Help:Stylebook

The Stylebook is a set of guidelines for style and layout on AnOtherWiki. Following these best practices along with the other instructions found in our Help documentation, one can quickly and easily create professional looking articles. The Stylebook concerns what you should do; how to do it may be found at Help:Editing.

Lead section

The first few paragraphs of your article, before any headings, are called the lead section. They are the most important part of an article. They are the first thing a visitor reads. As such, they should present a general summary of the article in a way that catches the readers interest and attention, much in the same manner of the hard lead or "lead-and-sumary" employed by newspapers. The full name of the article's subject should be prominently present in bold text. Other names that commonly represent the same concept should be included, also in bold, and you should add those pages as redirects to the main page. If there are multiple articles with similar names, it may be appropriate to create a disambiguation page as the main page.

Contents section

On articles with at least four sections, a table of contents will automatically be generated. You don't need to do anything to create this yourself.

See also section

A short list of links to significantly related articles within the wiki, if they have not already appeared elsewhere in the text. For instance, an article on Hosting may have Multiplicity and Walk-Ins as see-alsos. If a claimed connection is controversal, please do not include it under See also. Instead create a section in the article discussing the connection between the topics, as well as the nature of the controversy, and add a link to the other topic. Please note: this section is for internal links only.

References section

Citation Style

In an effort to keep citations standardized across the site, AnOtherWiki has chosen to employ the Chicago Citation Style. Templates have been provided for each of the document types listed on that page, and more will be added as needed. They may be found here. Please use these templates as you add sources to articles on the wiki, so that we can ensure proper formatting in every article.

External links section

Generally, it is preferred to keep these sections short: a handful of links pointing to content directly relevant to the subject of the article. By far, most links should be found in the references section, not this section. Think of this more as an external see-also.

General notes

Articles about people

In all articles about people, an otherkin name or online handle should be used in preference to a RL name for unless they only go by their RL name. Be careful about adding the real name of someone to an article about them, even as a redirect. If they include it on their website or generally use both a real name and a fan name, that's fair enough, but if it's not something they obviously want known it may be inappropriate to include it. Most of the time it is best to allow someone to edit their own article to add their real name if they wish to, and not include it otherwise. There may, however, be case-by-case exceptions: an article on Wolfie Blackheart, for instance, would not be prohibited from using her real name as it has already been mentioned widely in mainstream media coverage.

Similarly, photographs of a person should be avoided unless they are generally available to the public or the subject of the article adds them themselves. User-icons or artistic renderings of one's kinside may be substituted instead, with permission from the subject.

Finally, articles about people should be written in the third person, even if you're writing it about yourself. Also, remember to keep an Objective point of view.

Infoboxes

For some types of articles, templates called infoboxes have been created to help format and present information about the subject. Presently, there are infoboxes for articles about people, articles about websites, and articles about gatherings. More may be added in the future. Please use these to help keep the appearance of these articles standardized across the wiki, and aid readers in finding information about the topics they are interested in. They may be found here: Help:Templates#User_templates