General Conventions

This is a list of conventions about organizing the wiki. These are subject to change, of course, and they're not absolutes - content can be organized other ways.

Tagging

Most content should ideally be tagged. The emerging convention is for the tag to be a category, e.g. "author", and the tag value to be a specific instance of that category, e.g. "Alicorn". Authors, continuities, settings, and threads should be tagged with the authors involved. Everything can have multiple tags, including multiple tags from the same category.

Some tags have specific pages on them, listing conventions and some common values. These are also in the 'Conventions' chapter.

A list of all top-level tags currently being used is here, though note it doesn't currently give values used for those tags. (And of course some of these might be mis-tags or typos at any given moment.)

Important note: Tags applied to a continuity should be usually applied to the top-level book for the continuity, not its subpages, so that what comes up when people search the tag is the continuity name. We don't want the search results for relationship=het to be twelve different pages all named "Reference"!

Suggested tags include:

• author (value: author name)
• template (value: template name - author) (author should be noted in case of template name collisions)
• group (value: group name) (generally for grouped templates or grouped minor characters)
• character (value: character name (screenname))
• facecast (value: actor name)
• circumstance alt (value: canon character name)
• category (value: continuity, thread, setting, etc)
• setting (value: setting name)
• setting-type [on setting pages only]
• character-trait [on character/template pages only]
• relationship
• genre

Author Shelf

The convention for Authors is for each Author to have their own book. An Author may or may not have category-less pages like 'About X'. Common Author chapters are templates, with instances as alts within that template. ('Minor Characters' should probably be its own chapter). Other suggested Author chapters and category-less pages:

• Related solo works by this author
• List of settings this author writes
• Recommended threads and continuities

Note that page content can be mirrored between pages (https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/user/reusing-page-content/). Typically, things like "threads" and "settings" go on other shelves, but major examples could reasonably be mirrored (with the base example in the proper shelf).

Information about a template as a whole, such as history, clusters, and attractors, can go in a "About (Template)" page within the template's chapter. One can also add a short (2-3 items) list of good introductory reading material for that template, suitable for getting to know what the template is like.

Continuity Shelf

The convention for Continuities and threads is for each major Continuity to have its own book, with subcontinuities in chapters and notable threads as pages. Subcontinuities might also have a summary page, a notable characters page, a related reading page, etc. We have not figured out a set convention for notable Sandboxes yet. 

Settings Shelf

Generally, setting base pages should go over here, not in Author books, given that many settings have multiple authors involved. Fandom settings should get their own Book for the original fandom, with different takes (and common setting facts) in chapters. Settings or takes can be tagged with the involved authors.

It's suggested for minor original settings to go in the "Original Settings" book, possibly with chapters by author for simple solo settings (e.g. "Kappa's Settings (Chapter)") and a page for each setting. Individual original settings that are more complicated than a single page, but not as complicated as a full book, can also have their own chapters. Simple collaborative settings can go in a "Collaborative Settings" chapter if the authors wish.