Assassin's Creed Wiki:Sourcing

The following is the official Assassin's Creed Wiki Attribution policy. The main space of the Assassin's Creed Wiki is not a forum for personal or original thought. All and any information on the Wiki must be attributed to a verifiable source, the names of which are listed below.

In particular, editors must provide attribution for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material. If an article topic has no reliable sources, the Assassin's Creed Wiki should not have an article on it.

It must also be noted that the following policy applies only to the Wiki's main space articles, and not to the associated Forums or Fan Section.

Key principles

No original thought

Original thought refers to material that is not attributable to a reliable, published source. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, ideas, statements, and personal opinion; as well as, by extension, unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material. It is forbidden to include such information, especially when accompanied with an introduction such as "This is pure speculation, but..."

All information on an article must be attributed to a reliable source, and any material added to articles must be explicitly presented in said source.

Reliable sources as bases

In order to be classed as a "reliable source", a medium must meet the following criteria;

1. The medium must be published or endorsed by Ubisoft, and relate explicitly to the Assassin's Creed series.
2. Information given on an official Ubisoft forum should only be considered canon when it is published by an administrator of the forum (who should subsequently be an employee of Ubisoft), and confirmed as fact in said post.
3. Information given in any medium must explicitly indicate a view before it is entered into the article. Assumptions cannot be derived from stated or ambiguous data.

Speculation or "news" posted on popular gaming websites does not constitute a reliable source, and cannot be included unless supported by one of the above.

Reliable sources

Below is a non-exhaustive list of media that can be considered as reliable sources.

• Administrators or employees of Ubisoft on the official Assassin's Creed forums, or any other official Ubisoft website.
• Main games;
  • Assassin's Creed
  • Assassin's Creed II
    • Battle of Forlì (DLC)
    • Bonfire of the Vanities (DLC)
  • Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
    • Copernicus Conspiracy
    • The Da Vinci Disappearance
  • Assassin's Creed: Revelations
    • The Lost Archive
  • Assassin's Creed III

• Spin-off games;
  • Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles
  • Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
  • Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
  • Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy
  • Assassin's Creed: Recollection
  • Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
  • Assassin's Creed: Utopia

• Films;
  • Assassin's Creed: Lineage
  • Assassin's Creed: Ascendance
  • Assassin's Creed: Embers
  • Assassin's Creed film

• Written material;
  • Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia
  • Assassin's Creed: Renaissance
  • Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood novel
  • Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade
  • Assassin's Creed: Revelations novel
  • Assassin's Creed: Forsaken

• Comics;
  • Assassin's Creed: The Fall
  • Assassin's Creed: The Chain
  • Assassin's Creed comic
  • Assassin's Creed Penny Arcade webcomic
  • Assassin's Creed French comic

General standards

Once a source is found for the information to be added, the user who wishes to add the information must also cite it. However, a few key points must be observed before any information is placed into an article.

Canonicity

With the growing amount of material available to the Assassin's Creed series, the possibility of conflicting information is present. As such, the following assumptions should be made before information is entered into any of the articles on the Wiki;

1. In most cases, the main games (as listed under the "Reliable sources" section) are the highest tier of canon. If any information given in another medium explicitly contradicts that given in these games, it is considered non-canon. For example, if Assassin's Creed: Renaissance states that it took an individual three days to travel from Venice to Florence, while Assassin's Creed II clearly indicates it only took two, the article will cite the game over the novella.
2. The canonicity of media is tiered. The highest tier contains the aforementioned main games, while the second tier contains the spin-off games. The third tier contains the films, novellas, the Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia, and two comics, Assassin's Creed: The Fall and Assassin's Creed: The Chain. Finally, the fourth tier contains the remaining three comics.

Introduction

Sources must not be cited in the introduction or lead section of an article. Most if not all of the information in the introduction is mentioned again later in the article, and should be cited within the main text. This helps to limit congestion of the introductory text and keep the overall presentation respectable.

If, however, a sourced piece of information in the introduction is not mentioned again in the main text, it may be cited where required.

Positioning

Citations go immediately after punctuation and outside of quotation marks, with no space between the end of a sentence and a reference tag. It must be made directly after that which is being cited, so as to prevent confusion to the reader.

If an entire paragraph or section cites information from a single source, then simply place the citation at the end of the paragraph or section.

Formats

Upon confirming that both the information and citations to be used are valid, the citations must be properly formatted in accordance with the formats listed below.

The formats needed for each citation shall differ based on whether an article possesses one or many references, and whether each reference is inserted within the article one or many times.

Multiple references

By standard, most articles require the citation of several different references. The format of each individual reference differs, based upon whether it is only used once within the article, or multiple times.

For the single insertion of a citation, the following format must be used;

<ref>''[[Assassin's Creed: Lineage]]''</ref>

For multiple insertions of the same citation, two separate formats must be used; one for the first insertion point, and one for all subsequent insertion points.

In this case, citations must also be named appropriately through the "ref name" parameter. Numbered main games must be named "AC", "AC2", or "AC3" respectively, while all other media must use either their subtitles only (such as "Project Legacy", "Revelations novel", or "The Chain") or their appropriate acronyms (such as "ACPL", "RBook", or "ACTF"). A full list of the acronyms may be found on the "Variables" section of the Era template.

The following format is used in the first insertion point;

<ref name="Lineage">''[[Assassin's Creed: Lineage]]''</ref>

while the format below is for subsequent insertions points;

<ref name="Lineage" />

Outside references

Outside references, or those external to the Assassin's Creed series, should be kept to a minimum, and preferably only mentioned in the "Trivia" section of an article. The references must add something constructive to the article, and come from a source reliable in relation to the field it is from.

For example, if sourced from Wikipedia's article on The Prince, the line "Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a book which seems to counter the very ideals of the Assassins." should be written as such;

[[Niccolò Machiavelli]] wrote ''The Prince'', a book which seems to counter the very ideals of the [[Assassins]].<ref>''{{Wiki|The Prince}}''</ref>.

Specified references

In the case of subcategories of a source, such as the chapters of Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy or the numbered issues of Assassin's Creed: The Fall, the original source must first be listed, followed by the subcategory; as written below. The same method also applies for all instances of downloadable content.

<ref name="Project Legacy - Bartolomeo d'Alviano">''[[Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy]]'' - [[Italian Wars: Chapter 1 - Bartolomeo d'Alviano]]</ref>

Reference list

Whether the article makes use of multiple series references, multiple outside references, or a mixture of both, the "References" header must be included. At the bottom of the article, just before categories and appearance templates such as {{ACII}}, the following must be inserted;

==References==
{{Reflist}}

Singular reference

In the case of an article possessing only a single reference for its entirety, the formats listed previously do not apply. For this special case, neither <ref> citations nor the "References" header need be used; since citing every section with the same source would be unnecessary and time-consuming.

Instead, the bottom of the article must contain the single source under the "Source" header, and may be written as such;

==Source==
*''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood]]'' - ''[[Copernicus Conspiracy]]''