This is an official Star Ocean Wiki guideline, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to this page should reflect consensus.
The Manual of Style is a style manual for Star Ocean Wiki used to establish consistency across the project, but is not applicable to every situation. Wikipedia's Manual of Style may be referenced for very general conventions, but with discretion, as some elements may not be consistent with this community's standards.
General style[]
- Plain English should be used when possible. Avoid unnecessarily complex or rhetorical wording, and write with concision and clarity. Write with the intent of explaining in a way that any reader may understand it.
- When possible, use American Standard English in writing and editing. This is the orthography most commonly used in localization of Japanese games. Here is an exhaustive list for American spellings.
- Refrain from using slang terms.
- Refrain from using the passive form. The active voice is preferred.
- "Sentence case" is preferred over "Title Case" in headings, unless describing things seen in title case.
- Use templates when appropiate.
- Please always refer to the generic player in the third person and, when possible, in plural form. That is, no "you" in articles. Ever.
- When writing article content, game, manga and album titles should always be written in italics and in their full form. Example: Star Ocean: Till the End of Time or Till the End of Time (and not SO3 or Star Ocean 3). Meanwhile, song names should always be written inside quotation marks, ie. "Mission to the Deep Space".
- On the subject of abbreviations:
- Do not use them in article content unless they are used in-universe or when referring to stats. Examples: UP3, STR.
- Do use game abbreviations (ie. "SOA", "SO1FDR") in infoboxes and list notes, which is done simply to save precious space. They are also used in redirect links like Aurora Blade. See below for more info on title tags.
- Wikilinking is limited to the first occurrence of the word or phrase. This is exempt in lists and infoboxes.
- All articles and files must be properly categorized for a better organization of the wiki.
Presentation[]
- Most articles should be named after their topic's most representative name.
- An article's title must follow the subject's most recent or recurring English official name. It must also be written in singular instead of plural, when possible. For example: "Claude C. Kenny" (instead of "Claude C. Kenni" or even "Crawd C. Kenny").
- Titles or rankings are not included in an article's title. For example: "Shimada" instead of "Deputy Director Shimada". This is the case unless no given name is known, e.g. "King of Astral".
- Use
{{DISPLAYTITLE}}to deal with titles that cannot be portrayed in a URL, like italics for game titles. - Definite and indefinite articles should not be present in titles, except if they are used as the official title. Example: "Eternal Sphere" (instead of, say, "The Eternal Sphere").
- Redirects should be created for stuff in lists (paired with
{{a}}) and for topics with multiple, frequently used, sourced names. This may include the prefixes, titles, or honorifics applied to character names. - Finally, there may be cases where articles may have equal or similar names, but distinct subjects, requiring a disambiguation process. This is when the so-called title "tags" come into play. Tags are parenthetical qualifiers with a single word or a very short phrase that may distinguish two articles, link-wise.
- Obviously, tags shouldn't show when using the link in an article.
- Because of practical issues, proper articles with tags referring to games are not written in full form. Example: "Calnus (Star Ocean 1)", or "Maze of Tribulations (Anamnesis)" (instead of "Calnus (Star Ocean/Star Ocean: First Departure)", or "Maze of Tribulations (Star Ocean: Anamnesis)").
- Redirect links—those that take you to elements in lists or to Anamnesis playable units—that are present in more than one game have an abbreviation instead: "Defense Breaker (SO4)" or "Defense Breaker (SO5)", or "Fidel (SOA)".
- If necessary, use the game tag followed by another tag, all under the same parentheses. Example: "Luther (Star Ocean 3 boss)" or "Luther (Anamnesis boss)".
- The following is a list of tags that may be used for articles:
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Article layout[]
- Each article has different needs. However, articles should be as consistent as possible with comparable articles.
- All articles must begin with an introduction, with exception of list articles. Make it short, but not too short, and avoid writing major spoilers into it.
- The first sentence should be about the article's subject, and the subject (title) has to be written in bold in the same sentence. Basically, it should give general characteristics about the subject. It also should include its Japanese name using
{{j|<kanji>|<romaji>|<lit>optional}}. An example would be: "The Ethereal Queen (イセリア クイーン, Iseria Kuīn?), also known as Iselia Queen or Iseria Queen, is a recurring superboss..." - An image should when possible (if not always) illustrate the introduction on the right side of the page, or if it features an infobox, inside said infobox.
- Articles should contain a proper navigation template, usually at the end, if available.
- Content must be organized in sections in order for information not to be placed randomly. Important sections to feature in an article include:
- Subject's identification (as part of the introduction);
- General and specific details (see sections below);
- An image gallery (which should include conceptual artwork and images not used to illustrate the sections above);
- Secondary details (info of lesser relevance, such as trivia or etymology);
- External links and reference sections.
- Two sections of note are "Story" (for lore-related articles) and "Appearances" (for gameplay articles). Also, the "Entries" section.
- Sufficiently-long story sectios should be divided into sub-sections: first, "Background" (when applicable) and personalized subtitles named after events in the story, not the game's title. The only exceptions are recurring characters like Ruddle or Puffy.
- Meanwhile, appearance sections are indeed divided into game titles in a series order, not chronologically. Only the subtitle can be used: Star Ocean (*) → The Second Story (*) → Blue Sphere → Till the End of Time → The Last Hope → Integrity and Faithlessness → Anamnesis → The Divine Force. ([*] Even if it is unique to their respective remakes.)
- The "Entries" section goes after the article's intro. It lists the topic's mention in the recurring Glossary in-game menu element, or their Profile info from Star Ocean: Anamnesis. It is done in a series order as well. See Welch Vineyard for an example.
Tables[]
- Tables should follow the consistent format and their coloring should be the one assigned to the game. Here is an example of a proper table:
{|class="half-width SO1 article-table"
|-class="a"
!Name
!Age
!Race
!Fav. Food
|-
!class="b" rowspan="2"|Roddick<br/>Farrence
|style="text-align:center"|19
|Fellpool
|[[Twice-cooked Pork]]
|-
|colspan="3"|''Star Ocean'' protagonist.
|-
|}
...which results in this:
| Name | Age | Race | Fav. Food |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roddick Farrence |
19 | Fellpool | Twice-cooked Pork |
| Star Ocean protagonist. | |||
- The possible parameters to change: its width ("
half-width", "medium-width", or "full-width") and its class (in this case, "SO1"). Although some custom cell styling (ie.style="text-align:center") is used in the example above, please do not use it unless absolutely necessary. - As regards classes, they dictate the color for infobox, navboxes, and (when we figure out how... again) tables. For reference, the classes are spelled with the initials of the game in question:
Release Name Color "a" Color "b" Star Ocean series --none, is the default #041E3A #232424 Star Ocean/First Departure SO1 #2D53A2 #BD753F The Second Story/Second Evolution SO2 #332261 #6591c9 Blue Sphere SOBS #04507f ?? Till the End of Time SO3 #00c3cf #51769d The Last Hope SO4 #102D85 #b44c7a Material Trader SOMT ?? ?? Integrity and Faithlessness SO5 #024180 #919060 Anamnesis SOA #dcc066 #81c1b2 The Divine Force SO6 #4a419b #9e743a
Section headings[]
- Specific article types should follow an established layout. Unless a given section is too long, avoid sub-sections.
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