Sword Art Online Wiki:Reference Guideline

This guideline explains how references on the wiki work and lists a number of commonly used references.

Referencing is used because it helps look up facts in case of conflict, as well as tells how reliable the information is.

Referencing is required for:
 * Trivia
 * Timeline events (special referencing rules apply; see below)
 * Appearance and descriptions.
 * Stated facts

Referencing is not required for:
 * Chronology (unless the mentioned events were told in a different arc/story than the heading implies)
 * Personality (unless there are no specific examples mentioned)

Unnamed references
These references are mostly useful for one-use only references (usually very specific references that can only be used for referencing a single thing). Any references used more than once per article should be named. Technically, all references should be named, but references that are obviously not going to be used on the same page anymore, may be referenced like this if you are too lazy to name it.

Named references
A more common method of coding references, as it allows using repeated references.

Repeated references
Whenever a reference is already used at least once on the page, all you have to do is to repeat the reference name (do not forget the / is used to close the reference) and the wiki will just repeat the reference description itself.

Reference priority
In case of conflict, the following priority list determines which information is deemed canon. The lower priority source's version may be mentioned in trivia or adaptation notes, depending on the context.

Light novel (highest priority) > Material editions > Anime > Manga > Other sources (lowest priority)

Timeline referencing
Special rules apply for timeline referencing:


 * References are used to reference the time and date, not the event. A reference may be taken from a completely different story than the one that the event takes place in, as long as the new story gives information about the date and/or time of the event.
 * If a reference only references the date when the time is stated or if it only references the time, a NoteTag must be added next to it to signify this.
 * The anime is only to be referenced as a last resort. It is known that the anime has made at least several mistakes regarding the date of events.
 * For references that cannot be referenced by source (e.g. when the reference has to explain how a certain date was calculated from less specific details, like Underworld events), the date is used as the reference name (e.g. 100HWC; 23F23 (2023 February 23)).
 * For dates that are specifically mentioned, referencing just the publication and as specific location as possible is enough. For dates that are derived from calculations based on hints (e.g. 2 months before event x) should have an explanation in the reference, as well as the source (e.g. 2 months after Sword Art Online was cleared, according to V4C7).

Light Novel
Light novel references follow a standard format of VxCyPz, where "x" is the number of the volume, "y" is the number of the chapter and "z" is the number of the part (for side stories, Alicization and Progressive). For named chapters or side story names, the "Cy" is replaced with the abbreviation for the chapter name. For Progressive, a P is added before V.

Material Editions
For Material Editions, the reference name is "MEx", where "x" is the number of the material edition.

Side stories
For side stories, the abbreviation of the side story name is used as the reference name. Additionally, if the side story comes in parts, a "Px", where "x" is the number of the part, can be added for an even more specific reference (recommended).