Fanlore:Citation - Fanlore

Fanlore:Citation

Policy: Citation
In summary: Cite the source of the material you are quoting when you contribute (even if it is a paraphrase and not a direct quote) with a link, author attribute and date.
If the original material is not available in a public space (accessible to someone without an account or password), do not link directly - see the guidelines below for alternative citation formats.
Related Policies: Help:Footnotes, Identity Protection, Ethical Standards for Community & Content

Contents

A citation is a reference to the actual location of content that you are quoting, paraphrasing, or otherwise referring to in a wiki article. Citations support the legitimacy of the assertions that you make and provide readers with ways to learn more about your topic. In general, they help to make the wiki a more useful and reliable resource.

Citations can have ethical or privacy implications, however. For instance, most Internet users realize that quoting private email without permission is a violation of established netiquette. Likewise for the quoting of content from private mailing lists or friendslocked LiveJournals.

Our citation guidelines are intended to help contributors weigh these concerns and decide how and when to quote, cite, and link to supporting content.

The Anatomy of Citation on Fanlore

Definition of terms used on this page:

Quotation/Quote: Content that you have copied or paraphrased from another source.

Citation: Any identifying information about your content that informs the reader of its source or origins. For instance, the date of a blog post, the name of a website, or a link to the content itself.

You quote content by copy-pasting or paraphrasing it; you cite sources by showing the origins of a piece of quoted content.

Link: An HTML hyperlink that will take the reader directly to the source of the content you have quoted, are paraphrasing, or are referring to.

Internal link: A link to another page on Fanlore. Contributors should remember to link to other Fanlore terms and articles where possible. Internal linking helps readers find information more easily and fosters interconnectedness on the wiki.


Anatomy of Citation on Fanlore

Restrictions on Quotation, Citation & Linking

Fanlore places very few restrictions on linking to content in citations or on the quotation of content on the wiki. Restrictions fall into two categories:

  1. Content that violates the Fanlore terms of service agreement, and
  2. Content that is protected or whose access is otherwise limited to a group's "members only".

Content that violates the Fanlore terms of service agreement

Examples include:

  • Content that is prohibited by United States law, such as child pornography.
  • Content that violates an existing license or copyright. This includes non-transformative copies of songs/audio files, television episodes, entire copies of books, and pirated text, graphics, and video. See Fanlore:Copyright for more information on how copyright is dealt with on the wiki.

Protected or limited access content

Content whose audience is limited by electronic means or by fannish social convention.

Examples include:

  • Private and semi-private correspondence, such as email, instant messages, and chat transcripts
  • Portions of friendslocked journal posts or text from "members only" journals, message boards, mailing lists, or blogs
  • Content such as stories, essays, or posts that are password-protected or require membership or permission to access
  • Quotation of posts made to mailing lists or forums which are password-protected or are otherwise restricted to members only

Exceptions

In some cases, an original poster (OP) or content creator may agree to let you quote and cite them in a wiki article. In these cases, the OP must grant approval prior to your quoting of the content on the wiki.

See the linking guidelines below for further suggestions of how to cite non-public content.

Linking and Citation Guidelines

All Fanlore content is public and can, of course, be cited, quoted, or linked to from other Fanlore pages. For sources outside of the wiki, Fanlore recognizes three broad classes of electronic content:

  • Public content: Anyone with an Internet connection can access it
  • Limited access content: Access is granted by a person or a community, often via a password, or access is gained by joining a community or mailing list, or by being granted access to the content via a special filter
  • Private and semi-private content: Content that is considered to be private or semi-private by fannish or Internet conventions (e.g., personal emails, chat logs).

The sections below offer guidelines for quoting, citing, and linking to online content in each of these three categories.

