Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions

This page serves as the central hub for standards used in writing articles on Battlestar Wiki. Initially, it will probably consist of a lot of gesturing and debating on the talk page. Once a reasonable approximation of consensus is achieved on a topic, information about it will be moved here. Feel free to bring up new convention questions on the talk page.

This page is not designed to supercede other Project Pages. Some over-lap is expected, but project-specific standards and conventions should be moved to their project page, if one exists or a page created for a project, if one does not.

Spelling and Numbers

Prefer the American spellings of words as much as possible. This is arbitrary, but a call had to be made.

Use "the Twelve Colonies" or "the Colonies" rather than "the 12 Colonies" as it is the name of a sovereign government like "the United States." Likewise, "Colonial" should always be capitalized thusly, although "colony" remains uncapitalized for the same reason we do not capitalize "state" when referring to one of the United States.

Numbers should use a period (.) for decimal places and a comma (,) for marking every three digits (e.g. 3,600 or 54,345,277). For ease of reading, such use of commas is encouraged. Numbers less than 11 should generally be written out long hand (i.e. seven, not 7).

Character Names

Characters should be introduced with both first and last name the first time they are mentioned in an article. Subsequent referalls may abbreviate to the last name. Never use only the first name when the last name is known (ie, "Kara Thrace" or "Thrace", but never "Kara").

There are two currently active characters who share the same last name: Bill and Lee Adama; and Saul and Ellen Tigh. It is often tempting to refer to Lee and Ellen by their first names, and (Bill) Adama and (Saul) Tigh by their last. At the battlestar wiki, we find this somewhat condescending.

Where neccessary, characters sharing the same last name should both be introduced using full names, and may subsequently be referred to with first names. For example, in a single article, Ellen Tigh and Saul Tigh should be introduced thusly. Every time after that, they should be Ellen and Saul, respectively. When Saul and Ellen don't shown up in the same article, the one that does, of course, gets to be "Tigh".

The only exception is that on a character's own page, they have precedent to their last name. All others with the same last name may be referred to by their first name.

Other acceptable means for disambiguation include rank (Commander Adama vs. Captain Adama) and callsign (Adama vs. Apollo). Callsigns are appropriate for summaries and military data, but not for biographies.

Ships

Ship names should be italicized (e.g. Galactica). Military ships generally receive no article (i.e. "Galactica" not "the Galactica") and civilian ships generally do receive an article (i.e. "the Rising Star" not "Rising Star"). There are some exceptions to this (e.g. Colonial One). This italicization includes the possesive marker and other endings added to a ship's name (e.g. Galactica's, not Galactica's). Mostly, ships are female and so use of "she" and "her" is encouraged, though not mandated.

When discussing Vipers, use of either "Mark" or "Mk." is acceptable, though "mk." is just sloppy. Also, roman numerals are preferred. Thus, "Viper Mark II" or "Viper Mk. VII" but not "Viper mk. 2".

Verb Tense

In almost every case, the present tense should be used when relating events occuring in an episode (e.g. Baltar shoots Crashdown in the back in order to save Cally's life). This is in line with the traditional style used to discuss literary works of fiction and the reasons it is employed for those kinds of articles entirely apply here.

Exceptions can be made for articles dealing with historical events, where present tense can impede narrative flow.

Links to Episodes

When referring to episodes in text, use quote marks. This helps keep them distinct from other text. This is especially useful for unwieldly episode name such as "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I".

• Example: "In the episode "Pegasus", Galactica finds Pegasus

When using an episode to cite a source, use parenthesis with no quotes. Citations go inside punctuation.

• Example: "Galactica finds Pegasus (Pegasus)."

Signing Your Work

Don't. Battlestar Wiki is a collaboration of many writers. Be proud of your contributions, but do not take ownership of articles. Signatures will be removed without debate.

Images

Pictures are desirable wherever their use is appropriate. Character pictures are currently being handled on the Battlestar Wiki:Characters project. Other articles needing images are listed here. Bear in mind that Battlestar Wiki already hosts a large selection of images - try to find something appropriate from what's already been uploaded before uploading a new image.

• Uniform
  • Can probably find some good examples in the Characters project.
• Pyramid
  • There's a wide shot of the court before Thrace and Anders play that would be nice.
• Blackbird
  • Images when under construction & in flight --Day 18:13, 4 October 2005 (EDT)

    Though, there's no in-flight picture since it's hard to see in the dark, making for bad pics.