Highschool of the Dead Wiki talk:Manual of Style

Categorization guidelines?
I noticed that a lot of the pages on the wiki are over-categorized - they appear both in the parent categories and the subcategories, so basically a page will appear more than once in a category tree vs. just once in the most specific subcategory. This makes the categories more diffuse instead of focused. I have done a lot of work with Wikimedia Commons, so this view is influenced by how the category system is intended to work there: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Categories.

E.g., MP5SFK is categorized under both Weapons and Guns. Guns is already a subcategory of Weapons and with the MP5 in the Guns category, it is already included in the Weapons category. Putting it into the parent category is thus redundant. --BrokenSphere 22:21, May 27, 2011 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying and completely agree. I created most of the pages on here, but I generally only put one category on each page. Over time, other users expanded the trees. I haven't bothered trying to reorganize them since we don't have a guideline for categories. If you want, you can add a Category section to the MOS based on what you said above. You can also start fixing some of the category trees if you want. I don't want to ask you to do too much, but, as you may have noticed, we're a bit shorthanded here.Turambar  01:35, May 28, 2011 (UTC)

Use of color versions of images?
How about using color versions of images from the FCE when these become available? In the meantime the B&W originals can serve as placeholders. I'm not sure though if it's the wiki's policy allows for images to be orphaned, i.e. uploaded, but not used. The color versions could be uploaded over the previous uploads, although technically they are different versions. BrokenSphere (Talk) 20:43, June 1, 2011 (UTC)

Replacing the B&W with color images from the FCEs has always been my plan. The work on the FCEs is going a bit slowly right now, so it could be a while before they become available. I've been adding mostly anime images lately, but the FCE images can replace most of those later. As for unused images, I personally don't mind as we don't really have an excess of uploads and we don't have a policy yet. I've been planning on creating an image policy, but it's part of a long list of things to do on here, and I don't have time to do it right now. I'll be sure to come up with a policy before it becomes an issue.Turambar  01:08, June 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * Cool. Now that I think about it, retaining the regular B&W version can also be done to show both versions of the character where feasible. BrokenSphere  (Talk) 03:51, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

Article tense
There's no pronouncement on what tense to use. All of the articles currently use present tense.

How about this: present tense throughout for chapter and episode articles. For all other articles (characters, universe), past tense except in the lead section, e.g. "Takashi Komuro is...". This is especially applicable if someone has died or become undead, e.g. "Naomi was...". The thinking behind this is that the most recent manga chapters update what happened, so what happened previously is now in the past. BrokenSphere (Talk) 21:01, June 1, 2011 (UTC)

I don't always like the way we use present tense, but I think it would be wise to continue to do so since we've always done it. I'm not sure exactly why present tense was first used, but I do know a lot of other wikis use it in their articles. I understand your point, but I also think the Plot section or character and universe articles works the same as episode and chapter pages in that the story unfolds as it is told, so present tense is appropriate. I know using present tense on dead characters' pages may seem a bit awkward, but using past tense on living characters' pages seems even more awkward. Even without these reasons, there is the still fact that this proposed change would require many hours of work. There is a lot of other stuff that needs to be done that take priority over this. Turambar  01:30, June 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * It could be done going forward and applied retroactively. I started out with present tense as well on my home wiki (Battle Angel Alita) and got the idea to use past tense from a couple larger wikis like Wookiepedia and the One Piece and Naruto wikis. As I have gone back and made numerous changes to articles after I decided to change several standardizations for them you're right, you're right it is a time consuming process. However all wikis are a work in progress, so it could be work done in the meantime. BrokenSphere  (Talk) 03:51, June 2, 2011 (UTC)
 * I've always used the Bleach wiki as a guide for a lot of what I do here, and they use present tense for their Plot sections. I think it depends on how the articles of a wiki are structured. One Piece Wiki has all plot information on a History subpage, so past tense makes sense. Since we have a separate section for history, it may seem confusing to have both History and Plot in past tense, though having separate sections does take away some of that confusion. I think putting everything other than the lead paragraph and the Plot section in past tense is fine, but it would just seem strange to me to put Plot sections in past tense. We'll need to have a community vote for such a major change before anything is decided. I'll set up a vote in the forums within the next few days.Turambar  01:04, June 4, 2011 (UTC)

Added guidelines for posting and commenting
These are general guidelines I've seen on other wikis, which will be helpful here as well, although I didn't propose them first before adding them. ^__^); Feel free to make suggestions. BrokenSphere  (Talk) 22:28, June 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess we've never really felt the need to use this feature, or rather those of us who were here at the beginning had little or no Mediawiki experience and didn't know how to use it. It is useful on talk pages where there are multiple discussions taking place on the same page, but I don't think it's necessary most of the time in the forums. Forum pages are focused on a single topic, so the indentation would only be needed if a user wanted to specifically reply to another user. I'm fine with you adding that, and I'll try to use the indent more often.Turambar  01:04, June 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I found it a little harder visually to follow replies within thread topics if all the replies were all justified to the left. Indenting creates breaks that makes it easier for the eyes. BrokenSphere  (Talk) 05:30, June 4, 2011 (UTC)

Updates
I finished a preliminary revision and update to the content already here. Now we can begin adding new policies as needed. I'm not worried about the page being too long (I doubt most new users will bother to read the entire thing anyway), so we can add as much information as necessary.

I'll start out by suggesting a section on references. I only started adding reverences to the Takashi page and never got around to anything else. I think we should have a clear policy before we add them to the rest of the wiki. That will be a very long and strenuous job, and I want to make sure we know exactly what we're doing when we do it. Please give your feedback and any of your own suggestions below.Turambar  03:30, April 11, 2012 (UTC)

While I agree with your position on adding a section on references I personally really don't put references (Due to the fact that it seems a bit off to me not clue why). Aside from that I think there should be a rule under the image policy stating that you shouldn't delete a picture of an article and just upload the same picture and repost it, I saw this earlier on the "Drifters of the Dead" Page and thought why would you do that? If you don't fully get at what im saying look at the history between the two edits of yours and "Yourwelcome's" Hammiams 06:22, April 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't use references either, it's just something I started on the Takashi page a long time ago and wanted to eventually do throughout the wiki. There won't be a requirement for adding them because presumably other users will add references when they are not initially added. I think I'm going to make the system a lot simpler than how I started so maybe more users will use them. That image issue is something we've dealt with in the past. I'm planning on creating a policy page specifically for image uploads. The section on the MOS covers the basic requirements for images that are uploaded.


 * I'm going to add something here about using information from real-world sources, but I think we will need a policy page dedicated to defining sources. The problem here is that people add information to articles (typically guns) based on the real-world version of something rather than using only information from the series.Turambar  22:15, April 11, 2012 (UTC)

I'm done with the updates I was planning on doing here for now. Feel free to suggest any more changes or additions you may have. As I said, we will cover the image issue on the image policy page when we create it, which is the next step. I'm going to open a thread in the forums for discussion on image and media policies. Hopefully, we'll have some community input, but I expect it will just be the two of us again.Turambar  02:20, April 12, 2012 (UTC)