Gallowpedia:Manual of Style
The Manual of Style (MOS) provides a series of guidelines for users when creating articles. It serves the purpose of maintaining consistency throughout the MediEvil Wiki in order to ensure that its articles are easy to read and edit for all. Any questions regarding this manual may be directed at the administrators or posed in the Wiki's Discord server.
If you are unfamiliar with Wiki-style editing, please review the MediaWiki Help pages] If you are inexperienced with Wiki formatting, you may play around with it in the Sandbox.
Article structure
Articles should generally be structured in this way, from top to bottom:
- Disambiguation
- Infobox
- A floating box with all the essential information about the article subject.
- See the Infobox templates category for a list of currently available infobox templates.
- Quote
- Use the {{Q}} template. This should be a quote from or about the subject of the article.
- Introduction
- A paragraph (or several) giving a quick overview of the subject matter.
- This section generally does not require citations; they can be provided in the appropriate sections of the article instead.
- The first sentence of the first paragraph should begin with the title of the article in bold letters.
- The bulk of the article, under headings
- This part will differ depending on what the article is about. However, articles covering similar subject matter should generally follow the same structure. For example, Sir Daniel Fortesque and Zarok are both characters, so their articles should generally use the same headings.
And, near the end of the article:
- Gallery
- A sampling of images about the subject matter.
- If the subject has their own image category, a link to it can be provided here using {{Main article}}.
- Galleries may be separated out into a subpage if they are too big (more than 10 images).
- Trivia
- This section is for information that generally does not fit into any other section of the article, but is still notable enough to be worth mentioning.
- It is ideal to not have a trivia section at all, instead finding a place for all information within other sections.
- See also
- Use this section to link to articles on the Wiki that are closely related to the subject matter of this article. For example, the Zombie article is closely related to the Headless Zombie article.
- The inclusion of this section is not always necessary; only use it if you cannot incorporate related articles into the main body of the article.
- Notes
- Use the {{Notelist}} template here. This will produce a list of all notes in the article. To make a note, use the {{Note}} template.
- Notes can be used to explain editorial decisions made in the article or to go into more detail about specific issues relating to the article where it would be inappropriate to do so within the main sections.
- References
- External links
- You may link to websites about the subject matter other than the MediEvil Wiki here.
- Navigation
- Place an appropriate navbox (or several) under this heading. For a list of all currently available navboxes, see the Navigational templates category.
Canon
- Main article: MediEvil Wiki:Canon
Capitalisation
In headings
Use sentence-style capitalization, not title-style capitalization: Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case. Thus "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations".
For example:
- See also, not See Also
- External links, not External Links
In the articles
When writing about a specific in-game item or level, it is ok to capitalise its name.
Categories
It is important that all articles are categorised to make searching for them easier. The top level category on the Wiki is the MediEvil Wiki category.
Articles can be added to the main category for their type, e.g. because Sir Daniel Fortesque is a character, his article can be added to the Characters category.
For game specific subcategories, the naming format should be "X in Y", where X is the main category and Y is the game, e.g. Levels in MediEvil.
Italic titles
The names of real world video games, books, soundtracks and similar should be written in italic to distinguish their meaning. For example:
- MediEvil
- Ghosthunter
- Les musiques de MediEvil
Multiple links
Please make attempts to avoid making multiple links to the same article. For example, if you already have a link to the page The Desecrated Church in an article, please don't add another link to the same page later in the article.
Perspective
In-universe
If something is in-universe, or is described as such, it belongs to the MediEvil universe exclusively and not to the real world. Characters, for example, are in-universe, but the voice actors who portray them are out-of-universe.
Articles about any in-universe topics, such as characters, terminology, or species, should always be written from an in-universe perspective. In-universe articles should never refer to MediEvil by name, or any other real life things such as publications, developers, or the like. The exception to this are the "Gameplay" and "Behind the scenes" sections.
Articles that are primarily about gameplay elements, such as inventory items or the levels, may be written from an out-of-universe perspective.
Tense
In-universe article sections, specifically the history section, should be written in the past tense.
This is because in-universe articles on the MediEvil Wiki are presented as historical recordings. Keeping articles written in past tense provides consistency and flavour.
Out-of-universe
Out-of-universe is the perspective opposite of in-universe, i.e. something written from a real life point of view. While articles about in-universe subjects should be written from an in-universe perspective, articles about the games, books, developers, or other real life MediEvil material should be written from an out-of-universe perspective.
Sources
Under most circumstances, a source for a given article will be officially released media. For general information that the average user could obtain on their own, such as a game ending, no source needs to be cited.
If a "Citation needed" template is in an article, it means that information still needs to be verified.
In other instances, some information may come from an official source, but isn't readily available to the general public. In such instances, a source of this kind should be cited or linked to. You can use the Bookref, Gameref, Pressref, Twitterref and Siteref templates to more easily cite such sources. Don't forget to include a Reflist under a References heading at the end of the article as well.
The MediEvil Wiki also allows original research on its articles. For more information, see MediEvil Wiki:Original research.
Spoilers
- Main article: MediEvil Wiki:Spoilers
Uploading files
- When uploading new files, please put them in their correct category. If a category does not yet exist, you may create it.
- You can explore our existing image categories here.
- Please try to give files sensible titles. Uploading a photo with the title 56744asfd7asf657af.png doesn't help anybody.
- Do not upload files and do nothing with them.
Usage of 'you'
It is preferred that editors do not use 'you' when referring to Dan or the player as it sounds less professional, as well as 'we'.
- For example, instead of "You eventually corner Palethorn in Cathedral Spires.", use "Dan" or "The player" instead so that it becomes either "The player eventually corners Palethorn in Cathedral Spires." or "Dan eventually corners Palethorn in Cathedral Spires."
- The only exceptions when using 'You' are Walkthrough sections on Level articles and Strategy sections on Boss articles, as they are written as guides that explain the subject matter to the reader.
Additionally, always avoid writing in the first-person when writing articles, especially in character or enemy pages.
- For example, "Zarok's initial attacks are him chasing Dan around, spitting acid at him and swiping at him. I used the Magic Sword to defeat him." Personal techniques for boss fighting and experiences in the game are best avoided at all times, as this is where it tends to be easiest to slip into first person.
Miscellaneous
- Use colons in titles where appropriate. For example:
- MediEvil: Resurrection, not MediEvil Resurrection
- MediEvil: The Game Prequel, not MediEvil: The Game Prequel
- Due to the British roots of MediEvil, British English should be used on the Wiki instead of American English. For example, please use Dragon Armour instead of Dragon Armor.
- When linking, keep unnecessary words such as 'the' and 'a' out of the link itself, unless they are a part of the name.
- If you see any variant of "It should be noted..." or "It is notable that..." or "Of note...", remove it. It is unnecessary.
- If you see any variant of "It is interesting that..." or "Interestingly, ...", remove it. Saying that something is interesting is technically an opinion.
See also
- Manual of Style on Wikipedia.