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Wiki.theppn Style Guide

Time to start a Style guide, conversational work in progress.


Page Titles

Artist / Group Names

  • Japanese artists should have their surname (family name) written first, for example Hamasaki Ayumi over Ayumi Hamasaki. This is because this is the order that names are written in Japan (and also the order in which they are said aloud). There are few exceptions (for example, Angela Aki because her name is said 'Angela Aki' and not 'Aki Angela' in Japan because she chose to have her name written in a western order). Note, some artists use different romanisations for their own name in English (i.e. Hayashi Asuca, Ohguro Maki). To check, go to CDJapan and type in the artists' name in western order.
  • Artists with western names should be written in the western order of given name/surname.
  • Chinese artists' should be listed under their western names, with a redirect coming from their Chinese name (i.e. Stefanie Sun over Sun Yanzi, Jay Chou over Zhou Jielun). There are a few exceptions, for example when they don't have a western name or choose not to use it. If so, their name should stay as their Chinese two-part Pinyin name: family name and given name (for example, Wang Leehom, Zhang Liyin). Given name romanized in Cantonese are usually hyphenated between each Hanzi. If unsure, type the artists' name into Yesasia; it will usually be right.
  • Korean artists' should be listed under their personal romanisation, instead of a certain system of romanisation. For example, Park Ji Yoon over Bak Ji-yun. You can also check on these at Yesasia.
  • Bands with 'The' as the first word of their name should be listed so. For example, The Brilliant Green over Brilliant Green, The.
  • As the romanization of an artist's name may change over their career, the most recent name should be used (for example, v-u-den over Biyuuden; Matsutoya Yumi over Arai Yumi).

Title Romanisation

Japanese Title Translation

Generasia uses a modified version of Hepburn Japanese Romanisation, with a few differences.

  • を is written as 'wo'
  • Sounds are written out in full, instead of with an accent. For example, 'こう' is written as 'Kou', not 'Ko' or 'Kō'. This applies to all long vowel sounds (ie, 'おおきい' will be written 'Ookii').
  • Katakana based words based on English words should be written with those words. For example, White Road (ホワイトロード) should be written on the wiki as White Road, and not Howaito Roodo.
  • Particles are left uncapitalised, much like English titles. For example, track #1 on the album Keijijou no Eros is titled Kon'ya mo Noroi no Tobaki ga Aku (今夜も呪いの幕が開く).
  • An apostrophy is needed for words such as こんや, to separate the N and YA sounds so that they are not mixed up with にゃ.

Normal Title Romanisation

Several other rules/guidelines for titles exist. Some of these are:

  • The page itself should have the most 'proper' English grammar as possible, even if the title is not. For example, the article for the single COLORS should be at Colors. This also applies to non-standard characters such as ☆. The single The☆Peace! should appear at The Peace!.
  • Much like with romanisation, stress tones should not be in letters (though they should appear within the article. For example, Daite Señorita should have a page at Daite Senorita). This is because many users find difficulty in typing the stressed symbols.

Other

Release Titles / Track listings

Recently we have been following the v-u-den precedent but some of the more recent additions have shown the true scale of ridiculousness taken by producers, JAM PUNCH TOUR 2005 ~KONDORU no PANTSU ga kui KONDORU~ for example.

Additionally with the jam punch tour we have two pages that are in essence the same thing, the condor pants page is a dvd of a particular show in the jam punch tour, I suspect we could combine the two easily. The main issue with this for me is that a search for jam punch tour 2005 will go directly to the tour page when it is most likely the searcher wants the DVD page.

