several suggestions

Hi there, i've just got into LOGH and i've contributed a few bits to the wiki already, but in doing so i've noticed what i think are several areas that are in major need of improvement. I wanted to bring them up here because obviously it's not my wiki and i don't want to go around messing up your site. :)

So here are my main points of concern:


1. This forum.
Requiring someone to register a separate account on a separate Web site to discuss wiki-related issues is very irregular. Wikia/MediaWiki provide facilities for doing this directly from the wiki, which offers several obvious benefits that i'm sure i don't need to explain. I really would recommend creating something similar to Memory Alpha's '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' for site-related discussion like this.


2. Citations.
I've noticed that there are no citations for really anything on the wiki. I really think this should be required (or at the very least encouraged) by policy. The obvious benefit of this is accuracy, but it is also helpful as a reference to regular people. I have started adding episode citations for the photos i'm uploading — see for example the 'caption' below [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — but i'm basically making it up as i go along, since obviously there is no standard.

There are a couple ways of going about this; e.g., Bulbapedia uses episode codes/numbers ('EP001' or 'AG092'), and Memory Alpha uses a series code and the episode title ('TNG: "Genesis"' or 'VOY: "Endgame"'). Personally i don't have a preference, since they both have their merits (Bulbapedia's way is more compact, MA's is more informative). But i think you need something like this.


3. Japanese.
Bulbapedia does something that i think this wiki should do as well: include Japanese names of everything at the beginning of pages. For example, the page for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] starts like this:

Ash Ketchum (Japanese: サトシ Satoshi)

Since LOGH is a Japanese production, naturally this fits well here too.


4. Episode pages.
I suspect that these are only missing because someone just hasn't got around to it yet, but i think the episode pages need to be a priority. I recommend, again, something in the vein of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] or [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — a short description and photo up at the top, a side bar with navigation and things, a synopsis, background information, possibly a music section (just a thought), and then references/categories. Also, for consistency's sake, every episode page should end with the string ' (episode)'.


5. Policy/MOS.
Lastly, all of this kind of stuff needs to be compiled into a very detailed policies or 'manual of style' sort of page that is accessible from the side bar. You've already got a bit of this on the front page (about translations and number formats and such), but this should be more complete and should answer every possible question.


I guess that's a lot, and i know this is a fairly niche subject compared to Star Trek or Pokémon, so it will be heaps of work, but i am willing to help out in any way possible. I just don't want to take it over and change everything against your will.

Let me know how you feel!

kine wrote:Hi there, i've just got into LOGH and i've contributed a few bits to the wiki already, but in doing so i've noticed what i think are several areas that are in major need of improvement. I wanted to bring them up here because obviously it's not my wiki and i don't want to go around messing up your site.

It's all good. I mainly started up this wiki because no one else had, and I felt LoGH deserved one. I'm really not too terribly familiar with wiki processes, so I need all the help I can get. Thanks for your contributions!

kine wrote:1. This forum.
Requiring someone to register a separate account on a separate Web site to discuss wiki-related issues is very irregular. Wikia/MediaWiki provide facilities for doing this directly from the wiki, which offers several obvious benefits that i'm sure i don't need to explain. I really would recommend creating something similar to Memory Alpha's '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' for site-related discussion like this.

Irregular? Hm, okay. I did it because the whole wikitalk thing seemed too confusing to me. I don't like it, even on just an aesthetic level. As for the 'ten forward' type thing, I'll look into it, but as I've said, I'm not really familiar with the processes. I'm pretty busy with exams this week, but I'll make the forum open in the meanwhile.

kine wrote:2. Citations.
I've noticed that there are no citations for really anything on the wiki. I really think this should be required (or at the very least encouraged) by policy. The obvious benefit of this is accuracy, but it is also helpful as a reference to regular people. I have started adding episode citations for the photos i'm uploading — see for example the 'caption' below [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — but i'm basically making it up as i go along, since obviously there is no standard.

Yeah, that's a good idea. It's just something that didn't occur to me when I set up the 150-some-odd pages in a mad rush to get content. For the most part, all of the info I contributed is from the anime--it's me at my PC with an episode/ova open on one side of the screen, and the wiki in the other. In the future, I'll be sure to include references. I'm not too keen on the "EP001" in brackets, though. Aesthetically, it doesn't look too good. Wikia allows footnotes, right? Let's use those.

Now, the ship information--virtually ALL of it, particularly the stats (length, weapons, etc.) should be treated as QUESTIONABLE. That information came from a Japanese fansite that has since vanished from the net (or at least I've lost the bookmark and haven't been able to find it again). I have scanned some info books that appear to talk, at great length, about the ships, but I haven't had time to translate them yet.

kine wrote:There are a couple ways of going about this; e.g., Bulbapedia uses episode codes/numbers ('EP001' or 'AG092'), and Memory Alpha uses a series code and the episode title ('TNG: "Genesis"' or 'VOY: "Endgame"'). Personally i don't have a preference, since they both have their merits (Bulbapedia's way is more compact, MA's is more informative). But i think you need something like this.

I think the best way would be a hybrid. Something like, "Episode XXX: Title." Just giving a number is too vague, but leaving the number out makes it hard to determine where the episode fits in chronologically.

Say, for example, someone wants to look up fact Y. Fact Y is cited from Episode Z. If the Episode citation has a number on it, that person can easily tell whether or not he or she has already seen it--if he or she has seen it, no problem, he or she can go to that page and explore it at ease. But without a number... what if that leads to a page of an episode he or she has NOT seen yet? That's a situation where spoiler can occur, and I think that should be avoided. (I've probably explained that very poorly: I'm sorry).

kine wrote:3. Japanese.
Bulbapedia does something that i think this wiki should do as well: include Japanese names of everything at the beginning of pages. For example, the page for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] starts like this:

Ash Ketchum (Japanese: サトシ Satoshi)

Since LOGH is a Japanese production, naturally this fits well here too.

Yes. Of course. 100%. But why is Satoshi written in katakana? It's not a foreign word.....
Anyway, as a rule of thumb: Japanese names should be written as they appear in Japanese--that means Kanji. For phonetic pronunciation aid, hiragana can also be used. Katakana should ONLY be used for non-Japanese names (so, on the fiction side of things. Katakana should never appear--probably--on the production side of things).

Speaking of which, I'd like to see a LOT more content/translations of production-related material. I know there are a lot of guidebooks and interviews floating about: let's find them.

kine wrote:4. Episode pages.
I suspect that these are only missing because someone just hasn't got around to it yet, but i think the episode pages need to be a priority. I recommend, again, something in the vein of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] or [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] — a short description and photo up at the top, a side bar with navigation and things, a synopsis, background information, possibly a music section (just a thought), and then references/categories. Also, for consistency's sake, every episode page should end with the string ' (episode)'.

