Help:Cite

The cite extension allows you to add citation footnotes to articles.

See mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php for extension info.

Footnotes in action
The introduction line of this article reads:

The cite extension allows you to add citation footnotes to articles.

The section in the  tags is created as a footnote.

At the end of the page is a section called references which includes the code. The footnote text is placed here, and the texts are linked.

Named references
To give a footnote a unique identifier, use  . You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The name cannot be a number, or the extension will return an error.

Only the first occurrence of text in a named ref will be used, although that occurrence may be located anywhere in the article. For legibility, putting the full footnote first is recommended.

For subsequent identical references, use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this:  .

Citation needed!
Many wikis use a template to flag up phrases or sentences that need citations. Normally, that means adding  just after the text in question.

However, not all Wikia wikis have a fact template, so if you need to create it the code for the Template:Fact page is basically just:

...which creates [citation needed].

You may wish to link the 'citation needed' text to a help page on the wiki.

See also Template:Fact on Wikipedia, though this specific version is much more advanced than almost any other wiki needs.