WCPedia - Creating a Stylebook

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
One problem that I run into when I try to write for the WCpedia is that there's no agreed upon stylebook. For an easy example, do I call refer to 'the Confederation' or 'the Terran Confederation' (and then, with or without the definite article?).

So, we need to:

- Identify what needs to be decided.
- Debate each one.
and
- Make a choice.

The big ones in my head right now are the names of the nations-

- The Confederation (Terran Confederation?)
- The Kilrathi (Empire of Kilrah, Kilrathi Empire?)
- The Landreich (Free Republic of the Landreich?)
- The Black Lance (we need to sit down with this one now)

... then other proper nouns, like what we call the different wars. Is it the Terran-Kilrathi War? The Kilrathi War? The Galactic War? The Terran-Kilrathi WarS?
 
I think either Confederation or Terran Confederation is fine - I'm not sure it has to be consistent. But some suggest just 'Confed' is okay because of the precedent set in the novel, but I'm not so sure.

For the Kilrathi, I don't know. Empire of Kilrah somehow sounds more formal and grand to me, but that's a rather subjective value.

From what I've seen of the Landreich titles, it makes sense to use their full title in documents such as those referring to specifically (such as their own article), but when mentioned in passing, the shorter name would be more suitable on a practical level. Perhaps use the full title in the first mention within an article and the shortened form thereafter? A similar approach could be used for the other factions as well.

I'm not sure what's troubling you about the Black Lance. The Black Lance are the Black Lance, as far as I know. Are the referred to as anything else? Or are you suggesting they have some fancy name like 'Confederation Black Operations Group 359'?

Names of wars are a difficult thing to decide upon. Unless they already have a specific name in the literature, we're effectively making the names up ourselves. One tricky example that comes to mind is WC4. I think there's mention of it being called the Black Lance Conflict and Black Lance Crisis both.

Finally, I don't think Galactic War is a suitable title for the war(s) with the Kilrathi. It's rather broad and generic.
 
"Confed" should only be used if it's a direct quote from a source being used in an article.

Things to be decided:

Article Layouts - I'm trying to make them sort of all conform to a similar standard style, but I'm sure they could be done better with some more wiki experience.

Category Organization - This is something we've been dealing with since Day 1. How to organize all the information we are uploading. Just the other day I discovered several Fighter Wing articles buried in the Terran Confed Military category and not linked to any others. It might help to create the organizational layout and then fill it in, but that might actually produce a lot of work later on, as I've discovered a few times already with reorganizing categories.

Nation Names:

I think we should continue the trend we see in the novels. Both Confed/Terran Confed/Empire Kilrah/Kilrathi Empire are used in the text. It's just a matter of flow which name appears to be used in the text itself.

The others we will need to discuss a bit more.
 
How about page names for fighters? Like the Excalibur heavy fighter, the address https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Excalibur links to https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/F-103_Excalibur , though the fighter is rarely identified as an F-103 except in documentations.

Regarding the Kilrathi War, using the term 'Galactic War' seems too grand, but the main conflict in WC Unvierse was the Terran-Kilrathi War. Both Kilrathi War or Terran-Kilrathi War would suit the purposes, but since the main contributors of WCPedia are Terrans, using Kilrathi War would be more suitable.
Beside, there hasn't been any major conflict aside that and the Nephilim War (was it called the Nephilim War?)
 
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How about page names for fighters? Like the Excalibur heavy fighter, the address https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Excalibur links to https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/F-103_Excalibur , though the fighter is rarely identified as an F-103 except in documentations.

I don't understand this. It is the F-103 Excalibur. Why would we change it to a less specific article title simply because the full name isn't used in every reference?

Regarding the Kilrathi War, using the term 'Galactic War' seems too grand, but the main conflict in WC Unvierse was the Terran-Kilrathi War. Both Kilrathi War or Terran-Kilrathi War would suit the purposes, but since the main contributors of WCPedia are Terrans, using Kilrathi War would be more suitable.
Beside, there hasn't been any major conflict aside that and the Nephilim War (was it called the Nephilim War?)

Varni-Kilrathi War
Yar-Terran War
Border Worlds Conflict
Landreich-Confederation Conflict
Mantu-Kilrathi War
Nephilim War

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
 
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Yar-Terran War

You're thinking of the Yan, I think... and as far as they go, there's a passing reference to them in Action Stations and another one in Star★Soldier, neither of which go into detail or even determine who or what they are (the S★S gloss kind-of-sort-of-maybe-implies that they're aliens, but then that counts as unofficial material). Whatever the case and whoever-whatever they are, they're also in the 2300s, when Earth was under the Great Pandemic quarantine and before the Confederation even existed, so I'm not sure that "Terran" would even apply in this case.

