Pandora's Tale Wiki:Manual of Style

From Pandora's Tale Wiki

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.

Article Names

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 talk page for The Courier. Hence, I will not automatically consider these descriptions "official names" even though they do come from Xan.

Articles About Real People

I have no plans to make articles about real people, even if they are directly relevant to the comic.

Thinking Too Much To Think Positively

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).

Canon

Currently, the wiki treats everything in the comic as well as Xan's public statements on social media as equally canon. 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. In the future, I plan to implement a "semi-canon" template similar to the one on Zelda Wiki.

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[1][2][3][4][5].

Social Media Posts

All cited social media posts should be archived. Social media posts in a format that cannot be archived, such as Discord messages or Mastodon direct messages, cannot be cited. All references to archive.is or archive.ph should be changed to archive.today.

Uploading Images

This has its own page.

Major Character Articles

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.

  1. They are in the top named non-metafictional characters ranked by the number of chapters they appear in.
    1. In the case of a tie, more characters are included as major characters.
    2. As of Chapter 9, there are 24 named-non-metafictional characters, so the top four would be major characters. However, there is a three-way tie for third through fifth place: Con, Ms. Fortuna, and Zero all appear in exactly 8 chapters. Hence, five characters are considered "major" under this rule:Pandora, Isabelle, Con, Ms. Fortuna, and Zero.
  2. Any character who would haven been a major character under condition (1) when there were fewer chapters.
    1. As of Chapter 9, no additional characters qualify under this rule.
      1. In Chapter 1, there are only two or three named characters: Isabelle, Zero, and possibly Pandora (if you count her name on the title page even though she hasn't actually gotten a name yet). Hence they would qualify as major characters.
      2. By the end of Chapter 2, there are six named characters, five of whom appear in both Chapters 1 and 2: Pandora, Isabelle, Con, Ms. Fortuna, and Zero. Hence, those five would qualify as major characters under this rule.
      3. The same five characters go on to appear in every chapter of Book 1, maintaining a five way tie on first place while there are less than 36 named non-metafictional characters. Hence, they shut out any other characters from qualifying under this rule during Book 1.
      4. After Chapter 8, there were 21 named non-metafictional characters. Con, Ms. Fortuna, and Zero were tied for 3rd place with 7 appearances each.
  3. The semi-finalists of a once-per-book Pandora's Tale Character Tournament.
    1. Doctor Shah won the Book One Character Tournament and hence she qualifies as a major character. The other semi-finalists where Natalya and Hemmel, so they are also major characters.
    2. By the time we get to the Pandora's Tale Book Two Character tournament, I'll probably have either changed my mind about the qualification rules for being a major character, or given up on the wiki entirely. On the off chance I do neither of those things, the winner of the Book Two Character tournament will become a major character if they don't already qualify through number of appearances.

Putting it all together, the eight major characters are currently Pandora, Isabelle, Con Yung, Hemmel, Natalya Ustrashkina, Noor Shah, Veronica Fortuna, and Zero Angiers.

The "Relations" section

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 of A's article about B should be transcluded into B's article (not the other way around).

Chapter Articles

Characters section

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.

Interwiki and External Links

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:

  • An independent wiki specialized on the topic. Note that a Miraheze or WikiTide wiki is considered independent if and only if it has its own domain.
  • An independent non-wiki database specialized on the topic.
  • Another Miraheze wiki specialized on the topic.
  • Wikipedia
  • A specialized wiki on another wiki farm. If two or more such wikis exist, they will be prioritized by a combination of how complete they are and how ethical their hosts are.

Exceptions might be made to bypass wikis whose admins are evil or if a lower-priority source is substantially better.

Special Treatment for LGBTQIA Wikis

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 topics related to gender, there is also the independent Nonbinary Wiki.

Ordinarily, I would prefer the independent wikis over the MyWikis wiki. However, 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:

  • If I want to link to an article related primarily to gender, I will use the Nonbinary Wiki.
  • If I want to link to an article related primarily to orientation, or to a topic not covered by the Nonbinary Wiki, then I will link to whichever of the other two wikis covers the relevant information better.
  • If the MyWikis wiki ever takes over the domain of the Miraheze wiki, then I will no longer link to the Miraheze wiki and only use the one that has its own domain.
  1. ↑ https://pandorastale.com/2020/03/18/chapter-4-page-21/
  2. ↑ https://mastodon.lol/@comicsbyxan/109429358958569412
  3. ↑ https://archive.today/d3nii
  4. ↑ https://mastodon.lol/@comicsbyxan/109436552863220387
  5. ↑ https://archive.today/Rx1U1
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