There is no Manual of Style. Currently, there is only one active editor on Pandora's Tale Wiki. This page documents some of the style practices I follow and their justifications.
Should any new editors join the wiki, they do not need to adhere to any of the practices on this page (these style practices are not rules.)
If new editors do join, then they should discuss what the actual Manual of Style should say, and none of the practices here should be given precedent just because I did them first.
While I remain the only active editor, I might change anything on this page at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
I usually try to use "official" names given in the comic itself or in Xan's commentary. Sometimes, unnamed characters are given short descriptions in the comic script (which is available as alt-text to the comic on the fediverse). These short descriptions are not always suitable for use as article titles, and Xan explained why on the now-deleted talk page for The Courier. On 2022 November 30, Xan said
In the case of characters who don't have names, I wonder if using the descriptions from the scripts is always gonna be the best approach. "Cop" seems misleading for this character, and I'm pretty sure the cops from chapter 5 are just "Cop 1" and "Cop 2", while chapter 9 has different characters who also use "Cop 1" and "Cop 2". When writing scripts I'll often use brief descriptions like these for minor characters, but I don't think it necessarily makes sense to use these outside of that very narrow context. Just my two cents, ya know?
Hence, I will not automatically consider these descriptions "official names" even though they do come from Xan.
I have no plans to make articles about real people, even if they are directly relevant to the comic.
On Discord, Xan said "I think I'd prefer the new incarnation of the wiki to focus on Pandora's Tale and not my other work. By all means mention it, but since my other comics involve real people I'd prefer it if we didn't get too in depth with them." When asked for clarification, she said she also wanted me to delete the Disgruntled Catgirl family of articles. Though PTW has never covered the parts of TTMTTP about real people, I will henceforth also avoid other parts of TTMTTP unless they are directly tied with Pandora's Tale (such as Texts from Pandora).
If Xan revises and republishes some pages of the comic, only the newest revision is considered canon. So far, this has only occured once: when Xan modified Chapter 4, Page 21 for the book release to remove Kyndley's title. Hence, the title "Overseer" for Kyndley is no longer canon[c4p21][SemiCanon]
https://mastodon.lol/@comicsbyxan/109429358958569412
https://mastodon.lol/@comicsbyxan/109436552863220387
When I asked Xan on Discord whether citing her social media posts was appropriate, she said she didn't mind me citing them, but that some of the things she says outside of the comic are things she hasn't firmly decided on yet. Hence, all information that comes from Xan's social media should use either
All cited social media posts should be archived. Social media posts in a format that cannot be archived, such as Discord messages or fediverse direct messages, cannot be cited.
All references to archive.is, archive.li, archive.fo, archive.ph, archive.vn and archive.md should be changed to archive.today.
Wikipedia explanation on archive.today links
In an article's "trivia" section, semi-canon pieces of trivia should be separated into a subsection if and only if there are at least one canon and at least two semi-canon entries in the trivia section.
Information that is only available in the script is considered semi-canon, because the scripts are not available on the main site, and some of the scripts for earlier chapters differ from the actual text in the comic. If Xan ever puts the scripts on the actual comic site, this style practice should be reevaluated.
For the most part, Pandora's Tale Wiki is a text reference. If you want images which describe the comic, you can read the comic itself.
There is, however, an important use for images on the wiki. When writing an article about a character, it's important to disambiguate which character the article is about. Text descriptions may be insufficient, especially for characters who are not named in canon. Hence, each character article should have a single image showing just the character.
Articles for "major" characters follow a different format than articles for minor characters. This requires a definition of "major character." I consider a named non-metafictional character to be a major character if they satisfy any of the following conditions.
A character qualifies as a major character if they are in the top
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ⌊╲│Total number of named non-metafictional characters ⌋
named non-metafictional characters ranked by the number of chapters they appear in.
In the case of a tie, more characters are included as major characters.
A character qualifies as a major character if they would haven been a major character under condition (1) when there were fewer chapters.
As of Chapter 11, five characters qualify under this rule: Pandora, Isabelle, Con, Zero, and Veronica:
A character qualifies as a major character if they are a semi-finalist of a once-per-book Pandora's Tale Character Tournament.
Putting it all together, the eight major characters are currently Pandora, Isabelle Monday, Con Yung, Hemmel, Natalya Ustrashkina, Noor Shah, Veronica Fortuna, and Zero Angiers.
Every major character article has a section detailing the character's relationships with every other major character. Characters in this section should be listed in a particular order: Pandora comes first, followed by Isabelle, followed by all other major characters in alphabetical order by first name.
If A and B are two major characters, and A comes before B in the given ordering, then the subsection B's article should refer the reader back to A's article (not the other way around).
A character qualifies for their own article if they are either:
Characters who are named but never appear in the comic do not get their own articles, but they should appear on the list of unseen and implied characters.
The characters section should list all named and notable unnamed characters in the order of their first appearance in the chapter.
This section is the most important part of a chapter article, since it is used to calculate the number of character appearances, which in turn determines a character's status as a "major" character. It will also be used to determine which characters are eligible for the Pandora's Tale Volume 2 Character Tournament.
Sometimes, it may be appropriate to link to another wiki or online database. When this is appropriate, I will choose which site to reference based on the following list of priorities. From best to worst:
Exceptions might be made to bypass wikis whose admins are evil or if a lower-priority source is substantially better.
There are two versions of the "LGBTQIA Wiki" that we could link to for references on orientation, both of which share a domain. One is hosted by Miraheze, and the other is hosted by MyWikis on a subdomain.
For certain topics, there is also the independent Nonbinary Wiki and the Intersex Wiki.
There's also the LGBT Database Wiki, which uses Wikibase to store a lot of information about queer people.
https://lgbtdb.wikibase.cloud/wiki/Main_Page
Both LGBTQIA wikis have the same bureaucrat, and they say the Miraheze wiki is deprecated in favor of the MyWikis wiki. Though the Miraheze wiki is still active and still has substantially more articles, the MyWikis one has more active editors and the articles are generally of a much higher quality. The bureaucrat also says that the MyWikis wiki will eventually take over the domain of the Miraheze wiki once it has enough content. Hence, when linking to another wiki about a queer topic, I will use the following priority list:
I am using essentially the same rules for deadnames as the Rainverse Wiki. I am treating Pandora's designation number as a deadname, though I might not apply the same standard to other Helpers. As of Chapter 11 we do not know any humans' deadnames.
I will use strings of three dashes to indicate the start or end of a "template." Those dashes can be read by a script for modifying all copies of the template.
I will not use Forgejo issues. Instead, I will put all my plans in this document or in other files in the "Meta" folder.
There are two reasons for this decision. First, given that I am the only editor and the relatively small quantity of planning I have written down, there isn't much benefit to a complicated issue tracker.
Moreover, one of the main reasons for switching to git is that I want to have all wiki text stored locally, and that includes the planning.
On the old wiki, I used the template InfoUpdateFlag to keep track of information that required an update. Now, I should instead use the exact phrase
As of chapter X
(Case-insensitive), where X is replaced by a chapter number.
This wiki cannot hope to catalogue all queer terminology. Queer terms which are used in the comic should be listed on the appropriate page, along with a link to a resource with more information.
A citation should appear after the punctuation of the sentence or clause it refers to (typically after a period or comma). The citation should NOT be immediately before the punctuation.
All links to other wiki pages should use relative URLs. This ensures the link works both online and on a local file system.
All section headers and list items should have a space between the syntax symbol and the section name.