Pikipedia:Verifiability

Shortcut: P:VERIFIABILITY

This policy covers how truth, lies, and dubious information are handled on the wiki.

Disclaimer of veracity

As a wiki, Pikipedia aims to have no incorrect information. However, some sentences on the wiki might not be true. This can happen either because the author was mistaken, or because they purposely added wrong information to the wiki.

As a general disclaimer, Pikipedia does not guarantee that all of its information is true. Members of the community come together to attempt to correct any mistakes and misinformation, to the point where almost everything on the wiki can be assumed to be true. But mistakes and vandalism are expected to happen, as much as the editors attempt to correct it. Users are advised to use their own judgment when reading information on the wiki. The rest of this policy lists some ways editors have to help ensure that the information is right, and that readers and editors alike can confirm it.

Sourcing

The best ways to ensure that a bit of text is telling the truth is to have something to back it up. Given that Pikipedia is a wiki mostly written and read by fans of the series, simple facts, like "Captain Olimar is the main character in Pikmin" aren't doubted – almost all fans know this to be fact, and the ones that don't can easily check the games themselves or check countless external sources.

However, some pages may have some information that is very hard to believe. This could be because it is hard for players to check by playing the games, or because it is something that is not well known by the public. To help prove that that is not made up, the goal is to include some proof next to any dubious claims. This can be an image, a video, a quote from one of the games, a link to an external website specializing on the matter, or anything else that serves as proof. Fan-driven research and experiments (even by Pikipedia users) are also valid, provided that they're well thought out, and other users don't disagree with them.

All suspicious claims on the wiki must have proof whenever possible. One common way to provide proof is with the citation templates. Dubious text that does not have proof must be tagged with the source needed template, which will categorize the page under Category:Articles in need of sources. If some information goes without being proven for a large period of time, it will be removed, as it will be assumed to be false.

Claims

See: Pikipedia:Claims

Intentionally or not, misinformation can make its way onto the wiki. Users, especially staff, are urged to challenge any claims made by the edits on an article.

Sic

See also: Wikipedia's article on sic.

When adding a quote to the wiki, taken directly from a source, like a website or a game, the quote should come as-is, without being edited. This includes typos. In order to make it clear whether a typo was accidentally introduced by the person who edited the article, or if it was actually a part of the original text, the {{sic}} tag may be added in front of the typo. This indicates that the mistake exists in the original source.