Style Manual

This is a Style Manual for editors of the Harvest Moon Wiki.

When using a Wiki and having many different contributors at once, inevitably, articles can be written in many different ways. To help prevent arguments about how the Wiki should be run, these guidelines have been devised to help keep things organized and inform Wiki contributors on how to layout certain things.

Feedback is encouraged on the talk page.

Pictures
Pictures are an important feature in any article. When adding pictures be sure that:


 * The picture is actually either from the game or an official picture. Fan art may infringe on copyright and is somebody's original work. If it is your original work, please state it so that we have your permission to use it on the wiki.
 * Personal pictures of yourself or of something unrelated to Harvest Moon should not be uploaded to pages on the wiki. These pictures should be used in blogs or on your own personal profile page. When added, they should also have the category 'misc pictures'.
 * When adding photos to this wiki, please do not upload them with no intent of using them. This creates duplicated photos and spams the picture section with unnecessary photos. Unused and uncategorized photos may be deleted or go unnoticed.
 * Make sure that the name is appropriate to the picture. For example, if you upload a picture of Nami the picture's name shouldn't be svjgfvasdkhfhgaksdbgakjsdkj.png, it should be Nami.png, or something similar (Like Nami2.png.) This makes the photo easier to search and makes it relevant. This ensures that duplicates are harder to upload.
 * All pictures added should be put into categories. A picture of Allen should be categorized under A New Beginning Character Pictures or something similar.
 * As a general rule of thumb, picture categories should be the name of the game followed by either Character Pictures (Official artwork depicting a character), Portraits (In game character sprites), Screenshots (Screenshots from a game), or Images (Other images, such as thumbnails or animal art)
 * If the picture doesn't have a caption it shouldn't be a thumb image.
 * Please make any screenshots that are uploaded good quality images that are visible.

Editing Pictures
Cropping= Please use a cutting tool to crop the image as small as possible. Here is a good site for something like this. There is an example of a picture with too much trim on the right: Background= Please change the color of the picture's background to either white, or transparent unless the file is a screenshot. The HEX code for white is #ffffff. Here is a good page to use.

Galleries
Galleries are generally their own page. With the only exceptions being if it is small spin-off type game where not much information can be added or the gallery has less than five images in it. In this case, galleries should always be at the bottom of the page under one heading. The gallery should be 225px, centered, with medium spacing.

Use the following format for gallery pages: 

Sprites
Normal.png Laugh.png Angry.png Sad.png Happy.png Surprise.png Special.png Wedding.png

Article Layout

 * An article begins with a short description of the article, with its title in bold. Games titles are in italics and linked. They should all start with the same format.

For example, the page for Muffy from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life would be:


 * Muffy (ムームー, Mūmū) is a bachelorette in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life.

'''Do not add personal opinions to the pages - e.g. adding to a page that a character is ugly or similar. This does not contribute anything to the information on the Wiki, counts as spam and will be removed.'''

Game Pages

 * Game pages will be set out in this way:
 * Infobox
 * Introduction [brief description of the game]
 * Plot [how the story of the game is set up before gameplay begins].
 * Gameplay/New Features [the goals of the game, and is a heading for the following links on aspects of the game]


 * Setting [Where the game is set, list of locations. If possible, the different places should have their own pages]
 * Marriage
 * Marriage Candidates
 * Rival Marriage/Children
 * Children


 * Others [links to relevant pages]
 * References
 * Nav box that includes all of the Harvest Moon games in the franchise.
 * Add Categories
 * Game Category [e.g. Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town page in the Friends of Mineral Town category]
 * System

Game Pages Guidelines

 * In the 'Plot' section, refer to the main character as 'the player', or by gender instead. When talking about things that the game player can do (e.g. "the game player can befriend Won"), using 'you' instead is also acceptable.
 * Please try and use the 'main' template when possible. This will allow you to put a link on the page that will bring users to a more detailed page on that topic. This will allow us to have summaries on the game pages, which eliminates the length of a page and makes it look tidier. The main template:

Character Pages
 is a bachelorette in Harvest Moon.

