Hi, welcome to the Pronoun Wiki's Citing Standards page! Chances are, you're creating/editing a page on the wiki and you're looking for instructions or a place to find sourcing for a page. Well, you're in the right place!
This page details our standards for page citations, includes brief citing instructions and links to more in-depth instructions, and includes lists of potential places to find sources for an already-coined term or pronoun set.
Standards & Guide
Citing Standards
- All pages must have citations.
- Genders cannot be created via page creation. Instead, create a coining post to cite.
- Entire wiki pages (from this wiki or any other user-editable wiki) cannot be cited.
- Pages that do not have citations will be moved into the creator's userspace or deleted entirely.
- Pages should be cited using the Citations tool, rather than by inserting links at the bottom of a page. Instructions can be found under the Citing Guide section or here.
- It is highly preferable for sources to be archived, since these archived links cannot be changed or deleted in case something happens to the original source.
Citing Guide
A complete guide for how to cite using the referencing tool, both in visual editor and coding, see Fandom Community Central's Help:Cite page (linked).
Visual Editor/Citation Tool
These instructions are for using Visual Editor, the most-commonly used editing mode. However, when using any template, use the second set of instructions (Source Editor/Coding).
- Find the dropdown in the toolbar: "CITE"
- Create a new reference by clicking "New Reference", first in the dropdown list.
- Past/type the link to the source you are referencing.
- Click Insert in the top right corner of the infobox; your reference has bee added.
- To re-use a reference, click "Re-use reference", the second item in the dropdown. Your re-used reference will be added.
- To add a references list to a page, use the INSERT dropdown. Select More at the bottom of the dropdown, then References. Your references list will be added.
Source Editor/Coding
These instructions are for how to code citations. You can use this coding in Source Editor mode or in any templates, such as the Pronouns Template.
- Place the link to your citation inside <ref></ref> tags. (Ex: <ref>https://gender.fandom.com</ref>) Your reference will now appear once the edit is saved.
- To re-use a reference, name it the first time you use it. (Ex: <ref name=a>https://gender.fandom.com</ref>) For each new reference group, give it a different name.
- Every time you want to re-use a reference, you can type just the reference's name inside the <>. (Ex: <ref name=a/>) Once the reference is named once (previous step) this will make the reference appear.
- To add a reference list to a page, type <references/> in code where you'd like it to appear. (If you're using a template or Gallery and are still in Visual Editor, see Step 6 of the previous instruction set.)
Web Archiving
It is highly preferred that pages are cited with archived links, as these cannot be changed or deleted.
- Archive.is
- Wayback Machine
- Freezepage
- Archive.st - Suggested only as a backup, the only archiver that requires a captcha and therefore annoying to use
Tips:
- You may sometimes be able to find posts from deleted accounts in the Wayback Machine and Archive.is by searching the account's URL.
- Whenever possible, web archive the original posting of something on the creator's account itself.
- Archive.md has an official Tumblr! If a pop-up message on an archived site breaks it, you may be able to ask for help.
Places To Cite
These are lists of places where you can find links to archive and reference in page creation/editing.
This isn't a comprehensive list of all the sources you're allowed to cite, of course. You can cite (nearly) any website or published piece of media. In general, you should feel free to make your own judgement on whether or not a site is trustworthy enough to be cited as a source.
Popular Blogs, Coining Locations, and Citation/E-History Locations
(Asterisks * mark places with issues)
- Notcishetarchive -- Ezgender uses this Tumblr blog to reblog every post he finds that's a usable flag or a coining post, so that there's some kind of archive of things posted on tumblr. He does reblog troll/harmful terms and from blogs who are trolls/bigoted/harmful/on the NCB for the sake of archiving, though, so watch out for that if you search.
- Lgbtqiarchive* -- This archiving blog has a lot of reblogged coining posts and flag references, but has come under fire for reblogging from people with DNI banners that say "I'M PANPHOBIC". The blog owners are "ship neutral", which may make some people uncomfortable.
