SporeWiki talk:Manual of Style
From SporeWiki, the knowledge base dedicated to Spore
Contents |
[edit] Bold vs. Caps
When proof-reading articles I find both bold and CAPS to express importance. I would like to know which way I should go when editing. Personally, I find bold much easier to read than caps, while I can not speak for the readers as a whole, I know that there are often complaints about people using all caps because of difficulty to read, but I have never heard of all bold being more difficult to read.
Kcirtap1990 15:08, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
- Sorry if this should go into the Help Desk. I just thought that this is very specific to the style of SporeWiki editing would most likely belong here. Kcirtap1990 15:42, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
- This would be the best place for that kind of comment, and yes, bold is much better then caps. Perhaps italics would be good, depending on the circumstance though. But I don't think caps would be good ever. -- Mason11987 (T - C - E) 15:54, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
[edit] Help
If someone can figure out what is putting this in the Stubs category, I would be eternally greatful. I have the stub templates, but they are all nowiki'ed....I'm very confused. Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:52, 16 February 2006 (PST)
[edit] Idea
A standard page could look something like this:
[edit] Article Title
blah blah blah introduction text
[edit] In Reality
blah blah blah is a system for quark-level ROM blah blah blah
[edit] In the Game
blah blah blah is a type of shielding from blah blah blah
[edit] See Also
- blah
- blah
- blah
- blah
- bananaphone
- Samog 14:14, 16 February 2006 (PST)
- I like the idea, but I think the "in reality" section should be at the top without it's header, so it ends up as the info before the TOC. But it should be tops a few sentences anyways, more should link to wikipedia or something like that. And plenty of stuff won't have that section, but I'll work in that as a way of explaining the See also section, and telling how short the "real" info should be. Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:42, 16 February 2006 (PST)
- Alright, what do you think? Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:18, 16 February 2006 (PST)
[edit] Finishing Up
I'm going to do the other templates like the Labeling template. If I have the time to get to it. If anyone wants to give it a go to help out. Feel free of course. :) Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 05:54, 1 March 2006 (PST)
[edit] Spelling And Style Section
I hope that's representative of the wiki. Thoughts? --Daxx (T C) 10:49, 5 April 2006 (PDT)
- Extremly well said. I have no problem following that, and feel that it wasn't necessarily to make the edits I made before, so unless it warrants it or is particularly useful or necessary to change, I will leave it as is. Unless anyone has anything to add, I think that's perfect. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:37, 5 April 2006 (PDT)
[edit] Issues
There are a few issues with this that does not conform to W3 standards, and Wiki article standards in general.
- There should only be one top-level header (<h1>), unless the page is a collection of unrelated topics (which it should never be in a Wiki system). The solution to this is to move all headers one level down (use == Header == instead of = Header =).
- Tables are being used in various places as a means of layout, rather than its real use: data. There are very rare cases when tables are the only logical way to display non-data, but I have yet to encounter them in this Wiki.
I can make the changes if you like, but I wouldn't make them without approval from the original authors of this article.
-- Andreas Blixt 08:00, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
- All sections being == Header == isn't a bad idea, I agree with this. With the second point you are most likely referring to the UFO article. The thing is, since this is different from wikipedia there isn't any problem whatsoever with having a lot of pictures on one page. I personally think it helps out a lot and makes the wiki a lot more interesting. People love pictures, and we're trying to create interest in spore as much as we are about informing people of it. If you can manage to have the UFO article as graphically nice as it is while still being organized, and without using tables, then please be my guest (seriously). I've attempted to make it look as well as possible for users, at the expense of making it hard for editors to change, which is a bad idea I agree, I just haven't seen any other options. Feel free to make a UFO/Revision article if you'd like to make a new version though. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:48, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
Update
- Other things that might be a good idea to include in an article such as this one is how articles should be named. Following the Wikipedia way of naming articles, nouns should be in singular unless the word in question is only ever found in plural. For example, the article Monoliths should be named Monolith, even if the word "monoliths" is the only word used when linking to the article. Linking doesn't become more complex: [[monolith]]s links the whole word "monoliths" to the article "Monolith".
-- Andreas Blixt 08:00, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
- Yup, that is a good idea, I have no problem with moving such articles and creating a section to describe naming conventions, good call. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:48, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
Update 2
- Further, header names and article titles should never have upper case letters in their names (Other than the first one, obviously) unless they are part of a name. For example, valid article/header names would be "Creature editor" and "Main features of Spore", while "Creature Editor" and "Main Features of Spore" would not (The latter naming convention is used in published articles and books, but makes the use of a Wiki-system harder: "You can edit creatures in the [[Creature Editor|creature editor]]." versus "You can edit creatures in the [[creature editor]]." [The C will always be converted to uppercase automatically]). See Wikipedia naming conventions.
-- Andreas Blixt 08:00, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
- Ah, interesting...I have thought about this before and you're probably right. It'll be a hell of an effort though, and something I think should at least wait until the E3 chaos dies down a little. It's not a HUGE issue, but worth addressing, I think it should be done just not really soon. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:48, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
Update 3...
- I made a quick example of what part of the "Manual of Style" article could look like to make it conform more to both W3 and Wiki standards: User:AndreasBlixt/Sandbox
-- Andreas Blixt 08:00, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
- I like it, make the changes here :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:48, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
- I agree that making all these changes do involve a huge amount of work, but I believe it's for the best for both readers and editors. I've started on SporeWiki:Cleanup as an effort to get editors interested in following one set of standards. And I really do believe that the Wikipedia naming conventions is the best choice, not only because there's been thousands of people making them, but also because they make sense (Well, in my opinion they do).
- -- Andreas Blixt 13:59, 13 May 2006 (PDT)
[edit] Capitalisation
Should the title now be: Manual of style? Drin
[edit] Wikified
What is the tag for articles that need to be wikified? Thanks. PixelKid 15:51, 9 June 2007 (PDT)
