The following are some general things to remember when writing articles for the Trailer Park Wiki. See the other style guides for more detailed information about writing specific articles.
General Writing Tips
Paragraphing
Separate your writing with paragraphs. A huge block of uninterrupted text is unattractive and difficult to read. Limit each paragraph to a specific idea or theme, and start a new one for the next. In episode articles, a good place for paragraphs is when the show breaks for commercials, there is an obvious change in time or scene, or after a particularly intense scene is over. Paragraphing also makes anchoring points for placing images, with makes this idea especially important for article formatting.
Article Titling
Generally, every article title should have each word capitalized for uniformity.
TPB Episodes, specials and movies all have the name of it as the article title, followed by what it is:
- Conky (Episode)
- Trailer Park Boys: Countdown To Liquor Day (Movie)
- Dear Santa Claus, Go Fuck Yourself (Special)
For ease of use, contributors can also use the various templates to link to episodes within articles and this is a good idea to keep all linking accurate and uniform, and it is also quicker. See the links below for more instructions.
Profanity
TPB is a profane show, and this can't be avoided (it wouldn't be the same if it was!). If you are going to use profanity in articles, the profane words must be a direct quote from the dialog. Do not use profanity while writing in 'third person' (meaning, as yourself) description or exposition.
Point Of View
As mentioned above, all articles must be written in the third person. Do not write opinions, thoughts or any other irrelevant things in articles, save that stuff for the article's Discussion page -- this is pretty much common sense for anyone who's ever read or used a wiki.
'Real World' vs. 'Trailer Park World'
As with most wikis dealing with TV and Movie franchises, there is a distinct separation (or there should be) between the canon world and the real life perspective. When writing, try your best to write from either one or the other but not both.
For example, an article about Ricky should only deal with Ricky within the confines of his universe: the trailer park. When writing about Ricky's actions and involvement in the various goings-on, don't suddenly switch over to saying something about Robb Wells. If you must add something about Robb you can either a) add it to the Robb Wells article, or b) if it's appropriate, you can add it in the 'Characterization' section of Ricky's article.
A good example of this writing perspective is the Film Crew article, which deals with Julian's film crew from both a Trailer Park and Real World viewpoint, clearly divided by section headers.
Note: All articles will shortly begin to be categorized as either 'Real-World Articles ' or 'In-Show Article s' in order to make a better distinction.
Linkage and Cross Referencing
For information on how and why to make references, read this page.
Briefly, links are made by specifying wikiwords in articles, and you do that by surrounding them with square brackets (examples below). Wikiwords become links, and if you create a wikiword that doesn't exist yet, it becomes a blank article with the wikiword as the article title. They can be a single word or a collection of words, and they can include most characters you can type on your keyboard.
Basic Linking
Wherever possible, provide links in your articles to other articles in the wiki. If you think something should have an article but doesn't, you can make it a link anyway, and it can be written later, if it's relevant to the wiki.
Try to make your links on the first instance of the word or phrase and not somewhere further down the page. Also, do not link to the same thing more than once in your article.
Here are some basic link examples.
Example
Ricky's car is known as the [[Shitmobile]].
Ricky's car is known as the shitmobile.
Creating Correct Links
Keep punctuation and proper spelling in mind when creating links. A missed apostrophe or wrong spelling will most likely lead to a dead link, and we don't want that.
Example
[[Rub N Tiz'zug (Episode)]] [[Rub 'N' Tiz'zug (Episode)]]
Also remember that wiki names are CASE SENSITIVE, so 'Bottle Kids' and 'bottle kids' will lead to different destinations.
Example
Trinity was once the leader of the [[bottle kids]]. Trinity was once the leader of the [[Bottle Kids]]. Trinity was once a [[bottle kid]].
Trinity was once the leader of the bottle kids.
Trinity was once the leader of the Bottle Kids.
Trinity was once a bottle kid.
Contextual Linking
In a case where capitalization or pluralization would not appear grammatically correct in a sentence (as in the second and third example above, use the following method:
Trinity was once the leader of the [[Bottle Kids|bottle kids]]. Trinity was once a [[|Bottle Kids|bottle kid]].
Trinity was once the leader of the bottle kids.
Trinity was once a bottle kid.
Note that the wikiword (destination article name) comes before the pipe '|' and the link text (what actually appears in the sentence) comes after the pipe.
Links can also be formatted so as to generate different text than a wikiword, in order to facilitate easier sentence flow:
Ricky once burned down [[Ray|his father]]'s trailer.
Ricky once burned down his father's trailer.
Disambiguation
This shouldn't be too much of a problem on this small wiki, but there may be a case of the same thing generating multiple wikiwords or incorrect linkage. Case in point, the 'George Green' scenario, among other things:
* [[Officer George Green|George Green]] vs. [[George Green]] * [[Jacob Collins|Jacob]] vs [[Jacob Rolfe|Jacob]] * [[Shitmobile]] vs. [[shit mobile]]
- George Green vs. George Green (one is a character and one is an actor)
- Jacob vs Jacob (same as above)
- Shitmobile vs. shit mobile (incorrect phrasing, would generate a dead link)
Best thing to do when this comes up is just verify your article and your links before you deem it completed. But in a wiki nothing is ever permanent and anything can easily be rolled back or corrected.
What You Can Do To Help
- add relevant images where they are needed (don't forget to 'license' them appropriately!)
- write new articles that appear as red links (don't worry if they are 'stubs', they can be written later)
- categorize new pages that you write, or pages that don't have categories yet
- add references to pages that don't have any (this takes a little work, unless you have an encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise!)
- follow the style guides as well as possible (we're willing to help out when needed)
- correct spelling or factual errors if you see them
- login before you make changes to articles (it's not required, but it makes you part of the community)
- suggest ways to improve the whole wiki
What Not To Do
- delete, rename or move pages without a valid reason
- 'spam' the wiki (replace entire page content with useless nonsense)
- add articles for topics that have little or no relevance to the wiki
- create articles for topics that already have articles (check first using a search if you aren't sure)
- generally make a nuisance of yourself (hasn't come up yet!)