Yeah. It has been my absolute lowest priority. I'll make a few right now just to get a template up.
As for the episode pages themselves, synopsis, quotes and background information are all great--but I think identifying the music is DEFINITELY a top priority.

Well, maybe that's just me. I love classical music.

kine wrote:5. Policy/MOS.
Lastly, all of this kind of stuff needs to be compiled into a very detailed policies or 'manual of style' sort of page that is accessible from the side bar. You've already got a bit of this on the front page (about translations and number formats and such), but this should be more complete and should answer every possible question.

That sounds like a lot of work. You volunteering?

kine wrote:I guess that's a lot, and i know this is a fairly niche subject compared to Star Trek or Pokémon, so it will be heaps of work, but i am willing to help out in any way possible. I just don't want to take it over and change everything against your will.

Let me know how you feel!

Well, as long as you're able to be reasonable about everything, we shouldn't ever have any problems. Like I've said, I'm really still new to the whole wikia thing, so I'm pretty desperate for help. Most of the early preparation work for the wiki was done on /m/, where everyone's anonymous, so it's kind of hard to stay in touch with contributors. (A lot of the novel stuff, for example, was courtesy of anonymous--so I've got no sources for that).

The biggest problem with LoGH being niche is that information is very hard to come by--in English, most certainly, but also in Japanese. It doesn't help that so few people can translate from Japanese. Can you? My own Japanese is... middling, at best. That terrible, terrible kanji.

Canary wrote:I'm really not too terribly familiar with wiki processes, so I need all the help I can get.

I am not like a master-level wiki expert either, but i'd say i'm pretty knowledgeable about it. At the very least i am familiar with how other entertainment-related wiki sites are run!

Canary wrote:Irregular? Hm, okay. I did it because the whole wikitalk thing seemed too confusing to me. I don't like it, even on just an aesthetic level. As for the 'ten forward' type thing, I'll look into it, but as I've said, I'm not really familiar with the processes. I'm pretty busy with exams this week, but I'll make the forum open in the meanwhile.

I really recommend the wiki way, yeah. It is a major undertaking to get it running as smoothly as 'Ten Forward' though, so i understand the concern.

Canary wrote:I'm not too keen on the "EP001" in brackets, though. Aesthetically, it doesn't look too good. Wikia allows footnotes, right? Let's use those. ... I think the best way would be a hybrid. Something like, "Episode XXX: Title." Just giving a number is too vague, but leaving the number out makes it hard to determine where the episode fits in chronologically.

Regarding this, and your update on the front page about the naming convention, i think it needs a bit more thought (no offence!). Using the format 'Episode XXX: Title' works great for the main series, but how are we going to title the episodes for the other OVAs? This format will become very unwieldy once we start getting content.

Your priority seems to be clarity, which i totally respect, but can i make a few suggestions that i think might be more future-proof?

1. All episode pages should have the following title format:

The Day Before Destiny (episode)

Since links can be in any format we want, and additional information (like the series and the episode number) can be put in the article itself, there is no reason to add episode numbers and so forth in the article title itself.

2. Regarding categories ('tags' as you call them :p), i think they should be set up in a format like this:

-- Category:Anime episodes
------ Category:[Series name] episodes
---------- [Episode title] (episode)

In other words, the episode should only be added to the '[Series name] episodes' category, which itself will be added to the 'Anime episodes' category. I suggest this because adding every single episode for all series to one giant episode pool will get confusing — particularly with the episode naming convention i'm proposing.

3. We should create a template that automatically puts citations into the proper format. On Memory Alpha, their citation template works like this:

Blah blah blah statement in an article. {{TNG|Episode Name|Episode Name 2}}

Then in the actual article the {{TNG|blah blah}} gets converted into a citation that looks like this —

(TNG: "Episode Name", "Episode Name 2")

— with links to the episodes themselves as well as to the main page about the TNG series.

I know you have doubts about this format, but i really think it's necessary, because typing out the full name and number and the word 'episode' and possibly even the name of the series for every citation is going to become extremely confusing both for the person writing it and for the person reading. A couple possibilities for our situation (from the perspective of the reader) would be:

(LOGH: "The Day Before Destiny")
or
(LOGH: "025:The Day Before Destiny")
or
(LOGH 025: "The Day Before Destiny")

Please think about it :)

Canary wrote:Now, the ship information--virtually ALL of it, particularly the stats (length, weapons, etc.) should be treated as QUESTIONABLE.

This brings up another point: We need to have guide lines for 'canon' qualification. On Memory Alpha, they consider all official television episodes and all official films to be canon, but almost everything else (novels, comics, technical manuals, producer comments, &c.) is considered non-canon. In our case, LOGH has several 'official' forms of media, including novels and manga, which often conflict with each other, so our policy will naturally be a little more complicated.

My suggestion: We should focus on television and film productions first, and consider these to be 'primary' sources. I say this for two reasons: (1) the site's audience will obviously be more focussed on the anime, since manga and Japanese novels are much more niche media; and (2) from a practical standpoint, contributors to the site will have much less access to the non-anime media themselves.

So, to expand on that, i think the articles should focus on the anime/films, and then there should be a separate section near the bottom (but before Appearances / Background information) called 'Novel differences' or 'Manga differences' or something similar. Anything that is NOT in the official media should go under an 'Apocrypha' section.

Canary wrote:But without a number... what if that leads to a page of an episode he or she has NOT seen yet? That's a situation where spoiler can occur, and I think that should be avoided.

I understand the concern here too, but i don't think spoilers can or should be avoided in a wiki. Even if you aren't looking at an episode article, you're naturally going to come across spoilers in the course of reading. For example, Kircheis's page makes several mentions of his death. This can't be avoided, it's the nature of a wiki.

Canary wrote:Yes. Of course. 100%. But why is Satoshi written in katakana? It's not a foreign word.....

Almost all names in Pokémon are written in katakana, whether they're foreign or not. I assume it's partly a carry-over from the video games (the Game Boy wasn't really capable of storing or reproducing a lot of kanji) and partly just consistency for children's sake (since the intended audience is pretty young).

Canary wrote:That sounds like a lot of work. You volunteering?

Sure. I'll start putting something together.

Canary wrote:The biggest problem with LoGH being niche is that information is very hard to come by--in English, most certainly, but also in Japanese. It doesn't help that so few people can translate from Japanese. Can you? My own Japanese is... middling, at best. That terrible, terrible kanji.

I have maybe a 75% command of katakana and hiragana, but almost no kanji knowledge at all. I can do pretty good with computer assistance (translation tools, Google, &c.), but of course that won't be enough to translate novels or anything like that.


Sorry if i'm taking this too seriously by the way. I have a habit of that....

All right, let's give it a shot. (There's just something about these long, quote-filled posts I find incredibly wearying).

kine wrote:
I am not like a master-level wiki expert either, but i'd say i'm pretty knowledgeable about it. At the very least i am familiar with how other entertainment-related wiki sites are run!

