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Revision as of 13:32, 14 May 2006 by Dooky (talk | contribs) (Infoboxes etc)
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Formatting, rules and such

Hey all. Thought I'd get the ball rolling here with a few ideas on layout.

Conflicting continuities: One massive problem with Wikipedia's articles is the fact that information from different continuities (anime, manga, live action etc.) isn't always separated properly. This is a big issue, and something that we have to sort out early on. The way I see it, there are two possible solutions. Firstly, any one character (let's say, for example, Sailor Jupiter) would have a single article with a basic introduction, followed by numerous subsections relating to various continuities. The alternative is to somehow have separate articles for each version of that character... so you'd have Sailor Jupiter (anime), Sailor Jupiter (manga) and so on. This would do a better job of keeping things separate, but linking to articles would be that bit more complicated, since you'd always have to specify which version of a character you were linking to. Personally, I favour the first idea, provided we can get people to follow the style guide properly. Not sure how this would work with the musicals though, since they're effectively all micro-continuities separate from each other.

I think the first version would be the best idea. Too much linkage in the second one. Any other opinions? It's good to get this all straightened out now rather than have to reformat things later.--WikiSysop 23:55, 13 May 2006 (MST)
Yeah, I'm leaning towards that myself... we don't want to over-complicayed things and scare people away. Now, the easiest way to separate the continuities within an article is to have separate headings within the article for each of them. My only worry is that this could look messy, especially in articles for more minor characters. Perhaps we could have different coloured backgrounds relating to each continuity (I'm assuming that's possible with wikis, although my knowledge is really limited to text editing). If they were inoffensive pastille shades it might look okay. So... I dunno, anime could be blue, manga pink, live action green and so on.I'd rather see this than coloured text, which would probably look a bit more jarring.
So, how many continuities do we have? Here's a list of possibles: Anime, Manga, Live action, Musicals, NA Dub (and possibly other dubs too, if they're notably different), Games, Miscellaneous and Production/Fandom. As I mentioned earlier, some of these are more or less internally consistent, while others, like the musicals, games, and probably a lot of stuff in the 'misc' section, consist of lots of mini-continuities which would have to be separated anyway. Dooky 07:01, 14 May 2006 (MST)

Multiple identities: So, do we have a single article for Makoto/Sailor Jupiter, or do we have one for Makoto, one for Sailor Jupiter and one for Super Sailor Jupiter? Lunar Archivist's old encyclopaedia went down the first route, while mine went down the second. The only problem with the second system is that you have to decide on what information goes in each article, otherwise you end up repeating yourself. On my site, it works like this: "Kino Makoto" deals with her backstory, personality and so on, "Sailor Jupiter" deals with her Senshi powers and how she became a Senshi, and "Super Sailor Jupiter", when I get round to it, will be a rather short article dealing with how she became Super Sailor Jupiter, etc. Here's the thing, though... This is a great system for me as I'm the only one who has to follow it, but would we be able to institute a similar thing here, where there will (hopefully) be menay editors?

You got me on this. I think whatever is easiest would work best.--WikiSysop 23:55, 13 May 2006 (MST)
My vote goes for separate articles for each 'form'. For one thing, can you imagine how huge the Usagi Tsukino page would be if all the information on all the forms of Sailor Moon in every continuity were on there? Dooky 07:01, 14 May 2006 (MST)

Name order: Western or Japanese? On my site I use Japanese, just because it's an alphabetical list and Japanese names work better that way. That won't be an issue here, so perhaps we hould stick to Western order?

Western order makes the most sense to me. I've read a lot of academic texts on Japan, written some of my own, and while Japanese order is important for those, I don't think it's as important outside academia.
Agreed. Dooky 07:01, 14 May 2006 (MST)
On the subject of names, though, Sushil and I were discussing what ought to be done. We think there should be a list of common name spellings used for simplicity of the site, with links- where appropriate- to another page that shows the debate over particular romanizations, etc. Showing all sides of the various issues in this fandom are going to be important.--WikiSysop 23:55, 13 May 2006 (MST)
Yeah, this one we're going to have to nip in the bud, and compromise is the way to go. I'm afraid my site doesn't have a totally consistent policy on names... I usually go with the most common spellings unless I know there's something hideously wrong with them. We will probably need to decide on the 'consensus' spellings for the sake of consistency... again, I think it's best to use the most common spellings (a quick Google usually shows this) but for more contentious names we can have links to sites like Ian's, especially if he has different ideas about the spelling/origins. Dooky 07:01, 14 May 2006 (MST)

Canon: First off: the various materials collections for the anime and manga offer various bits of extra information. Should this be considered canon? For instance, the Lip Rods (those Outer Senshi transformation pens) are never named on-screen, but the name is used in the Nakayoshi Guides, so I consider it canon. There are plentyf instances like this, and we'll need to figure out a policy on such things. Secondly, will we have a way of differentiating stuff that happens within the Sailor Moon universe(s) from production notes, etc, that are from outside the universe? My site used the same format as the Star Trek Encyclopaedas, which were written (for the most part) as if the information they contained was factual. Any production notes or comments were then added in italics, to make it clear that they were to be viewed in a different context. Should we do something similar here? Dooky 13:19, 13 May 2006 (MST)

Yes, lets do something along those lines. I think it would be helpful if we set up a formatting rules page so people are aware of all this from the beginning.--WikiSysop 23:55, 13 May 2006 (MST)
If we go with the colour system I suggested above, then 'production notes' and such could simply have a white background. This would certainly be preferable to italics, since there will be some pages that are entirely dedicated to behind-the-scenes stuff, and a page all in italics would look pretty horrible. Dooky 07:01, 14 May 2006 (MST)


Infoboxes and such

I'm afraid my knowledge of wikis is limited to basic text formatting at the moment, so I'll have to just describe these ideas. Other wikis have these infoboxes/templates for various subjects, which would be useful here too. For instance, a Character infobox could contain the following: Affiliation (perhaps the affiliation could also determine the colour of the box's title bar), species (possibly; the species of many of the villains isn't clear, so we might have to settle for 'humanoid' in many cases), aliases, occupation, episode/chapter/act of first appearance. We'll want to keep this information fairly general though, as it will have to cover numerous continuities. The box could contain a picture, but it might be better to have a separate picture for each section if we're dealing with multiple continuities.

Regarding affiliations, there are various ways of organising them, but here's how it works on my site. I have the Moon Kingdom (main Sailor Senshi, Tuxedo Kamen, the cats, Elios and Queen Serenity), Dark Kingdom, Makaiju, Black Moon, Death Busters, Dead Moon, Shadow Galactica and Kinmoku Senshi. I have another category for Movie Villains (the three movies plus Bonnone) although his could be broken down further. Then I have civilains, non-human characters, fictional/mythical characters (within the context of the series) and "real" people (ie actual celebrities/historical figures who were mentioned in the series). A few characters don't fit very happily into these categories: namely Chibi Chibi (arguably closest to Galaxia in the anime, but her story in the manga is very different... probably a weak candidate for the Moon Kingdom), Perle (I'll probably have him as a Movie Villain by association) and the Lake Monster from Episode 40 (not really affiliated with the Dark Kingdom or indeed anyone). Uh, as you can see, some of this stuff is pretty minor, but I'm just posting things as they occur to me.

Incidentally, I note that image uploads are currently disabled. I think someone has to edit the .php to fix that. Dooky 10:32, 14 May 2006 (MST)