Forum:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style has been superseded by Dragon Ball Wiki:Manual of Style. Please refer to that page for current style guidelines.

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Proposal

Hi everyone. I've noticed a severe lack of consistency in the articles on this wiki. A lot of them are split into sections named simply Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. Some, such as Vegeta have Appearance and History sections and are split up by sagas. Others, like Kuririn had two pages devoted to a single character (I've since merged Krillin into that page).

I'm proposing a manual of style. This would make all articles conform to the same standards and order. I've so far based the one I'm proposing on the manual of style from the manual of style at the Star Wars Wiki (which was, in turn originally based on the Wikipedia style guide. See proposed Manual of Style below and please make some comments. Wildyoda 18:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Layout guide

IU vs OOU

All articles about characters, places, etc. that exist in the Dragon Ball universe should be written In-Universe (as if they were written by someone who lives in Goku's world. IU articles should be written in past tense. Articles about real people (i.e. Akira Toriyama) should be written from an Out-of-Universe perspective in present tense.

In-universe

All in-universe articles should be structured as follows:

Disambig(Templates which direct to other pages someone may be looking for)
Wikipedia(For copied articles)
Introduction/Main article
Behind the scenes (notice the capitalization)
Appearances
Sources
See also
External links
Stub
Category(ies)

OOU articles

Introduction/Main Article
Sources
See also
External links
Category(ies)

Naming articles

There are some rules regarding how articles on the DB Wiki should be named.

As this wiki is written in English, English names take precedence over Japanese-Romaji names. (Note that this differs from the previous standard.) The following order is used when determining which name takes priority, first being most preferable: English anime -> English manga -> Official English video games -> Other English authorized guides (IE, the newly translated Daizenshuu) -> Japanese anime -> Japanese manga -> Official Japanese video games -> Other Japanese authorized guides. When a Japanese title must be used, it should be rendered in Romaji.
Article names should be in singular form, not plural. (Saiyan instead of Saiyans)
The titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character was most commonly known, with later names preferred to earlier names, and full names preferred to partial names or nicknames. Titles, such as military ranks or titles of nobility, should be omitted. (Example: Vegeta instead of Prince Vegeta)
Unless the name of the article contains a proper noun, only the first word should be capitalized.

Using the #

Do not use the # in a link unless you intend to direct to a section of that article with the title after the # as a section. When linking to articles with numbers denoting their order, omit the # sign and simply put the number. Otherwise the software will look for that number as a section title on the page.

Perspective

In-universe

If something is in-universe, or is described as such, it belongs to the Dragon Ball universe exclusively and not into the real world. Characters are for example in-universe, but the voice actors who play them are not in-universe.

Out-of-universe

Out-of-Universe refers to the perspective in which an article is written; it is the opposite of in-universe. Something written from an out-of-universe (OOU) perspective is written from a real life point of view. It will refer, for example, to real life actors, events, television series and so on, acknowledging that its subject is fictional. In contrast, an in-universe perspective will strive for verisimilitude; that is, it will be written as though the author existed within the Star Wars universe. Articles about any in-universe things, such as characters, vehicles, terminology, or species, should always be written from an in-universe perspective. If a section in the article is not, such as the listing of a character's published appearances or behind the scenes details, it should be tagged as such. And only written in the Behind the scenes section. In contrast, articles about books, movies, games, or other real life Dragon Ball material should obviously be written from an out-of-universe perspective, but should still be noted as such. Basically, in-universe articles should never refer to something like the Dragon Ball Z series or a saga within it by name, or any other real life things such as publications, actors, or the like.

Headings

Use the == (heading) markup for headings, not the ''' (bold) markup. Example:

====This is a heading====

which produces:

This is a heading

If you mark headings this way, a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in an article. Sections can be automatically numbered for users with that preference set and words within properly marked headings are given greater weight in searches. Headings also help readers by breaking up the text and outlining the article.

Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lower case.
Avoid links within headings.
Avoid overuse of sub-headings.

Usage and spelling

Though the readers and editors of the DB Wiki speak many varieties of English, we prefer standard American English spelling, punctuation, and word usage.

If the title of an article differs in different varieties of English, the American title should be the article title, with alternate names being used as redirects.

Tense

All in-universe articles should be in past tense.

The reason for this is that the articles on the DB Wiki are presented as historical recordings that have been recorded in the DB universe. As such, all details pertaining to this history have not yet been uncovered, and more information may be added at a later date. Keeping articles written in past tense provides consistency and flavor.