Well, perhaps you can help solve a couple of the problems we've got here: I haven't had any luck with the wikia folks. First, we've got this random reformatting issue where headings vanish. (They end up w/ normal formatting, bracketted by == or ===).

ex.

Background Information
In episode blahblahblah, blah said to blah that blahblahblahblahblahblah.

turns into

==Background Information==In episode blahblahblah, blah said to blah that blahblahblahblahblahblah.

The other issue is the search function: it doesn't work well, and I can't figure out how to access any settings, if that can even be done. Basically, you only find things through search when you search for the EXACT same thing as the article title. That's useless. Searching for "Yang" ought to bring up Yang Wenli's page.

kine wrote:
I really recommend the wiki way, yeah. It is a major undertaking to get it running as smoothly as 'Ten Forward' though, so i understand the concern.

Yeah. Of course, it's not really too much of an issue considering how small our little community is.

kine wrote:
Regarding this, and your update on the front page about the naming convention, i think it needs a bit more thought (no offence!). Using the format 'Episode XXX: Title' works great for the main series, but how are we going to title the episodes for the other OVAs? This format will become very unwieldy once we start getting content.

My thought was that the main OVA episodes did not require to be distinguished, because they're the principal series.
ex.
Episode ### [Title]

OVA episodes would be the same, but distinguished by OVAs.
ex.
[OVA Name] Episode ## [Title]

I can't think of anything clearer, and I think clarity and simplicity are the most important things. In addition, each OVA/Series would have it's own category page, so it would be easy to move between series' and episodes and the like.

kine wrote:
Your priority seems to be clarity, which i totally respect, but can i make a few suggestions that i think might be more future-proof?
1. All episode pages should have the following title format:
The Day Before Destiny (episode)
Since links can be in any format we want, and additional information (like the series and the episode number) can be put in the article itself, there is no reason to add episode numbers and so forth in the article title itself.

I don't think it's necessary to use any parentheticals, particularly for format. I think I'd rather go with my initial idea, as outlined just above, for the reasons I've already stated, as well as the reasons I've written out below regarding spoiling.

kine wrote:
2. Regarding categories ('tags' as you call them :p), i think they should be set up in a format like this:

-- Category:Anime episodes
------ Category:[Series name] episodes
---------- [Episode title] (episode)

In other words, the episode should only be added to the '[Series name] episodes' category, which itself will be added to the 'Anime episodes' category. I suggest this because adding every single episode for all series to one giant episode pool will get confusing — particularly with the episode naming convention i'm proposing.

It's kind of like that already. It's....

--Animation
----Series Name
------Episodes

I guess the problem is that the Episodes tag shouldn't exist, then? I can see where you're coming from. I'll delete the Episodes tag and move anything that needs to be moved to the Animation page.

kine wrote:
3. We should create a template that automatically puts citations into the proper format. On Memory Alpha, their citation template works like this:

Blah blah blah statement in an article. {{TNG|Episode Name|Episode Name 2}}

Then in the actual article the {{TNG|blah blah}} gets converted into a citation that looks like this —

(TNG: "Episode Name", "Episode Name 2")

— with links to the episodes themselves as well as to the main page about the TNG series.

I know you have doubts about this format, but i really think it's necessary, because typing out the full name and number and the word 'episode' and possibly even the name of the series for every citation is going to become extremely confusing both for the person writing it and for the person reading. A couple possibilities for our situation (from the perspective of the reader) would be:

(LOGH: "The Day Before Destiny")
or
(LOGH: "025:The Day Before Destiny")
or
(LOGH 025: "The Day Before Destiny")

Please think about it

Well, it does sound good, and I agree that episode titles do NOT need to be included in citations. Episode numbers and Series are the most important bits, I think.

I do think, however, that the actual episode pages ought to have the title there, if only to keep things as clear as possible. I can see how this can make linking tedious, so creating a redirect for each episode seems in order.
Ex.
Episode 025: Before the Destiny
Episode 025

The first is the page name, the second is a redirect to the page name--so, for citations, you can simply have (Episode 025). Or even LoGH 025. Yeah, actually, let's go with that. LoGH 025 for the redirect, and get rid of the word, episode, in the page name. Or... Ah hell, I'm still not sure. Let me think on it a bit.

kine wrote:
This brings up another point: We need to have guide lines for 'canon' qualification. On Memory Alpha, they consider all official television episodes and all official films to be canon, but almost everything else (novels, comics, technical manuals, producer comments, &c.) is considered non-canon. In our case, LOGH has several 'official' forms of media, including novels and manga, which often conflict with each other, so our policy will naturally be a little more complicated.

My suggestion: We should focus on television and film productions first, and consider these to be 'primary' sources. I say this for two reasons: (1) the site's audience will obviously be more focussed on the anime, since manga and Japanese novels are much more niche media; and (2) from a practical standpoint, contributors to the site will have much less access to the non-anime media themselves.

So, to expand on that, i think the articles should focus on the anime/films, and then there should be a separate section near the bottom (but before Appearances / Background information) called 'Novel differences' or 'Manga differences' or something similar. Anything that is NOT in the official media should go under an 'Apocrypha' section.

I agree. Animated Productions are the ONLY source of primary canon. Within the animated sources, as the different versions DO differ slightly, Blu-Ray trumps DVD trumps Laserdisc. Official production material, staff interviews and the like should be treated as Secondary canon. Everything else--fansite stuff, information lacking verifiable sources--should be treated as tertiary canon and, therefore, possibly unreliable.

kine wrote:
I understand the concern here too, but i don't think spoilers can or should be avoided in a wiki. Even if you aren't looking at an episode article, you're naturally going to come across spoilers in the course of reading. For example, Kircheis's page makes several mentions of his death. This can't be avoided, it's the nature of a wiki.

True, but just because it can't be avoided doesn't mean we ought to ignore the issue entirely. If somebody is searching for Kircheis, odds are they want to know as much about that character as possible--spoilers are a part of that, and they know that. But what about tech, or ship information? If a person is reading up on Zephyr particles, for example, and sees references to certain episodes, he or she may want to check those episode pages--so it'd be handy for that person to tell at a glance if the link goes to an episode he or she hasn't seen.

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:That sounds like a lot of work. You volunteering?

Sure. I'll start putting something together.

Awesome.

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:The biggest problem with LoGH being niche is that information is very hard to come by--in English, most certainly, but also in Japanese. It doesn't help that so few people can translate from Japanese. Can you? My own Japanese is... middling, at best. That terrible, terrible kanji.

I have maybe a 75% command of katakana and hiragana, but almost no kanji knowledge at all. I can do pretty good with computer assistance (translation tools, Google, &c.), but of course that won't be enough to translate novels or anything like that.

lol, yeah. Kanji is a pain--and the novels have a LOT of kanji. I'm hoping I'll be skilled enough to translate 'em in a year or so. Right now... it's no-go.

kine wrote:Sorry if i'm taking this too seriously by the way. I have a habit of that....

