Standards

Fixme

Style

• Don't write entries describing events as current or future ("is currently", "in a forthcoming"), as they will become confusing with time. The exception is conventions that can say "will be held".

People

(1932 -- [[1999]])  

Biography

{{recognition}}  
* 1990 -- '''[[1990 Best Novel Hugo|Best Novel Hugo]]''' for ''Waterworld''  
* 1991 -- [[1991 Best Novel Hugo|Best Novel Hugo]] nominee for ''Fireworld''  
* 1992 -- [[Filk Hall of Fame]]  
(Award winners only. Only mention nomination for Hugo Awards, where nomination itself is notable)

{{person}}
[[Category:fan]]
[[Category:US]]
[[Category:Filk]]

Page titles

Wikidot is case insensitive when linking to pages, Mediawiki is case sensitive, so we need to be consistent in page names. They should be in title case, which keeps conjunctions and prepositions in lower case. Read up on it here

If uncertain about a phrase, type it in www.titlecase.com which reports for AP-style:

a an and at but by for in of on or the to up

Above About Across Against Along Among Around As Before Behind Below Beneath Beside Between Beyond Down During Except From Inside I Into Is It Like Near Off Since Toward Through Under Until Upon With Within

Or we could use the New York Manual of style as implemented in python module titlecase which has a command-line titlecase which produces

a an and as at but by for in of on or the to

Above About Across Against Along Among Around Before Behind Below Beneath Beside Between Beyond Down During Except From Inside I Into Is It Like Near Off Since Toward Through Under Until Up Upon With Within

We will create redirects in Mediawiki to redirect different usage to the titlecase forms, eg SF writer to SF Writer.

Acronyms/Initialisms should be in ALL CAPS

The Naming of Names

Names are important, since we want all references to a person or place or thing to go to that P/P/T's page. For that reason we have a simple set of rules for links:

• Pages should be created under the most commonly used form of a name, and where two versions are comparably commonly used, we will use the less ambiguous version. Examples:

# "Walt Willis", not "Willis" or "Walter A. Willis" (less ambiguous, but also much less used) or "WAW" # "E. E. Smith", not "Doc Smith" or "Edward Elmer Smith, PhD" # "LASFS", not "Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society" (Everyone calls it "LASFS".)

• When using initials, use periods and put spaces between them. So "E. E. Smith", not "EE Smith".
• When you are dealing with an ambiguous reference, create a link using an unambiguous form. So of the reference was "When Walt got back to Belfast," you would link it as "When Walt got back to Belfast,".
• When multiple forms of a name exist, add redirects from the lesser-used forms to the main page.
• Use redirects only where the form being redirected is reasonably unique. So, we would not redirect "Walt" to "Walt Willis" because there are other well-known Walts in Fancy. But we would redirect "Willis" in spite of their being other Willises -- none of the rest would likely be referred to by last name alone.

A redirect makes a page just a pointer to another page. If we've written up a page named "E. E. Smith", we also want references to "Doc Smith" to point there. We do this by creating a "Doc Smith" page and redirecting it to the "E. E. Smith" page.

A redirect is done by putting the line

#REDIRECT [[E. E. Smith]]

on the page.

(Feel free to ignore this -- the editors will be scurrying around behind the scenes adding redirects as necessary.)

Clashing Names

If a name is used for two things, don't put them on the same page. The better known item can have the main page, others should have have a (caveat) in the title, as in

Windycon

(Did you mean the [[Windycon (NZ)|New Zealand Natcon]]?)

Description

Windycon (NZ)

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Windycon}}
(Did you mean the annual Chicago convention [[Windycon]]?)

Description

The DISPLAYTITLE is what appears at the top of the page and in links, so you just refer to [[Windycon (NZ)]] and it will show Windycon on the page.

If there are lots of clashes, like with Unicon, create a special disambiguation page

(Did you mean [[Unicon (UK)|British]], [[Unicon (Australia)|Australian]], [[Unicon (MD)|Maryland]], [[Unicon (CA)|Californian]], [[Unicon (KC)|Kansas City]] or [[Unicon (FL)|Florida]] conventions of that name?)

Or do you know of yet another one!
{{choice}}

It will show all the incoming links to that page, which we aim to correct to the direct route.

The (caveat) should be things like (NZ) (Weston fanzine) (clubzine)

References to Publications

Fancy has the hope of -- eventually -- automatically linking from references to publications in its articles to the publication itself on its companion site, fanac.org. To prepare for that day, we have a simple standard for a very few fanzines and convention publication references. Currently only File 770, Ansible and The National Fantasy Fan (TNFF)

To refer to a fanzine as a whole (that is, not to a specific issue) use

[[File 770]]

To refer to a specific issue use

{{File770 | issue=23}}

To refer to a specific page, use

{{File770 | issue=23 | page=4}}
{{Ansible | issue=23 | item=4}}
{{TNFF | volume=5 | number=6 | page=12 | text=description}}

The template adds leading 0s as required.

Is there already a page for that?

Don't create pages for "X, someone who does Y", just create a redirect X that points to Y. If something has no independent existence, like awards only given at a particular convention, or someone's pet, add detail to the parent page. The site is about fandom, don't create pages about they things fans do in the rest of their lives

Year links

Use links to year pages very sparingly. Any years in the bottom templates will become links automatically, don't duplicate the links in the article body.

For fanzines and publishers the year it was first published/founded (and restarted if significant)

For a person, their year of death.

Year links should be avoided in tables or lists.

Don't have year links before 1900.

Sequences

To provide links forward and backwards in a sequence of conventions, awards etc, use:

{{convention | before=Picocon 32 | after=Picocon 34}}

Future proofing external site links

External website links are fickle, so we want a way to use the Internet Archive as a backup. Use:

{{link | website=http://www.nesfa.org/boskone}}

or

{{link | website=http://www.nesfa.org/boskone|text=Excellent Website|capture=2018}}
  

to give Website and Excellent Website

The link will be shown in hover text with the Internet Archive as an optional extra (IA)

A link going dead is not a reason to remove it.