I have 3 thoughts about product page titles,

  1. the main page should be the most typical "english" construction of the title, as that is what the search will be performed in, and all the stylistic variations should be on redirect pages. This means no page titles in all caps, among other things.
    Quick question. What about albums/singles that are named after a group (and the group has an odd capitalization)? I know that's a bad explanation...but what I'm talking about is something like SOUL'd OUT's debut album SOUL'd OUT. Should that be at Soul'd Out? Or should we keep it as SOUL'd OUT because it's also the name of the artist? Sorry if this isn't that clear...I dunno how to make it clearer. --Sky 08:15, 1 May 2006 (JST)
  2. The sub titles, ~I like pants~ parts, should not be in the page titles themselves as they only make links rediculously long, without adding utility.
    I disagree, the ~parts~ are needed to differentiate the tour (JAM PUNCH Tour 2005) from the DVD (JAM PUNCH Tour 2005 ~Kondoru no Pants ga kui Kondoru~), which should be two separate articles. Where the first part of the DVD title is not the same as the name of the tour, it might be slightly advantageous to keep the article title short, but I feel accuracy is better than brevity. The full official title[1][2] of releases should be used. Online retailers use the full title. [3] [4] [5] Although JAM PUNCH Tour 2005 ~コンドルのパンツがくいコンドル~ at Tokyo International Forum Hall A on 1st of June 2005 might be a bit much. --Pmsyyz 12:04, 30 October 2005 (JST)
    I sort of agree with Pmsyyz. I disagree that DVD releases and concert tours should get separate pages, but that's a separate point. I agree that subtitles should be reconsidered.
    What's considered a subtitle, anyway? Anything in between ~tildes~? The way I see it, there are two sets of subtitles: one relevant, and one irrelevant. In the JAM PUNCH TOUR example, The "at Tokyo International Forum Hall A on 1st of June 2005" part is very irrelevant and definitely shouldn't be included. The "~Kondoru no Pants ga kui Kondoru~" seems like it's an identifiable part of the title.
    To give examples I'm more familiar/comfortable with: Hello! Project concerts all have subtitles, and a large majority of the subtitles are very identifiable. For example, it's way more common for someone to refer to this particular concert as 15nin de Non Stop instead of simply Morning Musume Concert Tour 2003, which is especially vague since they had multiple tours that year.
    Another example: In Morning Musume Concert Tour 2002 Haru "Love Is Alive!" at Saitami Super Arena, the "Love Is Alive" is an identifiable part of the title, and used by fans when referring to the concert (along with the "2002 Spring" part, since the 2002 Summer was also titled "Love Is Alive!"). By contrast, the "at Saitami Super Arena" is not completely relevant, and shouldn't be part of the article title.
    Along the same lines, the subtitle for Morning Musume Live Revolution 21 Spring -Oosakajou Hall Saishuujitsu- falls into the irrelevant pile and shouldn't be included.
    Redirect pages are fine and dandy, but I think in these examples it would be beneficial to have the information on a concert reside on a page with the ~subtitle~ on it if it's relevant.
    To give another example on a different type of release: should Mr. Moonlight ~Ai no Big Band~ reside on a page titled only "Mr. Moonlight"? Should Go Girl ~Koi no Victory~ reside only on a page titled "Go Girl"? Or should Roman ~My Dear Boy~ simply be "Roman"? I don't think they should, because again, the subtitle is a very recognizable part of the release. Most of the time they do add utility. --Saa 13:07, 30 October 2005 (JST)
  3. The katakana conversions should go back to the original english, except when its is an original Japanese word, we dont expect users to look for Sakura DOROPPUSU or Morning KO-HI- so why KONDORU no PANTSU.

Singles/Songs title clashes

For previous discussion on this issue, please see User talk:StarPrincessLita#(Song). The following is the compromise that was reached on that page.

  1. In case of a Single / Song title clash, the detailed song information will be listed on the same page as the Single unless the volume of content becomes unwieldy.
  2. Songs will only have a (song) postfix when there is a name clash.
  3. Album tracklistings should point at the song details. If the song details are part of a single page, then point at the single.

Image titles

Please use descriptive filenames of what you're uploading.

  • Releases: Filenames should contain the title of the release, and a description of what the picture is (CD Cover, PV screenshot, etc.) Including the artist in the filename is also helpful.
  • Artists: Pictures of artists should contain the artist's name, and the year of the picture if possible.