Like I said before... it's all good. I'm happy to have some regular help, opposed to the guys that just show up and make two or three very minor contributions before vanishing.

Anyway, I'll fiddle around with the wiki a for a little bit, but I've got a big Japanese exam to prepare for, so if you feel like making any big changes go ahead--sometimes things look better than they sound. The only thing we've discussed that I stand firm on is keeping the episode number in the page names and citations.

Canary wrote:I haven't had any luck with the wikia folks. First, we've got this random reformatting issue where headings vanish. (They end up w/ normal formatting, bracketted by == or ===).

Are you talking about when you're editing the page, or when you're actually viewing it? Because if the former, that is how it's supposed to be when you're in 'source' editing mode (the == things are wiki mark-up). If it's the latter, i haven't noticed that anywhere.

Canary wrote:The other issue is the search function: it doesn't work well, and I can't figure out how to access any settings, if that can even be done. Basically, you only find things through search when you search for the EXACT same thing as the article title. That's useless. Searching for "Yang" ought to bring up Yang Wenli's page.

I get Yang Wen-li's article for the top result when i search for Yang. That said, i agree that MediaWiki's search function is horrible. It's the same for all wikis, and i don't really know of a way around it, other than to be very generous with redirects and disambiguation pages (which i have been and will continue to be). I will create a redirect from 'Yang' to 'Yang Wen-li' right now.

Canary wrote:The first is the page name, the second is a redirect to the page name--so, for citations, you can simply have (Episode 025). Or even LoGH 025. Yeah, actually, let's go with that. LoGH 025 for the redirect, and get rid of the word, episode, in the page name. Or... Ah hell, I'm still not sure. Let me think on it a bit.

Fair enough. I think 'LoGH 025' is a good compromise for the episode citations.

Canary wrote:If somebody is searching for Kircheis, odds are they want to know as much about that character as possible--spoilers are a part of that, and they know that. But what about tech, or ship information? If a person is reading up on Zephyr particles, for example, and sees references to certain episodes, he or she may want to check those episode pages--so it'd be handy for that person to tell at a glance if the link goes to an episode he or she hasn't seen.

Well, in the sense that it should be clear that a citation is in fact a link leading to an episode page, i do agree with you there.


One last thing, and i know this would be probably the absolute last priority, if you are even interested, but i was wondering if you plan to come up with (or would be open to) a more 'catchy' name for the wiki? 'Legend of Galactic Heroes Wiki' is certainly appropriate, but it doesn't really roll off the tongue. And aside from the marketing aspects of it, the name does have consequences for things on the actual site as well. For example, if i create a Manual of Style page right now, it's going to have the following title (since it's in the Project name space):

Legend of Galactic Heroes Wiki: Manual of Style

A little cumbersome. On other sites it would simply be 'Bulbapedia: Manual of Style' or 'Memory Alpha: Manual of Style' or whatever.

I'm not sure what it could be changed to though. I will think about it, and let you know, and i guess you can decide then if you like the idea. :)


Anyway i'll start getting to work. Let me know if you have any problems with what i'm doing, and good luck with your exams!

Okay... I went and took all of the Season 1 episode pages and moved them to LOGH ### to make for easier citations. I don't like it. Because the page title is so dominant, visually, on the page, it makes the whole thing look ugly. I think I'm going to do it the other way around.

Pages will be named Legend of Galactic Heroes ###: [Title], but there will also be LOGH ### pages that redirect. So, for citations, we can put LOGH ###, but the page name itself will be as detailed.

Or, perhaps, just name the main OVA pages ###: [Title], omitting the OVA title since it's the main series.

For OVAs, let's do the same, perhaps....

I dunno. I'll think on it some more. I'm not entirely happy with any of the methods for episode page titling yet.

EDIT: We posted at the same time, huh?

I dunno. Something like "Yang Wenli Wikia?" That's the domain name, at least, and there's some alliteration there. Ark Fleet? I don't know. If we go too esoteric, this place'll be impossible to find. One of the main reasons I wrote "Legend of Galactic Heroes Wiki" so much was simply so this place would show up in a google search for the same.

As for the == formatting stuff... it shows up in finished pages. Not often, but from time to time. I go in and fix it when I see it. If you make a page with a lot of headings, just check over it after you 'publish' it to see if there are any wierd things like that. And you can ctrl+f the novel translation pages... I know that formatting error kept happening over and over with those pages for a period of time.

Canary wrote:Pages will be named Legend of Galactic Heroes ###: [Title], but there will also be LOGH ### pages that redirect. So, for citations, we can put LOGH ###, but the page name itself will be as detailed.

That is what i thought you meant before, actually. I agree that using 'LOGH ###' for the title of the article itself is a very bad idea.

I'm wondering if you might consider a minor change though: Instead of the article titles having the full name of the series in front, use the abbreviation instead. For example:

LOGH ###: Title

Two reasons i suggest this: (1) It's much easier to read (you can imagine how long titles will start to get with the full series name in front of them), and (2) it will allow us to make citations more easily since the two formats will be consistent with each other.

Canary wrote:I dunno. Something like "Yang Wenli Wikia?" That's the domain name, at least, and there's some alliteration there. Ark Fleet? I don't know. If we go too esoteric, this place'll be impossible to find. One of the main reasons I wrote "Legend of Galactic Heroes Wiki" so much was simply so this place would show up in a google search for the same.

You wouldn't need to sacrifice any of that if you changed it. Memory Alpha makes sure everyone knows it's a Star Trek wiki by doing two things:

1. The main page has the title 'Star Trek Wiki - Memory Alpha'

2. All other pages end with the string ' - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki'

No reason you couldn't do the same kind of thing here. But again, last priority i realise


I'll look for the formatting error you mentioned. Maybe if i can see it in action i'll know how to fix it. :x

kine wrote:I agree that using 'LOGH ###' for the title of the article itself is a very bad idea.

I'm wondering if you might consider a minor change though: Instead of the article titles having the full name of the series in front, use the abbreviation instead. For example:

LOGH ###: Title

Two reasons i suggest this: (1) It's much easier to read (you can imagine how long titles will start to get with the full series name in front of them), and (2) it will allow us to make citations more easily since the two formats will be consistent with each other.

It's been a while since I've visited Memory Alpha. I ought to take some time out to examine how that wiki is organized: of the few wiki's I've seen, I'd certainly say it's the best of 'em. Anyway, you're naming suggestion is one of the methods I'd entertained... but, in general, having "LOGH" or any abbreviation in the page title looks really ugly to me.

I just don't know.

Actually, for now I think the best thing aesthetically would be to go back to your initial suggestion: episode pages are episode titles only. At least for the main OVA. I don't think many of the prequel OVAs have titles, so we'll use whatever they use.

Ex. Pages
War Without Weapons
Spiral Labyrinth, Chapter 3

etc., etc.