Despite this, do not include phrases like "His ultimate fate is unknown" or "what happened to the Nameks after that is a mystery".

Comments

We can add more details later, but just wanted to see what everyone thinks. —This unsigned comment was made by Wildyoda (talk • contribs) Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

I disagree on the names

I don't think we should go by the English Manga names as they get far too confusing. They are also just as fake as the English Anime names. Not to mention that the movies are not covered by the Manga so we have to choose between the Japanese or the Funimation names. and it becomes one big mess. On normal Wikipedia countless people would revert it back to the Funmation dub name. So our best choice is to leave it as the Funimation names. —This unsigned comment was made by Recoome (talk • contribs) Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

As stated by Wildyoda above, ..."original version of the series, film, etc. in which that character appeared, and not the dub." That's what it says, not manga. This means, no Cui, Krillin, Chiaotzu, Hercule, etc., I definitely have to agree with Wildyoda on using only original, translated, and/or pun names, such as Kiwi and Djinn Boo. Regards —This unsigned comment was made by Burdock (talk • contribs) Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

I've had some history in dealing with name disputes. If you want another view, there was a long debate over at the Narutopedia on what to use for names. The end result is that we used the names from the English Dub. The reason being that the English Dub is what most people are familiar with. Perhaps trying to evaluate the view where most of the readers come from might come up with a good option. But at least in the Wikia Anime Project we basically use Anime:Template:Translation (Roughly a from scratch expansion on WP's Nihongo template) to list out all forms of a name. I can expand it when needed, you could borrow it if you like, the Project is expanding across many of the other Wikia about different Anime, and Manga. Though this one had a large enough community that it didn't get pulled in when I started the project. Oh, to me a stub template always worked best at the bottom of an article. Though that depends on how you've formatted the template, but it's not in the normal location here so I don't know where it is. ~Dantman-local^{(Dantman|local)} Apr 1, 2007 _@ 21:33 ^(UTC)

Sorry to disappoint, English dubbed names should most definitely NOT be used here. The Dragon Ball wikia is supposed to be encyclopedic with uncut and in-depth information. I don't know much about Naruto but using dubbed info is not the right way to unleash complete information about Dragon Ball. Besides, which dub info do you believe should be utilized? FUNimation, Blue Water, Harmony Gold USA, UK dub, The Ocean Group, Malay dub, there are SO MANY English dubs, which one is the right one? I think using the most correct, translated and original form is necessary if we want to unleash the truth about Dragon Ball. Regards - —This unsigned comment was made by Burdock (talk • contribs) Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

Understandable, as long as all forms of the name are documented it's ok. Actually, in a case like that I'd probably expand a new Subbox for my character templates for the WGEP to let all forms be written out. ~Dantman^(talk) Apr 25, 2007 _@ 18:22 ^(UTC)

