Wiki 24 talk:Manual of Style

So episode guides - past or present tense? And character pages - past tense? -Kapoli 22:14, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't understand your questions. --Proudhug 22:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, it seemed like all character pages are past tense if for sure the character is not going to continue to appear in the show. Episode pages seem to be all present tense and I think that works better.  If all character pages should be past tense I wouldn't mind helping with the major characters. -WarthogDemon 22:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, nevermind. I'm having some problems with my browser today, and much of the content on particular pages doesn't seem to be displaying right away.  When I came back to look at this page again, the entire page loaded and I saw the section about tense.  Sorry! -Kapoli 22:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I am concerned with how we abandoned some of the old links on the style page for this page. The pages were fairly useful and contained the templates for many of the pages we do, as well as had talk pages for how to do those certain pages. Why don't we add a link to this page, and resurrect the old style page, or something to keep the old page with its different links. - Xtreme680 02:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the templates still exist, but the links to them need to be on a different page. I couldn't really find a spot in the Manual of Style for a list of templates without making it look ugly.  Something like "Wiki 24:Page Templates" would be more appropriate.  --Proudhug 03:59, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Xtreme680 about the necessity of the various page template links. Maybe even just adding one link at the bottom of the page that would take us to another page with all the template links.  --Kapoli 04:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I whipped up a quick list at Wiki 24:Page templates for now. --Proudhug 04:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Style Discussion
Great job, Proudhug! This will be a valuable resource for everyone who wants to edit. I did a little minor tweaking (I did include the templates, so someone can take 'em back out or whatever if they think it looks bad) and now I have a few comments and a question.


 * Question on Mila and Nikola: The show only gives them first names, but the House Subcommittee book gives them the last name Luminovic. Is it OK to change their page titles to Mila Luminovic and Nikola Luminovic, or is that not kosher?


 * I think 24: The Game and 24 Stories should stay titled that way for clarity. Otherwise we have a page titled "The Game," which implies that there's only one when there are actually a couple (and probably more coming). And plain "Stories" is a bit ambiguous when we also have pages titled Comics, Novels, Characters, etc. I'll eventually write articles for two BBC specials titled "24 Heaven" and "24: The Postmortem," and I'd like to leave the prefix on those for the same reason.


 * I disagree that disambiguation pages are only needed in the case of identical names. There are five Teds, three of them in season 1. There's no need to make people read five articles to figure out which one they want. Also, I don't understand the example. If you have three Bobs with full names, and a fourth with only the first name, isn't that exactly the same as if you had four Bobs with last names? They're still distinguished from each other. Why don't we just say that if there are, say, three guys with the same first name, they can have a disambig page?


 * Do we want the characters to be marked (Day 1) instead of (Season 1)? Because they say Season right now. Which is out-of-universe and thus matches the other examples better, but whatever, as long as they all match each other.


 * We didn't really resolve the real-world issue. I still think the most useful guideline for what real-life information to include is relevance. The date of Los Angeles' incorporation is irrelevant to understanding anything on the show; however, it may be important to explain who all those guys giving Palmer the thumbs-up or thumbs-down are, or where San Gabriel Island is, or whether First Lady is an office or just a title.

That's it for now. I didn't want to make any major changes without discussing it first. --StBacchus 15:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I put the template stuff on the Wiki 24:Page templates page. It has the potential to expand quite a bit and probably shouldn't clutter up the Manual of Style. Responses:


 * Yes, Mila and Nikola should be moved. The pages "Mila" and "Nikola" will be redirects anyway, so they won't be difficult to find for people without the book.


 * As for removing "24" from titles, we need to be consistent here. If we have some things with the prefix and some without, people will have to memorize which do and which don't, and we certainly don't want that.  "The Game" should have a note at the top saying "For other games based on 24, see Games." or something.  The title of the game actually is "The Game", as stupid as that may be.  The same could be done for "Stories", but I doubt that would be necessary.  "24 Heaven" and "24: The Postmortem" may be exceptions, I'm not sure.  I can expand all the disambiguation stuff when I get a chance.


