Lostpedia
Advertisement
Blue check This page is an official policy on Lostpedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
Shortcut:
LP:STYLE
LP:MOS

The below are guidelines attempting to describe the style with which articles and article content should be made. For a more general guide to editing and interacting on Lostpedia, see the Lostpedia:General usage guide.

New article titles

If the information merits a new article, following existing convention is a good rule of thumb:

Singular vs plural

  • When an object or theme occurs once, leave the article in the singular form.
  • If the plural is significant to the show, like in flashbacks or stations, use plural rather than singular.
  • To link to Flashbacks, for example, one can use [[flashbacks]] or [[flashbacks|flashback]]. If the article name was plural, one would have to use [[flashbacks|flashback]] to change it to the proper sentence form a lot of the time.
  • Category names should always be plural.

Capitalization

  • Use lower-case, except for titles and proper names, for which a capital letter should be used. Like singular names, this reflects the most common way one would use the term in a sentence; for example - Walt saw a polar bear in the comic book.
    • There are exceptions to this; mainly acronyms. DHARMA is an acronym, for example.

A/An/The in page titles

  • Avoid using A/An in page titles, except for proper names when you should use a "The"
    • Almost every simple noun related to the show could be described with a "a/an". For consistency, and for making it easier to link to these subjects in a sentence, avoid using "a/an";
    • Use "The" if that is part of the proper name of the item. For example, use comic book, distress signal, and crash (simple nouns), as opposed to The Swan, The Arrow, and The 23rd Psalm (proper names).
    • Very short words confuse the search engine as well: see Lostpedia:Searching for tips on making the most of the search engine on Lostpedia.

Proper names (people)

  • Whenever possible, use the full name of the character.
  • Use noncanon nicknames only as a last resort, when canon names are not known.
  • If part of the name is discovered at a later date or corrected, the article may be nominated for renaming (see below).
  • If the character goes by a very common nickname, maintain it in quotes (").
  • Add a redirect by the nickname as well (see below).

Symbols

  • Wikitext does not read symbols well--whenever possible, spell these titles out.
    • For example: Instead of "&" (an ampersand), use "and".

Simplify

  • Generally, the simpler the title, the better. For example, rather than "List of all the animals that make an appearance on or are referenced in Lost", the title Animals says it all and is easier to find on doing a search. Exclude unnecessary words such as "List of", "Appearances of", etc. for this reason. If the specific purpose or significance of an article needs further explanation, go into detail in the body of the article.
  • Use "Lost" in page titles only when absolutely necessary; This is Lostpedia--everyone knows what show you're referring to. One exception is differentiating locations within the Lost universe from real-life locations; drawing a distinction between Australia in Lost and Australia as a real-life location where Lost airs, is important.

Conventions within articles

Headings

  • All headings should use the same capitalization rules used for article titles.
  • Italics, bold, and links should be avoided in headings. Links in particular may be difficult for some users to see within headings.

Use bold or italics for emphasis

  • Create bold text by wrapping the title in three single quotes; i.e. '''Locke''' results in Locke.
  • Create italicized text by wrapping the title in two single quotes; i.e. ''Kate'' will result in Kate.

Links

  • Wikify text where appropriate; i.e [[Hurley]] will result in Hurley.
  • Not every word in an article needs to be wikified; it is fine just to wikify the first mention of a word in that section of the article.

Use existing conventions

  • When referring to a specific title of a book, film, or other such major work, it is good practice to use italics. For example, ''[[The Third Policeman]]'' (double apostrophes, not quotation marks) becomes The Third Policeman.
  • When referencing the title of Lost, use italics as well. However, episodes are considered subheading works, like chapters, and thus should be put in regular quotes. The template {{ep|#x##}} automatically takes care of quoting and wikification, for example, {{ep|1x20}} will display as "Do No Harm".
  • A shortcut that works for all words is {{link|WORD(S) HERE}}. This will automatically wikify, add quotes or italics where dictated by this guide; otherwise, it will link to the Wikipedia article, when there is none on Lostpedia.

Categorize

Please place the article in any of our categories with the following line of code: [[Category:Unsolved]] at the very end of the article. For the complete list of categories, see Special:Categories. Be as specific as you can with the categories. Remember that sometimes articles will fit into more than one category. Do not categorize user blog posts or theory tab articles.

  • If you are unsure what category your article fits in, you can leave it uncategorized. Sysops and others can use a special page for uncategorized pages to see a list of pages that have no category. The goal is to keep this list empty.

Never sign your contributions to articles

The wiki concept is not single authorship, but rather a collaborative effort. You might be extra proud of your article, but it will be mercilessly ripped apart by the rest of us. Signatures found in the articles are to be deleted, with the singular exception of long transcript articles (see below). (For any questions of authorship, refer to the Creative Commons license.)

Always sign your contributions to talk pages

While there is a log entry left for your edit, please sign comments on a talk or discussion page using the signature button (Button sig) on the edit toolbar, or with four tildes:~~~~

Nested headings

It's easy to link to wikipedia articles if information is beyond the scope of an article, using the syntax [[wikipedia:article|Title]].

