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)

Exactly what JSD said! And I ain't going to stop bumping this forum until this is resolved. 19:59, July 27, 2012 (UTC)

So, how are we gonna proceed? I propose we copy PX's draft to an actual page, say One Piece Encyclopedia:Manual of Style, then everybody makes the modifs he/she sees fit, using the talk page or this forum in case of disagreement.

Sound like a great idea on reviving the forum. I say let's go for it! 20:04, July 27, 2012 (UTC)

No. Talk page first before creating the article. SeaTerror (talk) 20:40, July 27, 2012 (UTC)

How are we going to discuss disagreements if we don't even know what they are? And we could always just leave it on my page unless it would be more convenient for everyone to move it. 21:47, July 27, 2012 (UTC)

I thought the point of this particular forum was just to decide if we wanted a MoS and what kinds of things should be in it, not specific rules. Once we decide if the whole community wants one, then I feel we should make a brand new forum category just for the MoS. I feel a talk page would just be too small to discuss all the things a MoS would encompass. Plus, the several rounds of voting that would take place on many issues would add even more space. A talk page would get huge fast. Also, the issues for an MoS don't really fit the current categories (Are they site problems? Wikia Appearance?). And a MoS is a huge thing to add to the wiki, doesn't it deserve its own forum section?

And why not just make a draft page in the draft pages section of the forum? JustSomeDude... 23:09, July 27, 2012 (UTC)

That is exactly why this forum was made. It was meant for discussion what we wanted in. SeaTerror (talk) 00:32, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

So tell me exactly why no one bothered with this forum but at the very beginning and only me and JSD cared about this. 00:33, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

Since when did April 22nd become May 23rd? SeaTerror (talk) 00:37, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

You guys left it unresolved pretty quickly. I attempted to bump this forum a few times. JSD also tried to bumped this as well. =/ 00:43, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

ST: I mean that this forum seems to have been used for more general things about what we want in the MoS. For example, we decide that we want to talk about grammar in the MoS in this forum. We don't decide which grammar rules we wish to have in the MoS in this forum, that debate is for later. We only cover general topics to be covered in the MoS in this forum. At least that's my opinion of the best way to go about adding such a huge thing to the wiki. If we try to decide too much at once, things could get ugly very quickly. Long arguments about tiny specific details would distract us from the main goal, in escense, turning this simple forum into the US Congress. (ZING!)

PX: I've read your MoS in more detail now, I do have many things I would like to change/add. I just would feel weird editing it on your page instead of a public area, that's why I think it should be moved. And back to what you said at the beginning, I do agree that it should be tabbed into several subpages. JustSomeDude... 01:17, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

That's totally fine, but I think we should figure out the page name and tab names before we make them. As for the length of this forum, we could always make a second forum if we need to. If everyone creates a new heading for a new issue, it will be easy to navigate the page through the navbox near the top of the page. 01:46, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

We should not make the article until we debate it. This forum was supposed to be for everything related to it. SeaTerror (talk) 08:06, July 28, 2012 (UTC)

Well there is most likely going to be a lot of polls, if we only use this forum it'll be cluttered very fast. Anyway I'll propose answers to the basic questions with which PX started the forum:

1) Do we even need a Manual of Style?
 * →The answer seems to be "yes", nobody opposed it I believe. If someone does, I guess we'll have to make a poll.

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


 * → This has to be decided on a case-by-case basis and could be the object of a forum (or even several) by itself.

3) Should it be tabbed into several subpages?


 * → We should postpone this decision until we have a better idea of the MoS' length. This is secondary.

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


 * → This is what we should decide now. I think a solution could be "anybody can propose an addition or a change; if someone disagrees and no compromise can be reached, a poll should be made."

If we don't make a decision about the 4th point we'll never make any progress.

I agree that anyone should be able to propose changes/additions. PX seems to have written the bulk of the thing though. I think that unless anyone has objections, we should work off of what PX already has. I intend to make a draft based off of PX's draft later this week. I just want to make some minor changes and significantly expand the writing style/grammar section.

What I would like to know is whereI should put my draft, and where other people put theirs, etc. I was just gonna do it in my sandbox. But if a bunch of people end up making drafts, where will they be compiled where it will be easy to compare? And where will voting on sections be done? And if there end up being a bunch of different drafts, at what point do we say to the community "Ok, here's the one and only Manual Of Style, go ahead and vote on changes."? JustSomeDude... 03:40, July 30, 2012 (UTC)

First of all, sign your posts. Second of all, we don't need to make a ton of drafts. Just take mine, move it to a page where everyone is comfortable, and everyone works on that one from there. Don't try to make it any more confusing than it needs to be. Another idea is to propose changes to this forum and have one or two people that add them for the sake of consistency. But it would be a lot easier not to do that.

