Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-4760310-20151221011251

A wiki is essentially an online encyclopaedia. As such, it really should follow standard rules for formal writing. Some elements are easy and understandable (such as writing out contractions, and removing instances of 'then'). Others, not quite as clear cut.

I would like to suggest some changes. Altering the article layout so it uses an in-universe speech, rather than out-of-universe, is one. It is much neater, and reads much easier, if the articles are written in the former way. This reduces the repetitiveness of 'In Episode X'; for instance, "Throughout Season Two, Murphy goes through a significant personality change" is not very encyclopaedic, particularly when it can be rewritten to read easier, such as, "During his time on the ground, Murphy's attitude towards his fellow Arkers shifts significantly, and several times, he aids in the rescue and help of his people[1][2]".

For this to work, a new reference system would have to be used, however I have created a template that would not be difficult to put into use. You can see it here, and you can see its output here. It's mostly complete, however the red links would need to be created (though I can do that). (and there is a code so you can just hover over the [1] and have the details pop up)

Another thing is the sentence case, and capitalised words. One example is 'delinquents'. The word is not a name or a title, it's merely used to describe and differentiate the children, so one isn't confused when they read 'The 100' (and have to guess if it's talking about the children or the show). Delinquents should not be capitalised. Not only that, but it's inconsistent across the wiki anyway: in Monty's article, it's used capitalised and non-capitalised interchangeably.

This also affects the subheadings. While I understand the technical use of the APA style for subheadings (in my studies, I use their reference style), however there is technically nothing officially written on the wiki that says we do use APA, and even if that were the case, there is enough that //isn't in APA formatting (for instance, the references) that make this argument a bit... weak. This site has a good list of advantages of using sentence case in the subheadings, in particular, the first argument: "There is some evidence to show that the use of capital letters slows the ability for people to scan content – it breaks the flow".

This is not a call to change, but a query wondering how the rest of the community feels. 