The following are simple templates intended to make it easier for new users of the Wiki to add material in a format that is consistent with our established usage. Each contains a skeleton page of its type, with some explanatory notes and useful advice. Simply edit the template page (by clicking on the "Edit Page" button at its top or bottom) and copy its contents to the page you are creating, then add real content to replace the sample material.
Templates
The basic page types found on the Wiki are:
- Category Listing Template — Not likely to be needed often, but here just in case.
- Character Sheet Template — For tropes that pertain specifically to the characters in a work.
- Works Template— Used for descriptions of television series, specials, movies, books .. all those things we call 'works' around here.
- Playing With Wiki Template— For making Playing With pages.
- Template Page For New Fandom Recommendations
- Trope Entry Template — For the vast majority of pages; anything other than Category Listings or Works.
- "So You Want To..." See a Template — Articles organized around the idea of creating a work in a particular genre.
Note: If you are creating more than one page at a time, you may want to save copies of the templates on your local machine and work from them. This is because (as of this writing) the edit process "locks" a page for twenty minutes, but if you open up an edit screen for a separate page without closing the first, the lock transfers to the second and others can overwrite your first edits.
While some simple formatting advice can be found in each template, complete formatting guidelines and codes can be found on the pages Tips for Editing and Text-Formatting Rules.
Style Guidelines
We have a few loose guidelines as to layout style that apply to all of the following templates. (These are, however, only a loose consensus, and subject to argument and revision.) Many of these help standardize the look of a page, and usually contribute to readability both in and out of the page editor. It's possible to code things in the editor to be impossibly opaque there while still clean and easily read when displayed, but that might be considered rather antisocial. Maximizing the readability of the page source is good practice that makes it easier for others to build on your work.
To this end, please try to be familiar with these basic formatting guidelines:
- There are two ways to form Wiki Words:
- Remove all the spaces between the words of a phrase: OrWasItADream will become Or Was It a Dream?. Most pages can be created/referenced with this kind of WikiWord.
- Single words can be Wikified by surrounding them with double curly brackets: For instance, {{Masquerade}} becomes Masquerade when the Wiki magic works its way upon it.
- You'll also want to do this if you want to add letters to the beginning or end of a word; for instance, {{Reluctant Gift}}s becomes Reluctant Gifts.
- Don't combine the two! It'll be a working link, but it'll look wrong: OrWasItADream.
- Linking to trope/program names with embedded symbols ("M*A*S*H", "Ranma ½") is done by typing the link out as if the non-alphanumeric characters don't exist—the symbols are imputed automatically in the link depending on the title of the page it links to. For example, Series/{{MASH}} becomes M*A*S*H and Manga/RanmaOneHalf becomes Ranma ½. These edited wikiwords can be changed across the site using the "WikiWord" link at the top of a page.
- It's a good idea to turn every program/series name into a WikiWord, even if there's no entry for it yet. Someday someone may write one, and you want to be ready for it.
- Similarly, make the names of books, comics, films, video games, and anything else that someone might want to link to someday into a WikiWord.
- Don't italicize the names of tropes.
- Do italicize the names of series, films, books, etc.
- Put the names of episodes, short stories, songs, and non-epic poetry in "double quotes".
- Webcomics and other web content can be directly linked if you want, but it's not mandatory. This is done using a variation of the "arbitrary text" coding mentioned above: [[(URL here) Link text here]]
- Whenever using special coding to form a link, always put the italics markup outside the coding, or it will not parse properly: ''[[Manga/RanmaOneHalf Ranma 1/2]]'' will result in Ranma 1/2, but [[Manga/RanmaOneHalf ''Ranma 1/2'']] will become ''Ranma 1/2''.
- Don't use ALL CAPS or *asterisks* for emphasis. Use italics instead. There is a special coding for what we call asscaps (all caps) [[AC:(your text)]]. It uses a smaller, bold font, allowing you to shout in an indoor voice.
- Be sparing in the use of horizontal rule lines — most of the time they're needed only to separate the description from the examples and the examples from the navigation bar.
- It's not necessary to be brief, but try not to ramble too much.
- Please keep "in-line" examples of a trope to a minimum — save them for the "Examples" section at the end of the page. We have started segregating examples by Media Categories because Anime examples, for instance, only work for Anime folks and Speculative Fiction Literature examples only work for people who read that sort of thing. There is a big overlap in those two groups, of course, but some fans of Live-Action TV, to pick a medium at random, don't do either, so the examples are just wasted space to them.
- Please try to avoid common and simple spelling errors, like "teh" for "the", "thier" for "their" and so on. Also, although they may not be all that common in usual speech, on this site "existence" and "villain" come up a lot, so please don't spell them "existance" and "vilain". Especially when naming a trope. While the Wiki Magic will take care of these sooner or later, you'll earn more props and credibility among the other contributors if your work looks polished to start with.
- Spellchecks are nice (Firefox and Chrome have them built-in!), but don't blindly follow what they say, or you might get "Frond" where you correctly wrote "Frodo", or "rouge" where you misspelled "rogue".
- Similarly, try to adhere to basic syntax and grammar rules. Incomprehensible, rambling or incoherent text will get removed or replaced very quickly on the Wiki.
- When using Reporting Names, put them in "speech marks". This isn't technically correct, but we don't want loads of capitals.
- When discussing named vehicles, don't use "the". It's not "the Enterprise", it's just "Enterprise".
- That said, there's nothing wrong with being funny. In fact, it's encouraged.
