People (style guide)

From IFWiki

This page will describe the preferred format for a page representing an individual person. In brief, a People page may have the following optional sections:

Please do not add empty sections to the page. For example, if there are no known links for a person, do not add an empty Links section. When sections are added, please add them in the order shown above.

All People pages should be included in Category:People, and sometimes an individual should be included in other categories as well.
(You'll probably want to include markup of the form {{DEFAULTSORT:Lastname, Firstname}}, so that the article is indexed in categories by last name, without needing to say so repeatedly for every category it's included in.)

Intro

The intro section is informal and isn't given a section header, but it should use complete sentences and present its information in paragraph form.

The intro section is mainly used to tell the reader which other names and nicknames that the person is known by. However, it is also acceptable to add other information, such as what the person's main accomplishment is in the IF community, what the person does for a living outside of IF, and which country the person lives in. But please, be brief.

It is not acceptable to badmouth or criticize a person or the person's IF work in any way. Nor is extravagant praise acceptable. Statements like "Adam Cadre is one of the most renowned authors in IF" is as far as praise will be accepted.

Avoid giving any details that people might want to keep private, e.g.: which city they live in, names of spouses and children. Sometimes, people request that their real names be kept off of IF sites; please respect their wishes.

Undecided issues:

  • Should we ever include the person's e-mail address? Maybe, if we have that person's explicit permission. If so, how should we format it so spammers won't harvest it?
  • Should we ever include photos of the person? Maybe, if we have that person's explicit permission.

Author Credits

This section should contain nothing but a bulleted list of the person's IF games. Please read the Game reference (style guide) and Game reference list (style guide) to become familiar with the format issues involved.

This game reference list should only list those works of IF that the person authored, designed, programmed or implemented. Games that someone else originally wrote, but this person ported, translated, or remade, should instead be listed in the Porting Credits section. Games that this person did not author, but illustrated, animated, or provided music or sound effects for, should be listed in the Multimedia Credits section.

The game reference list should be in chronological order from oldest to newest. If you don't have complete date info, do the best you can. Games without date info should go at the top of the list.

The game reference list should list only IF programmed works such as games or stories.

(TODO: Decide how we want to handle graphical adventures. Should we omit them? Have them in a separate section? Merely mark them as Graphical?)

However, do also include:

  • Anything entered in any IF game competition, even if it's just a transcript.
  • Any game available on the IF Archive or similar archive, even if it's a Z-abuse or similar.

Do not include:

  • Demos that are intended solely as learning exercises.
  • Library modules, IDEs, utility programs, compilers, etc.

Games based on the author's games should be sub-bulleted underneath the game that the port, translation, or remake is based on. (TODO: Give an example of this. Or should this be in some new section? Previous attempts to include this info have been edited out.)

People who have authored games should also be added to the appropriate authoring system categories, e.g. the Inform 7 authors or [[::Category:TADS 3 authors|TADS 3 authors]] categories. If people are credited with authoring ten games or more, they should also be added to the prolific authors category.

Porting Credits

This section is for crediting when the person has ported, translated, or remade someone else's game. As in the Author Credits, the game reference list should be in chronological order. (If they ported their own game, that credit should be listed as a subbullet in the Author Credits section.)

The game references in this section must reference both the ported version and the originating version of each game. For example:

The porter's name may, of course, be omitted when the reference is on the porter's page. If more than one person did the porting, use a phrase like "ported with Bob Smith" or "translated with Sam Jones" as applicable.

Note that the game title, author, year, and platform information is expected and desired for the two game references, both the ported game and the originating game. If the game title is the same in both versions, you can use "same title" (without italics or quotes) in place of the second instance of the title.

Please preface the originating game reference with an appropriate phrase that shows how the first game is related to the second. Examples of such a phrase include "Inform port of", "English translation of", or "Non-AIF remake of".

Multimedia Credits

This section is for crediting when the person has illustrated, animated, or provided music or sound effects for someone else's game. As in the Author Credits, the game reference list should be in chronological order. (If they provided multimedia for their own game, that should just be noted with the normal game reference in the Author Credits.)