That works too, but i have another concern now: Aren't there manga volumes and things that have the same names as some of the episodes and films?

I haven't read any of them, just glanced at a few pages online, but i thought that was the case. If it is, you're going to need a way to distinguish them from each other. That's why i had suggested adding ' (episode)' on the end before. Bulbapedia doesn't do this because they use episode codes for the article titles, but Memory Alpha has to because there are many novels, comics, &c., with the same titles as the episodes.

Otherwise it should work!


Aside: Not sure if you've noticed, but i've started a Manual of Style page here:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Still working on it, and i'm trying to avoid things that might be controversial, but let me know if you see anything you disagree with.

Sure thing. For any possible conflicts, like Manga or Volume chapters, if we ever get to that point... just make the manga chapters separate. For example, if both are name X... the animated bit gets to be called, simply, X because the OVA is our primary material here. The manga bit would be called X (Manga) or something.

Also: it'd be cool to have a thing exactly like Memory Alpha, where each citation has two links--one to the episode itself, and one to the series to which the episode belongs. I'm not sure how they do it, though: it might be a pain to do all that manually.

That can be semi-automated with a template, like i was talking about a few posts ago. It is one reason i was hoping for a very consistent episode title format, because then you can just type in a number or something in brackets and boom, you'd get all your links just like you need. It can also be accomplished with redirects, though, which is probably how we'd want to start doing it for now.

What sort of format would you prefer? Something like '(LOGH: 025)', where 'LOGH' goes to the series page and '025' goes to the title page? Or '(LOGH: Episode 025)', to make the episode target a little bigger?

I was just thinking to do the same as Memory Alpha. Series Name, the Episode Title. It may not be the easiest for the person working on the page, but I think it's the best for the people browsing. I guess it might be possible to set up a script like that.... where you just write a number, but the page displays that number episode title instead. I don't know.

Oh, i see. Well, i'll try to work on the template tonight, it should be easy to do (and easy to change, if you decide on a different format later) if i can make the time.


I had another thought, related to the menu on the side bar. I find it a little cluttered and inconsistent, so i was going to make a few modifications — but i don't have the right permissions, of course.

Could you try this, just to see if you like it at least?

Code:


*mainpage|LOGH Wiki
*Category:People|People
**Category:Galactic Empire|Galactic Empire
***Reinhard von Lohengramm
***Siegfried Kircheis
***Hildegard von Mariendorf
***Annerose von Grünewald
***Wolfgang Mittermeyer
***Oskar von Reuenthal
***Paul von Oberstein
***Category:Galactic Empire|more...
**Category:Free Planets Alliance|Free Planets Alliance
***Yang Wen-li
***Julian Mintz
***Frederica Greenhill
***Katerose von Kreutzer
***Dusty Attenborough
***Alex Cazerne
***Walter von Schönkopf
***Olivier Poplin
***Category:Free Planets Alliance|more...
*Category:Technology|Technology
**Category:Galactic Empire|Galactic Empire
***Category:Imperial Warships|Ships
****Brunhild
****Barbarossa
****Beowulf
****Tristan
****Konigs Tiger
****Category:Imperial Warships|more...
***Iserlohn Fortress
***Geiersburg Fortress
**Category:Free Planets Alliance|Free Planets Alliance
***Category:FPA Warships|Ships
****Hyperion
****Triglav
****Rio Grande
****Leonidas
****Achilles
****Category:FPA Warships|more...
***Armetis Necklace
**Warp
**Zephyr particles
**Category:Technology|more...
*Category:Media|Media
**Category:Animation|Animation
***Legend of Galactic Heroes (OVA)
***Spiral Labyrinth
***Category:Animation|more...
**Category:Novels|Novels
***Category:Book 1:Dawn|Book 1:Dawn
***Category:Novels|more...
**Tanaka Yoshiki
*Timeline
*mainpage|Common
**#visited#|most_visited
**#newlychanged#|newly_changed
**randompage-url|randompage


Just go to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and copy/paste (back up the current menu first).

What it does is change the top-level side-bar menu to the following:

- LOGH Wiki
- People
- Technology
- Media
- Timeline
- Common

And then there're separate FPA/GE menus for People and Technology, separate Animation/Novel menus for Media, and so on. Give it a shot!

In the mean time, i've got the basic citation template working, for the OVA at least — it was mostly copy-and-paste from Memory Alpha, just a few changes required.

There are three templates associated with it, which can all be used be on their own if you like (but don't have to be). Here's how they work:

1. linktip — Used to add a tool tip to links. You use it in this format: {{linktip|page-to-link-to|tool-tip-text|optional-link-text}}

2. e — Used to link to a specific episode. At this point it doesn't really do anything that just doing [[episode title]] doesn't do already, but it can be extended later if needed. You use it this way: {{e|Episode Title}}

3. LOGH — The one we're mainly concerned with. It adds a citation in the format 'LOGH: "Episode Name"', with a tool tip on LOGH that says 'Legend of Galactic Heroes (OVA)'. The format for using this is: {{LOGH|Episode Title|Optional Episode Title 2|Optional Episode 3}}

You can see the end result in the article for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

I'll have to do some more work to be able to allow stuff like '{{LOGH|25}}', not to mention other OVA/film citations, but that seems to work for now!

Thanks. I updated the sidebar a bit: I changed your script a bit, but for the most part it's very similar to what you wrote out. Basically, I just kept warships and technology separate. I'm not sure how the... two or three civilian ships are classified. May want to make sure those are marked as Tech instead of warships, and add 'em to the sidebar.

Also kept novels separate, simply because I think it's something people need to see as soon as they get to the site.

One thing to mention before I forget: be careful when linking! It's a mistake I've made before, too. I guess maybe we need more redirects. Just make sure your spelling is correct for the link, and things like that. For the star systems for example, the page names don't have 'Starzone' in them. So, for example, a linking to a 'Legnica Starzone' page leads nowhere, and makes it seem like the page is absent (when the page is actually, simply, 'Legnica.'

And in other news.......................

I've added pages now for ALL of the main OVA episodes, as well as the three movies. Honestly, I don't know what to do about the OVAs: I haven't had time to watch ALL of them myself, so maybe if I did my mind would be cleared, but..... there are different lists of OVAs, and none of the OVA lists match the OVA titles on the fansubs I've got in my LOGH folder. So, that's something I'll deffinitely need help with.

I also spent... yikes, about an hour trying to set up some kind of forum without any real luck. Looks like I'd have to upload something special? I don't know. I 'll mess with it more later.

Canary wrote:I updated the sidebar a bit: I changed your script a bit, but for the most part it's very similar to what you wrote out. Basically, I just kept warships and technology separate. I'm not sure how the... two or three civilian ships are classified. May want to make sure those are marked as Tech instead of warships, and add 'em to the sidebar.

I like that too, actually.

I should have put this in my last request, but i didn't have it quite mapped out in my head yet: Could you add this right below Timeline and above Common please?

