Petra Wiki's Manual of Style are the guidelines designed to establish a standard style and format for all the articles within the wiki. To ensure consistency amongst all the articles, editors should subject to the following guidelines.
In addition, this Manual seeks to accomplish articles that are understandable, organized, consistent, attractive, and easy to read.
Article titles[]
There are some general rules regarding how articles on Petra Wiki should be titled.
- The titles of articles about band members should be the name by which the person is most commonly known, with later names preferred to earlier ones, and full names preferred to partial names or nicknames. Titles such as "Mister", "Sir" or "Doctor" should be omitted.
- Abbreviations such as "NSD", "MPTY", and "PP2" should not be used. Rather, they should be written out in full (Never Say Die, More Power to Ya, Petra Praise 2: We Need Jesus) with a redirect page created for the abbreviation (see "Redirects" below).
- Disambiguation tags may also be necessary in the title. See below for more information.
Disambiguation[]
Disambiguation is the process of resolving ambiguity within articles with identical or similar titles. Disambiguation may serve to distinguish articles that would otherwise have the same title, or to differentiate articles with similar titles. Essentially, disambiguations are paths leading to different topics that share the same term or a similar term.
There are three ways to disambiguate on Petra Wiki:
Disambiguation tags[]
Disambiguation tags are used for articles (people or things) which share the same title. These tags appear in the title in parentheses, eg. (album), (song), etc. The tags used must be consistent within articles with the same problem.
Disambiguation notes[]
If two articles have similar titles, a disambiguation note should be used, in addition to tags. For example, if someone searched for the song titled "Beyond Belief", they'd come across the page for the album "Beyond Belief." To help the reader find what they may be looking for, a note might be included at the top of the page for the song:
- You may be looking for the song titled "Beyond Belief (song)".
A similar note is not necessary for the episode article, as it has the more specific title of the two.
Disambiguation pages[]
The most common form of disambiguation page on Petra Wiki distinguishes between similar names. Sometimes first and last names of members and producers are repeated, which can often be confusing. If two people have an identical name, or more than two people have similar names, a separate disambiguation page should be created.
All disambiguation pages contain "(disambiguation)" in their title, have the Template:Tl template, and are categorized as such. Note that these rules apply exactly the same for last-name-only person, as well as locations and items which share the same name.
Article infobox[]
All articles about members, albums, crew, and others should include a corresponding "infobox". This box contains the most relevant and/or important facts about the article subject, with a picture. Infobox always appear in the upper-right-hand corner of the article. To maintain consistency, there are templates that are copied and pasted into new articles for the creation of infobox. See Petra Wiki:Page templates for a list of full templates currently used. A shortcut to some common infoboxes, without other page template information, can be found at Petra Wiki:Info boxes.
Article introduction[]
Every page should begin with an introduction, briefly summarizing the article for the reader. The introduction should give a quick explanation of what the article is about and establish its context. The length of the introduction can vary from a single sentence to multiple paragraphs. The title or subject of that article should appear in the first line in bold. Even though the article title is already listed, it's useful to emphasize the article's subject for the reader.
Headlines, sections, and spacing[]
To create a new section in an article, surround the headline text with two or more == (equal signs) and include one space between each equal sign and the nearest letter. The wiki engine will automatically create a table of contents once there are four or more headers in an article.
The first word and all proper nouns of the header should be capitalized, and all other words lowercase. For the purposes of keeping the wiki markup accessible to all users, include one blank line between a headline or sub-headline and the subsequent image or paragraph of text.
Please avoid using links in headers. Depending on the browser's default settings, some users may not be able to see the links properly. It is much more useful to place the appropriate link in the first sentence after the header.
To prevent an image at the end of one subsection from running into the header for the next section, type the following template directly above the next header: {{-}}. This template adds just the right amount of space to keep everything above the header for all browsers. If there is enough text to separate the sections already, the tag will not add space. See also advanced editing.