Just my two cents on this one. I agree with Recoome, Burdock, and Wildyoda. The main question I'm seeing here is this, and I think this appeals to more than just names really: do we work from the original source material or do we work for who we think might be the audience of this wiki. I can see merit to both. Since this is an English wiki, naturally the audience is going to consist of English speakers, so I can see the natural tendency to want to do things "as English as possible." The problem with this approach is that it relies on us trying to determine who the audience is. But can we really do that? Who here is qualified to say what the majority of readers' backgrounds are? Do we assume that most readers have watched almost entirely the funimation dub?; the ocean dub?; any other english dubs?; the original japanese?; the manga exclusively?; somewhere in between? Are we going to survey audiences to determine this? Are a small handful of users just going to come up with a conclusion based on fansites, input, instinct, what their they and their friends like, etc.? There are a lot of "what-ifs" here trying to guess at the audience's backgrounds, and any guess that we (or it might end up just being admins) come up with would more than likely be biased or based on anything less than firm material. I point out what Burdock said about the various translation issues--I would also add writing issues since some of the dubs have parts that have been rewritten or reworked to suit a different audience/age group than the original did. So now I might ask "well by that reasoning, why would going with the original material be any better?" Well, mainly by the fact that it IS the original material. Many edits on many pages I have read indicate that this is an English wiki and that we should go by the English dub material. But remember, that Dragonball was written by Akira Toriyama (apologies for any spelling issues here)--a Japanese author. The manga was originally written in Japanese, and published in Japanese. The Japanese words and storyline in both the manga and anime are directly from Mr. Toriyama's mind. The dubs really are translations of the Japanese material to make that Japanese material more accessible to English speakers. It's a little like classical Greek and Roman works, or medieval works that have been translated hundreds, if not thousands of times, with their various nuances--generally, if the writings can be found in their original form and language, they will take precedence in an academic setting. Now, I grant that this is not an academic setting--Dragonball is entertainment (technically). But I think if we can be precise in that same way, it would be the most effective and far reaching, and if we were, say, discussing Dragonball with an adult or young adult, we could give them summarize as precisely as possible Mr. Toriyama's ideas. Take, for example, the case of the Odyssey, and its central hero. We all know him by his original Greek name, Odysseus (again I apologize for any misspellings as I am writing this rather late)--but many of us also know him by his Roman name Ulysses. So this brings up another point for our Dragonball wiki. Even though the Japanese Manga and Anime are the original material, I would strongly advocate pointing out some of the differences between the two. Since I started working on the Freiza page on November 2nd or 3rd (I can't remember which it was), I have tried to note some these differences, especially considering how wildly the original Japanese Freeza and the English Funimation Frieza differ in personality and demeanor (it's rather amazing how different voice acting and dialogue can shape a character, despite the same set of visual sequences). So on the Frieza page, I (and others) pointed out some of the differences between the two characters, and I think Nonoitall took that and created a separate subsection entitled "Original rendition". This has stood relatively unchanged for the last three months, and each time I read it and have others read it critically, they always appreciate having those differences noted and find it interesting. I think that this approach would add a tremendous amount of credibility to this wiki. Daizenshuu EX does a terrific job with this, I think, in their podcasts that they put out. When they review parts of the Dragonball story, they work with the original material--both manga and anime--but they also note differences from the dubs (they also mention filler inconsistencies, but that's beside the point). Okay, I do apologize for moving to a broader scope than just the naming conventions, but I think this discussion on naming brings up a far larger and more important point about our sources. I have been a little concerned by some of the edits that have to do with this issue from a variety of dates and users. My goal was merely to provide another viewpoint/argument for Recoome's, Burdock's, and Wildyoda's stance on the issue. I quote Burdock once more: 'As stated by Wildyoda above, ..."original version of the series, film, etc. in which that character appeared, and not the dub."' Ultimately, I agree with the folks supporting this view. I'm glad that the Naruto folks got something worked out, but here the original material is the foundation--that's where it all came from. But we can use the original material without becoming exclusive by noting differences. As far as naming goes, we already have taken a step in the right direction by allowing searches identify multiples names with and article (i.e. Frieza, Freeza, Furiza), so ultimately no matter what we decide to use consistently, the search will allow a user to find a character, object, etc. by whatever name he or she knows. I hope all of this adds something little more to this position. If not, I do apologize.

- Temp. (If you feel that this should belong in a forum topic, I would be happy to post there instead. Once again, apologies for any misspellings from a very tired writer. Thanks) Templarion Prime 10:07, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

After reading my points above, I wanted to mention that I am not trying to go after the dubs or to say that they are bad. I do enjoy some of the dubs, in particular the Cell Saga (Trunks' first appearance to Cell's defeat at Gohan's hands). I am also not trying to go after anyone or sully anyone's reputation. My goal above was just to offer some arguments for both naming conventions and writing conventions for the site, and to urge that if any source is going to take precedent that it should be the original source material in a non-exclusive manner. I do sincerely apologize if this came off as an attack on someone, and I want to make clear that in no way was/is this my intention.

Have you looked at Forum:Naming Scheme? There are a lot more discussions on naming there. I personally don't think it would be right to use Toriyama's naming scheme because for example, the names of most techniques derive from video game spin-offs rather than the manga, and anything related to Dragon Ball GT and the films have no manga exposition at all, which is why it's nice to go by the scheme set by all things animated since this covers all three anime series, as well as filler and non-canon film characters, rather than what was exclusive to the Dragon Ball manga. But because the manga is the original source material (more or less, since the manga and anime were produced parallel to each other between early 1986 and late 1995) I completely understand why it would be deemed more appropriate to use the manga naming scheme. But because this wiki is directed towards an English audience (setting aside the discrepancies with the various dubs), I have to oppose the idea of using the names issued by Toriyama or Toei Animation in Japanese source material. I'm sure a solid conclusion can be found to whether to use manga or anime/dub names, but this is an English wiki (and while other language Dragon Ball wikis do exist, I don't see their sizes as any excuse) so as such I think that regardless of who visits the wiki, the key audience we should be striving to appeal to are those with English backgrounds. The purpose of the Translation template and certain fields of Infoboxes are to enlighten readers of the Japanese names for the character, technique, etc. Storm

talk – projects 10:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Headings

In the headings section I disagree on these points:

