As a fan-curated encyclopedia, the Marvel Database strives to use citations consistently to ensure the legitimacy of the information it presents to its readers. A citation is a reference to the source that a specific piece of informaton comes from; it is displayed as a numerical marker embedded in the body of an article, and it looks like this:

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man.^[1]

Clicking on the citation will take you to the corresponding footnote where the source is listed in the References list generated automatically at the bottom of an article. On desktop, hovering over the marker will display a popup message with the source without taking you to the bottom of the page. In the footnotes, the citation will look like this:

A citation accredits the source of the information presented in the passage that preceeds it so it can be fact-checked or used for further research. Their employment is a vital tool in what makes the Marvel Database a reliable source of knowledge.

Adding Citations

All sections of an article should include the appropriate citations, including the overview, the infobox (excluding certain fields listed below), and the main body. Citations are still required even when all information on a page can be attributed to a single source, because new sources of information may appear in the future.

The first time a piece of information is established in the section of an article, the corresponding citation should be placed immediately afterward. Citations are to be situated after clauses, following punctuation marks (except dashes), and outside of quotation marks, with no additional spaces before or between adjacent footnotes. When a piece of information supported by a single source encompasses a bigger unit of grammar (i.e. a sentence or a paragraph), the citation must be placed at the end of it. However, this is not the case if the information that a source covers extends beyond a paragraph break. To avoid giving the impression that the ending of a paragraph lacks sourcing, a citation should be placed after it, even if the next immediate footnote marker accredits the same source. If a paragraph contains information from multiple sources, each source should be cited in each clause that corresponds to it.

To ensure an article's readability and flow, contributors must avoid using so many citations they cause visual clutter. This "citation overkill" refers to the excessive use of footnote markers one next to another, or every few words. When multiple sources can be used to reference a single piece of information, it's enough to only cite an earlier source if not the source where it originated, and to exclude sources that merely reinforce the information. Multiple consecutive citations are only acceptable when different parts of a clause are attributed to different sources.

There are generally two types of citations, internal citations are used to attribute sources to released media by linking to their articles within the Marvel Database. External citations are used to attribute sources not documented in the wiki, most notably other websites.

Internal Citations

While the Marvel Database supports the traditional <ref> tag that is built into the MediaWiki software, our wiki employs a custom R template for internal citations. Circling back to the example provided above, an internal citation is commonly written like this:

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man.{{r|Amazing Fantasy Vol 1 15}}

The R template will automatically and appropriatedly format the source inside the reference as a hyperlink to its article in the wiki, so the link to Amazing Fantasy #15 reads as Amazing Fantasy #15 instead of Amazing Fantasy Vol 1 15. The R template will also group instances of the same reference together so they share a footnote marker.

For a more in-depth explanation of the use of the R template, visit this page.

External Citations

The Marvel Database similarly uses a custom Cite template for external sources, like the web pages for news articles. This template allows for the appropriate inclusion of author names, publication date, access date and archive links. Due to the fragile nature of web pages, particularly social media posts, external citations must always include an archive link, using web archive services like the Internet Archive, Ghost Archive or Archive Today. The following is an example of an external citation:

There are no sandwiches in Earth-6160.^[2]

The footnote looks like this:

And the code of the citation looks like this:

There are no sandwiches in Earth-6160.{{cite|ref=true|url=https://gatecrashers.fan/2024/06/05/ultimates-deniz-camp-interview/|title=Talking The Ultimates with Deniz Camp|work=GateCrashers|first=Zee|date=June 5, 2024|accessdate=April 20, 2025|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605163938/https://gatecrashers.fan/2024/06/05/ultimates-deniz-camp-interview/|archivedate=June 5, 2024}}

For a more in-depth explanation of the use of the Cite template, visit this page.

Exceptions

Self-Sourcing

A text does not require citation in the cases of "self-sourcing," which is when either the text or the page itself sufficiently function as the reference instead. Examples of self-sourcing are:

• For released media, any information that is found within the credits or the material itself, including but not limited to: writer(s), cover date, page count, running time, etc.
• Likewise, appearances and the plot synopses of released media are automatically cited to their pages and do not require further citations.
• Certain template fields such as First or Death which contain the links to the relevant released media by themselves.

Special Fields

Most articles on the Marvel Database are entirely wrapped in templates, with different parts of the article corresponding to different fields. Certain template fields are used to generate hyperlinks, categories or custom displays and therefore do not support citations in any format. Examples of such fields include:

• The Name and CurrentAlias fields are used to display the page's title in the infobox and cannot contain citations. Special dedicated fields NameRef and CurrentAliasRef are used to list those instead.
• Power Grid values on the character pages are not found on the pages themselves, but rather are pulled from Module:Power Grid/List which provides the citation.
• Fields containing dates in various formats are used for category generation and cannot contain citations.