The Sample Source List Wiki
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Thanks for your interest in editing the Sample Source Wiki. While undoubtedly many people feel that it would be fairly easy to slap up what they think is a valid sample quote and move on, it would save me the hassle of having to fix every entry by hand (just for the sake of anal-retentiveness) if you followed these simple guidelines to keep the wiki as clean, smooth, and consistent as possible.

Thank you,
Ssmodk

Basics[]

To make things as clear as possible and to be sure that I'm doing everything absolutely correct, I always use the Source Editor to be sure the wiki is doing exactly what I want it to do. Wikia is making regular changes to the Visual Editor, but you can never be quite sure what it's doing without looking at the source and it tends to add unnecessary or wrong code in the process of attempting to format things; therefore, I recommend setting your editor for the Source Editor.

To set your editor for Source, go to your user icon at the top of the screen (you need to be signed in for this, so this doesn't help those that want to do some drive-by anonymous edits without a Wikia account; just get one already) and click on My Preferences. Under My Preferences, choose the Editing tab. You'll see the Preferred Editor drop-down under the first section, Editing experience. Once Source editor is chosen, everything else will make a lot more sense.

Samples[]

The individual samples are undoubtedly the easiest aspect of the format and, should the Artist and Source pages already be in place, adding a new sample should be quick and simple.

To add a sample, going to the existing page for the media the sample is taken from (movie, TV, recording, person, etc.) and go to the heading for the artist you're adding a sample for. If the artist exists on the site but is not on the page for that source, add it with the following code:

==[[Artist Name]]==

If the artist is the same as a movie title that exists or you would easily confuse it for, (Band) may be at the end of their name. In which case, you should list it thusly:

==[[Artist Name (Band)|Artist Name]]==

This is done just so it looks nice and clean and doesn't have a giant "(Band)" in the middle of the name headings.

The artist's name should always be placed alphabetically between the artists that come before and after it, not last on the page or anywhere else. If the artist's name begins with "The", you can ignore that but still add it to the artist's name if it is a part of it, particularly if it's listed as such on Discogs. The first letters of an artist's name should be capitalized, even if it normally isn't. (The same goes for the first letters of song titles and album names; I don't care if you think articles shouldn't be capitalized - you're going to do it or get the fuck out.)

After you find the appropriate artist, enter the sample alphabetically by the name of the track. You'll first add a bullet followed by the speaking character's name, a colon, and the quoted sample, inside quotation marks.

*Guy's Name: "Holy shit! It's a sample!"
*Some Other Guy: "I've been known to listen to songs with samples in them."

For the love of God, do use appropriate grammar and spelling. Also, be damned sure that you've checked that the sample is saying what it's saying. Don't work off of memory. Don't attempt to decipher it only from the song. Type out specifically what is said in the film, TV show, etc., and then check it against the sample to be sure they didn't tweak it or remove words for whatever reason. Where there are long pauses... ellipses... are... acceptable... and useful. Where several lines from the movie are removed but the remaining lines are played continuously, as if they were from a single, unedited sample, feel free to center the ellipsis to denote that ... words or sentences are missing in the middle of the line or lines.

If the sample is a sound effect, add the usual bullet, then list it within single brackets as below, using the minimal amount of description to get the point across. You'll also put double apostrophes around the brackets to put it all in italics.

*''[Don getting shot]''
*''[alien bursting out of Robert's face]''
*Don: "Oh, shit! They're killing me!" ''[sawing noise]'' "They're killing me with a saw!"

If the sample is a conversation between two or more people, it obviously has to be listed separately to maintain its integrity as a single sample but to be able to follow the dialogue. We're going to accomplish this by placing the sample in double bullets. Therefore, a single bullet will show up to denote the individual sample and then a series of second bullets, indented to the right, that will follow the flow of the conversation.

    • Guy 1: "Says a thing."
    • Guy 2: "Says a thing back."
    • Guy 1: "Now let's end the sample..."

The formatting around bullets can be a bit finicky, so be sure to leave a line break between any samples before and after the double-bulleted conversation. While it won't visibly show the line breaks outside the code, it'll make sure that the bulleting happens as it should and bullets don't disappear or end up where they shouldn't be.

*Guy's Name: "Holy shit! It's a sample!"

**Guy 1: "Says a thing."
**Guy 2: "Says a thing back."
**Guy 1: "Now let's end the sample..."

*Some Other Guy: "I've been known to listen to songs with samples in them."

After you're done entering the samples, end it with the song's title and the album/EP/single the track originally (or, if necessary and less confusing, most-notably) appeared on. (If the track originally appeared on a 12" single in 1982 that was an edition of 14 copies, you'll be forgiven for listing the album as the compilation of singles they released on CD in 1997.)

To possibly make the code for this less confusing, let's look at it first and then take apart what it means.

::'''"Song Title"''' ''(Album Title)''

Though it's probably not the best system, this is how we list things: first double colons to indent the line the appropriate amount of space, then triple apostrophes (which is the code for bold lettering), the song's title (inside quotation marks), then triple apostrophes again (to end the bolding), followed by a space, double apostrophes (to start italicizing), the title of the album/EP/single (inside parentheses), and double apostrophes again (to end the italicizing). Simple? No. But you'll get used to it.

