Highschool of the Dead Wiki:Manual of Style

This is the Highschool of the Dead Wiki Manual of Style. All policies and guidelines on this page must be followed with no exceptions unless otherwise stated below.

The purpose of this manual of style is to establish general policies for all aspects of the wiki and to keep all articles clean, organized, and uniform throughout the wiki. Please read this page carefully and follow the guidelines as closely as possible when editing any page on this wiki. If you would like to suggest changes or additions to these guidelines, please do so on the talk page.

Perspective
An in-universe perspective is used in all articles. Articles must be written as though the Highschool of the Dead universe was the real world. This includes all character, weapon, location, and any other pages with content from Highschool of the Dead. Direct or indirect references to episodes and chapters should not be used in articles except in the form of citations.

All article content should be written from a third person perspective. All sections other than "History" should be written in present tense (ex. They leave the school). "History" sections should be written in past tense.

Language
English is the language used on this wiki. No other languages may be used anywhere on the wiki. This includes articles, comments, talk pages, forum posts, and blogs. If English is not your primary language and you have trouble using it, try to make your contributions as clear as possible so that they can be corrected later without difficulty. The exception to the language policy is the use of Japanese words where they are necessary. All Japanese words must be in italics. All Japanese words should also be romanized. Japanese text should only be used in the introduction and infobox of each character article.

Comments and Talk Pages
Comments and talk pages are used for discussion on article maintenance and correctness only. All other discussions, questions, or speculations may be posted in the forums. Please remember to sign all posts using four tildes ( ~ ). This will generate your signature and a time stamp. Do not sign any edits made in article space.

As a means of helping readability, posts can be indented using colons. Additional colons will indent subsequent comments further. This helps identify which post is being responded to.

Quotes
Quotes added to character articles must be taken from the manga exactly as they appear, and they may come from official English translations or widely available scanlations. Quotes should only be added if they are used to help show a character’s personality.

Trivia
All trivia posted in “Trivia” sections or on the “Trivia” pages must be official, proven facts which are relevant to the article. Posting speculation in “Trivia” sections is not acceptable. Trivia should also not include general information that any casual fan of the series would know, anime and manga differences, or comparisons of characters to other manga and anime characters.

Source of Material
When contributing to any article on the wiki, manga is the primary source and takes priority over everything else. The anime is a secondary source, and anime differences should only be added to an article when clearly labeled. Information from official art books, novels, or other relevant works by Daisuke Sato or Shouji Sato is also accepted.

Many guns, vehicles, and other things in the Highschool of the Dead universe appear in the series very similar, if not identical, to objects in the real world. Despite certain items in the series being obviously modeled after their real world counterparts, information not given in official Highschool of the Dead sources may not be used on the wiki. This is considered speculation, and it will be removed. Listing real world information in the "Trivia" sections is also unacceptable as it is irrelevant to the series.

Units of Measurement
The units of measurement used in Japan and in Highschool of the Dead are SI units (e.g. centimeters, kilograms, liters), and SI is the only system of measurement used on Highschool of the Dead Wiki. While conversions to Imperial units (e.g. feet, pounds) may be helpful to some users, they should not be added to infoboxes or anywhere else in articles.

Grammar
Proper spelling and grammar in all articles is encouraged, but not mandatory. Excessive errors should be avoided if possible.If you have trouble with spelling, just click the "Source" button at the top of the edit window. The code view has a spell-check feature built in. Colloquial and idiomatic language should be avoided. Basically, if a word or phrase cannot be interpreted the same among most English-speaking people in the world, try to word it differently. Slang is never acceptable.

The only exceptions to grammar rules are quotes, as long as they stay relevant to the article.

Vandalism and Profanity
Vandalism includes removing material from articles without a legitimate reason or adding bad or malicious material to articles, and it will not be tolerated. Bad or malicious material includes but is not limited to profane or offensive language, nonsense/gibberish, and any other material added to deliberately devalue the page. Slang terms referring to the human anatomy (e.g. boobs, tits, ass, boner) are unacceptable in articles and will be treated as vandalism.

While profane or vulgar language should not be used in articles, it is not forbidden in the forum and other areas unless it is used excessively, used to aggressively target other users, or used after being asked to stop by other users, but it is strongly preferred that you avoid this language when it is unnecessary.

Speculation
Speculation does not belong in articles or anywhere else on the wiki other than the Watercooler section of the forum. Speculation posted in other discussion areas will be moved to the Watercooler. Speculation added to “Trivia” or other sections of an article will simply be deleted.

Image Policy
Only registered users have the ability to upload images. Any registered user may upload images and add them to articles as long as they follow the guidelines listed below.
 * If an image that was not taken directly from the anime or manga by the user is uploaded, that user must credit the source from which the image came in the "Summary" section on the upload page.
 * Images added to any article must be taken directly from the anime, manga, or other approved media such as official art books.
 * Images found through an image search or from another website should not be used on any article.
 * Fan art and edited images may not be uploaded unless they are used only on a user's personal page. The only acceptable editing is resizing or trimming an image or removing text from manga images.

Creating Pages
When a new page is created, the title should be the full and most formal name of the article's subject. Words should be capitalized as they would be in any typical title. Each article must follow our Layout Guide. The following is a list of the subjects articles may be created for.
 * Characters – Any character with an official name, a significant speaking role, or anyone else that is not a background character can have an individual page.
 * Universe – Any location, weapon, vehicle, event, or anything else which is either specific to HOTD or has a specific name given in the series can have an individual page.
 * Episodes – Each episode gets an individual page.
 * Chapters – Each volume gets an individual page, and the chapters each get an individual section on the page.

Articles
A category is a software feature of the wiki, a special page which is intended to group related pages and media. In practice, it implies that you'll associate a single subject with a given category. The category name would be enough to guess the subject, but some extra text can be useful to precisely define it. Categories function like a tree system, going from broader to more specific. Categories that fall within other categories may be referred to as “child” categories of the “parent”. The system works best when the most specific subcategories possible are used. Placing an article into both a child and the parent goes against the intent of the category system. E.g., if we look at Category:Weapons, within this category can be found the following child or subcategories:
 * Category:Guns
 * Category:Melee Weapons
 * Category:Weapon Images

Now if you want to categorize an article on a gun, you could place it into the parent Weapons category, but it would be much better to place it into the Guns subcategory. Even better still would be to place it within the applicable subcategory:


 * Category:Long-Range Guns
 * Category:Mid-Range Guns

Once an article is within one of these specific child categories, it is already within the parent Guns and Weapons categories. Categorizing the article under all three is completely redundant and unnecessary.

Media
Categorize images depending on the subject matter as well as the source (anime or manga).