Code:


*Project:Policies and guidelines|Policies and guidelines
**Project:Manual of Style|Manual of Style
**Project:Canon Policy|Canon Policy
**Project:Perspective|Perspective


(Using the 'Project' NS will make it so it automatically expands to whatever the full site name is.)

All of those articles are near-complete, except for Project:Policies and guidelines, which will be just a summary page, and something i'll create later. Of course, if you disagree with any of it, let me know. I tried to follow what you put on the front page, and then extrapolate what else you might want from there (with a little bit of my own stuff added in, of course).

Canary wrote:
One thing to mention before I forget: be careful when linking! It's a mistake I've made before, too. I guess maybe we need more redirects. Just make sure your spelling is correct for the link, and things like that. For the star systems for example, the page names don't have 'Starzone' in them. So, for example, a linking to a 'Legnica Starzone' page leads nowhere, and makes it seem like the page is absent (when the page is actually, simply, 'Legnica.'

I was doing that on purpose, actually. My thinking is that (e.g.) 'Fourth Battle of Tiamat', 'Tiamat', and 'Tiamat Starzone' are three completely separate, albeit obviously related, things. The first is a battle, the second is a star (right?), and the third is a star system. That is how it's done on both Wikipedia and on Memory Alpha — for example, their articles on 'Sun' are different from their articles on 'Sol System'.

The main argument i can see for the method you've just described is that, as of right now, we simply don't have separate articles for those things. Which is of course a concern... but we don't have articles for lots of things, so. I'm not sure.

Canary wrote:I've added pages now for ALL of the main OVA episodes, as well as the three movies. Honestly, I don't know what to do about the OVAs: I haven't had time to watch ALL of them myself, so maybe if I did my mind would be cleared, but..... there are different lists of OVAs, and none of the OVA lists match the OVA titles on the fansubs I've got in my LOGH folder. So, that's something I'll deffinitely need help with.

Two points regarding this:

1. I've noticed that the case you've used for the OVA titles is somewhat inconsistent. On the pages themselves, the titles are almost always given in normal title caps (e.g., 'Premonition of the Storm'), but in the article titles it's usually word caps ('Premonition Of The Storm'). I think we should standardise on title caps. I had been trying to move the word-caps pages to title-caps pages (since links to the episodes are case-sensitive), but Wikia throttles me. I can only move two or three at a time before it blocks me from doing any more for 10 or 15 minutes. :/

2. Regarding the other OVAs: I think we should standardise on the media list i've used on one of the policy pages, which was this:

* My Conquest Is the Sea of Stars
* Legend of Galactic Heroes (OVA)
* Golden Wings
* Overture to a New War
* Legend of Galactic Heroes Side Stories

Those are the official release names (and production order) as far as i know. The other confusing names you're referring to are individual arcs of the 'Side Stories' series, which are named after the original Side Stories books — but it's still all part of the same anime series.

So 'Spiral Labyrinth', 'Gaiden', 'A Hundred Billion Stars, a Hundred Billion Lights', and all that jazz should be listed as components of Side Stories, but their episodes should all be considered part of the same series and they should all be on the same page. That's what i think, anyway.

A couple updates for you!

The following pages have been completed, at least for now (i imagine several more things will eventually be added/changed, but only after we've come up with more well defined procedures and completed some templates and things):

* [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
* [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
* [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
* [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I hope this isn't overly nit-picking, but i would like to ask if you could change both the URL and the link text from 'Wiki Policy' to 'Wiki policy' (with lower-case p)? I put Canon Policy in caps because it's supposed to be like a proper noun (you know, the Canon Policy), but i think 'wiki policy' should be a generic page, and as a generic page it should use sentence capitalisation. :x

But other than that i think it's pretty set

I've also re-done the front page a bit: Changed some wording here and there, re-formatted a few things, got rid of the 'Contribution Notes' section (because i've created redirects from 'Free Planet Alliance' and 'Galactic Empire' to their category pages), and combined the wiki policy and discussion forum bits into one shorter section. I hope i didn't over-step my bounds there

I asked some friends what they thought of the front page, and they said they don't like the image that's used there — and i have to agree. However, i don't have a better suggestion at the moment. I was thinking something 'space-opera-y'... but i don't know what that would be yet. Just something to consider, i guess.

Was trying to come up with an encyclopaedia-ish logo, i've been playing with variations on this:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thoughts?

Hm.... well, I kind of like it, but I don't REALLY like it. (As in I think it's a good start, but not quite perfect yet). I really like the idea of using the Imperial Crest (though, personally, I think it might be better to go with the Goldenlohen crest instead of the Goldenbaum crest. Goddamn Goldenbaums! Basically, since the domain of the wiki is 'Yang Wenli' I think that should be acknowledged. I don't know. I suppose I could flip back the image on the main page to the Yang one.

There some way to set up the main page so that it cycles between three or four different images?

-moving on-

Two things I need to hit on in this post:

1. Wiki Policy and stuff--I used caps for 'policy' because it's consistent with the rest of the navbar. I've read through the policy pages and... it all seems very good. I know you've been editing them since, so I don't know if you've mentioned this or not, but it my be a good idea to mention secondhand sources: essentially, unverified information. For now, most of the information will be UNVERIFIED, which sucks, but we're stuck with it. Basically, any claims that can't be double-checked are unverified. I don't really have to say anything more, right? If data is cited to any resource we don't have access to, like unscanned data books, it's unverified. If sources, like fansites, claim to have taken data from databooks, but we can't double check, it's second-hand. Basically, we need to make it clear that this 'gray' information is acceptable for posting, but should ALWAYS be qualified so the readers know it may not be entirely accurate.

2. Back on something you mentioned a while back about the wiki name and googling... I checked memory alpha, didn't see any "star trek wiki" statements on any of the pages. Is it hidden? I think we need to do what we can to make sure this is the 1st or 2nd result that pops up for a "galactic heroes wiki" search. (After I started this thing up and contributed a lot, I found out that there have actually been TWO previous attempts at a LoGH wiki: the first achieved approximately zero articles, the second managed five. They're both lond-dead now, but better safe than sorry, ja?

As for a catchy wiki title... have you had any ideas? I've thought of, simply, "Yank Wenli Wiki," "Yang Wenli's Wiki," and "Admiral Yang's Wiki," but... yeah, I'm not too terribly fond of any of those.

Added a forum link to the main navbar. I think... just leave the forum as is for now. Setting up a new one seems like too much work. I'll try (again) to find the option to enable guest posting here, though.

Also: that wierd formatting bug can bee seen on Tomiyama Takashi's page. I didn't fix it just so you could take a look.

Canary wrote:Hm.... well, I kind of like it, but I don't REALLY like it. (As in I think it's a good start, but not quite perfect yet). I really like the idea of using the Imperial Crest (though, personally, I think it might be better to go with the Goldenlohen crest instead of the Goldenbaum crest. Goddamn Goldenbaums!

