View source for Help:Citing sources

In order to ensure statements made on this wiki can be verified, and to ensure end users can find information themselves in official products, citations are a must when creating and editing articles. 

You can insert ref tags into articles by using various citation templates. When citing books, there should be a child page of the {{tl | Cite book}} template. For example: {{tl | Cite book/knw}} to cite Kingdoms & Warfare. Book citations require a page parameter be added, like so: <nowiki>{{Cite book/fm | 205}}</nowiki> or even <nowiki>{{Cite book/snf | 118, 125}}</nowiki>. Requiring pages means users can find the exact portion of a source book that is relevant to their query. 

In order to cite other sources, there are similar structured citation templates setup. For example <nowiki>{{cite web/dsjuly2024}}</nowiki> will add a ref tag citing the Draw Steel, July 2024 Patreon Playtest Packet. 

When citing online messages, for instance from the MCDM Community Discord, the message and required context should be added to the Archive first. See: [[Archive:MCDM_Discord/2024-08/On_Kalas_Mithral]] for an example. An [[Template:Cite_archive/MCDM_Discord/2024-08-17/On_Kalas_Mithral|accompanying citation template page]] should be created for each archived item, which allows people to cite them similar to the book and web citations. Like so: <nowiki>{{Template:Cite_archive/MCDM_Discord/2024-08-17/On_Kalas_Mithral}}</nowiki>