User:CIA391/Good References

This help page provides information on what makes a good source or reference on Halopedia. Sources come in several shapes and sizes from a wide variety of places. A few questions you may consider is this "Is this source reliable", "Is my source legitimate", or even "Is this source safe". Well this page will help you understand a few steps on how to make sure things are as safe as they can be!

Add in actual good source examples, and show some terrible ones throughout

Before you start
Before you start, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the References help page! This ensures you set up references correctly.

Books, Games, and other official media
For media that is released by Bungie, 343i, or any of their partners, this media is generally considered reliable, legitimate, and safe for referencing. Halopedia maintains a list of Acronyms that features most of the media that are considered under this category. For a full list of all (and I do mean all) supported acronyms, see Halopedia:Acronyms. It's a very comprehensive list.

Accessibility
Notes from bacon to remove tomorrow: Make it more clear that "the content should be publically viewable without the need to sign up for, or log into, a private community/forum; and that this is done for both valid sourcing purposes and so that 343i (and others) don't feel like we're recording everything they say in private and make it public.

Add in Flash and outdated code caveat about how they are handled.

Web-based media has a lot of stuff to consider, to start off with the most important thing to consider. Is the content accessible? For the content to be available, the website needs to be active and show the intended content on its original link; or the content has to be mirrored on an archive.

Halopedia currently accepts two (though that isn't exclusive, and we will allow others if they are reliable) main forms of archiving in its reference templates; through our own internal archive on the Halopedia Archive, or through Archive.org.

To add an archive onto Archive.org is way easier, you first go on the website you want to archive and copy the link. You then put it into the text box next to "Wayback Machine" and follow the websites instructions until the Website is mirrored on the website.

While this is Halopedia staff dependent, to add an archive to the Archive may depend on the media piece itself. If you have a request for an archive to be added, please put forward a request in the community proposals forum and we will try to add that quickly to the archive.

Unfortunately due to the nature of the internet, it is not possible to ensure every piece of content is accessible, leading to content just becoming unavailable. In this it becomes impossible to prove certain media. These content will need to be discussed to see what we can do.

Legitimate
(TODO) Talk about very safe sources like Waypoint, and Bungie.net.

Talk about how new outlets are not as safe as the official source, and that its a good idea to find their source.

Reliable
(TODO) Talk about if the person has worked for Halo. (This on paper talks about if the person is in the credits of a piece of media, or is known to work on Halo)

Common places that are referenced
Twitter, Waypoint Forums, Waypoint, so on.

Email, Discord, IRC, and other chat related discussions
So you are on your favorite chat platform and you see a Halo developer say something about the next Halo platform. You may have a hard time with that source. With platforms like Discord, IRC, and Email; often there there is no way to archive the source, leading to a scenario where the source can vanish with no way to ever prove it was said. It is also very difficult to securely verify if the person is saying it is actually really that person; it is also very easy for someone to just pretend to be someone they are not and get away with it.

My friend Mike got told by 343i. If so this is impossible to verify so can not be used?

The big to long didn't read about this whole section is "If you need to argue/debate the legitimacy of what was said, is it really a good source?"