Standards

Style

Remember that this is Fancyclopedia, not the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Entries should emphasize the significance of the subject to fandom, not merely to science fiction. Entries deemed irrelevant or tangential to fandom may be deleted.

• 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".

Templates

We use mediawiki Templates to collect structured data. For example Template:Person or Template:Convention which should be included with {{person | born=????}} or {{convention}}. The template pages give documentation on the arguments, all of which are optional, though you might get nag messages if obvious things, like the year of a convention, are missed.

Unicode

Mediawiki handles Unicode well, but it can be difficult to find the characters on keyboards, so assume users will be often searching without them. Page names should use the accents in names, places and publications, but a redirect should be written for the ASCII form. Use "'- rather than the typographic “”‘’— in titles, more freedom is allowed in the content.

People

We have a more-or-less standard approach for people entries. (Notes are in <pointy brackets>):

(July 4, 1932 – July 31, 1999) '''Joe Phan''', a [[New York]] [[fan]] of the 1950s.... Blah, blah, blah. Lorem ipsum...<ref>says me</ref> <The biography goes here. It may be short or it may occupy hundreds of lines. If long, subheadings make for better readability.> {{fanzines}} <skip this section altogether if empty> * [[Fanzine 1]] [1973-77] * [[Apazine 2]] [1988-95] (for [[FAPA]]) * [[Fanzine 3]] [1994] (with [[Another Fan]]) {{recognition}} <skip this section altogether if empty> * 1989 -- [[Fantasticon 3]] <a GoHship> * 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 nominations for Hugo Awards, where nomination itself is notable, skip minor pro awards> <references /> {{person | born=1932 | died=1999}} [[Category:fan]] [[Category:US]] <or whatever> [[Category:Filk]] <as appropriate>

Publications

Description<ref>really</ref>

{{prizes}}
* 1990 -- '''[[1990 Best Novel Hugo|Best Novel Hugo]]'''

<references />
{{publication | year = 1978}} or {{publication | start=1978 | end=1992}}
[[Category:Fanzine]] <or whatever>
[[Category:US]] <or whatever>

Locales

Countries, states, cities (hotels and houses should be Venues). Describe the fannish activity that has happened there, but it should read like a place, not like a group. Don't create locale unless it has fannish significance. Specifically, if the only thing you can say about a locale is "Such-and-such convention was held in X" it should not get a locale page.

It is common for larger cities to have suburbs or nearby cities in which fannish events happened. Do not create a separate locale for each of them, but add a redirection to the main city. For example, "Boston, MA" is a locale. The Boston suburbs of Cambridge, Brookline, Waltham, Newton, Danvers also all hosted Boston-area conventions or clubs. All of them should redirect to Boston.

(How far away is far away enough to warrant a separate locale? It's a judgment call, and depends on how the fandom in that area views it. Always ask, "How do the people themselves see themselvs?" If you don't know the answer to that, a good rule is to ask yourself how you'd explain it to a person unfamiliar with the area. (E.g. if a convention was held in Downers Grove and someone in London asked you where it was held would you say (always assuming you wanted to inform) "Downers Grove, IL" or "a Chicago suburb"?

Venues

Hotels and houses. Use the current name for hotels that have changed name. (Old names of the hotel should redirect to the current name.)

Like with locales, venues should be created only when a site has more than trivial importance, where you could tell a fannish story about the site rather than just saying "Five X-cons were held there in the 90s."

Page titles

Mediawiki titles are case sensitive (unlike Wikidot), 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:

Use lower case: a an and at but by for in of on or the to up

Capitalize: 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

We will create redirects in Mediawiki as necessary to redirect different usage to the standard, titlecase forms, e.g. "SF writer" will redirect 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" (it is less ambiguous, but also much less commonly 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 if 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

How do we handle more than one page with the same name? This is pretty complicated, alas, and we have a page devoted to just this topic.

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, Ratatosk, 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}}
{{Ratatosk | issue=35 | page=2}}
{{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

So, for example, "Con runner" redirects to "Con Fandom". Note that we make a point of using the term "conrunners" in the Con Fandom page and we make it bold. This helps the reader who expected a definition of "con runner" to find it.

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.

Year links should be avoided in tables or lists.

You may come across year of death as a link in the top line, this is being phased out in favour of died=XXXX in the person template. If you don't know the year, either omit or use ????

The exception for using year of publication is for fan-fund trip reports and fanhistory articles, when the dates the events occurred should be used.

Sequences

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

{{convention | series=Picocon | before=Picocon 32 | after=Picocon 34 | series1=Eurocon | before1=Eurocon 10 | after1=Eurocon 12}}

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

A link going dead is not a reason to remove it. Please avoid using url shortening services, as that introduces another point of failure, and negates the use of using the Internet Archive.