As far as naming schemes go, Kilrathi War in particular, my take has been to either start off with Terran-Kilrathi War and then go into Kilrathi War, or else start with Kilrathi War, but link to the main article (which is, thankfully, Terran-Kilrathi War). Galactic War seems kind of obscure and I've never heard of Kilrathi War*s* until now (the movie does say "Pilgrim Wars"... subject that could use work).

Black Lance is the simplest and most recognizable name, and I'm just glad it exists to use. Qualifying stuff like "Dragons" and "212" is just too obscure. The Prophecy guide (and ICIS) use "Border Worlds Conflict", and I think the former also uses "Black Lance Affair". Those should probably be the big names.

Finally, Confed. The Pegasus Naval Base dossier from the Confed Military Installation Index, 2653 edition (from the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook) uses "Confed" to represent the Confederation - the only use of the full word "Confederation", in fact, is in reference to the Confederation Senate Security Committee which authorized construction. Then, of course, there's the name of the source (which itself is a confidential document). Arnold Blair's obituary also uses Confed, and in fact does not use the term "Confederation" at all.

The novels produce an interesting one - to Forstchen and Ohlander (especially Ohlander), the Navy is always "the Fleet". I don't think Forstchen uses "Navy" once in Fleet Action or Action Stations, and Ohlander goes even further, building up and mythologizing "the Fleet" as an entity, whether it's in little toasts or names like "fleeties" or arguments over whether a Space Forces colonel is qualified to command a Fleet vessel. The latter is the one that's interesting to me: are the Space Forces a distinct entity and "Navy" and "Fleet" synonymous, or are the capital-ship Fleet and space-fighter Space Forces both subordinate parts of the Terran Confederation Navy, along with (presumably) the Terran Confederation Marine Corps? (A couple pages after the argument between Blair and Eisen, Dekkar mentions how the Space Forces left him on Repleetah, and how "Tolwyn had decorated the Space Forces commander for cool thinking" (232) - that doesn't sound like just fighters).

Action Stations further complicates things by not mentioning the Space Forces at all - apparently fighters are under the operational control of the Fleet, and everyone has navy-style ranks. (The Space Forces do apparently exist at this point, given Major Blair's obituary, but things come full circle by the film where everyone has naval ranks, Navy (Fleet?) or Space Forces.
 
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You're thinking of the Yan, I think... and as far as they go, there's a passing reference to them in Action Stations and another one in Star★Soldier, neither of which go into detail or even determine who or what they are (the S★S gloss kind-of-sort-of-maybe-implies that they're aliens, but then that counts as unofficial material). Whatever the case and whoever-whatever they are, they're also in the 2300s, when Earth was under the Great Pandemic quarantine and before the Confederation even existed, so I'm not sure that "Terran" would even apply in this case.

Yes, I meant the Yan. I think Terran would be applicable in that case since Terran is talking about the race, not the government.


Finally, Confed. The Pegasus Naval Base dossier from the Confed Military Installation Index, 2653 edition (from the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook) uses "Confed" to represent the Confederation - the only use of the full word "Confederation", in fact, is in reference to the Confederation Senate Security Committee which authorized construction. Then, of course, there's the name of the source (which itself is a confidential document). Arnold Blair's obituary also uses Confed, and in fact does not use the term "Confederation" at all.

I think we can think of "Confed" as the equivalent to "US" or "EU" in modern parlance.

The novels produce an interesting one - to Forstchen and Ohlander (especially Ohlander), the Navy is always "the Fleet". I don't think Forstchen uses "Navy" once in Fleet Action or Action Stations, and Ohlander goes even further, building up and mythologizing "the Fleet" as an entity, whether it's in little toasts or names like "fleeties" or arguments over whether a Space Forces colonel is qualified to command a Fleet vessel. The latter is the one that's interesting to me: are the Space Forces a distinct entity and "Navy" and "Fleet" synonymous, or are the capital-ship Fleet and space-fighter Space Forces both subordinate parts of the Terran Confederation Navy, along with (presumably) the Terran Confederation Marine Corps? (A couple pages after the argument between Blair and Eisen, Dekkar mentions how the Space Forces left him on Repleetah, and how "Tolwyn had decorated the Space Forces commander for cool thinking" (232) - that doesn't sound like just fighters).

What's happening there is a mixture of naval traditions and organizations being mixed together. The whole "fleet" vs "space forces" thing is the "black" vs "brown" shoe argument that USN had during the interwar years. How could a naval aviator possibly be qualified to command a ship when they spent their time with the air wing? How could a line officer be expected to command a carrier with no understanding of air power? It's Forstchen throwing in more WWII references. The debate was, and is to a small degree, something that has been more drummed up by certain historians than being a real heated argument.

