Forum:Manual of Style Changes

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TheFifteenthMember Yes. You're creepy. I can't say we'll miss you while you're gone, so it'd be best if you did go. We all win that way. — TheFifteenthMember 18:28, 12 January 2015 (UTC) With the return of many old users and the arrival of some new ones, I feel it necessary to formally agree on a new MoS because there is a lot of disparity between certain grammar points or phrasings that need to be clarified before anyone mass-edits any more pages incorrectly. I ask everyone to hold off on making controversial changes to articles, until the issues here are resolved. Otherwise, someone might make a bunch of pages say one thing, only to have this discussion reach a different consensus, meaning that all those pages have to be changed back. Without further ado, I'll bring up points that I've noticed: Pronoun for gender-neutral subjects: It is "them". You can read my reasoning here and I have a source to back myself up. One user disagreed and used this as his evidence. However, that article is outdated since it was written in 2004. Not only is Oxford a more reliable source in my view, the article written by them is newer and has more updated information. Language moves on. Especially if it's English. Ability captions: Do we use "the user" or the character's names? My view on this has changed somewhat in the past few days; considering the character has as much a difference on how the ability looks as the game, I think we should go with the latter. For example, Break Time looks different between Terra, Ventus and Aqua, and all three animations are in the same game. Hence, I think the captions should be anything along the lines of "In BBS, Break Time causes Terra to...", "In BBS, Ventus performs Break Time by..." or "In BBS, Break Time allows Aqua to..." (obviously with BBS in full). Total consistency among pages is not necessary here. As long as the sentence makes sense and is not overly clunky, I see no reason to just edit a page to reword a caption so that all of them are worded the same. Variety is acceptable and I would encourage it, especially if there are multiple captions on the same page. These are issues I can think of off the top of my head but there are more, no doubt. I'm asking everyone to bring up anything they want to change in the MoS and share their thoughts on the two points I raised. Also, relevant forum.

TheSilentHero — 18:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC) Another relevant forum.

KeybladeSpyMaster - I do it for my family, my home, my friends! I do it for her! TALK - Welcome to Spy Force One. - 01:20 PM Mon, January 12, 2015 MST Great idea to have this forum. I will address some of the points FM noted, I don't know if I really have to discuss the linked forums (I can if we want). The singular gender-neutral pronouns "They/Them": The Manual of Style currently discourages the use of the terms "they" or "them" as singular gender-neutral pronouns. I did some research last week on its validity in the English language, using a wiki higher than any of us, Wikipedia. The results are....indecisive. That's right. Even Wikipedia, the most professional of all these "Anyone-can-edit-wikis", the source of them all, is indecisive as to whether it is appropriate to use the terms "they"/"them" as gender-neutral singular pronouns. The article on the terms on Wikipedia cites multiple, in my opinion, reliable sources that both encourage and discourage the use of the terms. My conclusion is that it's use is dependent on who you ask. Apparently, Oxford believes it is okay to use the terms as singular gender-neutral pronouns. I have to side with them in this case. The reality is that it's common to use in common English in the United States, at least. And without a true consensus even in the United States as a whole, we cannot argue it as being incorrect in English grammar conventions very easily. I say we use the more reliable source as a deciding factor, and right now, I feel that is the Oxford Dictionary that TheFifteenthMember has cited. Ability Captions: I also agree that it should be the character's names. Here's why, and I explained it on ENX's talk page: I do not believe that using a specific character's name necessarily means that no one else but that one character can use the ability as described. If anything, I'd claim it's speculation to assume anyone can use it when there's no proof of that. Using the character's name 1) makes it more understandable and friendly; 2) specifically describes what's in the image or animation or whatever; and 3) prevents that speculation I mentioned by stating not that, for example, Aqua is the only person able to use Glacier, but by stating that she's someone who can use it. It doesn't necessarily rule out that someone else can use it, but that she's seen as being able to use it in this case. Something that appears to have been an issue yesterday, and that isn't addressed in the Manual of Style or really anywhere as far as I know, is the order of navigation menus. I personally feel that in regards to the games navigation menus, they should be ordered by release rather than in chronological order. It's easier. I don't know if we want to handle/define how other navigation menus are ordered, but I feel that their order is irrelevant, except that they should be above the game menus (to me, that flows better).

