Transcendence AU Wiki talk:Style Guide

Good questions / interesting cases

• We definitely are going to want to document the preter rights movement and the existence of preters and pro-nats: what pages get created for this and what are they called?
• How do we document groups, such as Circle of the Dreamers’ Star? Do we treat them similarly to characters?
• How do we document in-universe works, like Mizar the Magnificent, and Twin Souls?
• How do we document species, such as demons and gnomes?
• How do we document major events, such as the Transcendence, and the California Incident?
• How do we document locations, such as Gravity Falls and Lancaster?
• What do we do about the fact that basically all the information currently on the wiki is uncited? When cleaning up existing pages, we need to know what is established canon and what is not. This is easier to do when adding cited information to a page rather than organizing pre-existing uncited information. Basically we need a cleanup action plan.
• The concept of “generally accepted canon” is kind of problematic. We need to come up with a presentation that documents popular interpretations of subjects while also giving other works an equal footing.
• Style guidelines for galleries?
• Mark and Anna Pines are separate people, and probably should have their own pages. Currently, they share a page.
  • This raises the question: how do we document characters that always appear in pairs? Mark and Anna Pines are one example, but there’s also Matthews and Card. There may not be enough information on each individual to create separate pages for them.
• Should fanfic titles and series names be mentioned in article prose (as opposed to only in citations and fic recs)?

To be implemented

• Do authors get articles?
  • Decision: no.
  • Follow-up: should articles be categorized by their canon-establishing authors?
  • e.g. “Bentley Farkas and Friends Arc”, “Torako Lam”, and “California Incident” could be in the “Established by Mod K” category (or something similar, as that breaks the rule that category titles should be plural)
  • The question is: is this useful? To be able to click a link and see what other facets of the TAU universe have been established by that author? Or is it sufficient to name the canon-establishing author(s) on the article?
  • Is naming the canon-establishing authors even necessary? One argument in favor is that it makes it easier for editors to know what information is canon-establishing and what is not.
  • Decision: authors are mentioned in citations. Authors may be mentioned on arc and sub-AU pages in the same sense that the mods are mentioned in relation to the overall AU. Authors may be mentioned under the Appearances section. No categorization based on authors. Authors should not be otherwise mentioned on subject articles.
• A lot of the examples in this guide assume use of the source editor. Things should be implemented and described in such a way that they are just as accessible to users of the visual editor.
• Almost every pre-existing article should be marked with {{BadStyle}}, so that we can go over them later and figure out what changes need to be made. Most of them will need work, because (for example) almost none of them have citations.

Closed

• Do individual fics get articles?
  • Decision: no. We are not attempting to duplicate AO3.
• We allow using links to fics in citations. Should we also allow listing links to relevant fics outside of citations? We may not want to try to emulate the behavior of a rec list or an archive -- such things are better left to Tumblr and AO3. It may be better just to feature a prominent link to a relevant tag on AO3. However, characters are not always tagged properly or at all on AO3. In addition, things like arcs usually will have no relevant AO3 tag.
  • Decision: yes. We want to list appearances of an article’s subject, as that allows us to showcase canon-compatible information.
• Mizar the Gleeful: canon is divided as to whether this refers to specifically Mabel, or if it is a title for any Mizar.
  • Decision: redirect to Mabel, and have a Redirect context link at the top mentioning Mizar
• Consider the article “California Apocalypse”.
  • First, is “California Incident” a more accurate name?
  • Second, it is essentially a copy paste of mod K’s post about the aftermath of the incident.
  • Because of this, it’s split into section titles that the post uses. This likely isn’t the best way to format this information for the wiki, so we need to decide how this page should look.
  • A lot of this information really deserves to be split out into separate articles, each using mod K’s post as a cited source.
  • Examples: MagiOrb, Reclaimant Circle, Californian Island Federation, Milchiresa of Unknown Darkness.
  • Additionally, while mod K is canon-establishing for the California Incident, a lot of the points made in the post are qualified with “might” or “could”. Those specific points are really just suggestions -- they don’t establish any canon -- and thus shouldn’t be documented on the wiki.
• We may want to create a template that we can add to pages that says “this article doesn’t conform to the style guide and needs work”. That way, it’ll be easier to tell which pages need work.
• Mabel is a bit of a special case because “Mizar” is both the name of her soul, and a name for a role her reincarnations sometimes play. I have tended toward using the phrasing “[character] is a Mizar” instead of “[character] is a reincarnation of Mabel”, but we may want to decide to only use that phrasing if the character actually plays the role of Mizar.
• We currently have two ways to list a character’s reincarnations: having a “Known Reincarnations” section on the character’s page, and adding the reincarnations to a category named for the character. We should choose only one of these and stick with it.
• To mitigate spam (which has been an issue on the wiki), anonymous edits will be disallowed. Users must be logged in to edit. Making an account is free and easy so this shouldn’t be a roadblock for legitimate editors.