Category talk:Help

Fanlore needs a style guide

Something that's been on my mind for a while is that I believe that Fanlore needs a unified style guide, much like Wikipedia's manual of style. The lack of a style guide makes Fanlore hard to get started for new editors, as they have to learn how things are formatted through browsing pages and observing editing practices. When a new editor asks "how is X formatted?", I want to be able to point them to a definitive article, not dig through Discord and talk pages for when the current conventions were established.

Some of the existing Help and policy pages serve a similar purpose to a style guide, but they're not intuitively named or structured, and a lot of information is scattered about on different pages. For example, to find the guideline to say "please don't use promotional images" you need to look under Fanlore:What Fanlore is not; it would be reasonable for someone to assume that this information is found on Help:Images, Help:Fanart, Fanlore:Fanlore's purpose and image policy, or Fanlore:Image Policy.

Something that I want to note about this suggestion is that I do not think a style guide should mean that all contributions need to follow said style guide to a T. Some people will add content to Fanlore, some people will format it, some people will add categories, and that's fine. It's better for people to be bold and add content then be restrained by rules. Sometimes a style guide's guidelines won't be applicable, and that's fine as well. Instead, a style guide will ensure that people who do want to clean up and make formatting changes and make articles more consistant will have a point of reference. A style guide would just apply to spelling and grammatical conventions either; Wikipedia's style guide covers best practices for choosing images, using gender-neutral language, and how to identify people in an article, among other topics (the latter two I think would be very beneficial guidelines to have on Falore). Pinky G Rocket (talk) 20:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Adding on to this, to readdress the topic the previously mentioned counterargument that a style guide is restrictive and difficult for new editors, Wikipedia itself outlines that the manual of style is a guideline, and that content is more important than formatting. From Wikipedia's help page on the introduction to the style guide:

Remember, the MoS is a guideline; you don't need to have the whole thing memorized! It's there to assist you when you're unsure how to best display information, and to minimize arguments if another editor disagrees with your formatting choices.

Content is more important than formatting, and other editors can assist you if you're in doubt (similarly, assume good faith when others help by formatting your writing).

Although it is important to follow the MoS where possible, verifiable content is more important than formatting!

Pinky G Rocket (talk) 21:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with a lot of the points you've made here, Pinky. But as a compromise/to start with, maybe we can start by making guidelines and "good examples" more findable? E.g. Copying that "please don't use promotional images" guideline over to the image-related help pages you've linked. But overall, i'm interested in helping make a more concrete, searchable, easy-to-use-and-direct-people-to Style guide/explainer. -- Quaelegit (talk) 01:40, 29 September 2023 (UTC)