I'm not sure what the Goldenlohen crest looks like. Is it the one that is like exactly the same as this one, but it's got a little mediaeval lion guy in the middle?

Canary wrote:Basically, since the domain of the wiki is 'Yang Wenli' I think that should be acknowledged. I don't know. I suppose I could flip back the image on the main page to the Yang one.

As for a catchy wiki title... have you had any ideas? I've thought of, simply, "Yank Wenli Wiki," "Yang Wenli's Wiki," and "Admiral Yang's Wiki," but... yeah, I'm not too terribly fond of any of those.

Re both of these statements... i was thinking about this as well, but i wasn't sure what the story was. Did you choose Yang for a specific reason? I mean i can kind of see how a historian would be an appropriate mascot or whatever for a wiki, but you had wanted dates in Imperial Year and the site made pretty much no mention of him beyond those two pictures, so i wasn't sure.

If your intention is to give the site kind of a Yang-like theme (in the same way that Memory Alpha's theme is the Federation library 'Memory Alpha' from The Original Series), then i do think we should try to follow through with that. However, i agree that the names you gave above are no good — they kind of sound like Angelfire sites. :p

If your intention was something else, though, or if you're not really committed to a Yang theme/name, keep in mind that Wikia will usually let you change your URL. (http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:URL) I'm not trying to push you or anything of course, just letting you know that you aren't held hostage by the URL if it was something you just chose on a whim. :x

Canary wrote:There some way to set up the main page so that it cycles between three or four different images?

On a normal wiki, yes. Whether you can do it on Wikia, i'm not sure — it depends on what kind of scripting access or whatever they allow. I've never been an admin on a Wikia site before, so i'm not sure.

Canary wrote:1. Wiki Policy and stuff--I used caps for 'policy' because it's consistent with the rest of the navbar.

Well the only other thing on there that has more than one word is 'LOGH Wiki', which is the title of the site. :/

Canary wrote:If data is cited to any resource we don't have access to, like unscanned data books, it's unverified. If sources, like fansites, claim to have taken data from databooks, but we can't double check, it's second-hand. Basically, we need to make it clear that this 'gray' information is acceptable for posting, but should ALWAYS be qualified so the readers know it may not be entirely accurate.

I do have a concern that saying 'unverifiable information is OK as long as you qualify it' kind of invites unverifiable information. On a more practical level, though, what should people use to actually qualify it within the article? A colour? A symbol? A foot note?

Canary wrote:2. Back on something you mentioned a while back about the wiki name and googling... I checked memory alpha, didn't see any "star trek wiki" statements on any of the pages. Is it hidden?

It's in the title of all the pages.

Canary wrote:I think we need to do what we can to make sure this is the 1st or 2nd result that pops up for a "galactic heroes wiki" search. (After I started this thing up and contributed a lot, I found out that there have actually been TWO previous attempts at a LoGH wiki: the first achieved approximately zero articles, the second managed five. They're both lond-dead now, but better safe than sorry, ja?

That will come with content. Even if there isn't a single page on the entire site that mentions 'LOGH' or 'Legend of Galactic Heroes', we will still rise to the top of the search engines if people start actually using it as a resource. Much of the site's publicity in the early stages will probably come from anime and sci-fi sites, not from Google itself. But of course, no-one will read or participate if it seems like it's a poor resource — and let's be honest, at the moment we have such little content that it is. So we might have a while to go, realistically.

Canary wrote:Also: that wierd formatting bug can bee seen on Tomiyama Takashi's page. I didn't fix it just so you could take a look.

When i look at the source, i see this:

:===Others [[http://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%AF%8C%E5%B1%B1%E6%95%AC&action=edit&section=19 Edit]]===

Firstly, section headings shouldn't be indented like that (with the colon), and secondly, it looks like maybe a Wikipedia link was accidentally copied and pasted into the page. Not sure if that kind of thing has been the cause in the past, but removing those two bits fixed it in this case.

kine wrote:I'm not sure what the Goldenlohen crest looks like. Is it the one that is like exactly the same as this one, but it's got a little mediaeval lion guy in the middle?

Er... it's pretty different than the Goldenbaum crest. I haven't been able to find any decent pics of it, but you can see in some of the ship art. Like:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It's yellow instead of white, and the overall shape is triangular instead of circular. Considering LoGH is really all about Reinhard's rise to power, it seems the more fitting symbol.

kine wrote:Did you choose Yang for a specific reason? I mean i can kind of see how a historian would be an appropriate mascot or whatever for a wiki, but you had wanted dates in Imperial Year and the site made pretty much no mention of him beyond those two pictures, so i wasn't sure.

He's a historian. Seemed very fitting to me, particularly given the nature of both wikis and the source material.

kine wrote:If your intention is to give the site kind of a Yang-like theme (in the same way that Memory Alpha's theme is the Federation library 'Memory Alpha' from The Original Series), then i do think we should try to follow through with that. However, i agree that the names you gave above are no good — they kind of sound like Angelfire sites. :p

That's probably a result of my not knowing anything about wikis... other than the generic 'space' template I set up when I made the thing, all I really knew how to do for giving it a 'theme' was slapping a Wenly pic up there.

kine wrote:Well the only other thing on there that has more than one word is 'LOGH Wiki', which is the title of the site. :/

No, that's not what I meant. I mean that if every word in the sidebar is capitalized, it'd look weird if one of 'em wasn't. It's an aesthetic/visual thing.

kine wrote:I do have a concern that saying 'unverifiable information is OK as long as you qualify it' kind of invites unverifiable information. On a more practical level, though, what should people use to actually qualify it within the article? A colour? A symbol? A foot note?

Instead of citing the information, it should be enough to simply say [citation needed].

kine wrote:It's in the title of all the pages.

Yeah... I'm not seeing it and neither is firefox (ctrl+f). The closest thing to it are the links to companion articles at memory beta. You'll hafta point it out. Well, not that it's really important.

kine wrote:That will come with content. Even if there isn't a single page on the entire site that mentions 'LOGH' or 'Legend of Galactic Heroes', we will still rise to the top of the search engines if people start actually using it as a resource. Much of the site's publicity in the early stages will probably come from anime and sci-fi sites, not from Google itself. But of course, no-one will read or participate if it seems like it's a poor resource — and let's be honest, at the moment we have such little content that it is. So we might have a while to go, realistically.

Cause and effect. Make a good wiki leads to making the site easier to find... well, yeah, I can see you're logic. I was more hoping that making the site easier to find would lead to more contributors, which in turn would lead to making the wiki good.

And while I know it's true, it hurts a bit to hear you criticize the lack of content here: keep in mind that <5% or the material here is pasted from Wikipedia, ~5% was from Gunlord, ~5% was from random contributors (whose contributions typically only seem to be a single sentence or two added to a pre-existing page) and ~all~ the rest is me. Even if the pages aren't all filled out, keep in mind that 300+ pages is a helluva lot for one poor sod to do alone.

