User blog:Acebatonfan/Wiki Tips 101: References and Controversial Topics

Hello, everyone! I am Acebatonfan, one of the older (and definitely less active) administrators on the wiki. One of the big things that I work on is re-writing pages and making sure that resources are accurate and reliable. Though we definitely don’t expect you to be using references like you’re writing a college research paper, adding references is one of the best things you can do to make a page stronger and more believable.

This goes hand-in-hand with many of our controversial pages. Often times, when a controversial subject comes up, people tend to rely on opinions or rumors versus facts. Examples include stuff like ‘’this player is awful’’, ‘’someone said this player did this’’. We need to be really careful about saying stuff like this. There are laws in place in the US that can cause the wiki to be shut down if we are spreading fake information that hurts someone’s reputation (called ‘’defamation of character’’).

So let’s dive in!

What are references?
To steal from Wikipedia "References (or refs or simply reliable sources), on Wikipedia, are important to verify content and inform the reader of its source… When adding content to an article, cite your sources to help readers verify facts or find more details."

- Wikipedia References are a great way to prove what you’re saying on a wiki page. If you say “Roblox started in 2005”, adding a reference to this will help to say “yes, this is true” instead of “I’m just guessing”.

What is a good reference?
This is where things get a bit tricky, especially on a game like Roblox. If you use a bad reference, it can actually give a reader the wrong meaning (you are trying to sway their opinion). If you have any questions about whether a reference is good or not, I recommend asking an administrator or content moderator, or posting the reference on the forums.

Let’s think of references like a stop-light. We got references that are “green”, meaning “you’re good to go to use them”. Then we got “yellow”, meaning “slow down and think!”. Last, we have “red”, meaning “you really shouldn’t be using these”.

How do I place references?
You made it through the hard part! Now it’s just learning how to put them in a wiki article. The best way to to it is to do what’s called an in-line citation. This can be done using the template.

If you want to place a reference about how Shedletsky graduated from Stanford University, your syntax will be ‘’Shedletsky graduated from Stanford University. The end result will look like ‘’Shedletsky graduated from Stanford University.

Once you got all your references, the last step is very important. You need to place the template that will list all the references at the bottom of the page. This makes it easier for people who read the wiki to read those sources themselves. I recommend using the following syntax when doing this: ==References==

A great example of a page that uses a lot of good references and nicely places it in the page is Community:Shedletsky

So what will happen if I don’t use references?
This is where the earlier discussions about controversial pages comes in. One of the jobs of wiki administrators and content moderators is to read through pages and remove or fix content that are opinions or claims that are not properly backed up with references. We know a lot of you spend much of your time working on making the wiki better in your eyes, and we don’t want to have to remove a lot of your work if it’s not supported by references. In very rare cases, you may also be temporarily blocked if you continuously post controversial edits without using references (especially if they may be defaming someone).

Where are some more places I can look at to learn about references?

 * |Referencing for Beginners. Wikipedia
 * | Help:Cite. Wikia