Guide:Sources

The following presents a non-exhaustive list of sources for the Star Citizen wiki and some general guidelines.

Verifiable primary sources
Any information provided on the wiki should be verifiable with reliable sources. In case of conflict, the most authoritative source should be used, in case of doubt, it is better to use a neutral approach and if need really be avoid the information completely so as to avoid misinformation.

Whenver possible, use primary sources rather than a secondary source repeating it.

Galactapedia
The Galactapedia is the most authoritative official source of in-lore information, official managed by Cloud Imperium Games itself, and regularly updated.

Press Releases
Press Releases about Star Citizen are usually found on the Cloud Imperium Games blog.

Roberts Space Industries website
The RSI website contains a lot of very varied information, however old posts can be outdated, and mistakes or contradictions can be found.

The easiest way to search the website is by using some google-fu, for example by searching on google site:robertsspaceindustries.com "chris roberts" which will searcg for the specific term between quotes rather than individual words, on the specific website. It can also be used for example on specific gaming sites whose internal search might be bad or to avoid the distractions of ads.

Here is a guide to learn how to use google properly to find what you want.

Videos
If only a specific part of a video is used, it is practical to use a timecoded link by clicking the relevant box after using the share function, however this is better avoided if a single video is used as a single source for several different pieces of information.

Videos are sometimes organized in playlists however those are unreliable as they depend on the author classifying them consistently.

Official videos
The RSI videos, easely found on the official Star Citizen youtube channel, are a good source of information that is often not written down on the RSI website nor anywhere else and is thus of particular interest to the wiki, however some content is prone to get outdated and people might confuse some things. misremeber them or make various mistakes, especially during live videos. Some caution should therefore be used.

Videos can be searched for specific keywords using tools to search captions such as Starchives, keeping in mind caveats such as captions being auto generated and thus innacurate, so that trying different spellings is advised.

Thumbnail images can be extrated using https://img.youtube.com/vi/ video-id/maxresdefault.jpg

Non official videos
While the content of most fan made videos such as the myriad of personal opinions about the latest patch or about which ship is the best aren't of particular interest to the wiki, there is also a lot of fan-made interviews with devs which are very much of interest. There is also a number of devs doing presentations at game industry events or even gamedev schools. As before, official RSI information takes precendence in case of conflicts, as individuals can misremember something or make mistakes.

If you find such a video, it might be a good idea to check if the author has made more such videos.

Podcasts
See non official videos above.

Jump Point
Jump point is the official Star Citizen magazine, information is therefore reliable despite some being prone to being outdated. Ideally besides the issue and the section, chapter, or other such division cite also the page number(s).

Images
You can look up the source of an image by using reverse image search, for example to find the RSI page it comes from, to find a higher resolution, to check the author and the copyright, to check if it's official or fanmade etc. Reverse image searching can also be useful to find a concept artist personal website or an interview for example.

This can be done by clicking the little square in the google images search bar an by pasting the link or uploading the picture, and using the "image source" feature. Tinyeye allow to sort by date. Baidu image search also has decent results, or even Bing.

Social Media
Most social media has an advanced search feature.

Twitter
Advanced search for twitter.

You can also use the format: keyword (from:author). For example to find the exclusive physical patches for a specific dev who worked on specific spaceships, you could search patch from:@PaulJonesAD

You can also search within lists by using the list ID number instead of a user.

Video game news websites
Video game news websites can contain useful, pertinent or even exclusive information not found elsewhere, or simply provide context, however one should dinstiguish between gaming journalism and buzz. Where possible, it is recommended to use reliable gaming journalism websites with a good reputation such as for example Eurogamer rather than websites that seek clickbait and are known for scandals regarding dubious or even outright made up sources or tend to have contradictory articles presenting opposite emotional viewpoints that are more opinion pieces than journalism. Keep in mind that the quality of gaming news websites can vary over time

Please use primary articles when possible rather than another site copy pasting the original one, unless the secondary one provides more information or context.

Common sense applies.

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources
The more extraordinary the claim, the higher the quality of the source should be, and multiple sources shoud be used.

Copyright and plagiarism
Please do not breach the copyright when using sources, and use your own words as much as possible, not only out by law, but also out of respect. In addition it's not good for Search Engine Optimization either, meaning that copy pasting hurts the wiki ranking in search results.

Archives
A website or a specific page or specific tweet might not be online anymore. For example the old star citizen forum was taken offline and replaced with Spectrum. While that means that most of the content is usually lost, it might still occasionally be possible to find them archived.

For this you can used archive websites such as Archive.org or archive.today

It's also a good idea to add things to the archive yourself by pasting the link, especially when you come across something of interest, so that others may find it archived later.

Citation needed
If need be, you can use the citation needed tag as a temporary measure.

Help
You are needed to make the wiki better for every single person using it, to add content and sources. Don't get discouraged by any difficulty you might encounter in your quest.

Don't hesitate to ask someone for help of any kind including finding a source via the wiki discord.