WF:Contribution

Welcome to the White Feather! Emma has written quite a bit in her journal, and we are just getting started here - we need all the help we can get recording it. Whether you know everything about the books, or are just reading for the first time, we appreciate all edits, from small grammar corrections to thoroughly-researched articles.

A great place to start is day summaries or character articles. Use the table of contents to quickly jump to a specific topic.

Style Guide

There is not a strict style guide for this wiki, but a sense of cont unity is encouraged. All articles should be written with an in world encyclopedia style. (The exception is articles on the actual books, wiki help pages, and the like). Think, if you opened an encyclopedia in 1883 and found something from the Emma books in it, how would it read?

Page titles should use the characters full names rather than any nicknames. So use Archibald Flat instead of Cousin Archibald and Niall Pierce instead of The Tenet or just Pierce. If a character has a nickname, alias, or title, that can be set as a redirect to the main page. For example, Tad redirects to Argus Whitaker.

A page can be on anything in the book series and created by anyone with an account. Before creating a page, consider if your person/item/location/etc is significant enough to warrant its own page, or if only needs a subsection or mention on another page. For example, a painting in Emma's garret or an item of clothing is better off mentioned on a page belonging to its owner. Emma's garret is worthy of a section in Lapis Lazul House, but not necessarily a separate page. Lapis Lazul House is deserving of it own page. Some characters, like a briefly mentioned relative or friend of a character, don't need their own pages. A good rule of thumb to follow is if you can't write more than 3-4 decent sized paragraphs about it, it doesn't need a page.

Pages should not be created for anything that is not fictional and therefore not unique to The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. Only rare exceptions exist, and they should be checked with a wiki admin. Things like sweat peas, Eaton, London, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Essays by Emerson do not need their own pages, instead links to their respective Wikipedia pages should be included. This way, we can enjoy the real world connections in the books without unnecessarily maintaining information.

While quotes and paraphrases from the books are encouraged, they should not make up the bulk of any page. Long or excessive quotes from the books are not allowed; the White Feather is meant to supplement them, not replace them. Likewise, all content should be kept factual and not include any speculation, theories, or opinions.

Using Media Wiki

White Feather is run on MediaWiki, the same software that Wikipedia runs on. While accounts, permissions, and extensions are different, that means that most things that work on Wikipedia work here. If you have a question on how to do something, searching for "MediaWiki how to {thing}" will usually pull something up.

See MediaWiki Formatting for the types of in-text formatting supported. Or use the visual editor like you would Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Citations

We use the standard Cite module for citations. You can refer to the Cite help page for more info, but usually the visual editor will handle everything.

Unlike Wikipedia, most of our citations come from a single book series. When citing The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, use Template:Journal_ref. This standardizes the format of the date and adds a link to the correct daily summaries page. Numbers, short names, and month names are all valid. The full year is required. Using it looks like this:

{{Journal ref|3|5|1883}}
or
{{Journal ref|Dec|25|1883}}
or
{{Journal ref|January|13|1884}}

This template will automatically insert all the necessary citation information. You can type/copy this format, or use the citation or template buttons in the visual editor.

When citing, cite the day in Emma's journal the information was recorded, not the day any event took place. If information is found or supported in multiple days, please cite all of them separately.

All non-Emma citations should use the Chicago Manual of Style

Articles

Articles on White Feather should maintain an encyclopedic tone. In general, this means that content should read like a Wikipedia article. Use formal(ish) language, 3rd person PoV, active voice when possible, and keep things factual (unless specifically marked).

To make creating an article simple, each of the basic types has a pre-made template you can copy. The template does not need to be followed exactly, but provides a standard for names and sections common to similar articles.

To create an article you must be logged in. Then, go to the article you want to create by clicking a red link or typing the full name in the search bar. Click the "create this page" link and use the editor to start writing.

Articles are formatted into sections. Usually the first section is before the table of contents, has an infobox, and provides a brief overview of the article's subject. This first section doesn't need citations, as the following sections will give more information on the subject and provide the citations. Add links to other articles the first time they are mentioned in a section, no article should be linked to more than once per section.

Always check to see if an article has already been made; some characters can go by different names and spelling errors might have happened. Many articles have also been pre-made with just a template too; these can be a great place to start!

Don't feel like you have to write a perfect article on your first try! Many wikis have much of the content added and then edited by different users. The important thing is that the information gets onto the article, followed by adding a reference to the proper date in Emma's Journal (written in or using a citation).

Characters

Use Template:Character as a starting point for characters. This template has the following sections:

• Appearance & Personality

Describe the person in as neutral a tone as possible, or at least how we have heard them described. Using quotes or paraphrasing, especially from Emma, is encouraged (with a citation).

This section can have two paragraphs, one for appearance and another for personality, or they can be mixed. It can contain both how the character sees themselves, how other's see them, an/or how the reader see them.

• Life Sketch

A history of the person's life. Not really a summary of the events of the books, but something akin to an obituary.

• Relationships

List the relationships this character has with other characters. Each character or group should have their own subheading.

• • Emma

Emma should almost always be included under relationships. This is a wiki for her journals after all. This is a good place to list this characters appearances in the books.

• Trivia

This is the catch all section for anything that should be in the article, but didn't make it. A bullet-pointed list, this section can include out of book things (this character was named for...) and interesting facts.

Locations

Use Template:Location for a starting point.

Organizations

Use Template:Organizations for a starting point.

Objects

Use Template:Objects for a starting point.

Daily Summaries

View Guide:Daily_Summary for more a step by step guide to adding a daily summary.

Daily summaries are brief summaries of each day in Emma's journals. They are organized by month, and can be found here or on the main page under "Book Summaries"

Each summary should be at least a sentence, but rarely longer than a paragraph (3-4 sentences). The goal is to provide enough context to jog your memory about the day, find a scene, quote, or reference, and to provide a quick way to recap the book. Summaries are of what Emma wrote that day, not necessarily what happened on that day.

A summary does not need to reference everything that happened on that day, nor should it copy from the text verbatim. The goal is not to replace the book, but index it. No citations are needed on summary pages.

A good daily summary might look like the following:

 March 5th
Emma M. Lion arrives in London and moves into Lapis Lazuli House, specifically the garret at the demands of Cousin Archibald. Him, along with  Cousin Matilde, Parian, Agnes, and Lady Eugenia Spencer are introduced. Emma finds a copy of Paradise Lost in the garret and decided to make up some calling cards.

June 4th
Emma received a letter from Saffronia March, who has traveled from Venice to Tuscany. 

Anything mentioned with an article should be linked the first time they are mentioned on every day, with the exception of Emma, who should only be linked on the first day of each month. If you can't/don't want to put the links in, that is fine, someone else can do it.

The same goes for incomplete, grammatically incorrect, or improperly formatted text. Add it, and let someone who knows the editor better fix it. We would rather have imperfect text than no information.

Templates

See WF:Templates for a list of useful templates, including infoboxes, that are available on the wiki.