The question is though are the Space Forces independent like the Air Force or like you asked a subordinate of the Navy? Blair and the other pilots, both game and novelwise, act and are written like naval aviators. The separation between a line officer and an aviator is not surprising to me for the reason above, but the ranks are more of an issue. Those make me want to lean towards the Space Force being subordinate to the Navy, but then a lot of other things don't make sense with that being the case (ex. the Academy...which in the US has graduated both line and aviator officers and Blair acting like a naval aviator at every turn). It's confusing because we have separate writers with unique ideas, and understandings, trying to talk about similar things and in reality causing us a bit of confusion.


Action Stations further complicates things by not mentioning the Space Forces at all - apparently fighters are under the operational control of the Fleet, and everyone has navy-style ranks. (The Space Forces do apparently exist at this point, given Major Blair's obituary, but things come full circle by the film where everyone has naval ranks, Navy (Fleet?) or Space Forces.

Yeah another one of those things that emerges because of having different understandings of how militaries work.
 
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Yes, I meant the Yan. I think Terran would be applicable in that case since Terran is talking about the race, not the government.

The problem here is that we don't even know if the Yan aren't Terran. Were they some kind of government on Earth? In space? Some Pilgrim-esque splinter group? Or were they aliens (or mutants, or robots?) All we have to go on is "Yan tails", which... isn't much (are they pigtails? Future slang? "Chinese silk" doesn't come from Chinamen).

Also, as far as the war goes, we don't even know how big it was (if we can call it a war - Banbridge calls it a "scrap", though he's probably being ironic there - probably). I think "Yan Conflict" is about as detailed a name as possible without implying anything we don't know.

I think we can think of "Confed" as the equivalent to "US" or "EU" in modern parlance.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, though I'd probably want to start out with "Confederation" before segueing into "Confed". Using "Confederation" for every instance gets very clumsy very fast.




Stepping back from the whole Fleet vs. Space Forces debate for a moment (which is something that I think needed to be brought up), the reason it's here in the first place is because I've been using the Forstchen/Ohlander nomenclanture and using "Fleet" in place of "Navy" for every instance on the site (the section for the McAulllife Ambush article, for instance, calls him a "Fleet cryptographer", whereas Claw Marks and Victory Streak say TCN). Is this something that needs to be addressed, as a matter of style? The link (and all instances of it) redirect to the main article at Terran Confederation Navy, so I hope that, for the purpose of variation and for the sake of preserving the novel nomenclanture where it exists, that system or some variation on it can stay in place.
 
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The problem here is that we don't even know if the Yan aren't Terran. Were they some kind of government on Earth? In space? Some Pilgrim-esque splinter group? Or were they aliens (or mutants, or robots?) All we have to go on is "Yan tails", which... isn't much (are they pigtails? Future slang? "Chinese silk" doesn't come from Chinamen).
I think in this case, the author's intentions aren't too difficult to guess. You're right - with what little is known, the Yan could have been some human faction, and Yan tails could mean pigtails or anything like that. But, while this change could potentially be made by a future WC story, we're pretty safe to assume that the author did intend the Yan to be an alien species with tails.
 
Yeah I'd expect to use Confed in writing like a do any shortened word. First identify the full word, then introduce the shortened version.

As for the Navy/Fleet discussion, I don't think this is an issue at all. The USN for a long time used both words interchangeably in documentation and writings. It's more a matter of style or context than any real difference in meaning and significance. I believe in the novel's the switch is a matter of which sounds/flows better in that situation.

Not sure why the Yan thing is a big deal, I was just listing other wars beside the Kilrathi war.
 
I think we should also look at the "premier" articles and decide if those are the manners in which we want articles laid out. I'm sure there are ways to improve on those articles and then incorporate those layouts into the other articles of that type.

Certainly we should take advantage of the other extensions that have been loaded into the wiki in some articles.

As always every little bit helps wingnuts so if you want to know where you can step in and help just ask.
 
Another thing that just came to mind....

Mission names.

For WC1, SM1, SM2 and WC2 (and probably SO1-2) I have been using the naming scheme found in the WC1&2 USG. This means that each mission is now identified by the flight name and mission: Alpha Wing (Brimstone System).

The WC3 authorized combat guide follows the lines of the CIC Games guides (system name and number) while the official guides for WC4 and WCP use an alphanumeric system:

WC4: [Mission G1: Rescue Kilrathi (Orestes)]
WCP: [F2: T'lan Meth - SWACS Scan of Dula 7]

The Priv2 guide uses an alphabetic system:

Mission A: Dr. Loomis
Mission B: The Canera Files

Do we follow the organization of each strategy guide for each game or do we follow the CIC game guides or a third solution?

The precedent has already been set through the use of the USG for the first games, so continuing to use the official guides for the other games seem like the thing to do. It might cause some confusion at first, but with the inclusion of mission trees at the top level of the category I think it will be easy to overcome.
 
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