Present versus past tense

  • Except for within episode articles, descriptions of events in the Lost storyline should be written in the past tense. Within episode articles, see Lostpedia:Episode Manual of Style.
  • Article biographies of living characters should begin in the present tense; biographies of deceased ones should begin in the past tense.
  • Picture captions should be written in the present tense, and should end with periods if they constitute complete sentences.

No personal pronouns

The second person pronoun "you", and the first person pronouns "I" and "we" as well as "one" should not be used in articles. The implicit second person pronoun "you" should not be used in imperative sentences. Examples:

  • Incorrect: When we saw Kelvin's blood, we knew Desmond had accidentally killed him.
  • Correct: Desmond apparently killed Kelvin accidentally.
  • Incorrect: The following details would lead you to believe that Lost is about Purgatory.
  • Correct: The following details are supportive of the Purgatory theory.
  • Incorrect: See this video for yourself!
  • Correct: This is a video about ____.

Spelling and grammar

Before submitting, use the Show preview button and read again what you wrote. You might find that you did not convey your idea as you wanted. Hit the preview button until you are happy and proud with your submission.

  • If you don't feel confident with your writing style, spelling and grammar, include the message "Proofread Me" in the edit summary, encouraging another active user to read and edit your contributions.
  • Utilize US English spellings. If British English spellings are used it is not a major priority to correct them but you may.
  • Do not change US English spellings into British English. The show is made in the US, and the site is updated to US airings.

A picture is worth a thousand words. If you can, put an image in your article. An image helps clarify the subject at hand. Presentation goes a long way. Wikisyntax makes it very easy to edit and categorise information. One extremely useful tool is multiple, nested layers of headings (see example)

Episode articles

Articles about episodes of Lost carry their own set of conformity conventions described in Lostpedia:Episode Manual of Style. Conventions agreed upon in the Episode Manual of Style supercede those listed here for episode pages only.

Redirection and list conventions

Duplicate or redundant articles should not be created. A redirection page is one that automatically shunts a search for a particular keyword into another existing page; they can be created by typing only #REDIRECT [[Page name here]] in that article.

Do not create pages with just lists of article links that duplicate existing categories. These should be redirected to the category in question by typing #REDIRECT [[:Category:Name here]] (adding the first ":" is necessary to avoid categorizing the redirect page back into itself). Ex: Director

List articles should have some limited info aside from just listing links (such as episode info, etc), however, they should not go into a huge amount of detail of each item, rather linking to the main page where necessary. Some portals are list pages (that are aesthetically arranged to help aid the viewer in navigation); see Ex. Portal:Locations.

Disambiguation page conventions

The purpose of a disambiguation page is to assist a user who has searched with an ambiguous term in quickly finding the article actually being sought.

Begin a disambiguation page with the ambiguous term or terms in bold and a brief disambiguating phrase such as "may refer to" or "can mean", followed by a colon. This should be followed by a bulleted list of links to the various applicable unambiguous pages.

  • No bold should be found anywhere in the bulleted list.
  • Only one wikilink should appear in each item in the bulleted list. More than one wikilink per line defeats the purpose of disambiguation.
    • Exception: if the main link in the disambiguation line is a redlink (i.e., if an article has not been created for it yet), other items in the line may be wikilinked, in order to assist a user interested in initiating an article for the redlinked subject with starting points for his or her research.
  • Be succinct with each line, assisting in quick disambiguation. Do not place periods at the end of the lines. If a line needs a period because it has more than one sentence, be merciless in editing the line down until no period is required. A disambiguation page is not an encyclopedia article; its function is merely to provide a bridge to the encyclopedia article being sought by the user who searched for the ambiguous term.
  • Do not use crossref templates in the bulleted list; instead use wikilinks or the episode template.

The {{disambig}} template tag should be placed at the top of the disambiguation page to categorize it as such.

Transcript conventions

A transcript page is a special page which records one listener's version of what is heard in an episode or Lost-related broadcast, podcast, or featurette. The navigation template used at the top is {{Nav-Transcript}}, which forces the following disclaimer into the top field (along with a navigation bar):


Disclaimer: These transcripts are intended for educational and promotional purposes only, and may not be reproduced commercially without permission from ABC. They represent one viewer's secondhand experience of ABC's LOST (executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof), and have no connection with ABC television or its affiliates.


Transcripts should be crafted meticulously to record dialogue in a painstakingly accurate manner. However, in order to preserve the above disclaimer that they are unofficial and not associated with ABC (and due to the fact that complete fan-created transcripts are very time-consuming to generate), the author (if there is one primary author) may request page protection and indicate his or her name in small script below the header as follows:

XXXX is responsible for this transcription.

Transcript pages generally do not include wikification links, except for episode name, episode writer(s) and director(s), as seen at the top of episode transcripts (see example). In the case of special DVD featurettes, members of the Lost writing and production team which are speaking in interviews may be bolded and linked (see example).

Advertisement