Chronological order is okay in my view. In truth, either method works. It's just arbitrarily choosing one and sticking to it. TheFifteenthMember 20:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

KrytenKoro - "Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." TALK - "They/Them" has been in accepted use as a singular pronoun since the Middle Ages. Its usage here is not possible to confuse readers, at this point. Are there sources which prefer other words? Sure. But it is not incorrect, it is not offensive, it is not confusing, and it is not awkward. As far as I'm aware, no other suggested pronouns have been put forward that meet all of these -- the only strike against "they" is from grammar prescriptivists, who are well known to make up rules for the sake of rules. Captions: Honestly, I'm against having captions that aren't being used to illustrate something interesting that can't be covered within our standard format. I'm against captions for captions' sake, and certainly "one image per game" per images' sake. That being said, Break Time is in fact the perfect example why "the user" should be used -- because that is a technique where the usage differs between users. Mentioning the user necessarily implies that the user is important context for what follows, even if it is weaker than outright saying "when X uses Y". "If anything, I'd claim it's speculation to assume anyone can use it when there's no proof of that" -- The thing is, this goes both ways. If you're assuming that a reasonable reader will read "the user" as meaning "all users", you've got to agree that a reasonable reader will read "Riku" as "only Riku". What obviously cannot specify the whole list of users for a generic ability in the caption, and captions are most efficient when they are concise. So why go into all this "Homing Cura in BBS used by Terra in Keyblade Graveyard" if they only relevant bit of info there is "Homing Cura"? At best, we're being boring, redundant, and non-concise, at worst, we're planting false impressions in the readers' heads. If the desire to add captions to everything is so that the images have the border that a thumbnail brings, the "frame" tag can be used in its place (or I'm sure the scripters on this wiki can whip up something that looks even better). I feel I may have been misunderstood in the past, as well -- if we have a caption at all, it should be something that describes what's going on in the image, stuff that is not redundant to the mechanics section or the lead. But this is still subject to the preference for brevity and relevance -- we don't need to describe every visual quirk of the animation, just those that are important. And again, it's very possible that we don't need a caption at all, or at the very least not one longer than "Homing Cura". I point to the very successful TFWiki for this -- they have so fully recognized the frequency with which captions are totally useless that where captions are not needed, they simply leave them blank or allow them to be used humorously, to make reading the wiki more entertaining. I'm fairly certain the community here would balk at turning captions into jokes, but it should be possible to at least recognize that a lack of lengthy captions will not reflect poorly on the wiki. Sidenote: I do not agree with "obviously BBS in full". Where we have official acronyms, they should absolutely be used to simplify content and be more concise. Using the full title for everything always obscures actual information with an endless stream of "Kingdom Hearts colon". Sidenote 2: "cause" is not a good verb to use, I feel, because it implies that the user is forced to perform these actions, or the technique itself. They aren't -- they retain what agency they have as player avatars. "Performs X by" seems technically okay, but still feels to me like it's saying that the user simply has to perform those actions and they get the technique, rather than having to unlock the skill. It's less of a quibble with that one. Navbox order: Honestly, this makes the most sense to me in order of game release. The game chronology itself is all over the place, with flashbacks to before BBS in KH1, or after KH2 in BBS, etc. The game release order is, I feel, how most fans list the games in their heads, and thus would be the more natural order they would expect when looking up information. However, as always I'd like to caution the overuse of navboxes -- I'm not very sure how valuable a by-game navbox is for a single-topic wiki, especially if it's expanded beyond major game mechanics into every possible thing that appears in the game. Like, I'd understand the KH2 navbox for reaction commands, and probably any other major topics that appear in the KH2 navbox, but not for Shadows or Air Pirates. We have categories that serve much of the same purpose, and they are less of a hassle to navigate (especially when dealing with phones or browsers that don't work nicely with the expand code, cough cough).