Meta:Manual of Style

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Manual of Style Overview
Character Pages: Game | Strategy | Lore | Voice | Anime | Versus | Gallery
Battle Pages: Battle Articles


The Manual of Style (abbreviated as MoS) is an instruction manual that addresses the conventions adopted by gbf.wiki in writing, titles, articles, and linking. Please read it before you contribute to the The Granblue Fantasy Wiki project.

This manual attempts to address all issues of style in an objective manner, though there will be inevitably cases where issues of style are subjective. If there are any unresolved disputes over what best adheres to the style of The Granblue Fantasy Wiki, please join the Discord and discuss in the #wiki_discussion channel or create a new discussion thread on the wiki itself on the page related to your issue.

Basic Wikicode

Besides writing articles in the The Granblue Fantasy Wiki on factual, useful information, contributors are expected to use decent spelling and grammar and a basic level of wikicode. Some of the most commonly used aspects of wikicode are listed below. Above the text editors for articles are a row of buttons with many common wikicode attributes.

For more information on wikicode, please see Meta:Manual of Style/Basic Wikicode.

On the Subject of Articles

Article Names and Section Headers

The conventions for titles dictate that all major words (proper nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs) are to be capitalized, as are all locations and names. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or yet, so), and prepositions of four letters or less (of, to, in, at, [...]) should be kept in lower case, unless they are the first or the last word in the article title.

In most cases, titles referring to a specific group should be kept plural. However, some exceptions are allowed when the group name is only used in singular, such as Society rather than Societies.

Uniformity in the titling of pages is much appreciated in that it makes for a much more professional appearance with regards to the public perception of The Granblue Fantasy Wiki.

Links to Articles

Generally speaking, an article should be linked just once within a given portion of text; if "Katalina" is mentioned more than once in a paragraph, the page should be linked only the first time the character is mentioned. Instances further apart can be linked to again, if they are in different sections on the page. It is up to an editor how far apart to place repeated links.

For consistency, if most elements of a list within a section are links, then more links can be created for as many times as needed in that list. Example of such would be a relationship summary on a character's lore page below their background, in which an another character would be mentioned multiple times in the background section - the first mention being a link to their page on the Granblue Fantasy Wiki - and then again at the beginning of their branch in the relationship summary, where each branch would start with a link regardless if the mentioned character was linked to before.

Character Articles

Characters are major part of the world of Granblue Fantasy - as such, special care is taken regarding the creation and structure of these pages.

In brief, here are some things to keep in mind when creating character articles:

  • Titles and Naming: Character titles are prioritized in order of their non-limited availability, so that the first-released version of a character is always the primary article, and all others have a variant next to their name in parentheses. If the next version of a character is of different rarity then their rarity should be placed within parentheses, for example "Sierokarte (R)" who's the only R variant of the SR story character "Sierokarte", regardless of the next version's element. If the next version is of the same rarity as the primary version, their element should be placed within parentheses, for example "Sierokarte (Fire)" who's the only SR Fire variant of the mentioned "Sierokarte" character. Non-limited characters include story characters, Arcarum Evokers, and Eternals. Details regarding time-limited versions of characters as are follows:
    • Non-collaboration Event characters, will always have the (Event) suffix.
      • In case where the character receives a second event variant that's of different rarity, the new variant's rarity should be placed within parentheses after the "Event", for example "Sierokarte (Event SSR)" who's a second event variant of "Sierokarte" following SR version called "Sierokarte (Event)".
    • Collaboration characters always receive an article name without parentheses, as they are assumed to never receive an alternate variant which would warrant the use of parentheses.
    • Characters featured in limited-time draw promotions always have their series stated when viewed on the in-game draw screen, or inside the character inventory once acquired. The name of the series should be placed within parentheses. This is regardless if the character already possesses a variant of the same rarity or element, as long as it is the character's only variant in that specific series, or if it's the character's first variant in the game so far. Currently there are five series applicable: "Valentine", "Summer", "Yukata", "Halloween", and "Holiday". An example of a limited-time variant would be "Sierokarte (Summer)".
    • Grand series characters should have the "Grand" placed within parentheses, only if they posses a variant that can be obtained from a non-limited draw or a story mission.
    • The first release of a Zodiac series character should be treated as their primary version, as they are assumed to never receive a non-limited draw promotion variant.
  • Structure: A usual character article always begins with a properly filled-out Template:Character, with subsequent sections expanding on the primary information found below it.
  • Images: All character images are in .png and follow an unified naming format. In the usual scenario, all images will be added to the pages via a Wiki bot by an editor with the knowledge required to perform such operation shortly after the page has been created. If a page is missing any images, the best choice of action is to contact the wiki staff and request they run the corresponding scripts to add the missing images.
  • Categorization: All character pages must be categorized properly; the Character template already goes some distance into doing this. If the character is appearing in other media, categories denoting this, like [[Category: Shadowverse Characters]], have to be added manually. Categories that refer to aspects of a character's kit, most notably [[Category:Sub Ally Support Skills]], also have to be added manually. All categories are preferably added at the very bottom of a character page.