Public content

In general, you may quote, cite, and link public content. However, carefully consider the wishes of the content creator or the expectations of the community beforehand. For instance, link to the main page of a fan's website if she has asked, rather than directly to her story or piece of art. Likewise, if members of a community or participants in a fannish activity that you are writing about expect that you will inform content creators when you link to them, then you should do so. Examples:

  • Links to content hosted on the Wayback Machine
  • Author and artist personal websites
  • Public LiveJournal communities
  • Public mailing lists at Yahoo groups
  • Public blog and journal entries
  • Fan fiction archives

Limited access content

Do not link directly to content whose access is limited, and do not quote this content. For instance, do not quote or link directly to a story on a password protected site; or to a post on a friendslocked community; or to a post on a moderated mailing list or one that requires members to join before viewing posts. You may link to the main page of the website, forum, community, or mailing list, however. Examples:

  • Friendslocked LiveJournal communities and posts
  • Members-only mailing lists
  • Members-only discussion forums
  • Websites and archives that require a password to access

Private and semi-private content

In general, do not directly link to or quote content from private or semi-private fannish spaces such as chat rooms, private forums, friendslocked journals, private blogs, personal emails, and so on. The only exception is if the content creator/s have explicitly allowed you to do so.

Also, remember that there are private spaces within fan communities that are not discussed in public spaces for very good reasons. If these spaces are active but are not common knowledge, please treat them as you would other private material and do not link to them or otherwise reveal their existence.

Guidelines for Specific Online Sources

Websites

Includes fiction, non-fiction, essays, archives, postings of other kinds of fanworks that occur on a web page.

You may link directly to the content you are citing, such as a story or essay. However, to reduce the likelihood of broken links (e.g., during site redesigns), you may prefer to link to the main page of its site. Also, content creators may prefer that you link to an index or warnings page. Annotate content that requires registration or a password to access.

Multimedia

When citing multimedia (such as images, videos, or audio files), do not link directly to the file. Instead, link to the web page that hosts the multimedia file.

Never hotlink a media file by embedding it on or uploading it to the wiki (unless you have received permission from its creator beforehand). Fanlore is not an archive for fanworks - it's a resource about fanworks. If you're looking to archive your fanworks somewhere, try An Archive of Our Own.

Do not link to content that is known to be transient or of limited availability, such as content hosted at MegaUpload or Sendspace. Keep in mind that even sites like YouTube often remove content from their servers.

Mailing Lists

Some mailing lists (particularly those hosted on sites such as Yahoo.com) are public, and their posts can thus technically be directly linked to, which allows immediate viewing in a browser window or downloading from the public archive. Others require that users sign up or subscribe to a listserv, but anyone may join and read current and archived posts. Still others are completely closed lists with limited membership. Linking guidelines for each of these three cases are described below:

  • Public lists: anyone can view or make posts. Quote or link posts as needed and supported by the technology
  • Membership lists: require users to join the list before viewing any posts, but registration is not restricted. You may link to the main page of such a list, but you may not quote or cite content.
  • Limited membership lists: moderators approve/deny membership. You may mention the existence of a restricted list and/or provide a link to the sign-up page, but you may not quote or link to content directly. Annotate your link accordingly.

Protected journals, blogs, and communities

Do not quote content from protected sources without permission and never link directly to protected content.

If your article refers to a journal, community, or other fannish space that requires membership or registration but is otherwise public knowledge, link to its (public) home page and annotate the link accordingly.

Forums and message boards

In general, when linking to content at a particular forum you should follow the stated guidelines of the site and the expectations of that forum's user community.

In the case of forums requiring membership for access, whether that registration is open or moderated, we recommend that you request permission to cite.

Email and chat room and instant message transcripts

You may quote personal email only with the permission of the other person or persons who engaged in the email conversation.

In general, the transcripts of chat rooms or instant messages cannot be easily cited. Like citations of private email, citations of this kind of content require that all individuals who were present during the chat agree to publicly disclose the contents of the chat. This makes quoting of these kinds of transcripts difficult from a practical standpoint.

If you do decide to quote these kinds of transcripts, make certain that all parties agree to it.

Formatting Guidelines

These formatting guidelines pertain to online and printed and electronic public content. We have also provided some suggestions for citing private and semi-private material.

Online Sources

When you cite online sources either in the text of your Fanlore article or in its footnotes, you should include some or all of the following information:

  • Name or title of the content you are citing (strongly recommended)
  • Name or title of the venue where the content is hosted (recommended for communities, mailing lists, and forums)
  • Author/s of the content (strongly recommended)
  • Date the content was published [Day/Month/Year] (if available)
  • Date that you last successfully accessed the content [Day/Month/Year] (strongly recommended)
  • The format of the content, e.g. PDF, Word, Flash (recommended if the content is not in a commonly web accessible form, or is in a form that requires a browser plug-in that may not be widely available)
  • Access restrictions, e.g. password required, moderator permission required, membership required (recommended where applicable)

Specific examples are provided below.

