Help:Citations, References, and Footnotes

Introduction
The goal of this wiki is to be a repository for all things Rush Duel. However, much of the data on this wiki will be derived from information posted by others. Not everything will have an official English translation from Konami, so to ensure that people get recognized and credited for their work, we should include citations that highlight wherever we reference their posts and translations.

If you are new to this process, it will probably be a bit difficult the first few times. My hope is that this guide will make it slightly easier.

Also, it's important to note that the Cite extension is the basis for creating citations, references, and footnotes on this wiki. The linked page has a very helpful tutorial, and I recommend consulting it as a secondary reference (it has a lot more details than what we will need here, but I think it's worth checking out at least once).

Overview
Let's start by describing these three terms (Citations, References, and Footnotes). As a disclaimer, I am not using these terms 100% properly, but I am doing this because I want to distinguish between the different concepts that will be relevant to this wiki.


 * Citations will appear as little numbers on the page. For each new reference, the numbers will automatically increment in order of appearance and connect to a formal reference that you specify later on the page. When you are writing down information that was translated or posted by another person, you should include a citation at the end.


 * References are formal postings that give information about the original work. There are different ways to format a reference, but the general recommended format will be a slightly modified form of the 7th Edition APA reference style. You don't have to worry about learning the syntax and whatnot because we have a template to help with formatting these references. Still, here's an example of how the references section could look like:


 * Footnotes is the term I will be misusing the most. I am using it very narrowly to refer to extra notes and remarks posted by referenced sources. For example, a translator may include extra details about their translation. These kinds of notes can be included on a wiki page in a dedicated section called "Notes". The procedure for creating these footnotes will be almost exactly the same as creating a References section.

Creating a Citation
After you include information from another source on a wiki page, you will need to insert a citation after that text. For this, the Cite extension has a helpful tool called the "ref" tag. Our References section will appear at the end of the page, so for this citation, all you have to do is mark it so that MediaWiki knows that a citation should be inserted here. To distinguish between different source references, the "ref" tag has a "name" attribute. For each unique reference, use a different name. The name will appear in the URL when a person clicks on the reference, so make sure that it is brief, appropriate, and sufficiently descriptive!

This is how your citation will look:

Looks pretty simple, right? Just stick this at the end of whatever text you wrote that came from or was informed by other sources. Creating the actual reference will be the focus of the next section.

Creating a Reference
These next steps will be slightly more involved. The general recommendation for organizing our wiki pages is to include references in a dedicated section towards the end. In that section, to let MediaWiki know that our references will be going here, we have to use the "references" tag. All of our references will be written inside of these tags.

Different citations within this section must be enclosed within "ref" tags. These "ref" tags should have a "name" attribute that matches the names specified earlier in the page:

To help you create references that follow our modified APA format, we have the "RefBuilder" template. Each call to this template can replace one "ref" in the above reference call. Please consult Help:RefBuilder for more information on using that template.

Creating a Footnote
The "ref" and "references" tags can have another attribute called "group". Normally, we leave that blank. But, if we want to have different reference sections within the page, we can use this attribute. So, when we want to include footnotes, we're basically creating a separate set of citations and references.

After including your text and a citation, if there's a relevant footnote or comment from the original source, you can add another "ref" tag with a group attribute assigned (preferably something like "Note"):

Then, in a Notes or Footnotes section on the page, you'll use the references tag again:

You only need to specify the group attribute once on the "references" tag; the "ref" tags that appear within those tags only need their name attribute listed.

Conclusion
With this information, you should now be able to create citations, references, and footnotes on Rushpedia! If you need to see more examples, you can check out the source of this page (I use some example references in the "Overview" section). And don't hesitate to ask others for help!

FAQ
Even with the knowledge of how to make a reference, you may still have questions related to when a reference is necessary and other important considerations. Hopefully, this section can help with that.

When is a reference necessary?
As a general rule, whenever you are using information present in an official Rush Duel source, you do not need a citation. This includes things like Konami's database and websites as well as the Rush Duel video games. For example, even if you saw the Konami Database ID for a card on a non-official website, since that information is clearly presented on an official source, you do not need a citation.

However, if the information is from an unofficial source, such as a fansite or yourself, you should include a citation. For example, unofficial English translations of Japanese card names, effect text, or set names should have a citation crediting the translator. Even if the text in your post is somewhat different from that of the source material, if it was inspired by the original posting, you should include a citation.

Across the page, I am referencing multiple things from the same source. Do I need a citation for each one?
You can keep one citation at the end of multiple references only if there are no other sources referenced between these citations and the cited information is all relatively close to each other (e.g., multiple elements in the CardBox template's lore/effect box).

I found several different translations for the same thing. Which one should I use?
In general, the more official the source, the more preferable their information is. The order of priority goes something like this:
 * 1) Official Konami Sources (Japanese)
 * 2) Official Konami Sources (Other Languages)
 * 3) Unofficial but Established Community Resources and Groups (like Ygorganization and entameSubs)
 * 4) Other Unofficial Sources (includes individual Rushpedia users like you and me)

Within each of these categories, some sources may be more preferable than others. If there are still some ambiguities, be sure to reach out to other Rushpedia users to discuss this topic.

How do I cite myself?
Assuming that you are using the RefBuilder template, the parameters you will need are:
 * author
 * orgName
 * year
 * month
 * day
 * title
 * url
 * refName

'author' can be your username, and 'orgName' can be Rushpedia. 'year', 'month', and 'day' can be from the date when you post your edit. 'title' can be something descriptive about what you are contributing (for example, "Database Q&A Translation for Blue-Eyes White Dragon"). And 'refName' is something you specified earlier on the page.

'url' is something you can get after posting your contribution. Each time you save an edit on the wiki, a link to the page specifically after your edits is generated. It's basically the regular page URL with an "oldid" parameter appended to the end of the link. Here's an example for an earlier revision of this page. If you look on your user contributions page, you can find this link on the datetime stamp of your edit.

Why does the CardBox template require citations to be stored as separate parameters?
A lot of the important card parameters in the CardBox template are also used to assign values to different Semantic MediaWiki properties. The "ref" tags do not mesh well with that, so I made separate template parameters specifically for storing citations. All citation parameters are mentioned in the parameter list specified on Help:CardBox. Although they are separate entries in the template, please do not forget to include citations wherever they are needed.