ShadowrunWiki:Sample Articles

The Sample Article illustrates some formal aspects that should be as uniformly applied as possible in the articles on ShadowrunWiki and addresses some content-related aspects.

Formal Aspects

Introductory text

For example, it is common to write a short introductory text to an article, as was done above. In this case, (only) the first occurrence of the article name is colored in bold. Other highlights, on the other hand, should be italicized. This practice is also common on Wikipedia.

Order of the Outline Elements

The elements navigation/follow bar, Endnotes (with the subsections References, Notes, Explanations, Contradictions), Index, See also, Weblinks appear in this order only after the article text. It is meta information and should therefore be separated from the actual content. A navigation or sequence bar, if any, is in principle equivalent to the item See also. It is therefore also necessary to examine whether they can replace this bullet point.

Sources

There are two types of references in the ShadowrunWiki: index and citation.

Index

First of all, the index, it contains as many occurrences of the article topic in the official Shadowrun sources as a simple list. If the source only deals with the topic to a limited extent, it is best to include page numbers, chapters or the like.

==Index==
*Source 1
*Source 2
*Source 3
...

With regard to the index, it should be noted that not all the materials listed in it were actually used in the production of the article. It is intended to serve as a starting point for other authors and, of course, as information about the sources in general. Another aspect is the scope of the index, a novel about a bar in the Redmond Barrens is not a suitable entry for the UCAS index, even if the bars are located in Seattle, which is part of the UCAS, nor should the index of the article Magic Groups be populated with sources that refer only to a specific magic group and do not say anything general about the topic.

Endnotes/References

If, on the other hand, a passage in the article text is to be precisely substantiated by a source, the citation of the source comes into play. To do this, create the heading Source and enter <references/>. The <ref> tag is placed at the corresponding text point in the article: <ref>source S.xx</ref>.

...text point...<ref>Source p.xx</ref>

==Endnotes==

===References===
<references/>

In contrast to the index, sources that do not directly belong to the article topic can also appear in the source citation, for example if a connection to a related topic is established. The direct connection with the article topic, on the other hand, must always be taken into account in the index. The formatting of the endnotes (i.e. the markers set by means of the <ref> tag) follows common conventions (DIN 5008). If it refers to a word or a group of words, it is placed directly after it, if it refers to a sentence or half-sentence, it is placed after the punctuation mark:

The entire sentence is meant.<ref>Endnote 1</ref>

The clause is meant,<ref>Endnote 2</ref> not the other.

Only one word is meant<ref>Endnote 3</ref>, not the rest of the sentence.

Endnotes: Explanations and Contradictions

The reference tag can also be used for references to explanations and contradictions, but you should still set the group attribute to "E" or "W". So that they are separated from source references. The reference to a specific passage is not always necessary for these two bullet points.

...text point...<ref group="E">Source A p.xx</ref>

...text point...<ref group="W">Source B p.yy</ref>

==Endnotes==

===Explanations===
<references group="E"/>

===Contradictions===
<references group="W"/>

The same rules apply to formatting as to source citation.

Categories and interwiki links

Categories and interwiki links (i.e. links to the partner wikis) could be anywhere in the article text and are still placed correctly. However, in order to make the article source code clear, they should always be placed at the end after all other article elements, namely the categories first and the interwiki links at the very end.

...article...

[[Category:Category Title]]

[[en:page name]]

Content Aspects

Endnotes: Explanations and contradictions

These two points are important meta information and are intended to prevent discrepancies in the sources or logical extrapolation from being incomprehensible and leading to changes to the article in different directions. They allow other authors to better preserve peculiarities of an article or to bring them up for discussion. They should therefore always be read when an article is modified.

Contradictions

Contradictions is simply a presentation of contradictory information in the sources, i.e. such simple facts as the spelling of a name or a year that differs in two publications, or even more complex facts such as two storylines that are incompatible with each other.

Elucidations

Explanations basically refer to certain decisions that an author has made when creating an article regarding the presentation of the content. Therefore, an explanation can also include the presentation of an objection if it also explains why one has decided on a version despite the objection. In this case, the objection does not have to be listed separately again.

The other form of explanation concerns conclusions. These serve the logical further development of Shadowrun content by extrapolating from existing material with the given caution (e.g. "Because Person A is assigned to Faction B, it can be assumed that Group C is behind the assassination."). In order to document such developments, they should be justified under explanations, especially if they have been woven into the text and are not recognizable as independent thoughts.

The use of general knowledge and lexical information, such as geographical names or historical facts up to 1990, does not need to be explained.