Forum:Brickipedia: The reincarnation/Manual of Style

Forums - Brickipedia: The reincarnation/Manual of Style

This page is waiting to be archived by an administrator. Please do not edit the contents of this page. Section 3: Manual of Style What needs to be on a page (all types of articles need to be discussed) To be honest, I think our manual of style is good for now. --ToaMeiko (talk) 04:03, 2 July 2014 (UTC) I assume the content is all there, perhaps could do with some prettying on the page. CJC95 (talk) 23:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC) We could replace the opening line on every single set from "1324 blah is a set from the blah theme released in blah" as we've used that to start every set article for at least 7 years :P CJC95 (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2014 (UTC) I don't think that's specifically a part of the MoS, it's just the only line that makes sense :P NovaHawk 23:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC) Prettying in the page? Like an image of "This is an infobox"? My suggestion was going to be bullet points (because those are easier to read than a text wall) but it seems those are already there. It still needs to be broken up somehow. Berrybrick (talk) 00:02, 3 July 2014 (UTC) We need to discuss a MoS for television series, television episode and film articles, and possibly others I haven't thought of. I'd also like to work on the usability of the page with nav at the top, and "back to nav" links for each section. NovaHawk 23:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC) One thing I have noticed is missing is where to put a LEGO.com bio (or other big quote) on a minifigure's page. I just put it either above or below the gallery of variants (I forget which; it is where ever it goes in relation to a gallery on a set page) but it isn't clear for someone who isn't familiar. Also, I think we should not have minifigure galleries on theme pages. It is a ridiculous amount of work for any theme with more than a few characters. Just a minifigure template at the end of the article or a list of minifigures should do, I think. I don't believe that is in the MoS, but it has become common practice so maybe it should be addressed? Also, Nova is right that we need some sort of style guide for those things. I vaguely remember a forum where someone (probably him) had some proposals for them, but I guess they were never implemented? Berrybrick (talk) 00:02, 3 July 2014 (UTC) What image to use for set infobox image This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Set boxes in the infobox. Thoughts? CJC95 (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2014 (UTC) I still prefer the box personally. An alternate idea would be to have both the box and white image and click between them like on here (I don't see much point in that though) NovaHawk 22:56, 7 July 2014 (UTC) I much prefer Nova's idea over the box being in the infobox, however I could see this being difficult. I'm basically neutral on just keeping what we're doing but I would like that idea much better if it were applicable. -NBP3.0 (talk) 15:07, 9 July 2014 (UTC) Nope, that'd be very easy to implement. We'd still have to choose whether to use the white background or box image as the default. NovaHawk 01:30, 12 July 2014 (UTC) I'd say use the box image unless there is a different image that better-depicts the complete set. --ToaMeiko (talk) 01:41, 12 July 2014 (UTC) Set up a vote below. NovaHawk 01:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC) Use box image Use white image Use both images on a tabber (box shown by default) NovaHawk 01:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC) Use both images on a tabber (white image shown by default) Layout (all types of articles need to be discussed) We often have these cosmetic sorta discussions, so I can't think of anything. I often advocate all themes and sets and minifigures have relevant navbars at the end, but I'm the only one who does them so that never happens. Maybe throw that in? CJC95 (talk) 23:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC) Already there for minifigs and sets :) But the layout for themes, books and years isn't specified NovaHawk 23:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC) I just realized that we don't have a "recommended order of sections and section headings" for theme articles. If we want some degree of consistency this is a necessity. Looking at various theme articles which have reached featured status, this seems to have caused discrepancies in what type of information should be included, other than an overview of the theme's story which I found to always (or almost always) be present when applicable. Berrybrick (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2014 (UTC) Agreed ^ Otherwise we're pretty well off. Feel like we've had these MoS forums open forever now. -NBP3.0 (talk) 15:07, 9 July 2014 (UTC) Set articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. I'd say keep this one as is, it seems pretty complete to me. However, I would like to remove the option to have the heading "Details" instead of "Description", and just leave it at "Description" only. NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) ^ Berrybrick (talk) 01:06, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Minifigure articles For the layout, I propose: A subheading: "Video Game Variants", under "Description", which describes the minifigure's appearance and in-game abilities. Extra subheadings for Film/TV/Book appearances under "Appearances" We also need to figure out how they're ordered- alphabetically or something else? And should it be "Book Appearances" or "Book appearances"? "References", "Sources" and "External Links" sections, underneath Gallery These are all already commonly done, but it'd be good to have them actually in the MoS. NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) Where would we place images from video game variants? Should they have a separate minifigure gallery, or be placed in a gallery? Also, I think that if it wouldn't be too much trouble, we should change the name from "Gallery of variants" to "variant gallery" or just "variants." Since the gallery usually ends up right under it, it doesn't