Help:Guidelines
From The Kim Stanley Robinson Encyclopedia
IMPORTANT: Please familiarize yourself with these guidelines before making any edits or new contributions.
Contents |
Getting an account
Unlike many public wikis, we require user registration before being able to make changes and new contributions to the database. The reason for this is that we are a small community who have got to know each other and have very clear goals as to what we want this encyclopedia to grow into. Consequently we would prefer that random passers-by do not just jump in and start 'helping' without first ensuring they share a compatible vision for the project. If you are a Kim Stanley Robinson fan, and are committed to accurately building a complete repository of information about his works, then I'm sure you will be welcome.
Firstly, you should make sure you are familiar with the web forum, The Demimonde. Have a look around, introduce yourself, and check out some of the many discussions regarding this project.
Once you have decided that you wish to be a part of this community, please contact one of the administrators of this project requesting an account. Please let us know your preferred UserID and we will enable your account as soon as possible.
Once you have an account here, you are encouraged to update your personal User page to include some basic information about yourself. No personally identifiable information is necessary; just a short introduction will suffice. (Examples: thoreaubred, Carlos.) Your userpage can be found at User:YourUsername within the wiki.
NB. The policy of requiring an administrator to set up your account, rather than accepting anonymous registrations, is in keeping with the points above. It may be possible to change this policy at some point, so please contribute your opinions over at The Demimonde, along with any other general project discussions.
General principles
Our aim is to make this database as accurate and comprehensive as possible, so that it may ultimately become the Internet's foremost resource for KSR material. We hope to accumulate a wealth of information for his body of work as well as a detailed description and database of each of the fictional 'universes' that his works inhabit.
Please be particularly vigilant when adding new information that you have sourced the data directly from the book (or appropriate source) and are not just going 'from memory'. It is preferable to ensure facts are correct the first time, rather than hunt around and correct subtle (or not so) misinformation at a later stage. Also, resist the temptation to add speculative information that is not explicitly stated in the text. Just stick to the facts. If something is heavily implied, but not outright stated, then this should be noted (eg. "It is widely believed that Frank Chalmers was involved in the assasination of John Boone, but how directly, and to what extent, is not known for sure").
Style and tone
Encyclopedic style
As with Wikipedia, an encyclopedic tone is required. Basically, this means keeping a 'value-neutral' tone, as much as practicable, and keeping your language concise, informative, yet easily readable. Casual and slang language is best avoided, yet overly formal and arcane prose is also not appropriate.
Consistency
Please make sure you have become very familiar with the existing work on this site before making contributions, as consistency of style and tone across the site is very important. The best way to determine how to approach something is to see how it has been done elsewhere. If you disagree with a particular approach to something, by all means discuss it, either at The Demimonde project forum or here on the discussion pages, but don't just unilaterally change a stylistic feature, creating inconsistency across the site.
Point of view
In-universe vs. ext-universe
Where possible, articles should primarily be written from an 'in-universe' point of view. This means that people, places, events etc. should be written as though they were actually part of history rather than fictional constructs. For example: 'Sax Russell came to Mars aboard the Ares in 2061, as opposed to 'Sax Russell is a character in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.' This approach allows gives a cohesion to the reporting of character motivations, reasons for events etc. from within the rules and structures of the story itself.
Naturally, many articles will benefit from additional 'out-of-universe' information, such as where KSR got the name of a certain place etc. This should go in a seperate subsection of the article, called 'Related info', so it is clear to the reader that we are 'stepping back' from the fictional world. At other times, a footnote may be required to comment on and in-universe fact from a out-of-universe point of view. See the example of Zo Boone's paternity to see how this works.
It is apparent that there will often be some confusion as to where the fictional universe ends and reality begins, as Robinson's fiction is heavily steeped in real world science and history. We are taking the approach that the fictional reality takes priority whenever there is a conflict, with additional discussion about the discrepencies to follow in a new subsection. For example, in talking about Martian geology and climatology, the information should be presented from the perspective of the reality in the story, and any differences in knowledge based on what we now know about Mars should be a seperate discussion.
Likewise with history. In the Mars trilogy, Robinson's history mirrors reality until approximately the 1990s, and articles should follow the fictional history, with any important and relevant discrepencies noted seperately. Any references to real people (eg. Clarke, Bradbury Point) can be reported accurately and the fictional reality is the same as the our reality, so there is no need to make a distinction.
Tense
For the Mars trilogy, articles should be written from the temporal reference point of the end of Blue Mars. Therefore, most will be written in the past tense, in the style of historical reportage. For things/places that still exist at the end of Blue Mars, present tense would be necessary. For example: 'Minus One Island is an island situated in the Hellas Sea' vs. 'Burroughs was a major Martian city that was drowned in the Second Martian Revolution'.
For other works, a reference point can be decided on in due course, but Mars is the primary in-universe focus at this point.
