, and click Insert.

While material from the Paizo blog can be a reference source, PathfinderWiki prefers canon or official sources, especially for material describing the Pathfinder campaign setting. If your source is a book, magazine, or other printed source, place identifying information about that source between the ref tags. For print sources, PathfinderWiki prefers inserting the {{Ref}} template for the corresponding book instead of using <ref> tags or the Cite button in the Visual Editor.

In this example, the citation refers to page 12 of the book Guide to Absalom, which contains the source of information for the preceding statement: 

Situated on the southern coast of the [[Isle of Kortos]], Absalom is the largest city in the [[Inner Sea region]] and quite possibly the entire world.{{Ref|Guide to Absalom|12}}

Which results in:

Situated on the southern coast of the Isle of Kortos, Absalom is the largest city in the Inner Sea region and quite possibly the entire world.1

The resulting footnote generates the necessary information about the book, including its authors, title, publication year, and in some cases chapter, section, or article name. For example, the above footnote looks like this in the article's References section:

  1. ↑ Owen K.C. Stephens. “Places” in Guide to Absalom, 12. Paizo Inc., 2008

Please see Help:Citing sources for further instructions on writing footnotes.

Using a citation template

We don't recommended using bare URLs for your external link references because they are prone to link rot. Instead, PathfinderWiki highly recommends providing more information than that in a footnote. To provide a more complete footnote for a web link, use a citation template, such as {{Cite web}}: 

<ref>{{Cite/Paizo blog/v5748dyo6sib6}}</ref>

To explain this template:

  • {{Cite web is the type of citation template, in this case to cite a website.
  • |author=James Case identifies the author of the blog post, and links to their wiki article.
  • |url=https://paizo... is the address to the source.
  • |title=Celebrating... is the title of the source webpage.
  • |page=Paizo Blog is the title of the source's website.
  • |date=May 16, 2023 is the date the webpage was posted.
  • }} closes the citation template.

This organizes details about the source in a consistent manner, with no effort required from you. The resulting footnote is:

James Case. Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2023. Paizo blog, 2023

It also ensures that even if the URL changes, there's enough information for a future researcher to find the source's new location.

External links section

Many articles inspired by or related to real-world concepts have a separate section called External links. This section is for linking to websites with significant and reliable additional information on the article's topic, such as articles about related mythology, fictional inspirations, real-world equivalents, etc., relevant to the article. Only a few, very relevant external links are appropriate for this section. If an article already has more than a few links in the "External links" section and you're an inexperienced editor, you probably should suggest any new links on the article's Discussion (talk) page before actually adding one.

To add a new external link, type the full URL for the link within a single set of square brackets, followed by a space and the text that will be visible. Precede it with an asterisk (*) to make it an item in the list. For example: 

== External links ==

* [https://paizo.com/ Official website]

will display the following, while linking to the full URL:



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