look nor sound quite right to me. Everything else sounds good. Berrybrick (talk) 01:08, 27 October 2014 (UTC) I like the sound of a second gallery underneath. Not sure what the subheading should be (or if it should be done with ; or ===). I don;t like the name of that heading either... not sure about "variants" because it seems to sort of sound like it's more relevant than description... variant gallery sounds ok to me, but again, with gallery right underneath it sounds a little awkward. Honestly I think I'd rather get rid of galleries altogether (not minifigure galleries, the other ones) and just link to a relevant image category on meta, like "Category:Images of Superman", but that's just me NovaHawk 09:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC) We could do one of those fancy infoboxes where you choose a tab and can switch between "Classic" and "Man of Steel" Superman, but that would probably get really messy for characters with 20 variants. Berrybrick (talk) 12:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC) Yeah, I'd rather we didn't, I like being able to see or scroll through all the variants NovaHawk 08:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC) Quotes section This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. There are a number of minifigure articles have a "quotes" section. Should we have a quotes section or not? NovaHawk 10:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC) My vote's for disallow. Allow a quote at the top, and work them into the background if the background's long enough and the quotes are relevant. But an isolated quotes section doesn't seem to serve any purpose to me, and taken out of context, a lot of the quotes don't even make sense. NovaHawk 10:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC) Theme articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Recommended order of sections for theme articles: Is needed. CJC95 (talk) 22:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC) I'll try something (based on BIONICLE) since nobody else seems to want to: Lead Section Description Design tendencies and common motifs of sets (and minifigures, when applicable) of the theme Background Background about the theme and it's release Story summary could go in a subheading called "Story" or something Notes List of sets Or a link to a list if it is ridiculously long Minifigures (I still support removing this, personally) A minifigure gallery References and sources See also External links Berrybrick (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2014 (UTC) All looks good to me, although personally, I'd rather see an OOU background about the theme go into a separate level 2 heading like "History" personally. Not sure about a "minfigures" section, can't you just go to Category:(whatever) minifigures? NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) Okay, "History" could work. As for minifigures, yes, or use a nav template. The galleries are extremely difficult to maintain, too, so I'd just like to abolish them. Berrybrick (talk) 01:10, 27 October 2014 (UTC) But we don't know the history of most themes :S So it shouldn't be a must Soupperson1 Friends are Forever! <3 Why don't we know the history? At the very worst, if we don't know about it we can look it up somewhere, or just figure it out by looking at the sets NovaHawk 08:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC) Part articles Book articles Inventory articles LEGOLAND articles LEGOLAND ride articles Year articles Day articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Proposed order: Lead section Events All entries in events formatted as: * '''[[Year]]''': ** Event 1 ** Event 2 ** etc... With years sorted so the latest year is at the bottom External Links NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) Okay. Berrybrick (talk) (changed top to bottom, I meant bottom- @Berrybrick, feel free to change your vote :P) NovaHawk 11:32, 17 November 2014 (UTC) Real-world people articles Ok, guess I'll take a shot at this: Lead section Biography (keep it brief) Work with LEGO: discussion about sets they've designed or stuff they've directed/acted in/whatever Gallery of works: minifigureGallery containing sets they've designed, characters they've voiced, or films/tv episodes they've directed/produced. If other minifigures are directly based on a character they've played, they can be mentioned too (eg, Chris Pratt has an article because of Emmet, but may as well have mentions of Star-Lord and Owen too). References/Sources/External links Also, I'm proposing new fields for the infobox (as opposed to the old fields) NovaHawk 23:41, 4 December 2014 (UTC) Lead section Biography (as detailed as possible- lots of people like to know how set designers and whatnot get their jobs and how they worked up to that) Themetable-like table of sets they've designed. Themetable lacks the ability to leave notes next to a row though, which would be useful for listing sets that were co-designed among multiple designers. Section that links to Brickipedia's interview of said person since we should do more of that See also (if necessary) References External links Navbox (we should have one of these with rows like "Set designers", "LEGO Company", etc. --ToaMeiko (talk) 23:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC) Film articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Proposed order: Lead section Lead cast and characters With a short description of each character (2-3 sentences) Synopsis Appearances: lists everything in the episode Subheadings for minifigures, vehicles, animals, and creatures (where appropriate) Notes Reception References, sources External links ? NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) Would a list with two or three columns be possible for the appearances list? Otherwise I imagine that being quite lengthy. Otherwise it sounds good, but there should be a spot for cast, and possibly reception. Berrybrick (talk) 01:12, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Good idea with the cast, added a section to the proposal. Appearances can definitely be done like that, I usually do it with code, but I've made up Template:Columns/2 and Template:Columns/3 which can be used instead. Reception- added in, but I think we should adopt the basics of the critical response section of Wikipedia's MoS: Absolutely everything must be sourced Allow quotes only from professional film critics only ie, not "this guy on Eurobricks said..." Use statistics from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic Also, I think a Reception section should only be used when appropriate, some of the smaller films/shorts probably wouldn't even make it to any review sites. Definitely for feature films and the bigger TV series articles though (Ninjago, Chima, etc) NovaHawk 02:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC) TV series articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Proposed order: Lead section Overview: A summary of the series, not too detailed. Lead cast and characters With a short description of each character (2-3 sentences) List of episodes Maybe in a table, with a very short overview? Notes Reception References, sources External links NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) Sounds good, but a place for a reception section should probably be indicated. Berrybrick (talk) 01:13, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Added in, but per my comment above with films NovaHawk 02:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC) TV episode articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Proposed order: identical to Film articles NovaHawk (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC) I thought we were discussing both up there already. :P Berrybrick (talk) 01:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Weapon articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Changes made after 00:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) will not be counted. Proposed order: Lead Description all the parts an how they fit together Usage in video games (if applicable) Background Users Gallery of variants (if applicable) Sources, References, External Links Weapon navbox NovaHawk (talk) 00:54, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Composition could probably be description, just for consistency. I think we will need a notability policy with this type of article, too. Berrybrick (talk) 01:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Yeah, fair enough, changed to Description. I'm not really seeing a need for a notability policy personally, most weapons could be grouped to have several variants on a page (such as lightsaber including lightsaber pikes, and a techno blade page would cover all four blades, we wouldn't need one for each type). NovaHawk 02:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC) That sounds like a basic notability policy to me. :P Berrybrick (talk) 10:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC) :D I was thinking it was more UCS than anything, but I guess a relevant note could be added in the section of the MoS NovaHawk 12:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Brand Store articles This section is resolved, but preserved for record-keeping purposes. Please do not edit this area. Proposed order: Lead Description- any events specific to this store, location within shopping malls, basically anything relevant. Only used when necessary. References/Sources/External Links External link to official site compulsory. StoreNav template (not yet made, but would look like a minifigure nav template) An autocat, from the infobox, which groups stores by their country. Sure, there's only one section (descripiton), but it's a store, what else can you put down about it? But basically, this is what most of our LEGO Store articles look like, this is how I'd like to see them (note the article name comes from the official site, and doesn't have all the location info after it which looks long and messy). A note about the proposed infobox- if there is no image inserted, a default one is shown instead (which you can see in the example mentioned here). It's a stock image that the official site seems to use for all their store pages, I figured it'd be unlikely we could get images of every store, so figured we could use that stock image for a backup too. NovaHawk 11:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC) Okay. Berrybrick (talk) 12:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC) Sourcing Info on future sets and recently released sets should be always sourced. I'd advocate sourcing more than that, but I wouldn't expect any one would actually follow it. CJC95 (talk) 23:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC) ^ Berrybrick (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Absolutely. -NBP3.0 (talk) 15:07, 9 July 2014 (UTC) Agreed. I used to worry that this wasn't possible due to a lot of info coming from first-hand experience, but then I realised that any sorts of features in sets would be present in the instructions, so they can be reffed to. As for minifigures, it's going to be a lot of refs to images of the minifigure which are aready uploaded here, but I guess that's ok. The one I'm not sure about is backgrounds- how would we reference them? For example, if someone put down on the background for 75055 Imperial Star Destroyer that it's 1600 metres in length, how would we source that? I don't have the Imperial Sourcebook, so I can't reference that. NovaHawk 23:52, 2 December 2014 (UTC) The issue here The main one is that Brickia haven't changed their layout either. I know we created and perfected this style over many a year and many a hard work, but we do need to at least rewrite the content of our big articles to stop google seeing it as copy for the rankings. CJC95 (talk) 23:44, 2 July 2014 (UTC) Many of them could probably do with a cleanup anyway NovaHawk 23:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC) I'd be willing to try and do some of this, but I would like a list of what articles to rewrite (or even write). Berrybrick (talk) 00:05, 3 July 2014 (UTC) Okay, I guess I'll do that myself. :P I'll start with BIONICLE and brainstorm more when I finish. Berrybrick (talk) 22:42, 7 July 2014 (UTC) Open MoS forums If nothing more is said on any of the "MoS threads" on Forum:Index, I'm just going to assume they're good to go through at the end of these forums. NovaHawk 22:56, 7 July 2014 (UTC)