Project:Style Guide

Introduction
For ease of access, Pluralpedia promotes some standard formatting, crediting, and other conventions. Because this is a public-access project, nothing will be perfect, but adherence to this guide is greatly appreciated!

Note that while we do have a standard style, it's still better to have a page with some info than to have nothing. Don't let formatting or writing style stop you from adding a page - you or someone else can always go back and edit it. There are also no notability requirements on this wiki, so it's okay to add obscure, historical, personal, or new terms.

If anything feels missing from this guide, or you have questions about anything, feel free to ask in the Discord server!

Templates & Guides
Here are some very handy pre-made pages to use when adding new terms.

For Terms
See this example page for adding new terms to the wiki. It can be copy & pasted in its entirety.

Consent
Not all systems want their labels, flags, or terminology in these sorts of projects. Please respect this! Many experiences are personal, and adding such closed terms into the public consciousness is violating a system's consent. When in doubt, do not add a term.

Word Choice
Another part of consistency is language. Beyond using proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, here are some guidelines.

Pronouns
Personal pronouns (you, I, we, us, my) are not recommended outside of the Project, Talk and User namespaces. This is an objective, abstract collection of terminology. While these are sometimes unavoidable, we should still try to avoid them as much as possible otherwise.

Referring to System Members
To keep this wiki inclusive, the term "alter" and "part" are not to be used when describing a member of a system when not on specific pages. "Headmate" is the preferred way to refer to them.

Medical vs. Community Terminology
This project is meant to encompass all plurality-related definitions and descriptors. As such, both medical (alter and specific diagnoses) and community-created (mesosian, for example) labels will be listed and supported.

Punctuation
Avoid the use of quotes for things that aren't actual quotations, as this could be interpreted as scare quotes. Scare quotes give many readers a sort of textual analog to holding something at arm's length and pinching one's nose.

To avoid this, prefer to write phrases like “Some systems prefer the term frob” or “Some systems prefer using frob instead”, rather than “Some systems prefer 'frob'”.

More Resources
Wikipedia's own Manual of Style is a good reference for writing in general wiki-style. However, our own style is not a carbon copy of Wikipedia's, and our own guide should take priority.

Descriptivism
The aim of this wiki is to be a dictionary that describes the terms as they exist in practice. Definitions should help anyone in the greater plural community become more familiar with the vocabulary of their communities. We're not here to police how people talk. If there's disagreement over what term is the right one, we should document both, perhaps with a note explaining the disagreement. Exceptions are possible, such as terms that are actively harmful, a slur, or widely considered offensive.

Tone
All good-faith identifiers must be treated with respect. Even if an individual disagrees with the term, editors here are simply messengers, not judges. Please do not put personal influence into definitions.

Credits
This is arguably the most important of this project: proper citations. Always keep links handy! Pluralpedia uses the references & footnotes when doing in-text citations, similar to Chicago style. If you want to learn more about references, see MediaWiki's own page about it here.

For Terms
Links to coining posts are required for a term to be added, preferably an archived version using archive.li or archive.org. Common places terms are posted are on Tumblr, Discord servers, forums, or other bots like Termora or Blossom.

Sometimes, terms can be harder to track down, or not have links at all. That's fine! Citing sites like did-research.org or traumadissociation for medical terminology is acceptable, or entire forums if individual coiners cannot be found. If a term was specifically coined for Pluralpedia, please note that in the page as well.

For Flags
When uploading flags, Mediawiki (this program) lets users change the file name when uploading. In the new file name, please add the creator's system name or another identifying label to it. In the description of the file, please add the link there, as well as in the thumbnail or gallery description. Credit for a flag is not necessary in the infobox.

For Oneself
Crediting oneself for writing, editing, or fixing a page is not permitted. This is not a project for the sake of personal achievement, but for the community as a whole.

Categories
Categories make terms easier to find for people browsing the site for the first time. Ask these questions when adding a new term:


 * Is it related to the DSM, psychiatry, or otherwise medical terminology? Category:Psychiatric Terms
 * It's also worth listing the origin as a Psychiatric Term in the term infobox.
 * Does this term describe the internal structure of a system? Category:Structure
 * Is it related to spirituality, or otherwise metaphysical? Category:Metaphysical Terms
 * Does it relate to fictives, factives, or introjects? Category:Outsourced & Introject Terms
 * Does it relate to fronting or switching? Category:Fronting Terms
 * Does it describe the age or maturity of a headmate? Category:Age-Related Terms
 * Does it describe things related to, or inside of, headspaces? Category:Headspace Terms
 * Is it a website, Discord bot, or another resource? Category:Resources
 * Does it relate to median systems? Category:Terms specific to median systems

Most of these categories are automatically added when using the infobox in term creation, but double checking where a page belongs is never a bad thing.

If a category doesn't exist, make sure that there isn't already one that's similar. For example, there's no need for a Medical Terms category, since there is already a Psychiatric Terms one.

When creating a new category, make sure to put it in the Terms category or in a subcategory. That way, the new category can be easily found by someone starting from the main page. Special:UncategorizedCategories can help with this.

Terms Infobox
In the source editor, click on the puzzle piece icon, then type in Term. It will present you with questions on the left. Clicking on the question will let you put in an answer, which will then be reflected in the infobox.

In the visual editor, go to Insert → Template, then type in Term. It will present you with a form with questions, and then create the infobox. You can go back and edit it by clicking on the infobox.

Other templates
There are a few other templates on the wiki that would be useful for most pages. Insert these in the same way as the Terms Infobox:


 * The  template is used for pages whose content may be confused for another term. Use it to explain specifically what the article is about, and direct the user towards potential alternatives. For examples of the template, see Alter and Gatekeeper. We follow pretty similar rules to Wikipedia] in handling these conflicts. The information there should be a good guideline in most cases.
 * The  template is used to mark pages that need further expansion. Feel free to put this on pages you have written but feel need more information, or on pages others have written but you would like to see more information about. For a list of pages with the template, see Category:Stubs.
 * The  template is used for pages with potentially sensitive content. For more information on when we use these, see Project:Content Warnings.

The following templates work similar, but are more for low-level formatting than specific things. They may not be particularly useful without direct source editing:


 * The  template is used format header warnings similar to the   and   templates. Use this if you want to add a similar message, but no existing template fits your use case well.

Categories
For the source editor, to add a category put a link to it at the bottom of the page, like. To make a link to a category without putting the page into that category, use.

In the visual editor, to add a category click on the hamburger menu (≡) and then Categories. Linking to a category is the same as linking to a regular page.

A full guide to categories can be found at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories.

Image Formatting: 1 Image
Use the format  for adding a singular image to a page, like one flag.

Image Formatting: 2+ Images
A gallery is recommended if a term has two flags, for example. This is formatted differently:

Thank you for reading! This keeps this project cohesive. Any suggestions to a page like this (including rules or DELETION GUIDE should be directed to the Discord server for discussing crucial pages, which can be found here.