Ultronomicon talk:Manual of Style

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Revision as of 16:18, 20 October 2005 by Phoenix (talk | contribs) ("Official" canon?)
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I haven't really contributed much, but I added just a few things to this style guide based on what I've seen around Ultronomicon. Please feel free to edit the guide and discuss anything that you disagree with here. Thanks! --Phoenix (t) 22:53, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)

Language

I wrote American English just because I've seen most articles using it. I personally prefer to use British English, so I will not object if we decide to use that instead (in fact, I'd enthusiastically support the use of British English). --Phoenix (t) 22:53, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)

I unfortunately have to agree. I prefer British English in general myself, and I'll do use it on the talk pages, but the game itself is in American English, and as such American English seems most appropriate for the actual articles. -- SvdB 20:59, 8 Oct 2005 (CEST)
Ah yes, I didn't even think of that. --Phoenix (t) 19:05, 10 Oct 2005 (CEST)

General style guide comments

If this style guide is going to stand a chance of actually being read, it's got to be a lot more terse. With that in mind, I'm going to be bold and scrap the entire introduction, which is just stating the obvious.

I also think the explanation on the various side boxes does not belong on this page. Ultronomicon:Templates perhaps, or else a new page. This page is about style, not a technical manual.

I have gotten rid of all the bold where it is used to signify litteral strings. This is what quotation marks are for. Bold is only distracting, which is what bold is for (focussing attention).

We should also stick to one "name" or for the flagship, to keep things clean. I'd say "The Flagship" when used as a title (which it is in most of the cases where you'd want a wiki link). When used as a description it should be lowercase; you'd just be using it as an English word. Suggested phrasing: Use "The Flagship" (note the capitalisation) to refer to the one and only Precursor ship controlled by the player. When refering to the ship by description, used "flagship" as you would in any other English text. Similarly, we should stick to one way of writing "The Captain".

"We chose the first option because it gives continuity from the original Alliance of Free Stars." It does give continuity, but I don't consider that the reason. In fact, whether we even want to suggest continuity is open for discussion. I personally like the name because it is descriptive. But we didn't conciuously made any choice.

Another issue: "Humans", capitalised or not?

— SvdB 08:30, 11 Oct 2005 (CEST)

As I was reading the style guide, I started debating the merits of using bold vs. using quotation marks anyway, so that's fine. You're right about the introduction. People reading this would probably have read style guides anyway, so they don't need a section on the conventions used here.

However, I think we need an explanation on the use of the {{RaceBox}} template, because these boxes need to be consistent. Some of the fields could be filled out in different ways: I think the style guide should specify how this box is filled out.

Okay, I like your phrasing of "The Flagship", but I'm a little conflicted about "The Captain". There have been some cases where "the Captain" would be appropriate, but you're probably right. Just sticking with one eliminates the possibility of mistakes.

With the name of the alliance, I definitely chose it simply because that was in use of the Wiki, but since I haven't really been in on it, perhaps you can note why we chose the name in the style guide. Or, if you wish, we can even just say "We chose the first option because we said so." :-)

I thought about the capitalisation of "Human", and I consciously chose to capitalise it (as you noticed, since you're asking me about it). This makes it consistent with how we describe the other races. We're "humans", but the Ultronomicon reads like an intergalactic document: "Humans" are just one among many races. So far, I haven't seen many "ur-quan", "shofixti", or "mycons", so I don't think we should be describing "humans" as if they were somehow different from the rest of the spacefaring races.

I'll update the style guide to address your "(disputes)" which are probably satisfied here. --Phoenix (t) 15:38, 11 Oct 2005 (CEST)


About the side boxes, I agree that people should know it, but to keep this page readable, I suggest to only make a reference here, and point to a page that contains the details. Something like "The various side boxes need to be filled in correctly and consistently. Read <this page> to see how it is done."

You said there were cases where "the Captain" would be appropriate. Could you give an example?

Someone started using "The New Alliance of Free Stars" to refer to the alliance, and it stuck. It should really be discussed, and if something else is decided, some pages would have to be changed.

I agree with "Humans" btw. I think consistency among SC races is more important than the convention in daily life in this case.

A remark about Hierarchy of Battle Thralls" to denote Battle Thralls and "Ur-Quan Hierarchy (fallow slave)" to denote the slave-shielded races.. It makes it sound like the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls is something else than the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, which it isn't. I'm not sure what the best way to solve it is though.

— SvdB 21:10, 11 Oct 2005 (CEST)

I disagree about moving the side boxes to another article linked from the style guide. I think the style guide should be a reference. It can be read from top to bottom if desired, but it's not really designed to be as such. I see the style guide as something that writers and editors refer to if they have a question about how to write content. I think all the data should be on one page. Having to click a link to get to more content is difficult, and it is also annoying when one wants to print out the page to have a reference with which to edit content. The TOC contains hyperlinks to all the relevant sections, and as long as the headings are verbose enough, I think that should be sufficient for the writer or editor to refer to the correct section.

The more I think about it, the more I agree that "The Captain" is fine for cases where I previously used "the Captain". Before, I used "the Captain" when it's not the start of a sentence (such as right after a comma), but when you think of "The Captain" as an actual name instead of a title or rank, it seems much more appropriate. Here's one case where I think "the Captain" may have been appropriate (from QuasiSpace Portal Spawner, which currently uses "Captain Zelnick"):

In order to allow The Captain to use such a Spawner on the much larger Vindicator, the Arilou had to amplify a standard Spawner's power using a Warp Pod scavenged from the wreck of an Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Dreadnought at Alpha Pavonis (coordinates 56.2:800).

I think the capitalisation looks a little awkward here. However, I can't very well say use "the Captain" in cases where "The Captain" doesn't look good, can I?

BTW, when referring to the name of the new alliance, are you emphasising the fact that there is a leading "The", or just that the "New Alliance" was chosen as the option out of the four possible alliance names?

I agree about the Hierarchy of Battle Thralls, but that depends on the actual name. I don't have SC1 in front of me right now, so I don't quite remember how it was referred, but this image seems to indicate that it was just called "Ur-Quan Hierarchy". If that's the case, perhaps to be consistent with how we denote fallow slave, we should instead say to use the following:

"Ur-Quan Hierarchy (battle thrall)" to denote battle thralls and "Ur-Quan Hierarchy (fallow slave)" to denote the slave-shielded races.

Either redirect battle thrall to Battle Thrall, or move Battle Thrall to battle thrall to eliminate the red link. This is probably ideal because Hierarchy of Battle Thralls is just a redirect to Ur-Quan Hierarchy anyway. --Phoenix (t) 20:00, 12 Oct 2005 (CEST)


About the side boxes: To be complete and consistent, we'd want to explain how all the various race boxes work. Consider how large this page would become then. I agree that they should be described, but I don't think it should be on this page. A remark here "For consistency, it's important that the various templates are filled in in the same way. The page ... explains how they are to be used." would do the trick imho. Having a separate page allows the reader to find specifically the information he's interested more easilly. Also, when someone reads the entire page from top to bottom, which imho is something all contributors should do, he/she won't remember all these details anyhow. The template stuff is more of a reference thing that people should know where to find when they need it, not something that is vital that they know when they start editing the Ultronomicon. Most starting editors won't be adding side boxes anyhow.

I think "The Captain" works. The capital "T" makes it clear that it's not just any captain, it is the captain.

The term "Ur-Quan Hierarchy" vastly outnumbers "Hierarchy of Battle Thralls". Neither of these terms is ever spoken by either Ur-Quan race. It seems more to be a name given by the allies based on a description, then an actual name. Interestingly, when "Hierarchy of Battle Thralls" is used, it's always as "[The Ur-Quan Kzer-Za] and their Hierarchy of Battle Thralls". Using "Ur-Quan Hierarchy" seems like the better choice now to me. I agree with your description of how to reference battle thralls and fallow slaves.

My remark about the new alliance was about the choice that the player gets in the beginning of the game. — SvdB 13:20, 19 Oct 2005 (CEST)

Sideboxes: Do you mean we'd have to explain how all the various sideboxes work? If so, right now, I can only think of two: the {{RaceBox}} and the prototypical Template:Sust:template. I think the presence of just two boxes should be okay. If the number of side boxes requiring a style guide entry reaches an unmanageable size, I'd agree, but right now, I only see two side boxes that require such an entry, and the style guide can easily handle a few more. In addition, I don't think all fields require an extensive entry. When I get around to expanding the ship box template to include details such as turning rate and battery regeneration, I can just lump all these together into one entry and say "specify the integer as noted in the source code", or something like that.

New Alliance: I see a few ways of dealing with the name of the new alliance.

  1. New Alliance of Free Stars— Based on your earlier comments, I think we both like this option, though others may not. It provides a clear description of just what this alliance is. Since it's only one of four options that the player can choose, this official title might not be appropriate.
  2. New Alliance (or The/the New Alliance?)— I saw an article that used this terminology (sadly, I don't remember which one it was), and thought about it as a possible title. This style keeps to how we use The Captain and The Flagship as "official names" for what is largely at the player's discretion. The problem with this is that it is a little confusing because it sounds a lot like "New Alliance of Free Stars", and since it sounds so unofficial, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to use it as an official name for a race box.
  3. The Captain's Alliance— I thought of this one as I was typing the first two options. This is also in the style if The Captain and The Flagship, but sounds official enough and different enough from one of the four possible player-choice options that it would be appropriate to use in a race box.

I still like the use of "New Alliance of Free Stars" because it's descriptive and it's certainly very official-sounding (since it's an official name), but I think "The Captain's Alliance" might be a viable alternative. What do you think? --Phoenix (t) 17:31, 20 Oct 2005 (CEST)

"Official" canon?

When I was reading some of the articles, I was thinking about something that (Svdb said about game events: events that have to happen in order for the game to end successfully, and side events (side plots?) that are purely optional. A lot of the articles are very well written and read like historical reference works, but I wonder if player-determined side plots should be mentioned as canon. Just like the use of (optional) to denote payer actions determining certain races' memberships in organisations, perhaps we should use a beginning and ending template, something like "Optional events: the following events are largely dependent on what the player chooses to do in Star Control II." and "End of optional events.", or words to that effect. I think it's also safe to say that the game was finished before the Kohr-Ah had a chance to cleanse any of the races that were still around at the beginning of the game.

Examples of canon events:

In that case, we should probably also have a page that describes canonical events and optional events. I think it could be in the style guide if it's small enough. If it becomes too large, maybe in a separate page linked from the editing essentials and style guide pages. Thoughts? --Phoenix (t) 18:18, 20 Oct 2005 (CEST)

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