Templates, categories, and glossary
Templates are very useful for sections of text/code which are used in many repeatedly throughout the site. They can contain variable parameters, and a change in a template is automatically reflected on all pages which reference it. Many types of pages within this encyclopedia require established temmplate (such as the character infobox, and the Mars trilogy baseline table). Please ensure that you understand the usage of these, and apply them appropriately as required. Once again, take note of what has been established and be consistent with this. New templates are welcome if there is a beneficial use to them, but expect some discussion when establishing a new one. For a current list of all the templates that exist on the site, see Help:List of Templates.
Categories are important for being able to keep groups of articles appropriately associated and for generating up-to-date lists of logical groups (such as characters, cities, etc). However, it is very important that consistency is maintained in naming and organising Categories and that a logical structure is developed. To learn how to add Category info to an article, take a look at the wiki code for an existing article.
- Special:Categories is a dynamic list of all Categories currently in use on the site.
- Help:Category Guide is a page that has been set up in order to track and organize the logical structure of the site's Categories. This is not a dynamic page, and will need to be updated whenever new Categories are created. Please ensure that you understand this structure, apply the appropriate categories to your articles, and that new categories are created in a manner consistent with and complementary to the existing structure.
- Please note that some of the templates contain categorization information, so you don't need to explicitly state these categories on pages that use them. Such templates include the Mars trilogy baseline table (contains Category:The Mars Trilogy Encyclopedia) and the character infobox (contains Category:Mars trilogy characters).
The Glossary is a site-wide index of short definitions of terms that do not require an entire article. These can include both real-world technical terms (eg. aerobraking) or fictional in-universe terms (eg. Glossary:_V#vidglasses) and should be written from a real world (out-of-universe) perspective. Where relevant, they can contain external links to sites that contain in-depth information outiside the scope of this project, but please ensure that you find high-quality, genuinely informative links if you are going to add them. Once again, please take the time to understand the formatting and structure of the Glossary system by observing existing entries before adding new material.
- There is one page per letter in the glossary, plus an Index page. You can also view an index by visiting Category:Glossary.
- Please don't add a glossary entry until the term been referred to in an article. There is no point having orphaned glossary entries as no one will ever visit them.
- Note that you should link article terms directly to their glossary entry (rather than just the page) using named anchors. For example, aerobraking is linked with the code [[Glossary:_A#aerobraking|aerobraking]] which causes the browser to automatically jump to the aerobraking entry on the Glossary:_A page.
Referencing and citations
This wiki uses the extension Cite.php to automatically generate footnoted references when required.
Our referencing policy is that real world factual information and quotes should be fully referenced to ensure accuracy and encyclopedic integrity. On the other hand, in-universe content does not need to be specifically referenced as it is assumed that the only source for this information is the relevant texts. However, you should still be rigorous with accurate sourcing of information from the texts, and be prepared to quote the relevant book reference if questioned on a point of fact by another user.
Additional footnotes (such as an out-of-universe comment on in-universe fact) should also be referenced in this style.
- See the Kim Stanley Robinson biography for an example of thorough referencing.
- Cite.php user guide (at MetaWiki)
- Note: If your article contains only source citations, then the Reference section should be called 'References' (Example). If it contains only notes/comments, then the section should be called 'Footnotes' (Example). If both, then 'Footnotes and References.'
Manual of style
This refers to how your writing should be formatted, and is important for consistency and clarity throughout the site. It will be an evolving standard, but the default should be to stick to academic conventions and/or Wikipedia's formatting conventions.
- See our current list of site-specific formatting requirements.
Editing information
Please use Wikipedia's comprehensive editing tutorials to learn about Wiki markup and page editing.
Discussion pages
Every article has a corresponding discussion page. Please make use of them. Any significant changes to an existing article should always be accompanied by a message on the discussion page as to what your thinking was behind the change, and you should expect other users to chime in in response. Don't be stubborn in your views, but try and listen to what others have to say in order to get the best results from everyone's contributions.
Take a look at some of the existing discussion pages to see how best to structure and format a discussion. If a discussion page gets too big and unwieldy, we can always archive outdated debates.
And don't forget to sign your name to any new comments so others know who they're talking to. In case you didn't know, placing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment will automatically add a signature with timestamp.
Any general discussions about the project as a whole should take place at The Demimonde's Project forum.
Personal essays and opinion pages
It is our intention that this site should not only be a comprehensive repository of factual information, but also a home for critical essays and opinion peices related to Kim Stanley Robinson's work. In order to seperate these two distinct types of content, you are invited to host any appropriate work within your personal User namespace page. The location of a submission will be: User:<yourusernamehere>/MyEssayName. Note the use of the forward slash which creates a virtual 'subpage' under your User account homepage.
Any content you place in your User area will be considered your personal property. No one else may edit it (unless you approve it), and you are responsible for the opinions and ideas contained within it.
You may place a link to a personal work on a main article page, but only as part of an 'Additional information' section and only if it is particularly relevant. Once users have started posting personal material we will maintain an index page of all submitted work.
We look forward to lots of interesting work from our user community.
