Wikitokyo:Style guide
From Wikitokyo, the unofficial Megatokyo wiki
The three golden rules of Wikitokyo editing are:
- Be neutral
- If people disagree, describe the disagreement rather than taking sides.
- Be consistent
- Pay attention to how similar pages do things, and try to emulate them.
- Cite your sources
- Link to appropriate comics and forum threads.
Contents |
[edit section] The rules
[edit section] Use good English
Wikis make it very easy to fix spelling and grammar mistakes—but this is not an excuse for sloppy writing. Using correct spelling and grammar will save everybody effort.
[edit section] Use US English
We need to pick something, and US English is it. Why? Because the comic is written by an American and its largest fanbase is in America.
Having said that, it's better to contribute in British English than to not contribute at all. Users should feel free to convert any British English to US English, but don't complain unless somebody is deliberately changing US English to British English.
(No cracks about how this section conflicts with Use good English, please.)
[edit section] Use native name order
That is, Japanese characters should have their name written Familyname Givenname, while American characters should be written Givenname Familyname. This is a matter of respect for other cultures.
However, as noted in Use consistent titles, you should ensure both name orders redirect to the character's page.
[edit section] Use consistent titles
Articles on characters should usually use first names or other "short" versions when titling an article about a person (Piro). However, some characters are only rarely called by their first name; in that case, their article should be by their most recognizable name (Inspector Sonoda). When creating a character article, also create redirects for their last name and their full name in both Western and Japanese order (Nanasawa, Kimiko Nanasawa, Nanasawa Kimiko).
Articles on objects, places, and organizations should use their full name (Cool Thing, Shiritsu Daitou High School). Acronyms and other abbreviated versions should have redirects to the full name (CEA).
In all cases, articles should have only their first word capitalized, unless the other words would be capitalized in body text (Miho theories, but Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division).
Titles should never be plural when referring to in-comic objects; however, creating redirects for plural versions of titles is encouraged. (Hence, Zombies redirects to Zombie.)
In general, titles should never contain more than five words. Find a way to shorten the title, and if appropriate create a redirect from the longer title to the shorter one.
In case it's not clear to you yet, creating appropriate redirects is considered a Good Thing, and is encouraged. Disk space is cheap.
[edit section] Use consistent structure
When you're writing or editing an article, take a look at the way articles on the same kind of thing are structured and coded, and try to emulate them. If you can use the same sections, layout, and tone, try to do so. It's okay to modify the accepted format, but only if you're prepared to edit other appropriate pages to apply your changes. It's also okay to extend the accepted format by adding more sections, but see if any other articles do so and consider whether other articles should.
[edit section] Use a neutral point of view
All articles should be written from a neutral point of view. That means that they should not state as objectively true anything that is seriously disputed. Instead, they should explain both sides, possibly with a reference to who believes them. NPOV is a policy taken from Wikipedia; see their NPOV page for a more complete idea of what this means.
Note that it does not mean you can't correct factually incorrect beliefs people hold, such as "'Tohya' and 'Miho' are different people".
[edit section] Cite sources
When writing articles, please cite appropriate strips, forum threads, and websites. Wikitokyo makes this very easy: to link to a strip, type [[Strip:(Strip number)]], and to link to a Megatokyo Forums thread, type [[ForumThread:(Thread number)]]. You'll probably want to use a vertical bar to control the text of the link.
[edit section] Link early, link often
Part of the point of a wiki is that you can just click on a term to see what it means, so linking is important. You should link the first time in each section that you mention a character, place, object, concept, or anything else worth a page on the wiki. Remember: it never hurts to add a link, as long as the link makes sense.
[edit section] Separate canon from fanon
Fans have made a lot of assumptions about the characters. For example, many treated the idea that Hitoshi is Inspector Sonoda's brother as fact, even though for a long time (until strip 804) this was never stated outright in the comic. Fanon has a place here, but it should be marked as fanon. Phrases like "many fans believe" or "the strip has implied" should be used to mark fanon.
This applies equally to images; it's usually best to use a colored image only if colored by Fred himself.
Correctness on Wikitokyo is more important than completeness; it's far better to say "we don't know" than it is to say something that may not be true.
[edit section] Don't violate copyright
For both text and images, avoid violating copyright. The following sources are off-limits for verbatim copying at this time, except to the extent fair use laws allow:
- The Megatokyo comic itself.
- Forum posts, unless you wrote them.
- Fansites, unless released under a compatible Creative Commons license, or unless you wrote the content.
- Wikipedia and the Community Wiki, which are both under the GNU Free Documentation License rather than Creative Commons. However, you can link to articles on these sites with the special
[[Wikipedia:(Article name)]]and[[Comm:(Article name)]]syntaxes.
See Valid sources for some sources you can copy from.
In the United States, fair use allows limited use of excerpts. For Wikitokyo's purposes, heavily cropped pictures from the Megatokyo comic showing a single character, setting or object are usually acceptable, as are short clips of dialogue. Make sure these are marked with {{comic-fairuse}}.
