Forum:Creating a Manual of Style

As some of you may know, I recently created a VERY basic, VERY rough draft for a manual of style for this wiki. However, since I made it using my own experiences and a few rules, it is far from complete. I included a few personal biases in there, and there is a ton of missing info that I need to add. The questions to be addressed on this forum are:

1) Do we even need a Manual of Style?

2) If we do, what should be on it?

3) Should it be tabbed into several subpages?

4) Who is going to make it if we do?

The actual rough draft is here. Check it out and give me some feedback.

Now concerning the stuff to be added and not to be added. Here is a table for ideas and stuff, add whatever you feel like.

04:32, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
It's good, but you need to add something about linking, which is generally link the first apperance of the word, and only more times if it looks right. (Like hasnt been linked on the page save the infobox) 11:36, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

Before anything else, take a look of what we already have. In a manual of style you usually put some guidelines about how use code or how write something. Here some guidelines that I'd like to be added:
 * A template with a lot of paramenters must be well formatted like this:

not like

or (really horrible and also incorrect)

These are some examples to let you get what I mean. The best starting point is to take a peep at other manual of style: Bleach wiki, RuneScape, Avatar.
 * Headings must be used the common formattig, with spaces before the "=" ( -> not correct;   --> correct)
 * Deprecated html tags like "font" or wiki code like "width=, align=..." must be replace by  parameters (unless there is a specific reason to not use it)

I see what you mean, I have rarely seen the templates being used to be so organized. I want to bring that out as a problem that this wiki is facing. Will it be fine if I will already start working on it, or is it necessary to wait for the acceptance of the manual of style. (I'm asking this, because the last time I started correcting a template code and started a mass edit, things were not as accepted as I thought they would be).

Please do, even if we don't put it in the manual of style, it's just a matter of order, beside that is the standard of formatting template. Be careful to not break the template though!

I know I havent been here for long. But yes I can see how the manual of style would have its uses, the main (obviously) would be keeping everything in order and organised. But in a way I dont think it is necessary and not sure how to describe it really but If you have every page in order just the one way it would look I guess boring. Also we all no how mass edits go down, apsalute chaos. 04:08, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Bump. We obviously hadn't talked much of this at all and we really ought to resolve if we need a Manual of Style or not and yad yad yad. Let's resolve this as this is pretty important. 01:34, May 23, 2012 (UTC)

I also feel this is pretty important, and I'm kind of shocked the wiki has existed this long without one. And I'm even more shocked that nobody has disscussed having grammar and content rules in a manual of style. There are so many grammatical rules that are inconsistent across this wiki. Amercian vs. British English, the tense of history sections, name spellings, etc. There are also ideas about the content of articles such as the idea of "How much is too much?" Are we an encyclopedia, and do we choose to pursue writing with an encyclopedic style? Or do we have our own style? We don't need to agrue about those things now, I just think we need to seriously consider having a place where we have defined rules to refer back to. I personally believe that as a site with as many non-native English speakers as this one, we should strive to make the whole site an easy and consistent read, both in grammar and content. JustSomeDude... 06:14, July 21, 2012 (UTC)

The one who critic the most never edit anything. You see something wrong, go fix it, instead of bitching about it. But yes, you're right, this forum do need to be bumped. 15:20, July 21, 2012 (UTC)

"personally believe that as a site with as many non-native English speakers as this one," You're implying we should be getting rid of Japanese names like Shichibukai or Yonkou. SeaTerror (talk) 16:51, July 21, 2012 (UTC)

That is nowhere even close to what I am implying, ST. I am implying that we should make the wiki easier to read for everyone by having a defined and consistent policy on grammar. For all the non-native english speakers, the easiest thing to read would be corrent english grammar. As a native english speaker, when I see something with incorrect grammar, I can figure out what's trying to be said fairly easily because I have grown up with the language. For our non-native english speakers, they can't always have the easiest time doing that. Different languages will have different parts that are harder to read. The best way to be fair to all of them is to have correct grammar consistent throughout the wiki. We already have a consistent policy on names, and it is exactly what it should be. I don't disagree with it at all. And that same name policy is something that should be absorbed into the Manual of Style if we do make it. JustSomeDude... 18:17, July 21, 2012 (UTC)

Bumping this! Okay, back to serious. We really should resolve this, whether we do need one, if we need it then what to include in it, and stuff like it. 16:30, July 25, 2012 (UTC)

Bump... >_< 19:24, July 26, 2012 (UTC)

If anything needs a thousand bumps, it's this forum. I don't think people realize the power of an MoS to stop arguments and edit wars. It can cover just about everything we do on the wikia. And we can have something to refer to when stopping edit wars and the like. Kind of like how the image guidelines have helped with similar stuff, but for images. This is huge, and we really need this, in my opinion. JustSomeDude... 19:57, July 27, 2012 (UTC)