Tech Credits

List the following applicable credits (using a bulleted list) in this section:

  • Created an IF authoring system.
  • Wrote/maintained an IF interpreter.
  • Wrote demos that are intended solely as learning exercises.
  • Wrote library modules, IDEs, utility programs, compilers, etc.
  • Wrote a technical standard, eg: the Z-Machine standard, or Glk.

Review and Article Credits

If the person wrote reviews or articles about IF, credit them here. Use a bulleted list.

If this list is starting to get large, unwieldy, or messy-looking, you may create subsections. If you do use subsections here, we'd like to suggest using these ones, if they will help make the section look more organized:

  • Reviews for links to articles about other people's specific works.
  • Essays for links to articles about IF-related craft, theory, or retrospectives.
  • Author commentaries for links to articles about the person's own works. Postmortems belong here.

If these subsections aren't useful — for example, if the entire list is mostly reviews already — then you'll have to invent different subsections such as Review collections and Reviews of individual works.

Organizational Credits

List the following applicable credits (using a bulleted list) in this section:

  • Organized or was an official judge for an IF competition or contest.
  • Editor or publisher of a IF newsletter, IF book, or other similar IF work.
  • Owner or CEO of an IF publishing company or IF-related organization.
  • Hosted, MC'ed, or otherwise helped organize an IF event such as the XYZZY Awards.
  • Maintains (or maintained) an IF website or webpage that features contributions from others in the IF community.

Testing Credits

This optional section should normally be a simple game reference list of the games that the person has tested (not including their own). Testing is assumed to mean beta-testing unless otherwise specified. (If the list is especially long, game references may be abbreviated to just the games' titles, and the list can be made into a paragraph where the titles are separated with semi-colons.)

This section can also include testing awards that the person won (or was nominated for); for example: awards from BetaComp, or Best Beta-Tester from the Erins.

Because researching testing credits is time-consuming and low priority, it should be understood that most people's testing credits will be incomplete or missing in IFWiki.

People who have tested others' games should also be added to the Testers category. If people are credited with testing twenty games or more not their own, they should also be added to the Prolific testers category.

Game Appearances

If the person appears in a game as PC, NPC, or just as a cameo character, list the games the person appears in, e.g.:

Mark appearances as (PC), (NPC), or (cameo) as appropriate. An in-game appearance entitles the person to be listed in Category:Real people in games as well.

Other Credits

This section is used to list any other contributions the person has made to the IF community that was not already covered by any of the above credits sections.

Avoid inserting credits unrelated to IF here. Things like "Wrote the novel Ready, Okay!" should instead be part of the Intro section.

Use a bulleted list for this section, using short statements as if you were listing accomplishments on a résumé.

If this person has no other credits section, call this section simply "Credits", not "Other Credits".

Don't forget to put a period at the end of each statement.

Links

This section, if included, should be a simple bulleted list of external links that are directly related to the person. In most cases, you should use the name of the page that the link links to as the name of the link. If necessary, annotate the link with a short descriptive phrase or sentence to clarify what the link is.

The first link listed should be, if available, the person's website's homepage OR the person's website's IF page. List one or the other, but not both.

The next link listed should be, if available, the Baf's Guide listing for that person. Use the phrase "Baf's Guide listing for John Doe" for the link's name, substituting for "John Doe" the name of the person as he or she is listed on Baf's Guide. Note that the name used by Baf's Guide may be different from the name used by IFWiki.

Other links go after the person's website link and Baf's Guide link. Keep the interview links separate (see below), but otherwise there's no particular order for these secondary links. Links should be about IF, but the occasional non-IF link is permitted if clearly labelled as "Not IF-related."

Interviews

Links to interviews that the person has given should be grouped together into a subsection titled "Interviews" and placed at the end of the Links section. Please wherever possible, annotate the link with the month and year that interview was given, and list the interview links in chronological order.

If a person has even a single interview link, then their page should be added to Category:Interviewed.

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