@sff Concerning the tabbing of the MoS, I don't believe it is as much of a length issue as one of organization. I believe that it would be much easier to browse and edit if there were several tabs. 03:30, July 30, 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I knew I missed my sig right away, and I thought I went back in and edited it... Apparently that didn't go through. Sorry. JustSomeDude...  03:40, July 30, 2012 (UTC)

No. Do not move it to a page. Discuss it on the forum before making a new article. SeaTerror (talk) 03:45, July 30, 2012 (UTC)


 * Nah, we can make a draft of it. Beside, how the heck we'll know the results of this without something to work on? We don't have to make a page, just a draft. 17:31, July 30, 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I've been starting to work on my draft a bit, and while I'm not ready to say that everyone can go take a look at it and eviscerate it yet, some people have given me feedback and have raised some questions that I alone cannot answer. So I've come back to the forum to get some help/suggestions.
 * How does the MoS affect what we already have? Things like the Image Guidelines, the Layouts Category, the help section, etc... Some of these things are already addressed in PX's original draft, and they are also addressed elsewhere on the Wikia. Personally, I think many of these things should be absorbed into the MoS (or a much larger help entity that encompasses the MoS and other things like it). I think it makes much more sense to put these things into one, easy to use and navigate section of the wiki. Moving and combining the older pages is something we should strongly consider. The idea of having whatever this is as a tabbed page has also grown on me substantially. As I find more things I think would be appropriate to add to it, it has become clear that it will soon become very long, and that many of the things won't relate closely to each other.
 * I also want to add the Forum Rules and Blog Rules. We already have Chat Rules and ban/vandalism policies, and I think it would be appropriate to have Forum and Blog rules in the same place. There's a few problems there:
 * 1) The Forum Rules are terribly out of date, and currently they are a Forum Page. I would like to make some substantial edits to it, but not without talking about them first. Since it's a forum page, there's no talk page though.
 * 2) Blog Rules don't exist yet.Forum:Blog Rules is the place to go to get that conversation really going again.

Overall, I think what I've started doing is creating something that is actually larger than the Manual of Style, it's become more like a "Help Section Overhaul." I personally think this is something the wiki needs to have almost more than a manual of style. A manual of style is about helping people write content, and even in PX's original draft, there are attempts to get rules into writing for the first time. I think we really need more of that more than anything. And I don't want to be crazy and autocratic about making this stuff, I just think it's something we really need, and I'm dedicated to making sure it happens. 19:40, August 9, 2012 (UTC)

Non sequitur: Redirects and linking them instead of the original article

 * "Things like  and   are pointless, only   and   should be used."

Why is that "pointless"? Everytime you link within an article to a redirect, you'll see a "redirected from ..." atop each article once you follow that link - which should be avoided.

Why don't you then not start to forbid  and create redirects for all possible declensions instead?

IMHO those two paragraphs should be replaced by something like: "Do not edit unbroken links." as forcing it either way is pointless. -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 03:46, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

Nope. It doesn't matter what is used but somebody shouldn't make it Monkey D. Luffy|Luffy if its just Luffy. This is why Meganoide got banned for 2 months. SeaTerror (talk) 04:18, August 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * So Meganoide got banned for nothing, and you got away with insulting people. Interesting.
 * If it doesn't matter, no one should be forced to link to a redirect page instead of the original article. "Nope." ain't no reason. -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 04:43, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

You have no reason at all for not wanting to use redirects. There is nothing wrong with being redirected. The redirects exist for a reason. If you want to truly be asinine about it then you should just use Monkey D. Luffy as the link instead of Monkey D. Luffy|Luffy. He got banned for edit warring. In fact, he never even responded on his forum once to even try to defend himself. All Meganoide did were those useless and pointless redirect edits. SeaTerror (talk) 06:05, August 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * There are reasons for not using links on redirects:
 * If an article needs to be moved - because articles need to be renamed for example - Double redirects or Broken redirects may occur and need to be fixed.
 * Special:WhatLinksHere is messed.
 * Redirected from ... atop of each original article which takes unnecessary space and may cause irritation to readers.
 * If the name is "Luffy" and not "Monkey D. Luffy", why not having the article then on Luffy while redirecting from Monkey D. Luffy?
 * Redirects can be diverted. Vandalising the wiki is then much easier by editing one redirect. A list of targets is easily provided by Special:Allpages.
 * By their definition from the MediaWiki creators, Redirects are meant be used for alternate spellings.
 * But well, of course the administrators of two other wikias are completely unreasonable or as you said "asisine" because they aren't agreeing with you. -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 08:37, August 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW, you're missing the point, SeaTerror. As usual. "Do not edit unbroken links." - it should even be increased by "Do not edit unbroken source code." -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 09:26, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

That's an amazing story you got there, bro. I enjoyed it a lot. SeaTerror (talk) 09:37, August 1, 2012 (UTC)


 * And you're still missing the point. -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 09:44, August 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * In future I suggest some unicorns and some dragons, always good in a story. 09:50, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

Nah. I have a needle. I can't miss the point. SeaTerror (talk) 09:51, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

Seems that we're gonna make awesome progress like this. Thanks ST and SHB for your participation.

