Gswiki:Style guide/Creative works

Creative works are articles written by players to reflect the views of themselves or their character, and may not be reflective of official lore in GemStone IV. There may be a singular or multiple contributors to the project. However, it is generally recommended that if a single contributor has published a creative work to the wiki, that other contributors respect that article and refrain from additional edits without the prior express consent from the original contributor. Due to the freeform nature of these articles, minor formatting requirements are in place, but are far more relaxed than other areas of the GSWiki.

What Qualifies

The below list describes what articles qualify for creative works, including their dictionary definitions and how they are to be categorized. Songs and poetry, due to their basic creative basis, may be considered interchangeably.

• Essays - an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view
• Letters - a direct or personal written or printed message addressed to a person or organization
• Periodicals - a magazine or newspaper, especially on a serious subject, that is published regularly
• Poetry - writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm
• Short stories - an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot
• Songs - a short musical composition of words and music
• Player-run storylines - a basic story run by and participated in by multiple characters with no GM intervention
• Character vignettes - a brief incident or scene

Form

A semantic form has been created to make it easier for contributors to submit their creative works to the wiki and can be found here: Creative Work Form. This form automatically populates the fields for the template, including a dropdown selection for the creative work type.

Article Title

Article titles for most creative works follow the same expectation as standard article naming convention with a couple of exceptions listed below. While some creative works pages do include the type in parentheses in the article title, it is not a hard requirement. This makes it simpler to view at a glance.

Character Vignettes

Main article: Character vignette guidelines

Character vignettes are vignettes posted by players for their characters. These may be tied to a storyline, but must always be tied to the character first and foremost. This is done by setting the vignette up as a subpage to their character page. Page naming standard should be as follows:

Character name (instance)/Vignette name

Periodicals

Periodicals are magazines or newspapers published at regular intervals and may contain opinions at odds with known canon, similar to tabloids. Periodicals should maintain a main, or landing, page with each issue linked as a subpage. Page naming standard should be as follows:

Periodical series name/Individual periodical issue

Dependent on contributor preference, the periodical main page may additionally be set up as a subpage to the organization publishing it. However, that is not a set requirement.

Player-Run Storylines

Player-run storylines are specifically player-led with no GM involvement, and can take place in any instance.  Page naming standard should be as follows:

Storyline name (player-run storyline)

Creative-work Template

The creative work template is a required template for all creative works, with the exception of character vignettes, on the GSWiki, as it clearly denotes the article as being both player-created and non-reflective of official lore. It should be entered prior to the body of the article.

Using this template will automatically update the list of creative works (with a brief delay). Due to technical restrictions, the "author" field cannot contain any wiki markup. This plain text name will be reflected on the sortable list. Use the "author-displayed" field within the template to add a link to character pages on the creative work page itself.

Please note: This template is only required on creative works that are published to the wiki as standalone articles and is not required if a contributor opts to set up their creative work article as a subpage to either a subpage to their character page or their user page. However, if the the contributor opts to utilize this template on those pages, the required fields are expected to be completed in full (title, type, author, and date).

Copy/Paste Code

{{creative-work
|title = <!-- Name of work -->
|type = <!-- Choose: essay, letter, periodical, poetry, short story, song, storyline, vignette -->
|author =  <!-- Name of author in plain text, will show up on list of creative works page -->
|author-displayed = <!-- Name of author with links to character pages as applicable (optional) -->
|date = <!-- Date creative work published to the wiki. Format: yyyy-mm-dd -->
}}

Form & Template

Form for creative work page creation or editing:

• Creative Work Form

Primary templates used with creative works are:

• Creative-work