Page Layouts

Artist Pages

 _NOTOC_
 [[image(s)]]
 Intro Blurb
 Profile / Stats
 == Biography ==
 == Discography or Releases ==
 == External Links ==
 == Sources ==
 [[Category(s)]]
 
 == Discography ==
 === Album ===
 === Single ===
 === Promotional ===
 
 == Releases ===
 === DVD ===
 === CD ===
 === Photobook ===
 === Other ===
 
Intro Blurb
A quick who what when where why for the page, letting the reader know quickly what it is they are looking at.
Image
A photograph of the artist, for AV or Gravure please try to keep things tasteful we all like boobies but I am sure there are clothed images available if you look hard enough.
Biography
A fuller description of the artists history and current work, perhaps some kind of reverse chronological structure is best starting from what a reader would want to know now (A J-Pop performer with a latin twist Artist XXX has been ...) rather than (At age 7 Artist XXX would walk to school in the snow, after many years .... 500 words later ... Now artist XXX performs a form of J-Pop mixed with latin influences)
Discography / Releases
Some artists primarily release albums and singles so the discography template could work best, whereas others produce a large amount of other content, Photobooks, Image Videos and the like, a more general releases template could be better in these situations. Albums should be listed before Singles, as the Singles list can be very long on many artists pages.
Links
It is good to link out to other sites, Pack this area with linky goodness.
No links to non-English fansites, though. --Saa 02:25, 11 July 2006 (JST)
Wait, why not? What's the harm?? --zeli 04:48, 11 July 2006 (JST)
This wiki is aimed for English-speakers. Sites in Hungarian or Thai or Klingon are useless to us, and including them here is just link-whoring them. A few exceptions can be made for sites in the original language of the product or artist, but that's it. --Saa 05:35, 11 July 2006 (JST)
What if the fan-site is scan heavy? For example, there's a French Olivia/Caroline fansite that's listed on their pages, and that site has a really large gallery. A gallery is useful no matter what language it's in. --Martzb00r 10:06, 11 July 2006 (JST)
Take it on a case-by-case basis, basically, since there are some examples where it'd be useful. Just make sure that they're really useful and the content isn't duplicated elsewhere. For that specific example, you might even want to link directly to the gallery and label it as such, for people that can't navigate the site otherwise, since the rest of the info on the site is useless to people that don't know French. --Saa 10:43, 11 July 2006 (JST)
Sources
It is just good karma to point to your sources, let's not forget to give credit.

Groups

 [[image(s)]]
 brief summary
 == History ==
 == Members ==
 == Timeline ==
 == Discography / Releases ==
 == External Links ==
 [[Category(s)]]
 
Discography / Releases
Should Group pages also reference solo work by members? or exclusively list group works?
My instinct says no, because Morning Musume comes to mind. It probably depends on the group, but I wouldn't do it for any group in Hello! Project.
The only referencing for solo careers on group pages should be links for the artists names. As you said, H!P solo referencing would make the page turn into a dictionary in and of itself.

Products

 [[image(s)]]
 Description
 Product Details
 == Credits ==
 == Track Listing ==
 == External links ==
 === Purchase ===
 [[Category(s)]]
 
