Star Trek Timelines:Style guide

This style guide has the simple purpose of making the Star Trek Timelines Wiki easy to read by establishing a certain format. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does things the same way, the articles will be easier to read and use, along with being easier to write and edit. Reading the style guide is important to ensure that each user's edits will be consistent with those of other users.

Article titles

Pages must have appropriate titles. Articles about crew, items, events, ships and other in-game features should be titled exactly as the subject's name appears in-game. In cases where information in inconsistent, please reference previous articles that are similar to see the naming/formatting conventions.

Quotation marks

Article titles that contain apostrophes must use "straight" quotes, not “curly”.

• Typographical, or curly, quotation marks and apostrophes might be read more efficiently, and many think they look better. However, for practical reasons the straight versions are used on the Star Trek Timelines.
  • Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers don't distinguish between curly and straight marks, Internet Explorer still does (as of 2016), so that a search for Necrovarus' notes will fail to find Necrovarus’ notes and vice versa.
  • Straight quotation marks are easier to type reliably on most platforms.

Sections and headings

Separating articles into sections makes them easy to read and navigate. Headings are used to split articles into sections.

Markup

Use two equal signs (==) style markup for headings. Start with ==, add the heading title, then end with ==.

This section's heading was created with the markup:

==Sections and headings==

This subsection's heading was created with the markup:

===Markup===

Wording

• In a heading, capitalise all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. For example, the words Crew and Event should be capitalized, while the words and and the should remain lowercase (unless they are the first word of the title, in which the first letter should be capitalized).
• Avoid putting links in headings.
• Make sure that the heading has an appropriate and accurate title, as this is important to help readers navigate the article. For example, do not make a "Items" section in an article about an event and then include Crew in that section.
• Keep headings short.

Lead sections

A lead (introduction) summarises the most important points of an article, creating interest in the topic. Thus, it should be limited to a few paragraphs. Certain information, such as strategies and trivia, should be in a separate section instead of in the lead. This applies only to articles that are of sufficient length to incorporate a lead.

Text elements

Internal links

• Every time an article is mentioned on the page, you don't have to link to every single one. For example, Crew may be mentioned five times. You only have to link to crew once. You can link to articles more than once if the page is very long.
• When a skill is linked to, the name of the skill or its icon should be used, not a short form or a different spelling of it. Instead of saying "This item has 95 acc" you should state "This item has 95{{Skill|acc}}" or "This item has 95 [[accuracy]]."
• Piped link formats for simple plurals are generally unnecessary. For example, use [[Expedition Event]]s instead of [[Expedition Event|Expedition Events]].
• On the other hand, use [[VIP|VIP Levels]] instead of [[VIP]] Levels when appropriate. Don't be afraid to use a piped link when necessary, particularly if avoiding them contorts the language unnecessarily or introduces spelling or grammatical errors into the article. Piped links have legitimate uses in an article.
• When including wiki-links in an article, there is no need to use underscores, since the software produces them automatically.

External links

Feel free to link to other sites, such as the Star Trek Timelines Forums. However, you may want to avoid linking to other fansites, unless it has exceptional content that cannot be reproduced here or because of copyrights.

Font colors

Colored font can be used sparingly, though not in very bright colors. For example, you can use a color such as red for a warning. Note that dark colors will not show up well against the wiki's dark background.

The exception to this is witch rarities. If referring to an item, please use the template {{Item|item|5}} which will auto-format the item with a colored rarity.

Bold and italics

Italics are mainly used to emphasise certain words, though they should be used sparingly. Italics may make longer phrases or sentences difficult to read. Bold is used as a stronger emphasis than italics, although it should be used sparingly as well. The first appearance of an article's title in the article should always be boldfaced.

Bold and italics combined emphasise selections well, but should be used extremely rarely. There are no common cases in which bold and italics are used together. Excessive use of any of these text elements will make the entire article difficult to read, so please use them in appropriate situations.

Italics should not be used on any quotes, which should always be delimited with quotation marks. The final punctuation mark of an italic section should sit outside of the italics.

Titles of works

Titles of works (e.g., books, movies) have standards in styling that should be appropriately followed here as well. Common examples for each type are listed below. For an exhaustive list, see Manual of Style for titles.

Italics

Below are commonly encountered examples of types of works that should use italics.

• Books; e.g., The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Video games; e.g., Star Trek Timelines
• Films; e.g., Casablanca
• Television shows; e.g., The Simpsons

Quotation marks

Below are commonly encountered examples of types of works that should use quotation marks.

• Short stories; e.g., "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
• Songs; e.g., "Sandstorm"
• Use "straight" quotes, not “curly”. (For single quotes or apostrophes: 'straight', not ‘curly’.)
  • For more information, see above or contact Titan^talk

Numbers

For numbers, a comma should be used as a thousands separator. While Disruptor Beam does not use commas in all in game numbers, it makes it much easier to read on the wiki when they are used.

