Forum:Manual of Style

I think it's about time we create a Manual of Style. We've been here long enough without one.

So breaking this down into sections. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 13, 2008 @ 09:14 (UTC)

Section order
We need an order for our sections to be put in.

Here's what I'm thinking:
 * (main) - The beginning section with general intro. This is the one without a section name.
 * Background - Historical and background information on the character.
 * Personality - Information on the character's personality.
 * Abilities - Information on the characters special abilities and techniques.
 * Other info - Things like Naruto's history with the Demon fox should be placed in this area. Or perhaps made as a subsection of an appropriate section.
 * Part in the story - Section container, the characters actions within the story would be here.
 * Part I
 * Some arc
 * Part II
 * Some other arc
 * Trivia - Trivia items. Organized in list format using * at the start of the line (Stylistically a space after that * would be nice.)
 * Sources - A special section for general sources such as the various data books which info comes from.
 * References - Just the ==References== section with a tag below it. To collect the tag info in the page. Individual bits of info should be tagged with specific citation other than just the general sources section.
 * Quotes - Character quotes. The character shouting out a Jutsu name shouldn't be considered a jutsu though. Organized in the same way as Trivia. If there are multiple language forms to a character quote, it should link to an article like Dattebayo and Believe it!.

My main points on this are:
 * Abilities should be above the part in the story as the pits (>.< lol), can get quite long and the Abilities should be grouped with the other stuff that's about the character.
 * Trivia and Quotes should still remain at the bottom of the page as they have very little notability.
 * The Part I and Part II sections should be inside of a proper ==Part in the story== section instead of just thrown into their own sections.
 * ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 13, 2008 @ 09:14 (UTC)
 * Quotes are not very necessary, I've moved them to the bottom. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Nov 20, 2008 @ 03:39 (UTC)
 * Just another note. Going with proper casing, please use "... arc" not "... Arc". ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Nov 22, 2008 @ 07:41 (UTC)

Other points

 * "Articles should be written in past-tense, not present or future tense." ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 13, 2008 @ 09:14 (UTC)
 * "Articles should be written in an in-universe style, and not refer to the reader or viewer when talking about events." ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 13, 2008 @ 09:14 (UTC)

Article size
Many of the articles in this wiki are too small, the articles such as Jonin should be conglomerated into larger articles, or if these pages already exist, should have the areas expanded. Small articles look bad if a wiki wants to look credible. Also, change the css stylesheet, it looks horrible with the orange on white. Whinge over, now I might start doing some contributions StijnX 20:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The Narutopedia plans to incorporate the use of Semantic MediaWiki when it is installed on Wikia. If articles are grouped together, then we lose the ability to do that. Semantic Attributes is what is going to allow us to easily generate the large lists automatically, and also allow users to search for things like, all the Female Ninja, who are part of Konohagakure. But what we can do is use DPL to create articles which include a summary from the other articles into the more general page. As for the stylesheet, feel free to come up with a better one, but this one was created to have some relevance to Naruto. We're not going to just wipe it out and go back to horrid white on white, :/ on white... The way to fix a stylesheet, is not to complain, but to point out ways to improve it, then you might actually change something. Otherwise people will ignore your complaints. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 20, 2008 @ 09:14 (UTC)

Site augmentation
I appreciate that you guys were motivated enough to create a Naruto Wikipedia, which is actually pretty cool, but unfortunately I think that there's a slight problem. The original Wikipedia had ALL of the Jutsu's arranged alphabetically beneath their respective category (of course, this was before they were all deleted). I found out that when I click on a Jutsu, it has it's OWN category, which kind of confused me. So, if it's not a problem, could you guys do this? It saves me, and many readers of this website a load of trouble.


