CPWiki:Style guidelines
From CPWiki
For the sake of uniformity there are a series of guidelines to follow throughout the articles on the Crystal Plains Wiki.
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Content
The main purpose of the Crystal Plains Wiki is to provide an encyclopaedic resource for fictional people, places, and events created or used by the members of the Crystal Plains web community, similar to how Wikipedia chronicles the people, places, and events in the real world. Articles created can cover:
- Characters
- Places or settings
- Groups or organisations
- Powers or magic systems
- Notable events in a world's history
- Short pieces of fiction detailing any of the above
- See CPWiki:About for more information about allowed content.
Formatting
CPWiki is an encyclopaedic environment, and we should make sure it looks that way. Information should be well developed and organised, and presented in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to the reader, and conducive to conveying information.
New topics inside an article should be spaced out with new paragraphs, and new sections should be marked with the == ... == header tags. White space helps guide the reader's eye to the important things you're trying to say. Articles should be written in an informative, encyclopaedic style - though this convention is not required as deeply as a nonfiction database like Wikipedia. As long as information is being well-conveyed, any artistic liberties may be taken with the layout and presentation.
The name of the article should be displayed in bold in the first sentence of the article. This is a convention adopted from Wikipedia that will help communicate the subject of the article without the possible confines of the MediaWiki naming conventions that control article title/URL. As a rule, bold text should not appear anywhere else in the article.
Use of italic text should be confined to emphasis, reference to titles, and in some cases, list headings. One common rule of writing style, the italicised text for foreign words, is not observed on the wiki, unless context permits it.
Specific Formatting
Wikilinking
One of the great things about online databases is the level of interactivity your pages can have with one another. Wikilinking topics with the [[ ... ]] tags will take your readers to a related or relevant topic within the encyclopaedia.
This is very important on many levels. Linking your article to other existing articles will guide readers to other topics of discussion, and other articles linking to yours will help people find it. Multiple links per page allow for a branching tree of research from topic to topic.
On the other hand, linking to an article that has not yet been created will encourage the growth of the knowledge base, and spur the creative content that other users can contribute. A red link is like a red flag to some editors, who can't resist delving into uncharted territory and leaving their mark with a new article.
As a rule of thumb, whenever your article makes reference to another person, place, thing, event, or concept, surround it with the link brackets to spur on the creation of everyone's realm of knowledge. It is in this way that the wiki grows and expands.
Categorisation
To help users sort through the wiki and find relevant articles in their search, be sure to mark your articles with any appropriate category tags, added at the very end of the body of text. A category tag looks like [[Category:NAMEHERE]]. You're free to add as many categories to your page as you want. Try to make sure you use an existing category to keep from making duplicates.
Using some templates like Template:Stub and Template:Draft will automatically add your article to those categories.
Timelines
Please note that every universe listed will also have an accompanying timeline article, named as "[Name] universe/Timeline". Whenever you put a date in an article, try to link it back to the appropriate timeline.
Sources and citations
While CPWiki is meant to be a collection and organisation of fictional elements, it never hurts to provide source material for the things you are describing. Whenever possible, please include links to external pages where the information also exists on the Internet - these could include role-play transcripts or archives, short stories, character galleries, or anything else where the element in question has appeared in action. A good heirarchy to use is: character articles link to role-play or story articles where the character has appeared, and those articles contain a link to where that information can be found in full.
If a summary of a role-play or other source is beyond what you are prepared to do, there is a template called {{justalink}} that will help you. When editing the page, just type {{justalink}} at the top and place the link to the source material at the bottom. This will provide at least a pointer to locate the relevant information, and place the article in Stubs so someone else may find and add to it.
- If you need a place to store chat or forum role-play transcripts, please utilize Crystal Plains' RPTPS subsite.