If you have any special notes, place them in parentheses, in italics, indented equally, above the song title line.


::''(from the German dub)''
::''(from episode 403, "TV Show Episode Name")''
::'''"Song Title"''' ''(Album Title)''

Try to keep those special notes to things that would help someone find the source or understand which version of the source it came from, such as a specific TV episode title and episode number, a dub or cut of a movie, a song and/or album that is sampled, the source of the documentary recording, etc.

Sample Sources[]

If the source doesn't exist already (and please search thoroughly first; the search system doesn't always turn up the best results first), you'll have to create the source before you can add the sample.

First, you will want to look up the film/TV show/person/recording/etc. on Wikipedia, IMDb, and/or Discogs, as appropriate. Wikipedia and IMDb will cover the majority of sources used on the site and should be filled in, if possible. Even historical figures tend to have pages on IMDb, even though they're not actors or movies; they've probably been featured in quite a few documentaries. Once you track down your source on those sites, find the proper title of the source and how it is spelled. IMDb is usually more accurate than Wikipedia for titles, so - if they disagree and one features a "The" at the beginning of the title or something - you probably won't go wrong by picking IMDb's iteration. Also, be sure there aren't a number of other media sources with the same name. One wouldn't just create a page for "Transformers", as they're at very least one TV show and one movie (if not more) with that title. Therefore, if you're in danger of confusing it for another title, put the year in parentheses after the title, such as Transformers (1985). Obviously, all the words in the title should be capitalized, no fucking exceptions.

The first thing you'll enter once you create this page is the infobox below, which can be pasted in and then filled out. It's called the "Movie infobox" because I created it before I realized that I wouldn't have to create separate infoboxes for all kinds of media.

{{Movie infobox
|title =
|image =
|imagecaption =
|imdb =
|wikipedia =
|discogs =
}}

As you can see, the first line (title) allows you to enter the title of the source, which should also include the year if you put it in the page title, and you can also add a line break and a parenthetical in italics if the movie is mainly known and listed on IMDb and Wikipedia by its Anglicized title but was released under a foreign title. An example:

|title = Day Of Anger (1984)<br />''(Dies Irae)''

If you are inclined to enter an image for the media source (a movie poster, etc.), enter the file name you'd want to use on the image line. The filename should probably just be the title of the page. Example:

|image = Day_Of_Anger_(1984).jpg

The "imagecaption" line allows one to enter a caption for the picture, which is probably not necessary, but the feature is there.

The "imdb", "wikipedia", and "discogs" lines are where you put links to the pages for the media source on those respective websites. As they are links, you'll put the address inside brackets. Example:

|imdb = [http://www.imdb.com/bullshitlink]

If there is a need for multiple links (the only one I can think of is that the TV series is split into multiple names over various seasons - see Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends), then you just add a space and another link in a separate set of brackets.

After you've filled out the infobox, return down a couple of lines past the }} and enter the artist and samples as listed in the section above.

Artists[]

I haven't entirely figured out how artist pages will work yet.

{{Artist infobox
|artist =
|discogs =
|wikipedia =
}}

Categories[]

Each article should be linked to a category or categories, either from the edit page or from the bottom of the article itself.

The possible categories and explanations of what falls into those categories is below.

  • Animation: Animation of any length or type, be it cartoons, CGI, or claymation.
  • Artist: All artists who are doing the sampling are included in this category.
  • Commercial: Actual commercials, which people do often sample. (This does not include movie trailers, which are just listed as the film itself, but a special note is made that it comes from the trailer.)
  • Documentary: Not just documentary films, but also documentary sources... Things taken from real life, not spoken by characters but by actual people. Everything from newscasts to political speeches and in between. If it comes from real life audio sampling, it's documentary.
  • Movie: Any full-length film, be it a documentary, animation, or pornography, in addition to all the usual films you'd expect.
  • Music: The ouroboros of one musician sampling another musician's music to make their music.
  • Person: Actual people, usually public figures given recorded speeches or interviews, serial killers giving interviews or being interrogated, or authors reading their works.
  • Pornography: Pornographic films; specifically X-rated fare and not just NC-17 art films.
  • Radio: From radio shows or broadcasts throughout history.
  • Recording: Mildly complicated... Basically anything that is a voice recording of someone that doesn't come directly from a commercial source, like film, television, radio, commercial, video games, etc. Anything from a recording of a speech to an interview with a subject that doesn't fall strictly under the other categories.
  • Short Film: The typical short-subject films. Things with running times of less than 60-70 minutes tend to be considered "short films". When in doubt, look to see if it's listed as a short on IMDb.
  • TV Show: Fairly self-explanatory. Shows from television, whether American or European, soap opera or cartoon, 30 minute sitcom or made-for-TV movie. (Yes, you can have a made-for-TV movie that is both TV Show and Movie.)
  • Video Game: Fairly easy to understand this category.
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