For further information on the guidelines of character article creation, please see Meta:Manual of Style/Character Pages.

CharacterTabs

Template:PageTabs is used at the top of all character pages. It serves a directory for a single character's pages.

  • Game - Dedicated to the character's objective game data. These are generally contained within Template:Character with subsections below it for elaborating finer details.
  • Strategy - Mainly for subjective character data, such as EMP builds, how to use, character synergy, etc.
  • Lore - For character lore, background, trivia, Fate Episodes, etc.
  • Voice - For character voiceline transcriptions, voiceline translations, and voice files.
  • Anime - Characters that have an anime counterpart have a separate page for that incarnation.
  • Versus - Characters that have a fighting game counterpart have a separate page for that incarnation.
  • Gallery - Contains pictures of the character.

For more information on this template, see Template:CharacterTabs

"Alternative" Character Names

Redirects from Japanese names should be created in order to alleviate confusion. For instance, the page Brodia redirects to Alexiel.

As the game has a large fanbase who have assigned nicknames to specific characters, redirects will be made to accommodate. For example, Birdman will redirect to Nezahualpilli.

Names of People

When mentioning real world people on any of page, it is generally recommended to use the their name as it appears on the English Wikipedia article about them. If the person is a voice actior, Template:va can be used by placing {{va|}} on a page and putting the voice actor's name inside the template, for example {{va|Keiji Fujiwara}}. Creating a quicklink to Wikipedia is an another method, that unlike the Template:va can be freely applied to everyone, such as [[Wikipedia:Keiji Fujiwara|Keiji Fujiwara]].

When a person has a specific preference for the way their name is rendered, or where convention differs, that is to be used instead. For example, using [[Wikipedia:Hiromoto SIN-Ichi|Hiromoto SIN-Ichi]], [[Wikipedia:Ikue Ohtani|Ikue Ohtani]], and [[Wikipedia:Rica Matsumoto|Rica Matsumoto]] instead of [[Wikipedia:Hiromoto SIN-Ichi|Shin'ichi Hiromoto]], [[Wikipedia:Ikue Ohtani|Ikue Ōtani]], and [[Wikipedia:Rica Matsumoto|Rika Matsumoto]]. A person's perferred name is often enough the name of their Wikipedia article, if it is widely known.

Battle Articles

  • Titles and Naming: All raids must be named under the Raids: namespace.
  • Structure: All raid articles will begin with a filled-out battle template:
  • Images: All fight images are in .png and follow a unified naming format - ["BattleRaid"]_[(name of the fight)]_[(difficulty of the fight)].png. For co-op use ["BattleCoop"]_[(stage difficulty and number※)].png.
※Example: "N1-1" - which is 1st quest of stage 1 on normal difficulty.
  • Categorization: All raids should be categorized with appropriate tags.

For further information on the guidelines of battle article creation, please see Meta:Manual of Style/Battle Articles.