Avoid links within headings.
- Links in headings are very useful ways of identifying to a reader that a section they are looking at is merely a very short summary of something, and that the real information is located at another larger article. On the Narutopedia pages like w:c:Naruto:Jutsu transclude information from pages list w:c:Naruto:Ninjutsu and the link in the heading is a highly useful method of identifying to a user that they should go to that other article, even more useful than using the {{Main}} template. Please also note that when I use w:c:Naruto:Jutsu#Ninjutsu you are still sent to the section on Ninjutsu even though the actual text inside of the == is [[Ninjutsu]], so adding links has absolutely no negative effects on headings or anchors. ps: Wikia is also going to be upgrading the DPL(DynamicPageList) and one of the new features is a special type of section transclusion. If you place <section begin=info /> and <section end=info /> into a page, you can then use this code to transclude that section into another page, without needing to deal with noinclude, or restrict yourself to including only one thing from another page:

<DPL>
title=Pagename
include=info
</DPL>

~Dantman^(talk) Apr 25, 2007 _@ 18:52 ^(UTC)

Avoid overuse of sub-headings.
- Each heading you use allows you to use an anchor(#) to direct a person to that section of the page. Unfortunately on Wikipedia some character lists do not use sub-headings, this is an example of what negative that has in comparison to one which effectively makes use of sub-headings as deep as needed. Compare Wikipedia:List of Saiyans in Dragon Ball#King Vegeta In which I can use #King Vegeta to send the reader to the King Vegeta character section. While on Wikipedia:List of Code Geass characters#The Black Knights I can only send a reader to a set of characters, I can't use something like Wikipedia:List of Code Geass characters#Karen Stadtfeld to send someone to that character's info. Also note that if a TOC get's to deep, it is possible to limit it's depth to a certain amount. Also note that in that DPL thing I mentioned above, using a # in that include parameter actually will transclude an actual section similarly to how # directs you to that section. So if you use sub-headdings adequately enough you don't even need to use the <section /> tags to transclude information from one page to another. ~Dantman^(talk) Apr 25, 2007 _@ 18:52 ^(UTC)

Titles

About the point:

Article names should be in singular form, not plural. (Saiyan instead of Saiyans)
- There should be a little extra on this. Yes Sayan should be used in singular form because the article about the species. But categories should be plural. Characters, Saiyans, Humans, etc... Should be used as category names as should any article which is not about the specific Species, etc... but about the multiple things within the species such as a list of people in that species. ~Dantman^(talk) Apr 25, 2007 _@ 19:01 ^(UTC)

Stub

What do you guys use to note stubs? I notice that the stub is listed as supposed to be near the top. But that actually depends on what type of Stub template you use. If you'll look over the one the WGEP uses (Which would end up here to if the DBWiki joined the project) at Anime:Template:Stub, you'll see that it's small, sleak, and borderless. Because of how it looks, this template actually makes it's best appearance at the bottom of the content right above the categories. ~Dantman^(talk) Apr 25, 2007 _@ 19:01 ^(UTC)

Yeah, we'll need one of those stub thingys here. - Burdock, the Saiyan

Well, I don't know what you guys are planning to do for a stub template. (The WGEP's one is only copied automatically if the DB Wiki joins the WGEP like the GITS wiki did). But since that Stub location was chosen without consideration that there is no stub template. I'll change it to what many wiki have found has been the best location. ~Dantman^(talk) May 9, 2007 _@ 01:39 ^(UTC)

I don't understand. Will there be a merger happening here? Er, can you create the stub template for the DB wiki or do we have to wait for a possible merger? Burdock

Mergers can't happen without community support. You can easily create your own simple stub template by making the page Template:Stub with something you come up with. You can get ideas by looking at the stub template of other wiki. But it would be helpful to get people to review Joining the WGEP, cause there are a large number of other things which are beneficial. Also, your forum upgrades, are kinda, WGEP dependent. They rely on some of the classes used in the WGEP so that's why they don't look right. ~Dantman^(talk) May 10, 2007 _@ 00:18 ^(UTC)