Megami Tensei Wiki talk:Manual of Style

Games

I've added small guidelines on Game articles, but I know you guys have ideas on content too, so suggest away! Bluer 23:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as the Gameplay section of an article, I always thought is was weird to make it seperate from the first thing being written about a game before the other sections. Sometimes there's two sentences and then your hit with a Contents box. Personally, I think gameplay should be included before the Contents box breakdown. As for character, I really don't like seeing all of that space if we used a list on main game articles, so I'm thinking of outlining characters, or the party, or whatever, with a link leading to the List of XX characters for any given game. The locations section is pretty much the same as characters.

I suppose we could do something like a short breakdown, letting main location articles, or character articles, filling the more detail specific information (while trying to add pictures of said location), but I don't see some of them really being more informative than, at most, a paragraph. Another thing we need to set up are the information boxes for the games and characters. I like what Icy did with Devil Children by putting the box art at the bottom. I would much rather see the logo of the game in the information box rather than the box art. Eventually, I'd like to get enemy data together for the games too. With all of this discussion I'm pretty well able to go to town on the wiki the more we talk this stuff out. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga has pretty much acted as the learning and implementation of our ideas for me. Thanks for the help. ^_~ Akkilmar 23:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about the box art and/or cover art (too, ?) being at the bottom. I really don't care about what other people do on other wikis. Perhaps, we can help implement a new style. Change is good, right? Just don't expect any credit from thieves. Anyway, wonderfully fantastic images of demons are on the way. I even asked permission from someone over at Dokuganryu if I could use them. I got their blessing, with the reply: "At last, somebody asked permission." icy 02:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, we should really cooperate with Dokuganryu. They've got real good images there. And icy, don't worry so much about the images, as long as we have follow fair use policy it would be all right. Bluer 03:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Demons

Basically, what I'm doing now is trying to figure out exactly how to group the demons. I've also, as you may have noticed, uploaded some images from the "Deities" group. (I'm trying to go in order.) I'm using the categories from here: [1]. This is a good resource for us, although I haven't been able to contact the person responsible. icy 05:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I was having trouble with this too. I think what they were doing was making compendiums for each game though, but I haven't looked into their method that much.. Another question is: do we want to make a seperate article for each occurance of the demon, like DDS Jack Frost and Persona 3 Jack Frost, or should we try to compress information on one article with sections regarding each occurance. You could essentially make a different template styled after the game they appear in either way. Akkilmar 23:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of having their different incarnations on the same page, and list the game they appeared in there, as well. I don't like the idea, however, of pointing out on the game pages which demons are available for recruiting. The list would be ridiculously long. Your thoughts? icy 23:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... I agree. I would get insanely bored and tired of looking at a list like that on the game pages. Plus, it goes with my dislike of all that unused space on the game pages, like I was talking about with characters and location. I can get some sprites, that I'll do myself so we don't have to ask permission from some other site, for the Persona games if we wanted to put those with each incarnation too, for example. I'll build a demo template first to give us an idea tomorrow, if you'd like. Akkilmar 02:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. About the individual Demon pages, it might be nice, since then only if someone was interested they could follow a path of links to find out more info on that particular one. I also think it might be interesting to include the origin of the demon in question. (Other than its relation to MegaTen and as long as it is somewhat brief.) If I hear enough loud "nay" votes from either you or Blue, I guess I'll reconsider. I don't know about you, but I was always fascinated with religion, myths and/or stories that gave info on what the person/god/goddess/angel/devil in question was known for. It's a good gateway to expand your knowledge of other cultures and what-not. Really, it's one part of the reason I was drawn to MegaTen in the first place. icy 03:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a demo template up in the sandbox. Akkilmar 18:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying, was busy somewhere. Anyway, the template looks nice. Some of the lettering sizes are kinda off. And maybe we can put the image above the Arcana type? Other than that, I'll have to check if we can adopt this template and variate it for other Persona use like Persona 3 which I just started play (and it looks really awesome so far). And based upon my experience for the other wiki, we should put the template's name above the ((name)) of the demon. And we mte have to figure out a name for the template, something easy to type like Template:PS2Persona or something (Personas are these things names, amirite?)

The origin section would be VERY Interesting indeed. We should make it brief tho since it's better covered in wikipedia, to which we should link to.

Btw, character infobox too? Bluer 16:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been pretty busy myself, so don't worry about it. Let me fix this one up and I'll start on a character info box for us to use. Should the character boxes be different for each game as well? The thing with the Persona games before P3 is that the demons and Persona are the same. Any demon in the game can become a usable Persona later. What I'll do is make a template called P2Demon for right now. Akkilmar 16:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

(Personas are these things names, amirite?) I'm not 100% sure, Blue, but I'm pretty certain that they are all Demons, since I have seen the Personas classified as Demons elsewhere. Really, a demon is merely something that a person can summon and use for some purpose. icy 03:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe they're explicitly called Personas in P3. Bluer 03:58, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but these Personas are all Demons, aren't they? icy 05:16, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I kinda realized that in the end :p Bluer 10:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it turns out that by trying to use the template I made, while trying to divide each game into a seperate section on the demon page, really makes things look horrible and not good. So, I bring to you a question (again): how do we want to do demon pages? We could have a single info box, but how do we utilize the amount of information for each occurance? Really, I'm just not sure what to do, but I'll build templates when we have a better solution. For now, I think I'll make a character info box like Blue was asking about. Akkilmar 01:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, this is the point where I bow out, and let you guys hash it out. If anyone needs me, I'll be over at Capcom. I do apologize, but that seems to be taking up my free time right now. icy 03:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, as far as these demons go, I've been referring to them like this: Izanagi. I think it's a good lay out for demons and Personae, but I don't don't how to refer to the demon clans. They've got several different names and it's rather intimidating. I think we might want some sort of demon specific template dealing with clans or demonic races. Possible a second template that will deal the Personae Arcana. If we used a game's template, Jack Frost is going to rack up twenty or thirty templates. Persona will be really easy since they're just divided by the arcana, which are the same in the english or Japanese version, but those demons....SeventhEvening 21:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I think the individual pages for demons should look something like Helios. Preferably with a bit more information, but with those categories. As far as templates go, maybe we should give each clan/arcana a template. Like "Justice Arcana" with a list of each persona in it. Or an over arching template that is "Persona" and only includes links to the Arcana pages, which will be lists. Demons would work the same, just replace the word "Persona" with demon and then list the Clans instead of Arcana. Personally, I think the over-arching template would be best. Like one for Persona (the arcana), One for Devil Summoner (raidou) classes (Pyro, Frost, Pagan, Skill, Wind, Volt, Fury), One for Shin Megami Tensei, and one for DDS. We might need more, I don't know what kind of classification exists in Devikids or Last Bible or older Devil Summoner games. We can cross those bridges when we come to them. Let me know what you think (especially since I probably won't be making the templates).

Actually, I think that's a pretty good idea. I'm still trying to work out disambiguation pages, which I understand for the most part, but I think I can try and work something out template wise. Now that i think of it we had been talking about character templates too... It's 02:08 here right now so I'm fried and may have some questions tomorrow, but we'll get it sorted out. Akkilmar 07:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Before I forget, the Navigation templates have a link to a Personae category. If we wanted we could add each Persona to a category, like Justice, and then add the Justice category page to the Presoae category page. So on and so forth for other games. I can make a template for each arcana (for the Persona series) listing each Persona in that arcana with every other arcana listed seperately. Before we go acting on this let me draw up some things and see how this will work out and connect. I'll also try to add some more Navigation templates for the other games that don't have any. Good night for now! ^_~ Akkilmar 07:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I'll wait for your word before I start slapping more non-existent categories to things. Although, I typically forget category markings and sign offs anyway. I think Arcana are pretty easy, and so are Devil Summoner (Raidou) categories, but those demon families and clans are going to be a bit painful. SeventhEvening 01:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Demons: History

A1G1S brought something up that I started to wonder about. I went back and deleted my comments on the Loki page after I thought about it. Where should the History go? He's been adding it to the Biography, which makes enough sense, but some of the articles have it at the top, and others have it as a separate section altogether (Philemon). I just wanted to bring it up and get it into the Manuel so we know and new members know. Akkilmar 15:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I was just getting ready to respond to A1G1S. I think it should be a separate section called "History" that goes at the bottom of the page (like Philemon). The Biography will have a lot of information about a demons in game appearances, so I think the last two sections of every demon page should be history and then the gallery. A1G1S is loading the in-game descriptions of the demons, which isn't the best thing for the history section, but it is a start. SeventhEvening 17:06, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

A separate section for demons

Hey. I think we should separate the Demon section from the Character one since demons are not same thing that Characters, don´t you agree?. --I need ur Halp! 03:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Box Art

Please post your opinions about the current policy on box-art here.

