User:TheQ Editor/Adopt/References

Because anyone can edit Wikipedia at any time, it's impossible to be sure that the information contained here is always accurate. At any point, a random passerby can change the text of a page to something that isn't actually correct - many do. We have methods in place to prevent this, but the most fundamental one is the requirement that information here must be verifiable. If Wikipedia says something, it should be possible to locate that information in a source and check that it is correct. Because of this, we need references to reliable sources in every article.

How to Reference

Citing references is an area that many editors struggle with - it does, however, look far more complicated than it actually is. See this essay for a simplified explanation of the process. The most common form of citation used on Wikipedia is the {{cite}} template (used in almost all automated citations) - there are variations for books, journals, web pages, newspapers and many other media. You will probably find yourself using these templates for most of your references, but it isn't mandatory, and you should try to develop at least a passing familiarity with other citation formats, such as short citations (useful in articles which rely heavily on a few extensive sources) or Harvard (parenthetical) referencing (unusual, but still totally acceptable).

What Not to Do

The easiest way to cite a reference is like this <ref>url here</ref> or like this <ref>[url here]</ref> But those methods are highly not recommended for two reasons.

They do not give enough information.
Sometimes, it will spam the references section of the page if the url is too long.

What to do

The most common way is to use the {{Cite Web}}. Like this:

{{cite web |url= |title= |last= |first= |author= |authorlink= |last2= |first2= |author2= |authorlink2= |date= |year= |editor-last= |editor-first= |editor= |editor-link= |editor1-last= |editor1-first= |editor1-link= |editor2-last= |editor2-first= |editor2-link= |editors= |website= |series= |publisher= |location= |page= |pages= |at= |language= |trans_title= |type= |format= |arxiv= |asin= |bibcode= |doi= |doi_brokendate= |isbn= |issn= |jfm= |jstor= |lccn= |mr= |oclc= |ol= |osti= |pmc= |pmid= |rfc= |ssrn= |zbl= |id= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |deadurl= |accessdate= |quote= |ref= |separator= |postscript= |subscription= |registration=}}

But hey, who can remember all that? Well, you don't have to. In the editing toolbar, on the top right corner, there is the cite button. Click on that and click on templates. Select your style. Cite web is for citations leading to a website. Cite Web is citing a website. Cite News is citing the news and so forth. All you have to do is fill in the blanks for the parameters that you want to include. You don't have to include all of them.

The fundamental thing to remember with any reference is that you need to provide enough information for the reader to stand a reasonable chance of being able to check the reference. Hyperlinks to online sources are fairly standard (remember to add the date that you accessed the page, in case it changes), but if you use an offline source, be sure you include sufficient detail: "Bailey, 1989" is pretty useless on its own, whereas "Bailey, John; Information Science, Routledge 1989, p. 17" gives the reader plenty to go on if they want to find the source in a library or bookshop.

Reliability

Now we know how to do citations, let's move on to reliability. Please read WP:Rely and skim through it. Remember, you can always look back there if you have any problems

Reflist

If you have citations but not a reflist. It will display something like this:

Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

To fix that, all you have to do is place a {{reflist}} or <references /> at the bottom of the page. Be sure to create a header named references too!

Task

Fix 5 ref errors from this list: Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting