LCNWiki:WikiProject TRA World Building/Guidelines

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This is a brief outline of certain things which the judges will hold your submissions against. For a more comprehensive list of guidelines, see Wikipedia's Manuel of Style (MOS).

Titles and headers

• Only the first word and proper nouns in titles and headers should be capitalized.

2003 Creeperian coup d'état

2003 Creeperian Coup d'État

CODECO military intervention in Sequoyah

CODECO Military Intervention in Sequoyah

Military influence in Creeperian politics

Military Influence in Creeperian Politics

Early life

Early Life

See also

See Also

• Titles in a language other than English, the titles of books, and the titles of newspapers should be italicized using {{italic title}}.

La'Matanza

History of Catholicism

El Faro

The names of ships should also be italicized.

BIC Adolfo Martínez Hernández

BIC Adolfo Martínez Hernández

• Titles should use the common name of the topic rather than the official name;

The Inconvenient Truth About Democracy

The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic System: The History of the Objective Failure of the Democratic Experiment

However, abbreviations generally should not be the page title.

Tuxtla Martínez Maximum Correctional Facility

TMP

Names should use the person's first and last names (no middle names)

Alexandra Berkhoff

Alexandra Johanna Berkhoff

Unless the person is more commonly known by another name.

Georges Loupe rather than Hector Subercaseaux

Don Cheto rather than Che Holguín Razo

• If a title has a generic name, it should have text in parenthesis to disambiguate it.

John Smith (politician)

John Smith

Liberal Party (Creeperopolis)

Liberal Party

• Headers should use at least two equal signs (==), increasing the number of equal signs for subheaders. Do not use single equal signs.
• Titles and headers should only use the Latin alphabet (no non-Latin scripts, ie. Cyrillic, Arabic, Hindi, etc.).

Creeperian Civil War

Գփերրա Ծիվիլ Ծրեեպերիանո

Letters with accents should be used when present.

Augusto Cabañeras Gutiérrez

Augusto Cabaneras Gutierrez

• The articles "a", "an", and "the" should be avoided if at all possible;

Creeperian Civil War

The Creeperian Civil War

Unless it is the proper name of the target namespace.

The Five Battles

Layout

• Country, city, and subdivision articles should have most, if not all, of the following headers:

Etymology

History

Geography – subheaders can include "Climate", "Topography", "Natural disasters", "Flora and fauna", etc.

Government (or "Government and politics") – subheaders can include "Political system", "Foreign relations", "Military", "Administrative divisions", "Human rights", "Crime and law enforcement", etc.

Economy – subheaders can include "Agriculture", "Tourism", "Telecommunications", etc.

Infrastructure – subheaders can include "Energy", "Transportation", etc.

Demographics – subheaders can include "Population", "Ethnic groups", "Religion", "Languages", etc.

Culture – subheaders can include "Art", "Literature", "Music", "Sports", "Cuisine", etc.

• Biographies should have the following headers:

Early life

Military career / Political career / Career

Personal life

Death (if deceased)

Legacy (if deceased and applicable)

Other headers could include "Education", "Legal troubles", "Orders and decorations", etc.

Additionally, the "Early life", "Career", and "Personal life" headers can all be grouped under a "Biography" header if the article is short enough.

• Wars and battles should have the following headers:

Background

Prelude (if possible; not the same as background)

Either a single header or multiple headers recounting the events of the war or battle

Aftermath (if concluded)

Vocabulary

• Articles should be written in a neutral point of view. Articles should refrain from condemning/denouncing or praising/promoting the topic. Words such as "terrorist", "extremist", "heretic", "traitor", "hero", "liberator", "freedom fighter", etc. should be avoided unless directly quoting someone.

Similarly, the terms "protest(s)" and "unrest" should be used in place of "peaceful protest(s)", "riot(s)", and "massacre" unless the latter two are the commonly used terms.

• Articles should not be filled with fluff to make the topic more appealing.

Creeperopolis is a country located in Sur. The country is led by Emperor Alexander II and has one of the largest militaries in the world. Creeperopolis has the largest population in the world and often seeks to influence other countries to adhere to its ideology.

Creeperopolis is a great and thriving country located in Sur. The powerful and mighty country is led by the all-powerful Emperor Alexander II and boasts a mighty and fearless military force. Creeperopolis touts the largest population in the world and does not hesitate to broadcast and propagate its vision to the world.

• Do not use euphemisms such as "passed away", "gave his life", "laid to rest", "is/was survived by", etc.
• Avoid relative time references such as "soon", "lately", "15 years ago", "in the future", etc.
• Avoid editorialized adverbs such as "un/fortunately", "tragically", "happily/sadly", "interestingly", etc.

Images

• Images should be relevant to the topic and have appropriate captions.
• Images inside infoboxes should not be inside of thumbs, while images outside of infoboxes should be inside of thumbs.
• Images should not sandwich text between them.
• Images with people should "face the text" whenever possible.
• Image captions should not have a period at the end of them unless they are a complete sentence.

Date formatting

• Only use dmy or mdy date formats, any alterations are not correct.

Y 31 December 1999

Y December 31, 1999

N 31 of December 1999; 1999 December 31; 1999, 31 December; etc

• Only use one date format throughout the article.
• Write out dates and months and write out the full date format.

Y 31 December 1999

Y December 31, 1999

N 1999/12/31; 1999-12-31; Dec 31, 1999; 31 Dec 1999

• When only using a month and year, do not include a comma.

Y December 1999

N December, 1999

• Do not add ordinals in date formats (ie. st, nd, rd, th).

Y 31 December 1999

Y December 31, 1999

N 31st December 1999

N December 31st, 1999

• All years after 100 should not have any letters preceding it (ie. AD or CE). Years 1 to 99 should be followed by AD or CE (not A.D. or C.E.) while the years prior to 1 should be followed by BC or BCE (not B.C. or B.C.E.). Years after 100 should only be followed by AD/CE if the article mentioned years in BC/BCE prior to the first mention of an AD/CE year. AD/CE and BC/BCE should not be written out (Before Christ, Before Common Era, etc.).

Miscellaneous

• Wikilinks to other articles should only be used upon the first mention (excluding the lead).

ie., once Creeperopolis has been linked in an article (excluding the lead), it should not be linked again.

• In biographies, the person's full name should be mentioned at the start of the article.

ie., Alberto Alfredo de Jesús Pacheco y Hernández rather than Alberto Pacheco Hernández

• In all pages, a person's first mention should consist of their first and last names (or the name they are more commonly known by) and be wikilinked. After the first mention, only the person's unlinked last name should be used.

ie., (linked) Sydney Johnson at the first mention, succeeded by (unlinked) Johnson at all subsequent mentions

The only time a person's first and last name should be used throughout an article are when the article mentions two people with the same last name, but all mentions after the first should remain unlinked.

• All non-English text using the Latin alphabet within articles should be italicized, not bold and not regular text.

Y The Creeperian Civil War (Guerra Civil Creeperiano) [...]

N The Creeperian Civil War (Guerra Civil Creeperiano) [...]

N The Creeperian Civil War (Guerra Civil Creeperiano) [...]

All non-English text not using the Latin alphabet within articles should be in regular text, not italicized and not bold.

Y The Creeperian Civil War (Գփերրա Ծիվիլ Ծրեեպերիանո) [...]

N The Creeperian Civil War (Գփերրա Ծիվիլ Ծրեեպերիանո) [...]

N The Creeperian Civil War (Գփերրա Ծիվիլ Ծրեեպերիանո) [...]

• Only the title or other very important words should be translated within articles. Do not translate random words throughout the article.
• Articles need to be properly categorized. The bare minimum categories required for an article are:

[[Category:COUNTRYNAME]]

[[Category:Terraconserva]]

[[Category:WikiProject TRA World Building entries]]