A very good idea. A fair-use compliant box art would suffice. And it should be placed above the external link and navi temp in a gallery view placed at the center, with relevant descriptions. Bluer 22:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, are there non-fair-use compliant box art? What would make it so?SeventhEvening 06:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Preceeded by/Succeded by Boxes

I've added a Preceded by/Succeeded by box to the bottom of Megami Ibunroku Persona. Tell me what you think about it. It's a really simple and easy to edit template, but I didn't want to put them all over the place just yet. Akkilmar 18:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I like it. I moved the one on Megami Ibunroku Persona to beneath the navitemplate, which I think looks much better. When it was above the navitemplate, I wasn't so sure I liked it, but beneath it's very unobtrusive. It's there if you need it, but it's not an eyesore if you don't want it. What do you think? SeventhEvening 02:40, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I like it there to. In fact I added it to all of the Persona games. Akkilmar 03:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Plagerism

Alright, this is not a huge issue because of the nature of Wikis, but please avoid cutting and pasting long articles from other sources, ESPECIALLY MegaTen wiki without editing.

• First, it's not entirely ethical, unless you wrote it in the first place. It may not bother you, but it bothers me. I'm a Communication/Journalism major, so plagiarism kinda gets under my skin.
• Second, if ethics isn't good enough, a lot of times, it just doesn't work. There are several articles on our wiki that are named differently than on MegaTen wiki. Not because one of us is right or one of us is wrong, but because we're writing about a Japanese universe using English. I had to delete the article of Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army skills because it referenced Susano-o, where we have Susa-no-O. That site also has the game as Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou, which is not our official title. If also only listed five demons with a particular skill as opposed to all of them, so it was extremely blatantly ripped from their site.
  
  

Naturally, this isn't a massive problem. We have a couple lists that A1G1S took from Megaten Wiki and a couple games have a wikipedia place holder until someone else gets to it. I've only deleted one page over this, and unless if find something else extremely incompatible, I won't be deleting anything else. I just wanted to throw my stance on this issue out there, since I do have the ability to delete articles. I'd love to hear some thoughts on this issue, and later, I'll figure out how to word an official stance that will go in the Manual of Style to inform future editors. Over and out: SeventhEvening 06:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm with you 100%. Outside of ethics we're just incompatible. Akkilmar 23:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Over at another wiki I am working on, our practice if brought over here will result in:

Persona may refer to:

• Revelations: Persona, a game.
• the series of video games
• the concept.

{{disambig}}

In which case we should use a template to indicate a disambiguation page. Bluer 22:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I had suggested this to Akkilmar and we were trying to figure out how it would work. Where does the disambiguation page go? Would it be something like [[Disambiguation:Persona]] or does it have to go on [[Persona]] ? I had kind of made a form of makeshift disambiguation page at Persona 2 so that anyone who searched for those terms would be pointed towards EP or IS. SeventhEvening 01:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The wiki I work with never bothered to write "Disambiguation". We could adopt the Wikipedia style, where the common use of the Word gets the full article while other uses are listed under "Word (Disambiguation)", or we could just make Word a disambiguation page itself. Bluer 07:37, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Lets use what we have now, which is Persona and [{Persona 2]] being disambiguation pages and see how that feels. So far, I think it works nice for Persona 2, but everytime I type Persona into the search box, I kinda think I should land in Megami Ibunroku Persona with a disambiguation link at the top. But that might damage how clean out layout is. I don't know, I see pros and cons with each. SeventhEvening 06:39, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Japanese / English

"In the case of multiple character names, the original Japanese name gets priority".

How is this decided and what was the case that brought to this decision? And forgive me, but last time I check, this is an English wikia? I understand that we're not about to change "Shin Megami Tensei" to "True Rebirth of the Goddess", but this is quite perplexing. Reasons?