- Idvault -- Another reblogging Tumblr blog; sometimes posts term definitions (which may or may not be lifted from different wikis). Original posts should be fine to cite, and searching keywords here may come up with results to help find original coining posts to archive.
- Genderheaven -- This blog has been active since 2015, reblogging as many informational posts about what a term means, coining posts, posts with new flags, etc. as possible.
- Beyond-MOGAI-Pride-Flags* -- This blog has ran for quite some time, and posts both original flags/terms and reblogs them from others, which means searching terms like "they/them," "xe/xem," etc. will probably get plenty of results. It's not only focused on MOGAI though, hence the name, and also posts flags for conformant identities, kintypes, or kinks. Mods have also been criticized for seemingly racist/ableist actions in the past.
- Xenoleaf -- A MOGAI blogger who has coined many terms and collected them as well, and has a Weebly site (linked) which is also acceptable to cite.
- Instagram* -- There's a surprisingly big MOGAI community on Instagram. However, Instagram's searching, not letting one download images (without using a separate service or Inspect Element), not letting links embed, and not letting any variety of web archiver work on it make it difficult to use. Also keep in mind many accounts that come up may just be posting terms they think are cool and not coining them, but not mentioning which it is; the majority of Instagram accounts should be okay to cite, though.
- Pinterest* -- Pinterest has a very expansive collection of pride flags, including coining posts. However, there is currently no way to view the date that a Pinterest post was created; it must be cited as having an "Unknown" coining date. Many flags and posts can be found by searching gender names or keywords, particularly that keyword and "pronouns".
- Our Wiki Discord Server
Other Areas to Search for References
- DeviantArt user Pride-Flags -- Many high-quality pride flags; normally has definitions/pronoun sets and coiner beneath the flags.
- Pride-color-schemes & ask-pride-color-schemes -- Ask-pride-color-schemes reblogs coining posts/posts where people discuss MOGAI. You can usually search a term name or an adjective on ask-pride-color-schemes and find something helpful.
- Gender-Jargon, previously Gender-Resource -- Reblogs a lot of coining posts and also has original flag posts as well. You can try searching the old URL for archived posts.
- Purrloinsucks - This blog contains reblogs from the original MOGAI-Archive blog. since that blog is long gone, these reblogs (some of which were reblogged even before MOGAI-Archive died) are the closest to original posting dates that we have for a lot of these terms
Unacceptable Citations
These sources are, without exception, unacceptable to be cited on our wiki. Pages cited with these sources will be moved into the creator's userspace.
Entire Wiki pages
Citing an entire Wiki page is not allowed. If a Wiki page has citations, those citations themselves can be used on the page on our Wiki. Another Wiki's page is a result of up to hundreds of edits by hundreds of different users and not a singular source, and the information within it can be completely changed at any time, making it an invalid source.
Unfortunately, however, there are terms that only have pages on other Wikis as coining sources because of this misunderstanding. In this case, you can use and archive the Edit History version with the original definition/flag(s) specifically as a source. (It is required to archive these references.)
- To do this, you hit the dropdown by "Edit" and go to "History" and find the one where the page was made, which is a clickable link that you can archive and cite.
Page As Original Source
Making a page to coin a term and having it be the original/only source of coining is not acceptable. Wiki pages shouldn't be used for this. Wikias are aggregates of information, not sources of them. Wiki pages are not social media and shouldn't be used as original posts. A coining post can be made in Discussions, on Tumblr, or on nearly any other archive-able site. For help creating a coining post, see the How to Make a Coining Post page.
In the instance that an identity has already been coined via page creation before this rule was set in place, the page's history may be archived and used as a source. This is not acceptable for pages created after the rule was set in place.
Random Notes
- If the creator of a term has made a Carrd relating to it, please web archive that and cite the web archived version. Carrd creators might remove these at any time.
- Not everything applies here, but if you're not sure why we care about citing so much you might look at Wikipedia's citing guide. It also contains tutorials for citing written media.
- If you have any further questions, please contact a staff member.