Welcome to the Florida Friends Wiki! We hope you'd like to contribute to this wiki, by adding new articles, or correcting and improving existing ones. This page describes little things that make pages consistent.
New User Instructions[]
User Account[]
If you don't have a Wikia login, please create a login, and then start editing pages. The best way to see how to add or change content is to click the "edit" on an existing page, and see how existing pages are organized.
Wikia offers two "skins", some may prefer the "MonoBook" look, which is closer to Wikipedia. You can get it (after signing in) by going to Preferences/Site Layout (Preference may be selected from the "user id" menu).
Optionally, you may want to create your user page to tell others a bit about yourself. See Help:User_page for more information.
Editing[]
Note that editing pages on Wikia has two modes: the Rich Text/WYSIWYG mode (default for new users) and "Source" mode. You can switch your default edit mode from the user preference/edit menue. Rich Text makes it easy to make and see the effects of most common formatting commands. For instance there are buttons for making text bold, underlined, etc. The Source Mode uses special conventions, like [[link]] to show the markup, but it's more flexible.
The following link is a useful summary of general wiki markup: Wikipedia:Help:Wiki markup.
Wikia (our host) has some more specific areas for help Help:Contents and especially Help:Getting started.
Licensing[]
Please respect copyright rules when incorporating material from other sources.
Also note that contribution to this wiki are generally licensed to the general public to re-distribute and re-use freely for any purpose including commercial use. See wikia:Community_Central:Licensing for more information.
Florida Friends Wiki Style Conventions[]
So far, we've worked out some conventions for grammatical tense, categories of articles, character page names, and book references.
Grammatical Tense[]
Most of the articles in this wiki are written in-universe, that is from the frame of reference that the fictional universe of the Florida Friends Books is real. Those articles are generally written in past tense. The exception are real world articles, which include author and source material information, and timelines which are written in present tense no matter when an event occurred[1].
Categories[]
We have a tree of categories which can be viewed here: Category Tree. It's best to put an article into the most specific category. For instance, a plane should be in Category:Aircraft rather than Category:Vehicles. An article can belong to multiple categories. You put it into a category by entering [[Category:XYZ]] at the bottom of the article[2], where XYZ is the appropriate category name.
Some of the more common categories in use, with sample articles:
- Characters: Steve Sharp
- Sharp Family: Bonita Sharp
- Locations: Town and Country Trailer Park
- Aircraft: Cessna 172
- Book-related articles: (these are generally populated by book citation templates below)
An activities category is expected to be created.
Character Pages[]
The best way to start a new character page is to enter {{subst:Characters}}, and save the page. This will create a "skeleton" character page, with section headings and categories. You can add or delete section headings, if appropriate; and, or course, add text to these sections.
Pages should be named after the most commonly used name in the books, as used in introductions. For instance, "Steve Sharp" rather than "Steven Gregory Sharp", which is only used once in the books.
Some people are never called by their full name, like Gretchen or Mrs. Carnahan. In that case, use just the name known.
Titles and ranks, like Mr, Dr, Sergeant, etc. should not be used as part of the page name.
If a person is commonly known by two different names, we can put a redirection link from an alternate name, e.g. create a page for "Sue Phillips" that has only #REDIRECT [[Sue Sharp]]. If the other name is significant, like representing a cover for an government agent, a separate page can be created for the cover identity, with links to the real name and vice versa.
In case where a person's name changes, as through marriage, court order or adoption, use the name most recently used in the books. Often, for a woman this would be the married name, e.g. "Sue Sharp".
Book References (Citations)[]
If you want to refer to a book, or a particular chapter, we recommend that you use one of the following templates. The references are particularly useful for relatively obscure facts, like the middle name of a person that appears only once in the book.
You can go to the Steve Sharp page which has a number of book references; and click "edit" to see how the coding was done.
If you use one of these templates in your article text, it will insert a footnote with the reference to the chapter or just the book (if no chapter is specified). It will also automatically add the article to a category related to this book.
| Title | Template | Example | Footnote (citation) text | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vacation? | V1 | {{V1|Prologue}} | Vacation?, Prologue | Vacation? articles |
| Vacation-Two | V2 | {{V2|4}} | Vacation-Two, chapter 4 | Vacation-Two articles |
| Bare Assets | BA | {{BA|6}} | Bare Assets, chapter 70 | Bare Assets articles |
| Job Hunt | JH | {{JH|7}} | Job Hunt, chapter 7 | Job Hunt articles |
| Chuck's Forced Vacation | CFV | {{CFV|7}} | Chuck's Forced Vacation, chapter 7 | Chuck's Forced Vacation articles |
| Always Finding Trouble | AFT | {{AFT|70}} | Always Finding Trouble, chapter 70 | Always Finding Trouble articles |
| On My Own | OMO | {{OMO|6}} | On My Own, chapter 6 | On My Own articles |
| Steve and Chuck | SC | {{SC|75}} | Steve and Chuck, chapter 75 | Steve and Chuck articles |
| Geraldine | GE | {{GE}} | Geraldine | Geraldine articles |
| "Be My Valentine" (short) | BMV | {{BMV|Synopsis}} | "Be My Valentine", Synopsis | Be My Valentine articles |
| "Happy Valentine's Day" (short) | HVD | {{HVD}} | "Happy Valentine's Day" | Happy Valentine's Day articles |
| Steve and Chuck Go Sailing | SCGS | {{SCGS|1}} | Steve and Chuck Go Sailing, chapter 1 | Steve and Chuck Go Sailing articles |
| Steve and Chuck - Changes and Life Adjustments | CLA | {{CLA|1}} | Steve and Chuck - Changes and Life Adjustments, chapter 1 | Steve and Chuck - Changes and Life Adjustments articles |
| Be My Valentine? 2011 | BMV11 | {{BMV|4}} | Be My Valentine? 2011, chapter 4 | Be My Valentine? 2011 articles |
References[]
- ↑ See w:c:Honorverse:Editing_Conventions#Tempus for more background
- ↑ actually, the category can be anywhere, but the convention is put it at the bottom