"Kagenuki should not be an unofficial name such as "Shadow Extractions" or "Shadow Pulling"."

Was it suppose to say "Shadow Extractions" or "Shadow Pulling" are unofficial names and should not refer to "Kagenuki"."? Bluer 15:46, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll try to clear this up. I sometimes type too fast and cause things to become unclear. The reason that Japanese names get priority almost entirely stems from Megami Ibunroku Persona. That game got mutilated in the US release. All the characters got renamed, several of them were Americanized, and the game was lambasted as one of the worst translation/localization jobs ever. Atlus, after hearing the criticism from the game, stayed very true to the source in Persona 2. But, many characters from Megami Ibunroku Persona appear. So to avoid confusion, those character kept their english first names, but they also took back their Japanese family name and their original appearance. Due to Atlus's current policy of remaining very true to the source, it was decided that Japanese names should get priority, since it barely affects anything outside of the first Persona, but doesn't tie us down to that terrible localization. It also prevents confusion with the game title, since Atlus US slaps Shin Megami Tensei on the front of all Megaten games, even though they're not part of that series. This causes two problems: Confusion, since Persona 3 is a Persona series game, but labeled as a Shin Megami Tensei Series game, as well as a second problem, ridiculously long titles becoming more ridiculously long unnecessarily. Example: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army (Which IS a devil summoner game and ISNT a Shin Megami Tensei game).

On the topic of Kagenuki. I can't think of any other examples, but in Persona -Trinity Soul-, there is an act called "Kagenuki". This series is not licensed in the US, and thus, there is no "Official" translation for this term. In the fan-subbing communities, there is dispute on if the translation should be Shadow Pulling or Shadow Extraction or any other number of similar terms. Marebito is referred to as "Outsiders" on Wikipedia last time I checked, but there is no source that officially calls them that. The purpose of that line was attempting to say that for concepts that no officially released translation exists for, we should use the Japanese term rather than, say, a fan-subbed or fan-translated term if at all possible. I mostly said that because if you read the wikipedia article on Trinity soul, you'll discover that it is terrible. I regularly edit it because people keep adding weird assumptions and theories that are completely unfounded. For example, under Inui it says "He is rumored to be Ken Amada from Persona 3. It is unknown if the dog he keeps is Koromaru.". In case you haven't seen the anime, Inui's dog doesn't even look like the same breed as Koromaru, so that's baseless and unnessisary, and will probably be deleted by me if someone else doesn't do it. Last month I had to remove someone's theory that Ayane was Chidori. My explanation is on the discussion board of that page (but my handle is Leviathan). I thought that, in the event we had more editors appear here, I could point something about Kagenuki's translation being unofficial, and hopefully avoid having a bunch of off the wall theories appearing, or unofficial terms appearing. Honestly, it's a bit moot right now, since we only have about 5 editors. But yeah, when you point that wording out to me, it does sound kinda bad. You can feel free to change my wording, or I'll come up with a better phrasing later.

Naturally, if you disagree with any of these policies, I'm open to suggestions or discussion about them. I just think that using redirects makes things keep the same user friendliness, without having to type "Guido" every time we need to talk about Kandori Takahisa. Akkilmar and me were the only editors that were active at the time this was changed and both of us felt the same about the Japanese over English policy, so it was unanimous at that time. I talked to Icy a little about it, and he/she said to use my judgment on it, but I've heard nothing from Icy in a while, so who knows his/her opinion. SeventhEvening 19:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't around much, a friend of mine was in town unexpectedly after a couple of years... As far as I can tell, based on a previous discussion I read with Icy, was that he preferred the American naming since he's from America and that's what's readily available to him. I also just realized that Kandori Takahisa's name order is still Japanese. Takahisa being his first name. Anyway, I'm with SeventhEvening about unofficial naming and muddy sources, like Inui, since so much of that stuff can be made up on the spot just because someone thinks it is. I think adding disambiguation links at the tops of articles would be easy enough, so we could always add them to specific pages if you're unsure, Seventh.