Number ranges should be indicated with an endash (–; HTML entity: –) rather than a hyphen; e.g., "1–5" is correct, but "1-5" is not.

Grammar and spelling

Abbreviations

Try not to use abbreviations. For example, use "diplomacy" instead of "dip." The reader may not know what these abbreviations mean. And, as far as looks go, it's much more pleasing to the eye to look at "That crew member has a very high diplomacy stat." than "That crew has a very high dip stat." It's even worse when you type something in "Leet Speak" also known as "1337 5P34K." This wiki's preferred language is English, not numbers.

Punctuation

If you are listing multiple things, like different items, each of them should have a serial comma at the end. For example, "clothing pattern, database, and casing" would be proper, "clothing pattern, database and casing" would not be.

Usage and spelling

• The first letter of every word in Star Trek Timelines is capitalized.
• Disruptor Beam should always be spelled as Disruptor Beam, not abbreviated as DB. The exception to this is if a reference to a Disruptor Beam employee's forum user name is being made.
• English spelling should be used at all times. Almost everything in Star Trek Timelines uses the English spelling, making this rule easy to follow; however, exceptions do exist, and in-game spelling should be used in favour of British spelling in those cases.

Tense

A rule of thumb is to use present tense in all cases. For example, articles for crew members, ships, items, etc. should be written in present tense. An exception to this rule would be events that have occurred in the past, or for in-game content that has been removed. For example, all events that have already occurred should be written in past tense. For future updates and upcoming content that have been confirmed by Disruptor Beam, use the future tense.

• Past tense: Past events and in-game content that has been removed
• Future tense: Future updates and upcoming content that have been confirmed
• Present tense: All other cases

Point of view

Articles should be written in the third person or objective point of view. Using the word "you" in articles is informal and should be avoided except if it is inside a quotation; try to use "players" or "the player" instead. For guides, "you" can be used, although the command imperative ("Equip all their items and advance the crew member to the next tier") is acceptable as well.

Images

Some general guidelines which should be followed are listed below.

• The preferred format for images is PNG.
• Right-alignment is preferred to left- or centre-alignment. However, centre-alignment can be used for some images.
• Personal images which do not reflect in-game content should not be uploaded.
• Don't upload images we already have. Before you upload an image, search the wiki if someone has already uploaded a version of it.

Fleet Images

All fleet images must following the following name guidelines:

File:Fleet <FleetName><ImageName>.<ext>

• Where <FleetName> is the name of your fleet
• Where <ImageName> is anything of your choice to name the image.
• Where <ext> is one of jpg or png

Please do NOT upload an excessive number of images for your fleet. A typical page should not have more then ~20 images on it, thus a fleet should not have more then 20 images.

Examples

FleetName	ImageName	Ext	Example
Second Star To The Right	Blank	jpg	File:Fleet Second Star To The Right.jpg
Second Star To The Right	Some Image Name	png	File:Fleet Second Star To The Right Some Image Name.png
Second Star To The Right	Rankings 1	png	File:Fleet Second Star To The Right Rankings 1.png

User Images

All user images must following the following name guidelines:

File:User <Username><ImageName>.<ext>

• Where <Username> is your username
• Where <ImageName> is anything of your choice to name the image.
• Where <ext> is one of jpg or png

Please do NOT upload an excessive number of personal images. A typical page should not have more then ~20 images on it, thus a userpage should not have more then 50 images.

Captions

Complete sentences in captions should always end in a full stop (period). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a full stop at the end. Captions should also not be italicised.

Dates and times

Use the Month before Day format (mm/dd, yyyy - May 1, 2008) rather than the day before month format (dd/mm yyyy - 1 May 2008).

Release dates

The release date used in the trivia section of the page, and should reflect the date the item was first made available to players in game.

Time references

Prefer specific statements of time by date, including year, to general ones (e.g., currently, recent, recently, soon). Articles should always contain current information, so there should be no reason to specify that it is current, unless there is some expectation that it could change.

For example, avoid statements like "Disruptor Beam recently released Galaxy Events" or "Disruptor Beam released Galaxy Events October." Statements could remain in place for years. Instead write statements like "Disruptor Beam release Galaxy Events in June 2016".

When there is some expectation that Disruptor Beam will significantly change some part of the game, it is acceptable to write statements like "This item currently has the same icon as another icon." As Disruptor Beam updates the game, articles should continually be amended with the changes, anyway.

Time zones

The time zone used to indicate all times in-game (exceptions below) should be the time in the Eastern Time Zone. This should be formatted like 12:00 pm (ET).
The time zone used to indicate Gauntlet should be in Coordinated Universal Time. This should be formatted like 16:00 (UCT).