Community Content: Adding Pages To The SuzeWiki

Suzerain is a whole universe, which means there's a lot to it. There's plenty of space for everyone to have a corner that matches their own vision. So welcome, and please join us in contributing some pages to the SuzeWiki.

We've chosen a few basic style rules to help make all the content easier to read and understand, so please take a moment to read the following. We'll also talk about the way you achieve the text effects you might want around your pages.

Setting up a new page

To write pages you'll need to be registered. Once you log in, you'll see a new option on the left hand side bar, near the bottom. It's called 'Quick Edit a Wiki page'. Type your new page name / title (we use those words interchangably) in the box and hit the 'create/edit' button.

You can use the 'create/edit' button to edit your pages too. In fact, you can edit any page on the site, though we ask you not to edit content that's in the Official category.

Titles

     There are a few rules to naming your page. For starters, please use capital letters for the start of each word so Adding Pages To The SuzeWiki rather than Adding Pages to the SuzeWiki.

     Stick to alphnumeric characters in titles where possible. Wiki software tends to sulk when titles have punctuation, though we've tested apostrophes (like The Ship's Cat), commas (like Marcus, Juju Shaman), exclamation points (like Mojo Rules!) and hyphens, (like Lucen-Harburg). Those seem to work though we've seen some instances where text you write in a word processor then copy into the wiki doesn't pick up links with punctuation. If you know there's a page with that name and the link doesn't happen, try editing the page in the wiki and deleting the link text, then retyping it exactly the same. Whether the ASCII codes for punctuation are different in the wiki to most word processors, or whether it's something else... either way, that seems to fix it mostly.

     If your page title could be either 'The xxxx' or just 'xxxx', skip 'the'. When I started writing pages I wrote a couple that I then changed, 'The Maelstrom' and 'The Veil'. They're now just plain old 'Maelstrom' and 'Veil'. It's easier to search for, and stops us ending up with a list that has thousands of entries under 'The....' or 'A...'

     If your page title could be singular or plural, go with singular. When it came to 'Realm' versus 'Realms', I went with 'Realm'. I'll be fixing 'Great Spirits' in a moment, I promise. EDIT: Done!

Main content

Our number one tip is this - write your text in a word processor so it gets spell-checked, and make sure you've got a blank line between each paragraph for ease of reading. Also, put the following at the start of every paragraph (not headings):

: %tab%

That adds an indent at the start of a paragraph, making it easier to read. Once you have that done, cut-and-paste the whole thing into the SuzeWiki page you create. The wiki doesn't spell check, and formatting the paragraphs is just easier in a word processor.

$tab$Our number two tip is to keep each page to about 500 words. If you get much beyond that, create a series of linked pages with each one covering an aspect of the topic you're covering.

First impressions

     Your first paragraph should generally be an overview of what you're writing about, stating which realm or realms your page focuses on and the time period. So, for instance, you might start with, "In Yr208 of the Elements realm of Untamed Empires..." then give a couple of sentences of overview before putting a header and the bulk of your detail. It's all too easy to remember to say your page is about a person in New York, but then forget to mention he's living in the modern day, 1999 to be precise. In Suzerain, which spans all times and places, it's important to have all that clearly stated at the start.

     This acts as a courtesy to the reader, and also adds a couple of high level links for people to follow. Make sure you have some links in your page, or people will struggle to find you. Most pages get read because someone follows a link or uses the backlinks from a page. If you're writing about a new realm you've created, then start with a page about that realm where its title is simply the realm name. Then link to that page at the start of each of the pages dealing with aspects of that realm.

     If your content relates to one of the families of realms, please put the following syntax at the top of the page:

: For Catalyst start with:

: {img src=show_image.php?id=34 link='tiki-index.php?page=Catalyst'}

: For Elements start with:

: {img src=show_image.php?id=35 link='tiki-index.php?page=Elements'}

: For Timeline start with:

: {img src=show_image.php?id=36 link='tiki-index.php?page=Timeline'}

: For Maelstrom start with:

: {img src=show_image.php?id=37 link='tiki-index.php?page=Maelstrom'}

Then leave a pair of blank lines before starting to type your text. This will add the appropriate logo to the top of your page so it's easy to see which set of realms your writing about. All realms fall into one of those four families, so many pages will link to one of them. If your page relates to more than one family of realms, then don't add any of the logos. Simple enough.

If you use a term that links to another page, please put the link in the first time that phrase appears, not the second or subsequent time. When I first mentioned realms a few paragraphs ago, I linked it to the 'realm' page. I haven't linked the word 'realm' since. That's a house style to keep pages tidier, especially if a term comes up often.

Past tense

If you're writing about things that happen, bear in mind that the Suzerain universe encompasses all places and all times, not just one point in time. When you talk about events surounding a character in 1999 New York, the reader might be used to thinking of New York in the 1920s or the far future. As a result, use the past tense where possible. That person 'did something'. Not 'does something'. Not 'will do something'. It's easier that way, and tells a better story. Imagine that you're at the End Times, when the universe is about to be destroyed, and you're looking back on the events you're writing about. That should work.

One exception - if you're writing a piece of fiction that's looking through a character's eyes, feel free to go to the present tense. We use quotes from people in various realms, for instance in Mad Tinkering, and for certain stories like the Leviathan Biographies. However, if you put a quote into a page, please have it in italics and attribute the quote to the person who said it. The Spirit World page shows you what we mean.

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Created by: MMK. Last Modification: Wednesday 16 of December, 2009 22:44:15 UTC by newcuckoo.

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