SFTropes:Style and Content Guide

These style and content guidelines are designed to help editors of this wiki understand how to best add content to the wiki, and how to format this content. Remember, these guidelines can be changed. If you feel a guideline could be changed in a way that would help us better achieve the project goals make a suggestion on the talk page.

Content Guidelines

These content guidelines should help editors decide what content should be added to which pages on the wiki. Remember that all content should comply with the Discursive Point of View.

General Guidelines

In general, it is important that content on the wiki links claims (assertions about what is true) to evidence (factual information) by way of support (logical reasoning). For example, simply listing a quote under one of our tropes provides evidence (it is a fact that the text appears in our reading) and an implicit claim (this quote shows that the work is somehow commenting on the associated trope). However, this implicit claim is quite weak (what does the quote suggest our author wanted to say about the trope in question?) and the support is missing entirely (how do we know this is what the quote is saying?). Adding both an explicit claim, and support would make it easier for the reader to understand the point being made.

What should a Work Page Include?

Work pages document a book, movie, or other text of interest to our tropes.

Plot Summary

The plot summary should give a summation of the plot of the work that reflects our class discussions and interests. That is, it should stress the ways that our tropes are explored throughout the course of the work. This means that the plot summary we develop should end up being substantially different from the plot summary available for a given work on, say, Wikipedia. In fact, we have the opportunity to write much richer and more interesting plot summaries than Wikipedia would allow, since the Discursive Point of View gives us more freedom to do original research and include well supported opinion than Wikipedia editors have under the Neutral Point of View.

However, Wikipedia plot summaries are (legally) free to use, and a fine place to start, and in fact the instructor included them (where available) for the mandatory class readings when the wiki was created. Now its up to you to improve them!

WARNING!! Plot summaries may contain spoilers. You may want to stay away from them until after you finish the reading if you don't want to spoil the plot for yourself.

Interpretations

Claims go here.

Subjects of Interest

Anything you find interesting.

Tropes and Trope Intersections Appearing in this Work

This section should discuss tropes and trope intersections appearing in the work. A good entry will do more than just document the presence of the trope, it will make an argument about what the author has to say about the trope, and what different readings of the trope's presence in the work might exist.

Allusions

List allusions to other works found in this work. Explain the allusion a bit and give its significance. This section will serve as a glossary for the work, helping us to understand complicated references.

Historical Influences

Suggest some historical events that may have affected this work and explain why.

What should a User Page Include?

Your user page should include everything described on the user page assignment. You can also add other information about yourself, if you wish.

As a general rule don't edit other users' user pages. The major exception to this is the use of tags to give feedback. Other forms of user page editing by others are usually considered rude.

Style Guidelines

Except where these guidelines explicitly state otherwise, refer to the Wikipedia Manual of Style for guidelines on grammar, formatting, and language use.

Language

• Avoid the use of the first person outside of your user page. It tends to make accommodating many points of view difficult, and to undercut argument.

Links

• When a topic has a page devoted to in on Working Tropes wiki, link to this page, rather than outside sources, in the text of the article. Add outside sources in a separate section, or as references.

References

All facts should be referenced. Use <ref> tag to cite references for facts. References should be formatted using the APA style for works cited pages. APA style citations for our class readings can be found on the APA Citation List page. Do NOT use APA style in-line citations. Reference tags play the role of in-line citations on the wiki.