Weekly Wiki Update - Sunday, September 28th 2014.

It is Sunday which means it is weekly wiki update day. This week was another pretty slow week for me when it comes to wiki editing, but I did manage to do some things.

This week I ended up adding a few games which I found while out hunting at thrift stores. The first game I bought that was not in the wiki was The Land Before Time: Great Valley Racing Adventure. It is interesting to see another on foot racing game as those always intrigue me. This game seems pretty simple and boring, but I will find out for myself when I play it. I also ended up making a franchise page for The Land Before Time as I noticed there have been a few games based on the series.

The second game I bought that I had to add was Horse Illustrated Championship Season. This one was the strangest of all the games I found. I had never heard of it or seen it before. It appears to be a simulation game in which you raise and train horses to compete in competitions. I will be installing this one for sure.

And the last game I bought was Rescue Copter for the PlayStation. I am not sure if this game is going to be any fun because the thought of playing a simulation of a rescue helicopter doesn't sound too appealing to me.

Other than adding those games I just did some minor edits here and there and some more work on empty pages. I would like to point everyone in the direction of the blog that @mento posted about his work on the wiki as it is an interesting read. Anyone else out there doing some fine fine wiki editing? Let us know!

Just bits and pieces here and there for me. More random PC games and more adding games to the CGA concept page.

And yes, that is some great work Mento did :D

have we got any more thoughts about what I mentioned last week about the Bobafett Wiki Blog Crew trying to piece together the style guide ourselves? I suppose I'll post the list I posted last week:

• American spellings only.
• No altering the format of headings - do not use bold, italic, underline, etc... on any of the headings).
• Action-adventure not action/adventure.
• PlayStation not Playstation.
• No italicising/bolding/underlining game names.
• No personal opinions.
• A single space after a period, never two.
• Everything should be in present tense, unless it is a game that absolutely cannot be played anymore by anyone (eg: discontinued MMOs, Curiosity).
• Video games, not videogames.
• 2D and 3D, not 2-D or 3-D (unless it is a part of a proper noun).

Something to look at is Wikipedia's style guide.

@beachthunder: Those all sound good to me. Also, what about dates? I like the format you posted in the last blog with "September 22, 2014" but what about others opinions?

Also what would be the way people would prefer decades, such as 1980s or 1980's? In Chrome it tells me 1980s is incorrect and 1980's is correct. I don't really care either way, but we should probably pick one.

Hey, thanks guys. It also puts an end to constantly bringing up its progress in these Wiki Updates too, so there's another upside.

@beachthunder: I've jotted some notes on what I'd want to see in a style guide, but it's ultimately up to Jeff. I'm sure he wouldn't mind the input though. I feel the ones you've listed are pretty important ones that would be in it regardless.

Here's a few of mine, mostly picked up from stuff Jeff's said in the past or told to me by other editors:

• No second person. Use "the player" or "[character name]". When referring to the player, use non-gendered pronouns like "they" and "their". "He/she"'s probably technically more right, but it reads awkwardly.
• Italics for the titles of non-game media, like movies or comics. Unless they're a franchise (like "Batman"), in which case leave out the formatting and link to the franchise page instead.
• No Japanese script (kana/kanji) in titles or releases; just in aliases. Avoid macrons, circumflexes and accents in page titles too, unless they're written that way on the box art (like Pokémon or Ōkami).
• Currently, if a game has an ampersand ("Pocky & Rocky"), add a request to put the non-ampersand "and" version in as an alias. Search engine's currently finicky about ampersands.
• Every page needs headers. Overview's the standard for all pages, and Gameplay's the next most important for game pages. Other headers vary depending on the page type.
• Image stuff: Tag all screenshots as both "Screenshots" and "x Screenshots", where x is the platform. Manual scans are prohibited because of copyright reasons (that's probably less style guide than core rules stuff, though). Box art, concept art and promotional stuff is fine, but I think magazine scans are out for a similar reason as manual scans.
• Default Image: As in, the box art that the site uses for the search engine icon. I believe the current preference is using the oldest (preferably original) US release. If there's no US release, go Europe. If no US or Europe, go Japan. If the game was launched on multiple platforms on the same day, go with first platform to come out chronologically (360 for last gen, WIIU/PS4 for this one).

I'm missing stuff, I'm sure. And, yeah, there's no guarantee any of these will stick if Jeff has other plans. I can see why this can intimidate folk away from contributing. Hell, I only fill out half the release info in most cases, there's just so much there to look up.

(Regarding double spacers: the site actually automatically fixes that, except in decks for some reason. If you see a page full of double spaces after periods, just hit edit and immediately hit save changes to make them all go away.)

Also "1980s" is correct, as is "DVDs" or "letter Ts". Apostrophes are for possessives and contractions only.

@mento: Those are good too. Although, I don't think there should be an Overview if there is no body text. It looks really wrong to have a heading with nothing under it.

Other headings (if needed) should be Story (we should stick to "Story", rather than "Plot", since there seems to be more of a precedent for it, we definitely need to stick to one though), "Development", "Characters", etc... I have been changing "Trivia" sections to "Additional Information"; the term 'trivia' has connotations of random information thrown out there just for the sake of it. But really, those sections should not exist, if possible.

Also, about default images, I think the pecking order is: box art; if none, then official image from distribution platform (eg. Steam header image); if none, then official logo; if none, then title screen; if none, then image from the starting area.

The only reason to use apostrophes is if you're abbreviating the year, such as '80s.

@beachthunder:

I'll get back on this, later this week.

Had major stuff to deal with this week at work.

So I just noticed we are up to 1000 pages of games now. That is a lot of games, almost 44,000 of them.

Also, there are times where I can not get a hold of a good quality version of the first cover so I will go with the next available one that is of good quality.

With Hyrule Warriors finally out, I've made even more edits to the page for the game and I imagine I'll probably still be tweaking it in the near future. I also fleshed out the page for the antagonist Cia, and just now gave the Dark Link page a major refresh, as it suffered from the age-old issue of second-person. I also gave the Dark Link page a better default image, as it used to be an oddly cropped close-up of his blocky old Ocarina of Time model.

As for other pages, I created a page for Cactair, and then went to the Cactuar concept page and cleaned up the text in that quite a bit. I also wrote full articles for the recently renamed Post-Credits Plot Twist and Lunar Cycle.

@hailinel: Great stuff! I had no idea who or what Cactair was so I checked out the page. Seems like an interesting character and I kind of love the idea of a Cactuar with an afro.

It's very amusing. The first time I came across the Cactair, I was pleasantly stunned by the sheer absurdity of it.