Silent Hill Wiki talk:Manual of Style

Initial Discussion
Something I've been thinking about for a while. Our Wiki so far is written primarily from an Out-of-Universe style. That is to say we make references to the games themselves inside character, item and game articles. Some examples are:
 * "Health drinks are items found within Silent Hill 1 and are used to heal Harry.
 * Referring to the character as a protagonist/player/etc is another example of Out-of-Universe.

Are we sticking to this, or are we planning to develop an In-Universe style? (Good examples are the Indiana Jones and 24 Wikis, which are strictly in-universe.)

For example, with my Keys pages, I could write the pages in two different ways;

Or
 * In-Universe: "Silent Hill is a secluded and private town, and the inhabitants keep many secrets. Many physical secrets are kept within closed doors, hidden away in cupboards, or entire houses locked up."
 * Out-of-Universe: "Keys form an integral part of the Silent Hill experience, and are a prominent, recurring item needed to solve puzzles and advance through the games."

Both convey a different aesthetic value.

One last point before I leave the topic open for discussion, is I notice many Wikis that deal with this kind of thing have a small template which establishes if an article deals with "The Real World", which would be suited for articles dealing with specific game overviews. Character articles and so on, so forth would be In-Universe and wouldn't need a template. Given the nature of video games and their relationships with each other, I understand if people don't want to be too strict with keeping it In-Universe. Just something I've been thinking about. --Faded-Myth 11:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Article Replies

 * The raised difficulty level in writing articles is one of the trickier notions behind the proposal, and one I agree is going to be a tough one for people to side with. It's one of the reasons I prolonged putting it forward while I waited for the Wiki to grow a little more.

I definitely stress the fact that this isn't intended to be universal across the entire Wiki. Pages such as game articles, as well as corporate and walkthrough guides would of course be Out of Universe, and I've created a template for that already.

Those that would be In-Universe would be Character, Item, Monster and Location articles, which would make it so that information on all of these aspects of the games doesn't pull away from their very nature.

I'll wait though for further input from others bewfore I express further ideas though. --Faded-Myth 11:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC) (Moved from an incorrectly linked Talk Page)


 * Personally I think it would be best to have the entire wiki in Out-of-Universe style.


 * Most articles are already written in this style and many concepts (like witch character/item/creature/etc appearances, game mechanisms, alternative endings and things and events that only appear/occur on 2th+ playtroughs) would be very hard or even impossible to explain in In-Universe style.


 * In addition the Silent Hill series already have 4 different confirmed universes (main-cannon, comic-cannon, film-cannon and SM-cannon) and multiple hard to place spin-offs that might even exist in there own separate universes.


 * I also think that writing In-Universe would make it harder for readers to find the information they are looking for (I have experienced this myself with other wikis), and the constant changing back and forth between styles might confuse them. --Painocus 14:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Good points, though personally I can't see any real difficulties in writing character, location and monster pages as In-Universe. Many Wikis cover subjects that have multiple canons (such as TransFormers, which has a vast amount), and yet manage to keep it In-Universe. I'm not proposing this be universal across the Wiki, remember. However, again that's just my opinion, and I can see where you're coming from with your concerns. My biggest reason for proposing this is to make the Wiki not just a databank, but really feel like it's a real part of the Silent Hill universe by presenting itself in the same style.

With secondary playthroughs and multiple endings, these are pretty easily covered because they're mostly explained in the Game articles, which are Out-Of-Universe by nature anyway, so you wouldn't be restricted in writing about them. The same goes for Secrets and Unlockables and the like. For Character pages, I personally feel game endings should be kept separate anyway, since in real life people don't have multiple endings, and it leaves their fates ambiguous. The alternate endings is thoroughly explained in the Game articles, so it also prevents doubling up of information.

For example, in Silent Hill 2, James disapears. Easy enought o allude to in an ambiguous way in his character page, whilst the Game article covers it more thoroughly.

And it's not really flipping back and forth in styles, because for the most part it's self contained. When you read a game article, you know you're reading out-of-universe stuff because your talking about the physical game. Wheras a Character article should really be a character article. Not an article about a video game character. It's my belif that there should be a clear discrepency between the two. In my view, it's less confusing than having a character article filled with video game references, such as multiple endings, especially when all that information is covered in tiny detail on the game articles. In other words, you're reading about Harry Mason, not a video game character called Harry Mason.