You're welcome. :) SeaTerror (talk) 11:05, August 1, 2012 (UTC)

We should get this sorted out, this is exactly what Mega got banned over. Because we has no rules about this, I say we should sort this out, decide when to use redirects and when to use direct links. 14:28, August 2, 2012 (UTC)

Since I made a lot of edits with this kind of stuff, I feel like I should share my personal opinion. Concerning redirects, I personally prefer, the "less complicated the better" approach, where we use  over. It is simpler, and I think that as long as we have the redirects, then we should make use of them. However, I prefer to use  over   because as soon as the noun is made possessive, the 's is part of the word, like a conjunction (and it looks sloppy otherwise). 14:42, August 2, 2012 (UTC)


 * Then why not create a redirect on Ace's to Portgas D. Ace and use  Ace's  in the article? I don't think we should enforce that as anyone could place the link (s)he wants. With linking the original article through  Ace  you still avoid the "redirected from" atop of the article... -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 14:59, August 2, 2012 (UTC)

PX: While I personally don't really care about your first point, I disagree with you about your second point. I don't think "Ace's boat" looks sloppy, and in source mode it's far better. This format can moreover be useful to separate two links, e.g. Ace's bounty rather than Ace's bounty (which one must hover to discover it's actually two links).

I'd like to talk about what defchris said awhile ago about not "editing unbroken source code" such as in the case he linked to. I support this rule entirely. But we should be strict in how we enforce the rule. I think that if someone is editing unbroken source code, they should be immediately warned on their talk page and/or in chat about it. However, we should not undo the edits that the person made if they don't change/damage how the article reads/the article's layout. I feel like if nothing changes in the article's readability, then edit warring over the source code is a severe waste of everyone's time. If one person changes things, they're pretty much only wasting their time and a much smaller fraction of ours than an edit war. As long as the person is told to (and actually does) stop, it's not a big deal. Edit wars are much, much worse. I think we should consider undoing edits of unbroken source code to be an equally bad (if not worse) offense as editing the unbroken code in the first place. Edit wars suck, let's not have them. Especially over something that doesn't matter too much.

Regarding redirects and links with apostrophes, I think we do need to decide on a standard. And whatever that standard is, we should make sure it is used on all new articles that are created. (and new content on old articles too.) But we shouldn't get too bent out of shape about changing it in older articles. It shouldn't be a priority, because the links aren't really wrong. Nobody should go around changing every redirect ever and nothing else. But say you're in source mode on a chapter article that you're changing something else in, and you see something that's not the current standard. If you see that, then go ahead and edit it. It should be something that can be piggybacked with other edits, but not done alone. I'm sure if someone really wants to go around and edit that kind of stuff, they can find at least 1 other thing wrong with the article and make themselves actually useful.

As far as what we make the standard, I don't really have an opinion. The stuff's too far over my head most of the time anyways. I'll do whatever everyone else decides. 16:14, August 2, 2012 (UTC)

Direct links should always be used in the episode character appearance and chapter sections on articles. is wrong to use. makes much more sense and is actually accurate. There's no reason at all to add coding with the Ace|Ace's. We should undo the person with the links unless it was an edit made years ago. It's like how people who switch British English spelling to American English spelling or vice versa should be reverted right away. That kind of stuff should be left alone. SeaTerror (talk) 16:52, August 2, 2012 (UTC)

IMHO, links to the original article should be used everywhere, as you could hide the full name with a piped link. But if one used the link over a redirect, it shouldn't be replaced unless there are other non minor changes to the page, following the paradigma of using the minimal amount of edits. -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 17:50, August 2, 2012 (UTC)

Defchris and JustSomeDude made good points, about redirects first I suggest that if we ever decide to make some rules move the discussion in a different forum (since I fear it will just go on forever) and whatever rules we decide, we should make it "negative" ("do not do this" instead of "do this and that and also that"). That said, I'll repost my opinion on the matter:
 * Fixing not canon name redirects is a good thing, for example something like "Jimbe → Jinbe".
 * Fixing short-name or nickname redirects is irrelevant, I don't see it as a task to do, but I don't see a reason to undo it. Some example "Luffy → Monkey D. Luffy" or "Whitebeard → Edward Newgate", just a note some people may prefer to see the actual name in the tooltip instead of a nickname (Whitebeard vs Whitebeard) (and technically the short-name case is a little different from the nickname case, because the latter is more reasonable in my opinion).
 * Fixing redirect to merged pages as well different topic pages is a bad thing, for example "Gear Second → Gomu Gomu no Mi/Gear Second Techniques" or "Shandian Village → Skypiea#Shandian Village". This is because in these cases the redirect works as an anchor for a concept or a topic different from the page which is redirecting to, this is useful because if in future we decide to make the Gear Second tab a page on its own, we don't have to fix the links.
 * About "there is a reason why redirects exist", Sea it's not really for the reason you think of... the main reason the redirects are used is to work as anchor link for merged articles or synonymous, not to correct editors' laziness. And as Defchris said, by purposely using redirects over correct links you cannot check where are the links pointing to an article with WhatLinksHere and you increase the chances of creating broken or double redirects. There is also a reason why the pipe link exists too.