User talk:72.244.61.76

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Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages‎, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. --Powerlord 06:13, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: How do I site sources on wikipedia?

[edit] Wikipedia Citations

1. I'm posting this to your talk page rather than mine so you get the nifty "You have new messages" thing.

Citing sources isn't actually that difficult. The easiest way is to use one of the Wikipedia:Citation templates. Which one you want to use depends on the type of source you're using. You generally want to use as much information as you can. Some of the more popular ones are cite book and cite web.

For example, if I were to cite from page 55 of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, I would use

{{cite book
| title = The Return of the King
| last = Tolkien
| first = J. R. R.
| authorlink = J. R. R. Tolkien
| pages = 55
}}

Which produces something that looks like this:

Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Return of the King, 55. 

The only field required for a book citation is title. It is recommended that you also list the author and page numbers, but it isn't actually required. The authorlink field, if you choose to use it, is the name of the author's Wikipedia page.

For a website, it'd be more like this:

{{cite web
| title = O.J. Simpson arrested in armed robbery probe
| url = http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/16/oj.simpson/index.html
| accessdate = 2007-09-16
| work = CNN
}}

O.J. Simpson arrested in armed robbery probe. CNN. Retrieved on 2007-09-16.

(Note: I used the story that was in CNN's "Breaking News" box)

A website citation always requires a title and url, but it is recommended that you also use an accessdate. This is because websites are constantly changing. You may not know the author of a piece. Even some news sites, such as CNN above, do not include author credits. You may want to include the website name under either the work or publisher part.

Most pages I've seen here on Wikipedia use footnotes. Footnotes are easy to combine with the citation templates from above. Just put <ref> before the {{cite and </ref> after the }}. This will make them appear wherever <references/> or {{reflist}} appear on a page.

[edit] Wiki tags

2. Another common bracketed tag is <nowiki>. This tag is used to show example wiki code. I've used it several times on this page. You can use it if Wikipedia is interpreting your text as some funky wiki thing, or if you're giving someone example code.

I've also used the <pre> tag on this page. It makes the text you type appear with its line breaks intact. Wikipedia also displays it in a box using a monospace font (AKA typewriter text).

I hope this helps. --Powerlord 20:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)