View source for Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:Canon Content Requirements

==Canon Article Requirements==
A canon article is based on primary sources, generally official material published by the company responsible for its development. This may be in the form of books, novels, internet articles, or even computer and video games.

===Copyrights===
The basis of most Canon articles will be copyrighted, non-free material. And copyrights have to be respected if we want to continue to serve in this capacity. To achieve this, we apply the same rules and guidelines as [[Wikipedia:Main Page|Wikipedia]], as stated at [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Copyrights|Wikipedia:Copyrights]] and all its related pages. We especially want to keep in mind the following Wikipedia statement:

''Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, ''not'' the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely. (See our Copyright FAQ for more on [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?|how much reformulation may be necessary]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Derivative works|the distinction between summary and abridgment]].) However, it would still be unethical (but not illegal) to do so without citing the original as a reference.''

For these reasons we will usually not include statistics of any kind, as they cannot be sufficiently reformulated.

===Sources===
All sources of the articles should be stated in the references section. A source tag about which company/companies provided the material should be included in the article for easy references with the help of the [[Template:Tsrwotc]] (for material by [[TSR, Inc.]] or [[Wizards of the Coast]]), or [[Template:Source]] (for all other companies). The companies should also be included as categories. For the TSR/WotC, this is done automatically by [[Template:Tsrwotc]]. See [[Canon:Wee Jas]] for an example.

Citation of specific relevant works is also encouraged for all canon articles, just as if you were citing an event on Wikipedia. The [[Template:Cite Pub|Cite Pub]] template is generally used for these direct citations.

===Categories and Breadcrumbs Guideline===
To be able to apply certain tools, we strive to put Canon articles into categories according to topic and - if appropiate - campaign settings. Many of our infobox templates will apply these categories automatically. [[Canon:Main]] gives a list of example categories. 

For easy reference we would also like to add breadcrumbs for those topics and campaign settings at the bottom of the article, that include links to the respective categories. See [[Canon:Moradin#External links|Canon:Moradin]] for an example.