Phew! =P --Faded-Myth 16:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I don't like the In-Universe style at all. While it attains the same goals as the Out-of-Universe style, I find it looks more like a fan novel than a Wikia entry. AlessaGillespie 07:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree with the fan novel notion, since their character biographies and location descriptions, not unlike a lot of what we already have, and it's far from conjecture or made-up information. But fair enough. --Faded-Myth 08:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not saying it's conjecture or made up stuff, I'm saying the style makes it look like that. AlessaGillespie 09:07, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * In a way that's kind of the reasoning though behind it. Rather than come across like a game manual or a walk-through book you find in shops or everywhere else on the net, the idea is for it to be a seamless bible to the history, characters and locations, whereas the game articles remain as they are. If you look at the Halopedia for example and read the pages on Elites or Spartans, they come across as both informative and comprehensive, yet feel like they're anactual part of the universe because they pull the reader in, rather than say "The Master Chief is a protagonist from the Halo series". You know that from the actual game's article. Wheras the page for Master Chief is soley about him, In-Universe. Granted, this works well for the Halopedia because theyre's a mammoth backlog of expanded universe, books and games to fill in everything. But the principal remains the same. Essentially, if I'm reading a page about Harry Mason, I'd rather read a page about him, not the game he's in.

I will point out that if the majority of people are against In-Universe pages, I'm fine with that. It's just while the discussion is active, I'm going to give my reasons why I'm for it.--Faded-Myth 09:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I rather LIKE the In-Universe approach, but I think it would be best if it were marked as such,  a sort of "Beware, all ye who enter here" item. Maybe use a different style of text for In-Universe? ––Discarded People Parts 15:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's why I created the "Real World" template which can be seen at the top right of the actual game articles. (SH1, 2, 3, etc). Even if the consensus swings against the In-Universe style, chances are that template will stay anyway since they separate those articles from the character, location and other such articles. --Faded-Myth 15:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That'd do it. a 'Real World' POV and an 'In-game' POV template.  I guess it says something about me that my first thought on seeing that template mark was that it dealt with the 'Reality' level of Silent Hill, as opposed to Fog World or Otherworld.  Discarded People Parts 18:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * In response to Goodman's Verdict post, I'd just like to mention that rewriting articles wouldn't honestly be too difficult, as the majority of them are already "Harry met Cybil" or "James received a letter" as opposed to "The player confronts Claudia". It's just a matter of removing what references to the player that we can. It's my opinion that if we value the world of Silent Hill so much, then we should treat it as if it actually exists, and we're just writing about it, not just the games. This, of course, doesn't include articles regarding items, secrets, and the main game articles, which are Real Life articles. In essence, we're creating an encyclopedia (which is what WIki's are) rather than a Game Strategy Guide book. --Faded-Myth 19:30, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry I haven't contributed to this discussion any earlier. Ummm...either way is fine with me, really. I honestly thought that all the rewriting would be a hassle, but now that you put it that way I can agree with you. I hadn't given it much thought when actually writing articles, and I wish I had. I prefer the In-universe style when READING the article (because it feels more involved), but it is easier to WRITE using Out-of-universe. Those are my preferences, but I can work with whatever the final verdict is.--Butterscotchboy 19:38, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Was Vs Is
Agreed with you there. I've seen it myself and I've caught myself doing both as well. The Wiki covers all timelines, including those deceased, but also writes game articles really specifically as if its a current event, so it could swing either way. Actually this was one of the reasons I brought up the style debate in the first place to try and nail this sort of thing (in which case present-tense would have been the preferred option). It might be better using past-tense, if we lean towards the Out-of-Universe style. --Faded-Myth 14:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Verdict
So, the discussion has been active for three weeks, and it seems anyone with an opinion has given their input. I felt three weeks would be ample time for discussion to run its course, but it seems most users have no opinion or can't be bothered to join the discussion.

So, as it stands we have--


 * For - 2
 * Against - 2

I haven't discussed my opinion on the subject, mostly because I wanted a few other users to chime in first. In light of the fact that only four people have spoke up on the issue, I'll leave discussion open for two more weeks, and add my 2 shiny pennies to the talk page--


 * I'd like to give the IU style a go. To test those waters, we could designate a few pages strictly as IU. My recommendation for this would be any of the comic pages, as the difference between a game and comic is interaction. In a game, you experience events in a first person, seemingly undetermined fashion. With comics, however, you are simply a 3rd party observer. Because of that fact, the comic pages are already 90% IU anyway.

Our biggest hurdle comes from rewriting articles, which I feel is what is putting people off of the idea. I'm with you guys there. It'll be a pain, for sure. But, if we transition to an IU style, it'll give us a chance to overhaul many of our older articles.

--TheGoodman 19:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)