Manual of Style

(A big thanks to the Lovecraft Wiki Manual of Style for laying out the foundations for this page.)

The Manual of Style is not intended as an ironclad set of rules, as much as guidelines to help make our pages more uniform and our information easy to understand and edit.

Article Titling
Article titles, when possible should be a person/place/thing in its singular form, (i.e. Civilian, rather than Civilians). Exceptions to this are when the proper name or group name is naturally pluralised.

Additionally, as with The Red Army, while the common usage is to add the article "The" in front of the nouns, the article titles should not contain these. Exceptions should be made in the case of proper titles, (i.e. "The War")

Prefer to use the more famous name for the article and not necessarily the most accurate or complete.

It is very simple to correct this type of problem so that it corrects for any misuse elsewhere in the wiki.
 * 1) In the incorrectly named article, enter the edit mode and copy the entirety of the article, and its code
 * 2) Create a new article with the correct name
 * 3) Paste all of the original content into the new article and publish
 * 4) Return to the original incorrectly named article and delete all the content and replace that with the #REDIRECT New Article command

Disambiguation
At times it may be necessary to distinguish between articles of the same apparent name.

Parentheticals should be added only when necessary and a disambiguation article and link should be placed at the beginning of the articles using the

Images and image usage
Efforts should be made to correctly identify the work, and properly give its information in the image file entry.

Efforts should be made to contact the artist in question if the work has not otherwise been published. Due to the unofficial and "fan made" nature of this site, "Fair Use" remains a grey area that remains legally questionable. Thus some interpretations of the law may allow for the usage of imagery on the wiki, but may still violate the individual rights of an artist to withhold their work. All decisions defer to the artist, and a reasonable efforts should be made to contact the artist and secure express written communication when possible.

In such cases, images should not be modified in any way unless permission is so given by the artist, (i.e. permission has been given in some cases to blur regions of images that might be considered offensive).

Although fan art is allowed on this wiki, it is preferable to use those that are about the subject from authorial intent or from professional publication.
 * Use common-sense English words to title your picture, not alphanumeric strings that make more sense to a computer than a person. Note that if any image with the same title has already been uploaded, it will be replaced with your new one.
 * You must balance the need for a clear image against the need for a fast-loading image. Remember that your image is most often going to be viewed at a size no greater than 420px in width. Therefore, it is a waste of bandwidth to upload a picture which is more than 3 times that width. Likewise, files which are bigger than 100kb can cause people with slow internet connections to have slower page loads. Consequently, you should try to keep your images to no more than about 800px and 100kb in size.
 * Crop images to show just the relevant subject. Again, remember that your image is going to be displayed at no more than about 420px. The more tightly it is cropped on the subject, the better it will display.
 * Do not upload another version of a file that is materially the same as the one which previously existed. The rule of thumb for uploading a new version of an existing file is, "Does this file look distinctly better than the original image at 420px?" Whether it looks better at full size is not to a factor in deciding whether to upload a new version of an image. Images used on maintenance templates are exempt from this ruling.
 * Don't put photo credits in articles or on the images themselves; put them on the image description page.
 * Crop your photos so that network logos, if present on the original screenshot, do not appear. Also, crop any and all black borders from images.
 * Use JPG format for photographic images, like screenshots and telesnaps, and for comic images. Use the SVG format where possible for icons, logos, drawings, maps, flags, and such. PNG format is also acceptable as an alternative to SVGs, and can be especially convenient when you require an image to have a transparent background.
 * GIF and BMP formats are strongly discouraged.
 * Add a good alternative text for images.

Categories
Articles should use the lowest possible subcategories when being labelled to avoid cluttering this space with parent categories.

Discussion
In talk pages and discussion boards, users have to assume good faith in others.

Sub-Manuals
For the obvious reasons of keeping this page cleaner and easier to use, below are a list of Manuals pertaining to specific categories: