Help:Style guide
Here is a brief "style guide" to be taken into consideration when creating and editing entries:
Article names
Article names should consist of a character's name, followed by the primary continuity associated with said character in parentheses (usually, the continuity where this character first appeared). As an example, there are currently two characters named Hot Shot, one from Robots in Disguise and one from the Unicron Trilogy. As such, the first character's entry would be Hot Shot (RiD), and the second would be Hot Shot (UT). Even if a name is only used in one continuity, PLEASE maintain this naming scheme, in case future lines utilize a pre-existing name (just look at how many different Scorponoks there are!).
Keeping the notations short and abbreviated is important, especially to keep typos and annoyances to a minimum. For example, when the wiki begins to start creating pages in the Toy section, "Hot Shot (Unicron Trilogy) (toy) (Energon) (Energon)" would be extremely frustrating to repeat across pages.
Some characters, most notably Unicron, are canonically dimensional singularities. As they exist simultaneously in all universes, they need no parenthetical notation after their names.
Examples:
Articles ("the", "a")
Unless the page title refers to the title of a work, such as The Ultimate Doom, articles (i.e. "the", "a") are to be avoided. Thus, the Fallen's page should be at Fallen, not The Fallen.
Plurals
Unless the plural form is surely the group's name (Wreckers), it should not be used as an article title (Transmetal). One way to make sure of this is if the singular form is used often and that it's not a "join forces" kind of group.
Series Identifiers
The terminology used on this Wiki to refer to each "era" of Transformers is as follows:
- Generation 1, abbreviated (G1), includes all Transformers toys, comics, television series, and miscellaneous products produced between 1984 and the end of 1992. This includes all Japanese, European, and South American products as well, and possibly some of 1993's European releases, specifically the Turbomasters and Predators. It includes Japanese toys and cartoons which were not released in the US, such as those from Victory. It also includes the newer "Generation 1" comics from companies such as Dreamwave and IDW, as well as the Generation 1 reissue series in the United States and Japan, specifically as pertains to new characters introduced in those series. Alternators are also currently considered part of the Generation One continuity.
- Generation 2, abbreviated (G2), includes all Transformers toys, comics, and miscellaneous products produced between 1993 and the end of 1995. This does not specifically include the Generation Two television series, which consisted entirely of G1 episodes with new graphics.
- Beast Wars, abbreviated (BW), includes all Transformers toys, comics, and miscellaneous products produced between 1996 and 1999, excluding the Animorphs subline, but including the Japanese Beast Wars Second and Beast Wars Neo series. This series also includes BotCon exclusives from 1996 to 2000.
- Beast Machines, abbreviated (BM), includes all Transformer toys, comics, and miscellaneous products released under the "Beast Machines" line, between late 1999 and mid-2001.
- Robots in Disguise, abbreviated (RiD), includes all Transformer toys, comics, and miscellaneous products released under the "Car Robots" line in Japan in 2000 and in the United States "Robots in Disguise" line in 2001 and early 2002.
- Transformers: Universe, abbreviated (TFU), includes all Transformer toys, comics, and miscellaneous products released under the "Transformers: Universe" line in the United States starting in 2003 and going forward, as well as all BotCon exclusives between 2001 and 2004, although several BotCon exclusives prior can be considered retroactively part of the Universe continuity.
- The Unicron Trilogy, abbreviated (UT), includes all Transformer toys, comics, television series, and other miscellaneous products released under the Armada, Energon, and Cybertron lines in the United States, as well as their comparable Japanese series.
- Transformers: Timelines, abbreviated (T), includes BotCon exclusives (both toys and comics) starting in 2005 and going forward.
New series identifiers will be added as needed, after being agreed upon by a consensus of users.
Disambiguation
In many cases, more than one article "should" have the same name. Such articles require disambiguation.
- If none of the meanings of the term require long definitions, they can all be listed in the same article.
- If there are exactly two meanings for the term, the primary or more commonly-used meaning should be found in the main article. The other meaning should be placed in a second article with a clarifying statement in parantheses. Both articles should include the Template:Disambig2 template to notify readers of the term's other meaning. (If neither meaning for the term is significantly more prominant, you may create a disambiguation page as described in the final bullet of this list.)
- If there are three or more meanings for the term, and one of the meanings is significantly more common than the other meanings, the most commonly-used meaning should be found in the main article. The other meanings should be placed in other articles with clarifying statements in parantheses. A disambiguation page should be created which lists and links to all meanings of the term. All of the articles should include the Template:Disambig3 template to point readers to the disambiguation page in case they ended up at the wrong page by mistake.
- If there are three or more meanings for the term, but none of them is significantly more common the the others, the main article itself should be empty and should redirect to a disambiguation page. The disambiguation page should list and link to all meanings of the term. All of the articles should include the Template:Disambig3 template to point readers to the disambiguation page in case they ended up at the wrong page by mistake.
The names of all disambiguation pages should end with "(disambiguation)". All disambiguation pages should end with the Template:Disambig template.
Lists
A list of items from the Transformers multiniverse, such as Starships or Places should be broken down by continuity, G1 and G2 first, followed by Beast Wars/Beast Machines, then Robots in Disguise, Unicron Trilogy, and a final (if necessary) "Other" category.
Within each larger category, please break down individual entries by faction, with Autobots first, Decepticons second (or Maximals and Predacons where necessary), followed by any other necessary "Other" categories.
Images
Whenever possible, PLEASE source any art you upload to this Wiki! Please include the name of the original artist (where possible) and the location of the artwork (comics: issue number; cartoons: episode title). If you don't know who drew it or what episode it's from, then at least provide a link in the image upload information telling us where it's from.
Minor and Major edits
Be sure to only mark something as a minor edit when the change made is negligible; for example, fixing a typo, wikifying links, adding categories to a page, or making minor formatting changes. However, anything that actually changes the content of the page should not be marked as a minor change.
The purpose of marking something as a minor edit is presenting it as something that most users should ignore on the Special:Recentchanges page. Actual changes to the content of the page should be visible to any editors watching the article.
