OverWiki talk:Manual of Style

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Spoilers

I can only repeat past wishes: I hope we can decide upon a spoiler policy so others won't have their experience ruined in the same way as I had mine... --ligemeget 20:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, that should do for now. As of now, spoilers are disallowed in infoboxes and must be placed in the article text instead where it can be properly marked with spoiler tags. --MattyDienhoff 16:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Then I've gone ahead and removed the "death" option from the character infobox - to make sure that people don't unintentionally see when a person die. --ligemeget 22:22, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems rather silly though, as anyone reading ANY wikia article should be smart enough to know spoilers are present. If you don't realize what happenes to Gordon will be said in his article, then maybe you deserve to have it spoiled. Unless spoilers are placed hidden among the info, but that would just be bad style anyways. Just saying, dont want too much info, then dont look at a site thats all about info about it. --Miumaru 07:05, May 21, 2010 (UTC)

past or present tense?

the first example of whether to use past or present tense makes no goddamn sense. it seems like a plot summary, yet the next example uses a "plot summary/walkthrough" setting and uses the opposite tense. this is kind of ambiguous. also, who decided that the slash/ character was unacceptable? if this is about someone's personal aesthetics, then I'm gonna go off and make all kinds of silly rules --fred-104 17:41, 25 August 2008

The difference is, the first example (in which past tense is used) isn't a full plot summary but just describes a particular event, as in "this happened here". Generally, past tense is the way to go whenever describing plot events, and full plot summaries and walkthroughs are rare exceptions to this simply because they're continuous. I thought the distinction was clear enough.

And I don't know who wrote the part about slashes, but it's a good rule of thumb nonetheless. Besides which, it doesn't say they're "unacceptable", just undesirable. Unnecessary use of slashes is just bad writing. Here's a practical example: You decide which looks better:

[The Overwatch Nexus] appears to have been a political building/museum before the Seven Hour War

[The Overwatch Nexus] appears to have been a political building or museum before the Seven Hour War

In my opinion, that's incorrect use of a slash. "Or" works better. That doesn't mean we've outlawed slashes. Use of a slash in 'and/or', for example, is fine.

As always, these are guidelines, not rules, and you're welcome to disagree. But most of this is just common sense. --MattyDienhoff 06:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Dead characters

Shouldn't something be said about using past tense for characters who have died? —Milo Fett^{[morphine administered]} 01:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Well it's kinda obvious to talk about a dead person in the past tense. Klow 01:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Be that as it may, there are some wikis (e.g., Wookieepedia) that put everything in the past tense for NPOV among other things and for wikis involving time travel (e.g., Lost) it gets more complicated. Why not just a few words clarifying it? After all, under the current policy, making you know who's article in the present tense would be completely justifiable. —Milo Fett^{[morphine administered]} 04:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok I'll clarify the whole thing. And you just posted a spoiler, I removed it. Be careful please. And about Wookieepedia, the thing is that the whole thing is set "a long time ago", which justifies the past tense. Klow 11:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't know there was a spoiler policy. But following the same line of thought, isn't Half-Life largely set in 202-? Should we replace everything with future tense? -—Milo Fett^{[morphine administered]} 22:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes and no, that would be weird. Star Trek is set in the future, and Memory Alpha does not use this policy. Klow 22:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. That's a series in the future and everything is in past tense, which also makes sense. So we can't just assume users will know. —Milo Fett^{[morphine administered]} 23:08, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

"Blue" page links

"If the page where the link is supposed to lead to exists, it should be blue." But for some reason it's not. ASBusinessMagnet 14:40, May 13, 2010 (UTC)

Lol, I changed the CSS since then. Corrected. Klow 20:47, May 13, 2010 (UTC)