Quote Pages
Quotes are generally listed on their own page that are linked at the top of the infobox of their main page.

Use the following format for gallery pages:

Festivals
¹ - If the game has more than ten instances of unique dialogue.

Quote Guidelines

 * All quotes should be written in a bulleted list under their respective header.
 * Any quotes with specifics to trigger, such as location or weather, should be listed last. They should also have the trigger bolded before the quote. (ie: Sunny: "Quote here")
 * In place of specific items, character names, nicknames, or other things that can very use a general placeholder word between square brackets. The following are commonly used placeholders: [Player], [Child], [Nickname], [Spouse], [Gifted Item], [Farm], [Crop], [Animal Name]
 * Subheaders may be used for games with many instances of the same trigger, such as character gender or weather. However, no headers should be added outside of the set formatting.

Game Pages
Game (, Bokujou Monogatari, lit. Farm Story)

Location Pages
Game (, Bokujou, lit. Ranch).

New Features
(if applicable)

Animal Pages

 * Infobox at the top of the page.
 * Description of the animal.
 * Obtaining - talk about how to obtain/unlock, the cost and breeding options.
 * Animal Product - specify what kinds of products the animal produces. Example: cow would produce milk, chicken would produce eggs, etc. In depth detail can be put down about the types of milk/eggs, and what their costs are.
 * Extra information (optional).
 * References
 * Nav box, if any.
 * Add appropriate categories.

Tool/Item Pages

 * Infobox at the top of the page.
 * Information and description. Talk about how to obtain the item, how much it costs, what it's used for, etc.
 * Available upgrades, if any.
 * References
 * Nav Box, if any.
 * Add appropriate categories.

Categories
Categories can always be added on the bottom of the page by clicking on the 'add category' button. The Wiki is divided into categories in which the character, item, game, etc. is relevant to. Even if a page is a repeat, it will be categorized in which game it pertains to.

Disambiguation Pages= Disambiguation pages do NOT have any other categories with the exception of 'disambiguation' and possibly a character hub category. If an admin sees that any other category has been added, it will be immediately removed. Disambiguation pages are used to group similar characters or items together. Categories should be added to the unique character/item page, not the disambiguation page.

Character Pages= Character pages should have the game that they belong to, and if they are a bachelor or bachelorette. Additionally, you can add NPCs and Character categories, if they are available.

Good Example: You edit Cliff's page from Harvest Moon 64. Categories you would include would be: ''Harvest Moon 64, HM64 NPCs, HM64 Characters.  Bad Example: You edit Cliff's page from Harvest Moon 64. You add categories such as: Friends of Mineral Town Bachelors, Back to Nature, Sunshine Islands Characters. ''

Game Pages= Game pages are simple to categorize. They only need the game's name, and the system that they belong to, as well as the "Games" category. Any other category that is not relevant is spam. Example: Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, Gameboy Advance, Games

Item/Tool Pages= Items and Tools should be categorized according to game, and the item or tool mass category may be added if necessary. Example: Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature Tools, Items, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature Items Animal Pages= Categorize the same as items/tools. Example: Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility Animals, Animals, Chicken


 * Do not add categories that are unnecessary. This counts as spam and you will be warned. 
 * Only include categories that are relevant to the game that you are playing. Although Cliff is a recurring character in Harvest Moon, do not include all the games that he is included in when you put the specific page into categories.
 * If you make a mistake, you can go to the edit button on the top of the page. You can then take out categories by clicking on the trash bin icon when on the edit page.
 * Do not add mass categories such as: Male, Female, Bachelor, or Bachelorette. This creates large categories that are unnecessary, and makes navigation difficult. Again, make it relevant to the game that you're editing the page from. These categories have been removed from the wiki already by the admins, so please do not re add them.