 * Just a first note, it's Narutopedia or Naruto Wiki, not Naruto Wikipedia... Wikipedia is a name for the Wikipedia encyclopedia and is trademarked by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Narutopedia is a wiki, not a Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is also a wiki.
 * Off that, which categories are you referring to? The jutsus being in the Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and Kekkei Genkai categories. Or them being all listed in the Jutsu category. We separate the jutsu into the three later ones to avoid making the Jutsu category extremely large. But we're actually going to be using a Jutsu infobox later on, so it'll make it far more easier to categories things however we want. Just wait till the Jutsu infobox is finished and used on all the Jutsu articles, at that point the Jutsu will become much easier to search through. Also, when Semantic MediaWiki is installed we probably won't be using the Jutsu categories... Using SMW the Jutsu, Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and Kekkei Genkai pages will actually function much like the categories and the jutsu will actually be assigned to those pages rather than the categories. The browse, ask, and other features of SMW will make Jutsu much easier to search for. You can actually combine things together, and search for say... All Ninjutsu which are Kinjutsu and are S-Rank and come up with a nice list of them. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jan 30, 2008 @ 16:35 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. My example of this might be...the article titled "List of Taijutsu(2). I simply liked how organized Wikipedia was with the Jutsu's is all.  Y'see, this didn't make sense at first, but I just noticed that article was "Rescused" from Wikipedia.  Wikipedia had a cool way of categorizing the Jutsu.
 * Oh, you're referring to them all on the same page. Ya, when the Infobox is created, we can also put section tags inside the jutsu articles and have a long page with summaries on the jutsu automatically transclude those small sections. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Feb 1, 2008 @ 05:44 (UTC)


 * However, wouldn't that shorten our wiki? --Kakashi Namikaze Talk, Contribs 19:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * If removing duplicate content from your wiki and replacing that with includes severely shortens your wiki, you don't have a valid source of information, you have a pile of shit repeated all over the place. List pages honestly don't matter for wiki size. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion May 29, 2008 @ 20:05 (UTC)

Well what about.
For quotes, lets say it is a character specific jutsu or combo. Naruto's Uzamaki Rendan. Since no one else says it or uses it shouldn't it be counted?


 * Not really, all they're doing is shouting a jutsu name. That is hardly a quote with any point for the article. Just cruft. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jun 25, 2008 @ 00:26 (UTC)

Images
Here are some of the implicit policies that seam to be know by some editors:
 * In articles images tagged with a proper fair use rationale will always be preferred over use of an image without a rationale and such is tagged for deletion (This is especially true for infobox images)
 * Never overwrite an existing image with another one. There is no valid reason for overwriting an image unless you are doing some tweaks to clean up the image itself. Any better image should be uploaded with a different filename. (Overwriting images skews stuff in pages, and also makes edit history for licenses and stuff on the image page confusing; Overwriting of an image is almost always the case of someone trying to overwrite the image in an infobox with a different one, and that invalidates the fair use tagging for the image and screws up the page)
 * Infobox images should be of the character near their first appearance. So in other words, the infobox of characters like Naruto should be of them in Part I, not their Part II look. And characters like Tobi who are really someone else first show up in the series with their mask/alias and so an image of them like that should be used. For Sasori his big puppet would be used, not his body turned puppet.
 * Leafninja images are bad, they're poor quality and as such are always tagged with which is in a way a later deletion tag.
 * ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Jul 18, 2008 @ 23:05 (UTC)

Romanisation, language issues
I think there should be a clear guideline on how to romanise the many Japanese names and terms used. Wikipedia uses Revised Hepburn, which would be the most professional. However, it does bring with it the problem of macrons. It's traditional to forego the use of macrons, because of the technical difficulties of typing them. This would mean, however, that there should be a guideline for when to use them and when not.

There's also the problem of when to use Japanese terms and when to use English terms.

Then there's the problem of pluralising Japanese terms. I believe it's common not to pluralise them (one ninja, two ninja; one jutsu, two jutsu), since Japanese doesn't have a plural itself.