Disambiguations

If a name can refer to more than one entry of different nature, for example a playable character who also is a boss in a raid battle, disambiguations should be noted on all pages concerned. For example, {{About|the recruitable character|the summon stone|Europa (Summon)|the raid battle|Europa (Raid)}} will result in This page is about the recruitable character. For the summon stone, see Europa (Summon). For the raid battle, see Europa (Raid).
The code above should be placed at the very top of the pages, above all other templates if any are present. For playable characters specifically, it should only be placed on the "Game" subpage of a primary version of the character.

Japanese

There may be times when a joke, a reference, or things of similar nature have to be explained by quoting Japanese words. It is up to the editor if they want to include the kanji, katakana, hiragana, or rōmaji to make the context more clear to other readers. However, when using rōmaji, the method of romanization of Japanese used on The Granblue Fantasy Wiki will be the Hepburn standard. Long vowels are indicated by using the macron-topped letters Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū ā ē ī ō ū, and should be used rather than a doubling of the letter, a tilde, a circumflex, or an unmarked vowel.

For more information on this section please see Meta:Manual of Style/Romanization.

English

The Granblue Fantasy Wiki is designed to be accessible to both new fans and old, while containing text understandable and accurate to both, and as such should contain the best possible level of literary style. Also as a formalized wiki, it is suggested to not use the second-person in descriptions, as an example: "Katalina's 4★ uncap is unlocked after completing Chapter 36 Story: Dead End." is preferred over "You can unlock Katalina’s 4★ uncap after completing Chapter 36: Dead End.".

Check for spelling and grammatical errors before finalizing your edits on a page. You should also feel free to correct these, if you notice them anywhere on the The Granblue Fantasy Wiki, as it is an open project.

As Granblue's translation team uses American English, the writing style on the Granblue Fantasy Wiki should also mimic the official translation.

Images

Images are often a helpful visual addition to the content of articles.

Only official images should be used under the Mainspace articles. Fan-works aren't permitted, even if the author allowed for their creations to be uploaded. Only exception to this is the April's Fools Wiki-hosted event, details of which should be always discussed with the site administrators.

  • Overwriting existing images is acceptable, if the new version of the image is of higher resolution and/or quality.

Pages under User namespace are allowed to contain non-official images, as long as the uploader has the permission to upload said images, and their file name will not conflict anything used by the Mainspace articles. It is advised for users to put an unique name, for example their Wiki username, in the file name, to avoid any possible conflicts.

Formatting Preferences

  • For backgrounds and templates, obtrusively bright colors should be avoided.
  • Smaller tables are generally considered better, assuming they still have adequate information. class="wikitable" is among the most commonly used styles for tables and should be applied whenever possible.
  • Navigation templates should aspire to be as useful as possible, not as large as possible. Try to keep navigation templates simple but useful.
  • Status Effects should always use the Template:Status. Items should always use the Template:Itm if possible, etc.

Integration of Content from Other Websites

It is against The Granblue Fantasy Wiki's policy to directly copy text from other websites without permission. If other sources consent to allowing their text to appear on The Granblue Fantasy Wiki and be subsequently edited and expanded upon to better fit The Granblue Fantasy Wiki's style and standards, then and only then editors can directly copy their text into The Granblue Fantasy Wiki. In this case, the source must be credited.

Integration is not the same as replacement, however. If The Granblue Fantasy Wiki already has information written on a subject and it is not directly copied from any other source, then it is better to edit and expand that text than to completely replace it with another source's words, even if the other source has allowed their text to be used and has more information. This may not violate The Granblue Fantasy Wiki's policy, but it does clash with The Granblue Fantasy Wiki's style, which prefers original content directly provided from its contributors over content taken from another website.


We at The Granblue Fantasy Wiki are here to create, provide, and upkeep an enormous database filled with Granblue Fantasy information. Your help is appreciated more than you know; contributions extend beyond just The Granblue Fantasy Wiki to the entire online Granblue Fantasy community.