This article describes best practices for maintaining articles that are on the Main namespace (main area) of this wiki.
User pages, talk pages, and user blogs are under separate namespaces and are not covered here. Also not covered are article and forum comments, which fall under Discussions.
Goal
- The primary goal of this wiki is to provide accurate and comprehensive information about Beavis and Butt-Head.
Content
- All content should be relevant to Beavis and Butt-Head.
- It should be objective (not a matter of opinion) whenever possible.
- It must be accurate and sourceable.
- When subjectivity is unavoidable, such as when describing a character's personality, it should stay within the most conventional possible interpretation and the likely intention of the writer(s).
Language
- This is an English wiki; all pages should be written in English.
- They should be written clearly and concisely, and with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
- The writing should be original, as opposed to copied from other sources like Wikipedia.
- Because this is an American series, American spellings are preferred over British (e.g. "color" instead of "colour").
"Butt-head" versus "Butt-Head" versus "Butthead" versus "ButtHead"
- "Butt-Head" is the preferred spelling on this Wiki. The name is always hyphenated; both "Butt-head" and "Butt-Head" were seen on the air, but the capital "H" variant was used more in the production of the series.
Dates
- Dates should always be absolute rather than relative. For example: "in 2012", not "ten years ago".
- To avoid confusion between locales, months should be written in full. For example: "March 8, 1993", not "3/8/1993"
Spoilers
This site should be treated as a spoiler for the whole series. Readers that are not up to speed browse at their own risk. All information, no matter how new, should be presented plainly, without any special tags, warnings, or other considerations about potential spoilers.
Citations
To cite a source, place a <ref></ref> block right after the stated fact, and place the source between the tags. For example, citing a source for an airdate would be written as:
airdate = March 8, 1993<ref name="epguide">http://epguides.com/BeavisandButthead/</ref>
The "name" attribute is optional. It allows the same source to be cited multiple times on a page without the need to repeat it. It can be given any value that is unique on the page.
Subsequent citations repeat the value, and would be written as:
<ref name="epguide" />
New Pages
- Topics that are frequently mentioned, either within one page or across pages, are likely important and good candidates to have their own pages.
Files
- When uploading media files, such as images, a licensing option should be selected.
- For screenshots from episodes and other things that contain copyrighted material, "Fair Use" is the most common option that is appropriate.
- File names should be short and descriptive of what it depicts. This helps users search for content to reuse on other pages.
- A good example of a name for a title card to Frog Baseball is "FrogBaseballTitle.png" or "Frog Baseball Title Card.png"
- Bad file names contain things like UUIDs and timestamps saved by a media player.
- To avoid creating duplicates, always check for and reuse media content if it already exists exists before uploading new files.
- If the content already exists but in lower quality, use the "Upload new version" feature on the file page (convert formats if necessary). This makes version history easier to track and ensures that the newest version will display on all pages that use the file. This should be used only for upgrades in quality. Otherwise, a new file is required.
Linking
- Every page should be linked to at least once per page that mentions it.
- The first mention within any page should always link to it.
- For subsequent mentions, linking is optional but should not be overdone.
Categories
- Adding relevant categories to pages is highly encouraged.
- They should be placed at the bottom of the page's source.
- They should not be overly specific. A category should be broad enough that it would likely apply to multiple pages.
- Category names should short and descriptive.
- Categories themselves can have categories. The root category in this wiki is Browse. The full tree can be viewed here.
- All categories should derive from the root, either directly or through one of its descendants.
- The root is only there to provide structure, not meaning. Articles and other non-category pages should have meaningful categories and not be directly categorized under the root.
- Every assigned category should have its own category page with a brief description in the body.
Character and location pages
- The character infobox should be placed at the top of every character page. The location infobox should be placed at the top of every location page.
- The facts that go in the infobox must follow the canon of the series and film.
- This means, for example, that a character's "birthday" field should be left empty unless it was actually revealed in an episode or pertains to a real person, like Bill Clinton.
- The "age" field may have an approximate range but should not be exact, unless it's actually known. The characters don't age, so the numbers should reflect how they are portrayed, regardless of what year it is now.
- The rest of the article should primarily follow the canon but may draw from other sources, such the books and comic books, in which case they should always be cited.
- Fanon does not belong in any articles of this Wiki and should be deleted on sight. There are Wikis that accept and are dedicated to fanon, but this not one of them.
- The character navbox should be placed at the end of every character page before the categories. Likewise, the location navbox should be placed at the end of every location page before the categories.