Description
If it's a single or song title, and the original name is in kanji/kana, it's very common to start off the description with 漢字Kanji (Romaji: text; English: text). There are some inconsistencies with the kanji, though- some people prefer to bold it, to make it stand out (since it's the original Japanese of the article title), while others prefer to leave them un-bolded, saying that bolded kanji are hard to read. Thoughts?
I prefer bold. I don't think it looks good to have the Romaji and English bolded, but not the kanji. The loss of readability that you get from bolding it, I think, is negligible; increase the font size if that's an issue. Also, the kanji is usually repeated later in the tracklisting, so if you can't read the bold, it's available elsewhere. --Saa
I prefer names and titles to be Romaji (Kanji English), with the wiki being specifically targeted at English speakers the first thing we present should always keep the intended reader in mind. Visually I would agree that the kanji should be bolded if the user cant read kanji they would copy and paste it to where intended, if they can read kanji, they can read bolded kanji. --Womby
If we write Romaji (Kanji English), then it's a bit unclear if the title is originally written in Romaji/English/kanji. I said Kanji (Romaji English), but what I want to emphasize is Original form (translations and transliterations). The wiki is targeted at English speakers, but it's just as easy for them to catch the bolded title regardless of whether it's set up as Kanji (Romaji English) or Romaji (Kanji English). Also, keep in mind that the romaji is the title of the page and is in the URL. --Saa
good point, it didnt occure to me that it might be confusing. then I will throw my vote behind Kanji (Romaji, English) --Womby
Waaait. Over the past few months we've had people editing some of the pages so the song/album titles are "Romaji (Kanji)", so I began doing it as well. Are we still doing it the way mentioned in this discussion or what? ~ Wapiko 04:53, 30 April 2006 (JST)
As far as I know, yes, still supposed to be doing it as described above, for the reasons described above. --Saa 05:12, 30 April 2006 (JST)
But then there is the issue of this happening...so this is why I ask. ~ Wapiko 05:41, 30 April 2006 (JST)
Credits
Does this fall under Product Details? Regardless, should Credits be made into a section? I think so, if they're long enough; sometimes the credits can be lengthy.
Track Listing
# Track Title in Kanji (linked romanization)
OR
# Already-romanized or English Title, linked
Track Listing- instrumental romanizations
Should instrumentals be romanized? The kanji was presumably already romanized in the first track, but I'd still rather romanize it again. Some people might have difficulty comparing the kanji, and too much information isn't necessarily a bad thing. [example]
That's assuming most people that come here from Google or wherever actually have kanji fonts installed. If they don't, they'll just see a bunch of ?????'s anyway and might think it's a different song or assume the track title is not known. So I think the instrumental tracks should be romanized to make things more clear. --ilikejpop 06:49, 29 Aug 2005 (JST)
I tend to think we should focus on presenting the English language first then offer the original form as extended information. --Womby
Purchase
Like this?
 ::* link 1, link 2, link 3
Or like this?
 ::* link 1
  • link 2
  • link 3
I prefer the first method, as the second one makes the page longer for no good reason. The first looks neater. If there are different formats for the same product (i.e., CD, DVD, Limited edition CD), then those can go in separate lines, but if there's just one item then there's no reason to have the different store links on separate lines. --Saa
(Ran into problems when making purchase links for Serenade) What do I do about YesAsia.com? There are two sites (us.yesasia.com & global.yesasia.com) for orders to US/Canada and for the rest of the world. Do I just make one link and believe people to understand it themselves, or do I create two? If I create two, which should I use?
 ::* Shop1 | YesAsia Global - US/Cananda | Shop3
or
 ::* Shop1 | YesAsia.com Global | YesAsia.com US/Canada | Shop4
Or some other method? (Thought I should ask this in case you have a pre-made layout for this) --GenoSV
We have a template for Yesasia:
 :: ::: {{yesasia|numbercodehere|YesAsia}}
 :: I think it leads to the global site when clicked on. Just use that =) ~ Wapiko 07:59, 10 August 2006 (JST)
I used the template, and it led to the us-site. O_o see: YesAsia
Well, guess that's ok too. If I remember correctly YesAsia warns you to swtich site when you check-out anyway. Thanks for the fast answer Wapiko. --GenoSV

Songs

 [[image(s)]]
 Artist / Group Details
 Description
 CD / Album Links
 == TV performances == (for singles, if any)
 [[Category(s)]]
 

Images

Multiple images on a page cause a rendering issue in most browsers other than IE, the solution appears to be to put an additional div around the images.

 <div class="WTrthumb">
 [[Image]]
 [[Image]]
 </div>
 

This will allow the images to display properly without disrupting the location of other floated elements.

Oricon Weekly Rankings

 <div style="float:left;width:50%;display:inline;">
 {| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" align="left" width="100%"
 |- align="center" style="background:#C0C0C0; font-variant: small-caps;" 
 | '''#''' || '''Artist''' || '''Single''' || '''Sales'''
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 1 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 2 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 3 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 4 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 5 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 6 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 7 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 8 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 9 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 10 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |}
 </div>
 
 <div style="float:right;width:50%;display:inline;">
 {| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" align="left"  width="100%"
 |- align="center" style="background:#C0C0C0; font-variant: small-caps;" 
 | '''#''' || '''Artist''' || '''Album''' || '''Sales'''
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 1 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 2 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 3 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 4 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 5 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 6 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 7 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 8 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F8F8F8;"
 | 9 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |- style="background:#F0F0F0;"
 | 10 || [[]] || [[]] ||
 |}
 </div>
 
 

I am sure we can do better than this, perhaps popping the number one out with more detail and cover art?