Sl1pg8r Wiki:Manual of Style

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This is the Manual of Style for the Sl1pg8r Wiki. This page will give an idea of how to write articles so they are consistent with many of the similar articles. Note that this page is still a work in progress, but what it says thus far should be followed.

General article guide

  • Article titles should not capitalize all words, e.g. "List of montages" rather than "List of Montages".
  • Video game titles should be written in italics, e.g. Minecraft.
  • The definite (the) and indefinite articles (a/an) should be avoided in article titles, except if they are used as the official title. Also see; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name).
  • Wikilinking a word or phrase is limited to the first occurrence of that word or phrase on the page.

What should an article have?

What is needed can vary wildly depending on the topic of the page. Some things which would be found of almost all pages of a single topic may be completely absent from pages of a different topic.

For let's play episodes

The title of an LP episode article should be in the form "(Game/Series) S_E_", e.g. "Surviving Sliptopia S1E1".

The first thing on any LP episode article should be Template:Episode. The article text should start with a straightforward statement of the episode's title and its position in its series, followed by a link to the episode on YouTube using Template:YT. The first section on the page after the introduction should be the "Synopsis".

At the bottom of the page, with no section headers, place:

  1. Template:EpisodeNav
  2. The appropriate category, e.g. [[Category:Surviving Sliptopia episodes]]

A note on season numbers

Season numbers can be excluded if there is only one season of a series, unless there is a reasonable expectation that there will be additional seasons later, or if it is a variant of a game that already has multiple seasons of vanilla gameplay. For example, there is currently only one season of modded ARK, but it meets both criteria for having a season prefix despite this, because there may well be additional seasons later, and there are three seasons of vanilla ARK.

Modded Minecraft is a special case, as the modpack names serve as the season identifiers, and season numbers would only come into play if there were multiple seasons on the same modpack.

For let's play series

To be expanded

For people

To be expanded

For lists

To be expanded

When writing an article

Articles on the Sl1pg8r Wiki should be informative in their detail, but can have a reasonably casual tone, provided it does not descend into outright silliness.

Active voice

Many wikis prefer the active voice to the passive voice when describing events, as the active voice is much stronger. Here is an example of a sentence in the passive voice:

  • Sl1pg8r is blown up by several creepers.

Now, here is an example of that same sentence, except written in the active voice

  • Several creepers blow Sl1pg8r up.

In the active voice, the person performing the action is the subject of the sentence, instead of the person or thing the action is performed on.

However, as this wiki is about Sl1pg8r, events that take place in gameplay make the most sense if described from his point of view, meaning that the passive voice will often be preferred.

Verb tense

To determine which tense to use in articles, it is logical to describe events happening in the present tense. In other words, use present tense to describe events as they happen, e.g. "Sl1pg8r is blown up by a creeper", not "Sl1pg8r was blown up by a creeper".

A related issue is a tendency of some edits to refer to events as happening "recently", i.e. being in an LP episode that was published shortly before the time the edit was made. This is completely against the above guideline about present tense, and furthermore, common sense would indicate that writing in a manner that is capable of becoming outdated is simply not a good idea.

Real-world events, however, are always past tense, e.g. "Sl1pg8r was born on his bornday, in the year that he was born".

Spelling

Although Sl1pg8r is American, his audience is international. Therefore, this wiki does not strongly prefer US English over Commonwealth English.

In particular, please do not make edits solely to change from one version of English to the other. If you absolutely feel you can't bear to see a Commonwealth spelling on an article, change it only if you're making a more useful edit to the article anyway.

Point of view

On most wikis, there is a policy to give a "Neutral Point of View" (NPOV). Things should be described objectively, and must not represent any specific personal biases.

Categorizing

Each article must be categorized, and done so according to which category applies to it. A list of categories can be found here.

Category redundancy should be avoided. For example, a page that is categorized under Category:Hermitcraft episodes should not also be in Category:Minecraft episodes or Category:Episodes.

When creating tables and infoboxes

For table formatting and markup, see Help:Tables

When making a template

Be sure to add an explanation of what purpose it serves, so that the other users of the wiki do not have to guess. If the wiki's administrators see no purpose or even possible future potential use for a template, it is likely to be deleted. The explanation can be written as part of the template page, between <noinclude> and </noinclude> tags; see MediaWiki help on transclusion or look at existing templates if you don't understand this.

Working with Media Files

To be expanded