Finally, I'd like to ask which version of English should be used. I've seen both British and American English used. --ShounenSuki 12:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't call macrons an issue. For the guideline of when to use them or when to not.
 * Use macrons when referring to a name in a special location outside of content text where you will use it allot. (The first name occurrence in it's article where you use the template; Infoboxes, and the page title)
 * Don't use macrons inside of big content where you are going to use the name a fair bit.
 * Don't use macrons on English versions of a name.
 * We've got a good informal guide so far for Japanese and English terms.
 * English names are preferred for most cases.
 * Don't use an English name for something unless it has actually shown up in one of the official English series. (Don't assume by translating or using a scanalation or fansub name)
 * Justu however use the literal English translation of the jutsu's name. Not what shows up in the English series, or the name in the Japanese series.
 * This is because there are to many jutsu. If we used Japanese, it would be hard for people to find the Jutsu. If we used official English then most of the Jutsu wouldn't have a translation and things would be inconsistent. So we use the literal translation.
 * There is still discussion on whether to transliterate words like Technique into Jutsu, and how to deal with special move names like Rasengan and Chidori.
 * For special names like Kunoichi, Shinobi, etc... If the English series disagrees with itself and uses both the English name (Female Ninja, Ninja, etc...) then use the Japanese inspired term (Kunoichi, Shinobi, etc...) since it is a agreed on by both the Japanese and English series.
 * As for English, I believe we're catering to the North American audience. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Aug 12, 2008 @ 16:52 (UTC)
 * How about plurals? and if an English word is used in the Japanese version, would we use the English word (if there is no reasonable doubt it actually is an English word) or would we use the transliteration of the Japanese katakana? --ShounenSuki 17:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Base for Dates and Times
I noticed that Temporally Ambiguous phrase's have been used frequently in pages on this site, For Example here is a quote from the headline text of the Page on Konohagakure No Sato "...Although Konoha, much like the country in which it resides, has been peaceful for the past sixteen years and has grown accustomed to that peace..." as you can see it states that the village has experienced Peace for Sixteen. What I would like to know is "sixteen Years past what?". Now I assume that this means sixteen years before the start of the series, but before I act on that assumption I just wanted to ask if this is going to be the standard date that is being referred to when writing things like "sixteen years past" or something similar. SilverSword 18:29, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I belive that was the Third Great Shinobi War, or maybe that was when Kyubii attacked Kohona, and Naruto is now 16. That is just my speculation however. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 01:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Commentary from a Not-So-Active User
First off, I would like to say thank you for attempting to make a MoS, I may actually be able to contribute now. Secondly I have some suggestions. (They may be out of order) That is my rant. If you respond, please post on my Discussion page, I don't usually check things that I write on other pedias NaruHina  Talk  01:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "Never overwrite an existing image with another one." If it is a better version of the image then that should be allowed, its the same picture. One may be blurry and this one pristine and if they don't overwrite it then they have to go page by page changing the coding so that the image is shown, while simply overwriting does the process automaticly in about five minutes.
 * "Infobox images should be of the character near their first appearance." Why? They don't look like that anymore, the image should be the most updated image possible.
 * I think "Trivia" should have a different title, it means that the info is unimportant.
 * The part in the story section should be under "Biography" and should be first, right after the intro to the character.
 * The list of the character's jutsu, I think, could just be put into the ability section rather than a hang-down addendum to the infobox, or at least the jutsu should have its own actual field in the infobox.
 * There should be an appearance section, a list of the comics/anime/other media in the Naruto universe. (Yes this will be long but it gives you something new to research, maybe learn something new about the character as well:))
 * Quotes section, not sure if that is nessisary but it should have more structure or a limit to the number it can have, it shouldn't just have fifty "Believe it!"s.
 * Possibly a bit off topic but you need an upload field for book covers as well. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 01:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "Never overwrite an existing image with another one." If it is a better version of the image then that should be allowed, its the same picture. One may be blurry and this one pristine and if they don't overwrite it then they have to go page by page changing the coding so that the image is shown, while simply overwriting does the process automaticly in about five minutes.
 * We've got a new Narutopedia:Image policy that I think I made state it better. But yes, uploading a better image of the same image is ok, but it's stated to discourage people from overriding images with images that are not the same. Doing that breaks the history and makes it hard to determine if a fair use rationale is actually valid.