Canary wrote:It's yellow instead of white, and the overall shape is triangular instead of circular.

Oh, i see. I don't think i've ever noticed that one before. Of course, i'm only 35 episodes or so into the series.

Canary wrote:He's a historian. Seemed very fitting to me, particularly given the nature of both wikis and the source material. ... That's probably a result of my not knowing anything about wikis... other than the generic 'space' template I set up when I made the thing, all I really knew how to do for giving it a 'theme' was slapping a Wenly pic up there.

Fair enough. Setting up a wiki 'theme' based on a single person is going to be slightly more difficult than otherwise, but i agree he's an apt choice. I think something is needed that reflects both Yang and the atmosphere or history of the series itself (so... definitely not the thing i showed you before), and coming up with that is going to be difficult... but there must be something. I will probably not have many good ideas until i complete the series, though, and at the rate i'm going (i've only been watching it at work, and i don't want to skip ahead since a co-worker is watching with me) it might be a few weeks.

Canary wrote:And while I know it's true, it hurts a bit to hear you criticize the lack of content here: keep in mind that <5% or the material here is pasted from Wikipedia, ~5% was from Gunlord, ~5% was from random contributors (whose contributions typically only seem to be a single sentence or two added to a pre-existing page) and ~all~ the rest is me. Even if the pages aren't all filled out, keep in mind that 300+ pages is a helluva lot for one poor sod to do alone.

I wasn't trying to criticise the work you've put in, of course. Just pointing out that the ratio of current content to the content the site would need to be 'complete' is very low, probably less than 10%. (On the other hand, Memory Alpha, Wookieepedia, Bulbapedia, and the X-Files Wiki are probably all 75% complete or higher. Of course, it goes without saying that they've had hundreds or thousands of people to help them and you've only had a handful.)


Unrelated to the above, here are some things i am thinking/wondering about:

1. I still need to complete the citation templates for films and other OVAs. I would like your input on how these should be formatted.

Films / single OVAs: I can't decide how i want this done. Should we use abbreviations (like 'MCISS' and 'GW') or full names? If the latter, should the names be italicised? (For comparison, Memory Alpha does full names in italics (e.g., Star Trek: First Contact) — but none of the Star Trek films have names as long as the LOGH ones.)

Side Stories: I reckon these should have a similar formatting to the main OVA's citations (currently ABBR: "Episode Name") — but i'm not certain how we should divide them up. Should we do SS: "Episode Name" (for 'Side Stories')? Or should we do SL: "Episode Name" / HBSHBL: "Episode Name" (for the individual arcs)? Or something else?

2. I am going to try to create some image galleries, one for each film and each series of the OVAs. That way, if we need a picture of something from, say, a specific time period, we'll be able to go to one page and see all of the images that came from that period. Right now i'm trying to compile as many MCISS screenshots as i can, since it's the best-quality video i have on me, so i'll probably start with that.

3. I noticed earlier that the dates on some of the pages are in the format 'd MMMM, yyyy', and i wanted to ask you about that. Since all of your other writing policies indicated people should use American writing standards (and their date format would be MMMM d, yyyy), i had been trying to follow that, but now i'm not sure. Which one would you prefer? (For the record, Memory Alpha requires American spelling/grammar, but they use the 'd MMMM' format for some reason.)

4. I noticed you had changed the spacing for some dashes i used on the MCISS page. I had seen a thing on Memory Alpha's MoS about what the preferred type of dash is but i thought there was no reason to add such a guideline here — maybe i was wrong? I personally prefer the space-mdash-space format, but should we be deciding on an official policy for this?

5. What kind of infoboxes would you like to see? Right now we only have the one that i've been using on the character pages. Other possible pages we might want to adapt these to: real-life people, planets, vessels, episodes, films....

1. For films/single OVAs, I say just do the whole title. Abbreviations can get confusing, particularly since the only 'standard' abbreviation LOGH has is, well, LOGH. I don't really have an opinion on italics. Regarding the longer Gaidens... I don't think we need episode titles. In fact, I think it would be better not to have them--mostly because many OVA episodes simply don't have titles. For example, Mutineer Chapter 1, Mutineer Chapter 2, Mutineer Chapter 3, Mutineer Chapter 4, etc.

For stuff like that, I think it'd be best to simply cite it as [Mutineer 01] --that is, just the full OVA name and episode number.

2. Sounds good.

3. I don't really know. Personally, I've been moving more toward the DD/MM/YYYY format because it makes more sense logically. Ideally, though, I think it would be best to simply write everything out fully: The ##th of [Month], YYYY.

4. Oh, sorry. That's a bit of a habit. The dash, as a punctuation mark, does not have any spaces. I mean, you can, if you want to, English is fluid like that, but if this were say, a print publication, it'd be wrong.

5. Given the scarcity of information, I haven't given it much thought, really. The only thing I'm sure of is that I don't want borders on tables with 3 or fewer columns. Personally, I don't think any info-boxes are necessary.

Canary wrote:1. For films/single OVAs, I say just do the whole title. Abbreviations can get confusing, particularly since the only 'standard' abbreviation LOGH has is, well, LOGH. I don't really have an opinion on italics.

I am divided on the italics myself. As a rule i really dislike using italics for anything but emphasis, and certainly you have already established a trend of not using them (you don't italicise 'Legend of Galactic Heroes' on the wiki, even though technically i believe it should be), so i guess we'll start with that. I guess we can re-evaluate it later.

Canary wrote:Regarding the longer Gaidens... I don't think we need episode titles. In fact, I think it would be better not to have them--mostly because many OVA episodes simply don't have titles. For example, Mutineer Chapter 1, Mutineer Chapter 2, Mutineer Chapter 3, Mutineer Chapter 4, etc.

I didn't realise that. I haven't watched any of the multi-episode OVAs aside from the main one, so maybe i should hold off until i have. I think the vast majority of data will be coming from the main OVA, MCISS, and ONW anyway.

Canary wrote:3. I don't really know. Personally, I've been moving more toward the DD/MM/YYYY format because it makes more sense logically. Ideally, though, I think it would be best to simply write everything out fully: The ##th of [Month], YYYY.

K, i'll add this to the MoS and we'll see how it goes.

Canary wrote:4. Oh, sorry. That's a bit of a habit. The dash, as a punctuation mark, does not have any spaces. I mean, you can, if you want to, English is fluid like that, but if this were say, a print publication, it'd be wrong.

That's an American typographic rule, not an English one. (In UK English it's usually an em dash or en dash with a space or half-space on each side.) But of course, i am using American for everything else here, so i will concede. I'll add this to the MoS too.

Canary wrote:Personally, I don't think any info-boxes are necessary.

By that do you mean, you think they're unnecessary, or just that you aren't that worried about them either way?