Thread:RegisteredContributor/@comment-4821405-20120207213205/@comment-2045915-20120209033819

OK there seems to be some confusion here. We NEVER MAKE THINGS UP. This is a canon wiki. There is a separate wiki here on wikia for fanon. The only truly fan-made material on this wiki is art, and we are now much more selective about what fan-made art we will allow and prefer official art in its place whenever possible.We comply with canon in all factual areas and never deliberately contradict it unless there is an actual contradiction in the canon (which does, sigh, happen a lot). If someone extrapolates some information from something in canon that is conjecturally obvious, we will generally let it stand if it does not obviously contradict something stated elsewhere. This wiki has almost no regular (i.e. daily or every other day) editors, and was abandoned outright for almost 3 years before we got it running again 2 years ago, so large swathes of the content other than our Space Marines pages are only beginning to be updated to the 5th Edition standard, i.e. all the retcons for certain races like the Dark Eldar and the Necrons. Considering where this wiki was only 2 years ago, I think we have done an amazing job with what we have, and our usage statistics reflect that.

With that said, there is plenty of room for improvement. One area where we differ greatly with the Lex is their strictness about sourcing. Every page needs to be sourced with the book or novel or background book that all relevant information used in that page's construction was taken from. But we do not use footnotes, as that is a Wikipedia convention that we have abandoned since bottom-page sourcing is more than enough in most cases. This is a deliberate choice on this wiki intended to make it a lot easier to edit articles. I personally also find the use of footnotes an incredibly over-anal academic convention which is pretty pointless in an entertainment-based wiki. I know many people disagree with that opinion. That's why the Lexicanum exists and is the great resource that it is. The use of page numbers in all sourcing is definitely preferred and encouraged, particularly for White Dwarf articles, Codexes and Background Books. But if someone does not cite the page numbers in, for instance, the synopsis of a novel, I'm not going to have a cow. In most cases, people can just read the book if they really need to fact check something.

I hope that makes our policy in these matters more clear. If there are any more questions on these matters, which are not made clear enough in the Important Links on our main page, please do not hesitate to ask me.Thanks, and have fun.