Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions/Formatting

This page is one of Battlestar Wiki's many projects. This page serves to coordinate discussion on a particular aspect of this Wiki. The formal recommendations of a project may be treated as policies.

Battlestar Wiki's Standards and Conventions
Standards for...
Overview ... Page Formatting ... Article Prose and Grammar ... Cast and Crew Biographies ... Episode Guides ... Disambiguations ... Quote of the Day pages

HTML vs. Wiki code

Main article: Battlestar Wiki:Markup

The usage of Wiki code supersedes the use of HTML coding on Battlestar Wiki. Wiki code is faster to type and, if everything is in wiki code, allows changes to cascade automatically in the event that a format or style is modified, thus reducing mass re-edits to all pages during a huge update.

Especially, <b> and <i> should always be replaced by their wiki code equivalents (''' and '', respectively).

For a tutorial on coding and formatting using Wiki code, see: Battlestar Wiki: Tutorial (Formatting).

Images

All episode screenshots are copyright NBC/Universal or Universal Studios, and should be credited as such on image pages. If you upload an image, make sure you tag it correctly. You can do that by following the correct formats on the official policy on image tagging.

Images 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 at Battlestar Wiki Media:Requested Images.

Category Rules

Main article: Battlestar Wiki:Categories

All manually entered categories for any page should be in alphabetical order: 0-9 then A-Z. Categories should go below templates (if it's the last item) and before BW:FA and BW:QA templates, All interwiki language links should be last and should also be in alphabetical order. Interwiki links are maintained by Interwiki Bot.

All categories up to the "parent" category should be included. For example, Colonial One has all of these cats:

{{Ships}} ↔

[[Category:A to Z]] ¿
[[Category:Colonial]] *
[[Category:Colonial Craft]]
[[Category:Colonial Craft (RDM)]]
[[Category:Ships]] *
[[Category:Ships (RDM)]]
[[Category:RDM]]

{{quality article}} ↔
{{featured article}} ↔

or

[[de:Colonial One]] ‡

The categories marked with a * are the parent categories, because the next category after that is "A to Z" in which is included in all article pages. The A to Z ¿ category is always first and always included on every page.

Note: The "Ships" template ({{Ships}}) is before the categories. The one interwiki link for Colonial One is after "RDM" category but before the featured and quality article templates. The FA and QA templates are not used if the article conforms to "Real Point of View" rules. If a template auto-creates "categories", place the template in-between the categories so that it would not break the alphabetical order of the categories.

From "Antibiotics"...

[[Category:A to Z]]

{{Drugs}}

[[Category:Technology]]
[[Category:Technology (RDM)]]
[[Category:Terminology]]
[[Category:Terminology (RDM)]]
[[Category:RDM]]

By doing this, this allows people to browse by series or non-series if they goto the category view.

RDM                              TOS                             Ships
|- Colonial Craft (RDM)   |- Colonial Craft (TOS)  |- Ships (TOS)
|- Ships (RDM)               |- Ships (TOS)              |- Ships (RDM)

The only time that this does not apply is to the series category. TOS, TSC, 1980, RDM, Comics, and Video Game should be be the last category added and this is also the list of the "top level" categories on Battlestar Wiki. If the article contains more than one series or genre, make sure they they are in this order also. This includes any double categories as shown by the example for Richard Hatch:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatch, Richard}}
[[Category:A to Z]]
[[Category:Cast]]
[[Category:Cast (TOS)]]
[[Category:Cast (TSC)]]
[[Category:Cast (RDM)]]
[[Category:TOS]]
[[Category:TSC]]
[[Category:RDM]]

Pages that are lists should be categorized in their sub-category itself with |*, but not when you add the [[Category:Lists]]. It makes the lists the first items in the category view.

Individuals and characters with proper names should be sorted by last name, then first and middle names. To achieve this, use:

{{DEFAULTSORT:lastname, firstname middlename}}

You may still override the default sort by piping the [[Category:]] syntax like so:

[[Category:A to Z|Hatch, Richard]]

Be sure to check your work. Make sure there aren't other sub-categories that you can add to to the article to make navigation and reference easier. Categories are an easy and powerful addition to every article, so be sure to be thorough.

Caprica (series)

All Caprica series related articles should have Caprica (series) category before RDM as it is not a top level category.