I've noticed something missing from all the help and wiki pages, and never mentioned once in the Discord or these forums. What citation style should be used when citing for e621? This is very important for the site as a whole, how are we supposed to know that "pelage" is actually a word for the coat of animal or that saliva is composed of 98% water without proper citations? It's almost impossible to trust the e621 Wiki at this point.

_{While the latter part of this was in jest, I am still curious on what the answer to my actual question is, even if it wouldn't actually matter much.}

I think there really hasn't been a need for proper citation for e6 since the wiki is usually about when something should be tagged, rather than what something is. But usually you just use a hyperlink on the text in question

anicebee said:
I've noticed something missing from all the help and wiki pages, and never mentioned once in the Discord or these forums. What citation style should be used when citing for e621? This is very important for the site as a whole, how are we supposed to know that "pelage" is actually a word for the coat of animal or that saliva is composed of 98% water without proper citations? It's almost impossible to trust the e621 Wiki at this point.

_{While the latter part of this was in jest, I am still curious on what the answer to my actual question is, even if it wouldn't actually matter much.}

> inb4 someone cites the Merriam Webster definition for bestiality.

In short, we don't or would never cite sources in tag definitions.

Most of the time, it is either already directly ripped from Wikipedia or tailored to fit our tagging criteria and/or the furry community (e.g., bestiality and feral here does not mean the same as in the real world).
For the latter, this is due in part to how fluid definitions can change after forum discussions, and also to avoid linking fictional use of terms with those associated in real-life.

In my opinion, we shouldn't even be adding redundant information like "saliva is 98% water" when it has nothing to do with how we use the tag itself.

If you're adding something that feels like it needs a citation, consider if it's actually needed. Trivia tidbits can be fun, but they shouldn't be super weight bearing.

if you really wanted you could use anchors to do stuff like ^this like how Wikipedia does it.

but I'd say that general tags probably won't ever need citation links pretty much ever, in these situations the wikipages are meant to describe the tag's use. and in quite a few situations the general tags are, at least partially, in-house definitions, even if they are somewhat common real-world words.

citation or external links for species, character and copytags could be more useful, though. or at the very least those are situations where I feel like additional information would be actually interesting.

#this

dba_afish said:
but I'd say that general tags probably won't ever need citation links pretty much ever, in these situations the wikipages are meant to describe the tag's use. and in quite a few situations the general tags are, at least partially, in-house definitions, even if they are somewhat common real-world words.

I agree, and it seems like most people agree considering 90% of the time writing the forum post was just trying to find 2 examples of something that would be better with a citation. It was a silly question fueled by my tired state.

MLA style is preferred, with APA style a close second.

Story: I have used my local library card to log in to the Oxford English Dictionary before, in order to cite the OED here in the forum. :D