Inline citations versus footnotes

An inline citation is one in which information about the content being cited, such as its title, author, and date of publication, is placed within the text of a wiki article itself. Footnotes collect all of that same information and locate it in a reference at the bottom of the article.

Unless specific details about the content you are citing are being used to support the thesis of your article, we suggest that you use footnotes rather than inline citations, because inline citations tend to add excess clutter to an article.

The two examples below demonstrate formatting for websites, journals, and blogs.

  • Footnotes: Jane Q. Fan's story Mary Sue Rides Again![1] was featured in an article[2] in the New York Times. Jane's well-received sequel to the story, Mary Sue Redux,[3] was later featured in the zine Merry Mary Sue-age. In 2004, Jane also created the LiveJournal community Mary Sue 4 Evah[4] for authors of serious and parody Mary Sue stories.
[1] Fan, Jane Q. Mary Sue Rides Again, published on 10 November 2003 at Jane Q's Fanfiction Cave. (Accessed 04 August 2008.)
[2] Doe, J. Fan fiction: What happens when fans get into the act, New York Times, 14 January 2004, http://nytimes.com/articles/doe_j_fans_01122004.html (requires registration). (Accessed 04 August 2008.)
[3] Fan, Jane Q. Mary Sue Redux (PDF), published in March 2005 in Merry Mary Sue-age, by Fanfic Readers Anonymous Press. (Accessed 25 August 2008).
[4] Mary Sue 4 Evah (requires membership). (Accessed 25 August 2008.)

Citing mailing list, forum, and message board posts

Forums and message boards follow the same formatting rules shown in the mailing list examples below.

  • Public lists:
Inline citation: Parody or its own category? The great Mary Sue debate by Jane Q. Fan on Fanfic Archivists (requires membership), 12 June 2004. (Accessed 15 July 2008.)
Footnote: [1] Fan, Jane Q. Parody or its own category? The great Mary Sue debate, posted on 12 June 2004 at Fanfic Archivists. (Accessed 15 July 2008.)
  • Membership lists:
Inline citation: In 2004, the mailing list Fanfic Archivists (requires membership) discussed the best way to categorize Mary Sue stories in an archive.
Footnote: [1] Fanfic Archivists (requires membership). (Accessed 15 July 2008.)
  • Limited membership lists:
Inline citation: In 2005, the mailing list Fanfic Archivists-L (requires moderator approval) discussed the best way to categorize Mary Sue stories in an archive.
Footnote: [1] Fanfic Archivists-L (requires moderator approval). (Accessed 15 July 2008.)

Citing email and transcripts of chat rooms and instant messages

If all parties have agreed to disclose the contents of an email message or a transcript, you may cite and/or link to it.

In some cases, an original poster (OP) or content creator may agree to let you quote and cite them in a wiki article. In these cases, the OP must grant approval prior to your quoting of the content on the wiki. When in doubt, ask the OP how they want you to cite this content. For example, they may want you to link to the home page of the forum or journal, or of the OP's website; or they may prefer that you simply cite it as "personal correspondence" with the OP. Include a date where possible.

Citing email:

Inline citation: In a personal email to author, [Janet Loves Fanfic], on 9 August 2006, Jane Q. Fan said, "I was surprised that the New York Times decided to write an article featuring my story."
Footnote: [1] Jane Q. Fan, personal communication, 9 August 2006. (Accessed 21 August 2008.)

Citing chat and instant message transcripts:

Inline citation: Transcript of chat from June 2, 2007, chat host. (Accessed 21 June 2008.)
Inline citation: Transcript of instant message from June 2, 2007. (Accessed 21 June 2008.)
Footnote: [1] Transcript of chat from June 2, 2007. (Accessed 21 June 2008.)
Footnote: [2] Jane Q. Fan, instant message transcript, 9 August 2006. (Accessed 21 June 2008.)

Other Sources

For print sources (e.g., zines and books) and electronic sources that are not online (e.g., television episodes and films), we suggest that you use a standard citation format, such as those defined by the American Psychological Association and the Modern Language Association.

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