News:Archive/17 May 2009/Manual of Style

 HALOPEDIA NEWS  Manual of Style

Story by Jaws Redfield May 17th, 2009

Intro
With Halopedia's articles slowly becoming more messy, admin Subtank is proposing we use Manual of Style. I explain what it will do to articles.

News
"Halopedia's articles are of poor organisation, grammar and most importantly, quality and readability. Everyday, we've tried to fix these errors/problems left by visiting IPs and new users. Everyday, there are new trivia and images added in an article by these new users, often ruining the quality and organisation of these article. Our veteran users (both old and new) combat against these errors/problems and tried to return these articles to normal. However, that is not enough. (Oh, keep up the good work!) The real problem is the fact that every article we have in Halopedia has no common/standard format."

- Subtank on the state of Halopedia's articles.

Many of you have seen the blog, but for those that have not, here is rundown of what it’ll mean for the wiki. Firstly, I would like to note that the project is being spearheaded by Subtank. The Manual of Style is essentially a Massive Cleanup project of Halopedia articles. As Subtank said, none of the articles have a standard styling, and as the M.O.S has worked well for Wikipedia, Halopedia are going to attempt it and see how well it works out.

Firstly, one of the big changes is to the Levels. The main don’ts include removing the Walkthroughs on the pages, and giving them their own subpages. The reason for this, given to me by Subtank, is that they make the Pages look Messy, and this then in turn causes the page to look disorganized. She also is planning on removing Weapon, Vehicles and Equipment Layouts from the levels and placing it on the Walkthrough subpage. She also makes it clear that having the list of Enemies is redundant as you only face three different Factions. Carrying on the images, she has made a list of what the levels should have the list pretty much what is on Levels now minus the stuff I have listed above. With Biography, it is mainly the same, but removing any unnecessary areas. This is so that it does not clog up the page with too much information and make the page hard to understand and/or read.

With Species, The M.O.S has one significant change, and the change is involving Combat. The M.O.S says that Combat “Should not have strategies or tips! This section is to describe their combat behavior and vulnerability, not weapons they can or cannot wield!” This means that there is no section for tips to defeat. Other changes include that there is no need for Appearances, as that’s what the era template is for, and no Gameplay section, as stated above.

I decided to get some people’s opinions on the matters, so I asked whoever was on Halopedia’s IRC Channel at the time. First to answer my questions was SPARTAN-08BLAM!. I asked him if he liked the idea of introducing the M.O.S, and he replied quickly with a very simple “Yes”. I then questioned him if he wanted to change anything about what M.O.S will do, and he replied with “Nothing actually, I think the entire thing works well and would do the wikia lots of good.” After waiting for half an hour waiting for another opinion, no one came forward.

I agree with the point SPARTAN-08BLAM! made. It will do the Wiki a lot of good if done, and it’ll make the pages affected more easy to read, and is easier to the eye.