 * As for Ted, a disambiguation page isn't necessary. If someone queries "Ted" in the search box and there's no article titled simply "Ted", the engine provides a list of all articles that contain the word.  A disambiguation page is only necessary of we have a character just named Ted, because then those other pages wouldn't come up if "Ted" already exists as an article.  This is how Wikipedia and pretty much every other MediaWiki wiki does it.  Besides, we have many other ways of finding character pages, including episode cast lists and straight-out character lists, we don't need to fill up Wiki 24 with a billion disambiguation pages for characters that merely have the same first name.


 * "Day 1" is more consistent with the other media than "Season 1", since it's what we've decided to name the season, out-of-universe. Day 1 isn't an in-universe title.  "Day 1" is akin to putting "One Shot" or "Operation Hell Gate", where as "Season 1" is akin to putting "Comic 1" or "Novel 1".


 * As has been said in the past, we're Wiki 24, not Wikipedia. Let's try to keep our information what came from the show, rather than a resource to expand upon the show.  If people need more information about a real life item like the First Lady, the Cabinet or San Gabriel Island, it's only a matter of clicking an external link.

Thanks for the criticism. :) --Proudhug 16:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Policy vs. Style
Some of the things that have been put here seem less about style and more about policy on what should be done. It's not a big issue, but it's misleading. It seems like some things about speculation and redirects are more policy issues, while how to create a character page is more of style issue. They obviously overlap, but a little seperate and wikilinks never hurt anybody eh? I also think we've added a LOT of this really soon. I'm concerned there hasn't been much community consensus on some of the issues that have been raised here, but I don't want to flesh out the details right now. Anyone else? - Xtreme680 04:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that part of the Manual of Style seems to lean more towards Wiki 24 Policy... maybe the page needs a little more sorting out and linking to the style pages.


 * And I appreciate you mentioning the community aspect of Wiki24, Xtreme. I've had a lot going on for the past couple of weeks and haven't been able to contribute as much as I normally do, but I feel like there's a solid group of regular editors on this page, myself included, and I think that it's important to have a group consensus on the details of our style and policy.  I remember Xtreme and StBacchus working up some ideas for a new sidebar in The Situation Room several weeks ago, and I remember all of us offering feedback on those items.  I'd like it to be the same way with the rest of the style and policy manuals.  I realize that sometimes only one or two of us will post a response with our thoughts, but I think the floor should be open to ideas and criticisms from everyone.  I think that if need be, the two admins of this site need to pull rank if we all can't come to an agreement on something, but I can't think of any time where that's been needed yet.  -Kapoli 05:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we should call this the "Manual of Style and Policy"? Otherwise, people can feel free to move things around.  As it says at the top, it's a work in progress.  I realize this is a community effort, which is why everyone is free to pitch in with their ideas on policy and style, but every single thing shouldn't have to be hashed out beforehand.  I think it's enough that anyone (admin or not) be free to contribute to the site and then if there's an issue with what was posted, we discuss it.  Otherwise, we'd be spending all our time discussing when we could be editing.  It's best for people to be bold now, as it can always be changed later. --Proudhug 13:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Policy = Style: updates on MoS
The MoS was officially incorporated as an element of Policy, making much of the above 2006 discussions outdated or non-applicable. See Talk:Jennie for this change.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out something else: important changes have recently been decided upon regarding the Disambiguation component of the MoS. See Forum:Manual of Style disambiguation changes proposal for the discussion about this change. 06:25, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

In-universe tense
I don't know why the original editors of the Manual of Style decided to direct other editors to use the past tense when writing in the in-universe style. Most major U.S. publications in the U.S. (e.g. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today -- the list goes on & on) and most colleges and universities to refer to the events in fictional narratives (e.g. books, movies, plays, short stories) in the present tense -- not the past tense. In fact, I cannot think of a single major publication that uses past tense. I suppose that, at this point, it would be too difficult to change all of the Wiki 24 in-universe articles to present tense. And that's really unfortunate because it makes Wiki 24 grammatically different from just about all major writing on media subjects. In fact, some might say that using the past tense in these situations is a grammatical error (a error that's repeated in all 4,095 articles) and that this manual of style promotes an incorrect grammar policy. Ask123 22:38, 17 May 2009 (UTC)