 * Accepted. Though that should be updated here. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 02:30, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "Infobox images should be of the character near their first appearance." Why? They don't look like that anymore, the image should be the most updated image possible.
 * We are not a "live" resource, we are an "aggregated" resource. What we write is meant to be relevant to the reader no matter how much of the series they have seen. In fact, we are not' targeting the people who are so far into the series they already know about Shippūden, we are targeting the people who know little or nothing about the series.
 * The most relevant image is the one of the character's appearance as it is the first part of the story they appear. We can go into more details in the article. In fact take a look at most of the characters, the Part II section of the page normally includes an image with their new appearance.


 * You may be an aggregated source, but so is wikipedia, it has the most recent photo, as are most other wikis, anyway its not about the education of people who want to get into the series, it is providing updated information for reference, and therefore the infobox image should be recent, it would be the same for any real person which is how characters should be treated. As long as peole don't start jumping through trees like that or stabbing each other with kunai knives. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 02:30, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * However to the reader who has no knowledge of the series, and wants to know about the character, the more relevant image is the one as the character starts out. The Part II image is only relevant to the person who has already seen what the character looked like originally, while the original appearance is relevant to both.


 * The part in the story section should be under "Biography" and should be first, right after the intro to the character.
 * No, the part in the story section should be at the bottom, only above notes like sources, trivia, and quotes. The part in the story section can get to be extremely long. Placing this section above anything non-trivial like appearance, personality, and such will make that information harder to find.

~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Dec 7, 2008 @ 02:05 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if you dissapprove of this cross-wiki reference as I understand they are not the same MoS, but check out most Featured Articles on Wookieepedia, they are all at least 1000 words long, many such as Corran Horn (look him up as he is a great example of my point) are longer than that. There are links at the top of the page that are automatically placed and updated if the article go longer than a certain umber of sections, it does not make it harder to find thee info if it is at the bottom of the pages. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 02:30, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh and PS, I don't come to this wiki much because it doesn't have an official MoS yet so I can't contribute until I know what you guys want written and watching pages doesn't work cross wiki so I can't check it if I'm iin the middle of editing Wookieepedia. NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 02:30, 7 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes I know about the ToS, but it is still best to keep the small aggregated sections together rather than shoving a huge section in between them. Basically going "summary, aggregate, long story, notes and references". While the ToS does help find info, it serves someone actually just reading an article better if the aggregated sections are up top, instead of split by a long story. For the person only wanting to read about the character, not read their entire story involvement, placing the story in between aggregated sections can make them think that there are no more. Not everyone actually looks at the ToS, in fact I almost never look at the ToS, much less read it, when I go to read a Wikipedia article.
 * Watchlist works cross-wiki if you use it right. Just make use of either e-mail or rss, and it doesn't matter where you are. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) current discussion Dec 7, 2008 @ 03:35 (UTC)
 * If a person does not want to read spoilers of their story involvement, they shouldn't come to a wiki, they can also easily read the secions and say to themselves "Oh no, spoilers" and skip the section to read about their personality. And it does not matter what you personally do, it is about what we want the reader to do, wee want them to read it or at least have the option to reference it for a link to a section of the article, especially if they don't know what to look for in the story. And the summary is not aggregated, it is an introduction to the character that needs to be updated regularly with the most major plot points, not a place to say "This is what the name means" that is for the Trivia section, which I still hope gets renamed. Such as in the case of Naruto, it should read "Naruto was a genin from the leaf villiage. He was part of Team 7. Sasuke betrayed him. After time-skip he is the last genin of the Konoha 11. And other broad relative info from Shippuden, keeping it abourt 3-4 paragraphs long. It should go Intro, Bio, Personality, Abilities, Appearances, N+R, then Quotes (If you must have quotes in a seperate section of the article, I think it makes it look cluttered but thats just me). NaruHina  Talk [[Image:Anakinsolo.png|14px]] 04:02, 7 December 2008 (UTC)