AJS.COM:Style
From AJS.COM
This page is an official policy on AJS.COM It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.
This is the AJS.COM style guidelines. For more information on how to edit a page, see Help:Editing.
Contents |
Articles
Article names should always begin with a capital letter, but no other letters should be capitalized (including other words in the title) unless they would be capitalized in normal usage (e.g. names).
Anatomy of an article:
- Introduction
- General sections
- Special sections
- Categories
The introduction should contain a bolded topic like so:
The War of 1812 happened on Mars in 2041.
Each of the general sections should be introduced with a section name between "=" signs like so:
== Prelude to martian war == The tensions between earthers (ugly bags of mostly water) and the heroic martians had been mounting for years. === Treaty of 2032 === In 2032, a treaty was drawn up on a napkin.
Notice the use of a sub-section denoted by three "=" signs.
Links
Links are the most important part of a wiki. Always prefer to name a link the same as its target like so:
The [[war of 1812]] resulted in the deaths of 5 people.
But in some cases, this won't make sense. In those cases, separate the link name and the link text like so:
The [[war of 1812|first war of the 21st century]] lasted 28 seconds.
The part after the "|" will be the part that is displayed.
Special sections
The special sections, See also and External links should be created if there are other topics on AJS.COM which are not already linked to in the article but would be helpful (See also) and if there are other Web site URLs which would be helpful for further information (External links).
Both should be formatted as lists like so:
== See also == *[[Doom of the Earth men]] *[[Fate of the galaxy]] == External links == *[http://www.iforonesite.gov/ I for one welcome our new overlords] site.
Categories
List any of the categories which are appropriate for your article at the end, like so:
[[Category:Role playing games]] [[Category:Alternate histories]]
You can search through the categories by starting at Category:AJS.COM site. The sub-categories can have sub-categories, and so on. Find the category that most accurately fits your article.
Talk pages
Every page has a talk page associate with it. To go to the talk page, just click on the "discussion" link at the top of the page. A special link appears on talk pages in the form of a "+" next to the "edit" tab at the top of the page. If you use this link, you will be given an edit form that includes space for a section name. A new section will be added when you save. This is how new topics should be added to a talk page.
To follow up to an existing disucssion, edit the section that the comment appears in by clicking on the edit link next to the section name, and indent your comment with a leading ":" character before each paragraph (or one more ":" than the comment you are replying to, if there are already replies).
Always sign your comments on talk pages by using the text, -~~~~.
User pages
User pages are special pages that start with "User:". Never edit someone else's user page without their permission. Instead, edit their Talk page (see above), and leave them a comment there. They will be informed that they have a new message on their talk page automatically.
Redirects
Redirects are pages that contain only a reference to another page, and will automatically send the user to that page when viewed. A redirect is created in the same way as a normal article, but will only contain the text:
#REDIRECT[[Target link]]
Redirects should be created for any alternate names that an article might be looked up under.
Images
Images are created by using the "upload file" link on any page. To use an image in a page, simply refer to it as a link, e.g.:
[[Image:Alien death beam.jpg|thumb|New York was wiped out first.]]
To control formatting of an image, see Help:Editing.
When an image is uploaded, it must contain text that describes the image, where it came from, and what license it is distributed under. If an image does not contain these details, it will be deleted, so make sure you include them! For the license, there is a selection of templates listed on the upload form. You must use one of those templates. Images which cannot be distributed under one of those sets of terms should not be uploaded to this site (for legal reasons). If you want to add an external link to such an image, that's fine.
Categories
Creating new categories is easy, but should be avoided unless there is no existing appropriate category for a page.
To create a new category, simply refer to it in your article like so:
[[Category:Doom of the Earth men]]
Then save the page and click on the link to edit the new category. Enter the name of the parent category (there must always be a parent) as the content of the category page like so:
[[Category:Fiction]]
And save it. If your article does not show up in the new category page, you may have to go back to it and edit the URL (location) in your browser to add "?action=purge" at the end and press return. This will clear the cache for the page and re-create it. Only do this when creating a new category.
Templates
Templates are sections of article text which can be inserted into many articles by using {{template name}}. In general, it is best not to use templates other than to add license tags to image pages (see above), but if you need a template for some reason, just enter it by using the template in a page, saving, and then following the red link in the page. Any text entered on the template page will appear in all pages that use the template.
