Help: Manual of Style

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Revision as of 22:31, 21 April 2013 by Winterz (talk | contribs) (Body: Correcting a little mistake)
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This Manual of Style is a collection of rules of thumb and guidelines for giving our wiki a consistent look and feel. It is intended as a handy reference for editors. Feel free to suggest or discuss guidelines, over at the forum or on the discussion tab.

General rules

  • Use the Preview button.
  • Follow the format of existing pages as much as possible, you can always use the sandbox to test code.
  • Add a descriptive summary when editing a page, A "minor edit" is a fix to a typo or small change that does not affect the page. No summary required.

Discussion

  • Sign your name at the end of your post by adding 4 tildes (~~~~)
  • Indent your post with a colon (:) when replying to a previous post.

Dates and Years

  • Use [[300 AL|300 AL]] when linking to years after Aegon's Landing. There are templates that automate this: {{Date|300}}

Punctuation

  • For quotations, use "double quotes" and 'single quotes' for nesting quotations; thus "quotations 'within' quotations".
  • Write formally. Avoid using contractions such as don't, can't, won't, would've, or they'd.
  • Avoid using slashes to join words. Instead, spell it out.

Tense

  • Articles that cover events taking place before the novels should be written in past tense. However, events taking place in the book series should utilize present tense - even if the event is outdated by new books in the series.

Spelling

  • Words should be spelled using the American English spelling.

Article layout

An article should begin with an introductory lead section, that provide an overview of the topic, briefly summarizing the article for the reader. Followed by the rest of the article divided into sections, each with a section heading. If there are at least four section headings in the article, a navigable table of contents is generated automatically and displayed between the lead and the first heading.

Introduction

  • The first occurrence of the [name of the] subject of the article at first mention must be bolded, preferably in the first sentence in the article.
  • ( The lead section should be about one to three paragraphs long, dependent on the overall size of the article. Often, a single sentence suffices.
  • Ideally, the lead section should be a synopsis of the topic's history, role and significance.

Body

  • For the "Genealogy" section, use the familytree template.
  • "Recent events" section
  • "See Also" is a section where the reader can be pointed at related articles, or a gallery of images of the subject.

Links

The following should be link: dates, places, people, events etc everything that appears in a narrative this wiki covers. However, don't over link, it is recommended that you limit the number of times you link the same word in a single article, Generally, it is preferred that you link to only the first instance of a word in each section of an article. If the article is not sectionalised, but has large, multi-sentence paragraphs, then link the word once a paragraph. If you have made a link in captions or the infobox, it is a good idea to make the same link in the article.

Do not use external links in the body of an article. Articles can include an external links section at the end as further reading, the following sites should be linked: Official sites (that majorly relate to the topic), articles about the subject of article on other encyclopedias or vast resources that contain neutral and accurate information that has not been mentioned in the article.

References

  • For all articles, notes and references/sources are combined under the same subsection: References. For this, simply type {{references}} at the bottom.
  • Cite only sources that are considered Canon and reliable sources like Concordance. Do not cite secondary sources unless there are valid conclusions drawn based on the previous.

Sources and Copying

Information for the content of pages comes from a lot of different sources. If the source of your contributions is something other than the books, please state your sources.
Copying from wikipedia is okay; the content of wikipedia is free but there are some rules, which are stated in our attribution help page. In short you have to refer to the original article. This is a must!

  • A good way to do this is using the template {{EnWP|<article from wikipedia>}}

Images

  • Uploaded images must be related to A Song of Ice and Fire and its derivative works, the one exception being if you want to upload an image for your userpage, of yourself or for a userbox.
  • Always tag the images you're uploading with copyright information; for this you can use copyright tags template.
  • It's preferred that any primary image used (be it a photo or an artistic depiction) is one that does not deviate too much from how the character is described. [1]
  • When uploading images to the Wiki, the rule of the thumb is to use JPEG for photographic images, and PNG for everything else.
  • Superseded or replaced images should be kept to preserve Wiki historical record. Deletion, should only be used in case of copyright violation or technical reasons.
  • You should always be watchful not to overwhelm an article with images by adding more just because you can.


Categories & Templates

  • Each page and each image should be labeled with a category or more if appropriate. You can use the Categories Overview to find out more on how they are organized.
  • You can find a list of templates here: Category:Templates and an overview of the most common ones here:Help:Templates Overview. Many of the Templates used in the wiki automatically tag the pages with the appropriate category.

Notes