Another thing I think we should consider more is what makes a side game versus a main game. I'm still of the opinion that Aegis: The First Mission should precede Persona 3 since it's storyline is directly related to the events that occur in the main game in the series. Just like if... is technically a side game to the Shin Megami Tensei series. Whereas Persona was a spin-off. I just got off work, so I'm a little brain dead. Akkilmar 23:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, with the muddy sources/unofficial naming, I think making an article named Shadow Extraction and making it a redirect is easy. That way, if someone was looking for Kagenuki information, but watched the Ainex fan-sub (like me), they might be more familiar with the term "Shadow Extraction". Honestly, I pull up the Hidehiko Uesugi page by searching for Brad. I didn't realize the Kandori Takahisa mix up, since I actually played the bad English localization, so I pulled the names of Wikipedia. Usually they put the Kanji, followed by the the name in Japanese order, but a couple characters are flip-flopped.

As for the whole side vs. main games, I'm a bit torn. I agree, lets have Aegis precede Persona 3. But I usually think of "Side games" as less than "main games" and thus I don't really want to call If... a side game, since I think it's a full length, legitimate game. For example, Persona 3 QIX, isn't something I consider a full length legitimate game. I think we should use the pre/suc template on cases that a loose time line is available. If we can't fit it on a time line, we shouldn't use that template with that game. On the Persona (Series) page where games are divided into only two categories, I actually plan on changing that to a more concrete division, like dividing it based on release date, or by platform. Or something timeline based. We might consider replacing the pre/suc template with a "Persona Series" template that lists all the games, and then mention what precedes and succeeds in the opening information about the game. What do you think? SeventhEvening 02:15, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree about the loose timeline for pre/succ template use. I think that by making a game specific template to replace the pre/succ template just to list the games in the series might be more templates than we need (like this sentence!). We could always get rid of the pre/suc template as well, but we'll have to remove the code from each game that uses it. At least until we come up with something better. Akkilmar 01:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Newest Revision

I have attempted to clarify things a little more. A large number of things have been categorized wrong, and nearly no images have the proper categories. I added a bit to that in order to hopefully clear things up so that the can be correct (or corrected) in the future. I also added a bit for consistency's sake under character sections. I firmly believe that demon clans should be in Japanese for Japanese games, but English for English games, since clans and races are not exactly equivalent across games. Please let me know what you think. SeventhEvening 23:57, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Personae's Images

I've noticed that several Persona/Demon articles uses different images on the top right corner, some uses their latest appearance, some uses their first appearance. Which leads me to this question, do we use their first appearance images on the top right corner then their later-latest appearance in the "gallery" section? Or vice-versa?-- N/A 07:18, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I think is as something to do with quality for example the Image of Isis in P3 don´t looks very good whit the Black Background, in exchange the other Image is clearer and is more recent --I need ur Halp! 15:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

It does have to do with the quality of the image. The images from the Kaneko Complete works usually get priority, because they're hi-res and very clear. The persona 3 and persona 4 images that are from the game disk should be avoided since they have a black background and they "fade out" on the persona. This looks stylistic in game, but not so much on a wiki. The devil summoner art, which is also from a game disk, doesn't fade out, so it's better than the majority of the P3 or P4 art we have, but those pictures have multicolor backgrounds and thus arn't as good. If we had a pile of images for a demon or persona, and all of them were the same quality as the Kaneko complete works, the image that should be used is the "most common" one. Cerberus, for example, would be the white demon with the silver-tail from Nocturne, since that's how Cerberus usually looks (it's the same as the SMT art, only updated.) He shouldn't be shown as Koromaru's persona except for in the gallery. SeventhEvening 16:25, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

P4 for MASSIVE WIN!

I'm pretty convinced that on the subject of Persona 4, what we should refer to when the topic is exclusively Persona 4 is the English version. As such, any reference to Kuma would be changed to Teddie. Objections? —^BLUER一番。 18:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I guess this is old, but none from me. Honestly, I think the English names should always take precedence since this is geared towards English-language readers and I imagine a lot of editors will be writing based on what they've played in English. With the *sole* exception of the original Persona due to the hack job... ReboValence 18:16, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I thought of that as well. But truth be told, I've only recently acquainted with Megaten, through the Persona series, so I can't argue much. —^BLUER一番。 14:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)