Style Guide

Hello! Thank you for joining the RC Wiki Community.

This page outlines all the formatting and styling conventions as well as the templates currently in use on the **Romance Club wiki.** Need any further clarification? **Ask an administrator**.

Please note that this wiki is fan-run so we are not the game developers.

The Wiki Team is composed by a group of volunteer admins who update these pages every time new episodes are released and whenever needed. While **the Wiki Team is not currently recruiting**, we are very grateful for everyone's help. Just please make sure to read this page to familiarise yourself with our formatting conventions and work processes so to be a productive contributor. Thank you in advance!

## General editing guidelines

* Both while editing the wiki and while writing editing comments, please **be respectful of other people's hard work**. Countless hours and effort have gone into these pages, which are written by people from all over the world, so please remember the person behind the username whenever interacting on these pages.

* Please do not make extensive changes without speaking with the admin curating the page you intend to edit. You can check who the admin in charge is by looking at the History of the page - clicking on the three dots in the top right corner - and seeing which username recurs the most.

* Please always add a comment explaining what you changed and be polite in your phrasing, without passing judgement on your perceived quality of the page. For example: 'Fixed typos' is an acceptable editing comment. "Corrected grammar because it was terrible" is not.

* Extensive unwarranted edits and rude or dismissive editing comments count as disruptive behaviour and as such are in violation of this **Wiki General Rules** and might result in a block.

## General styling and formatting conventions

* This wiki uses templates and free text only. Please **do not use tables** because they are not flexible, hence not mobile friendly.

* Please edit the wiki using **Source Editor** and not Visual Editor. It might look daunting at first, but source mode allows for more precision and helps avoiding issues with images and templates alike. Editing in visual editor mode might cause formatting issues. The admins are happy to help if you need clarifications on how to use source editor.

* Do not edit any template framework. Despite some options in the templates being optional and potentially unused, please do not edit them out of any page as they might be needed in the future. They won't appear in visual mode anyway, so they can stay untouched in source mode.

* Always write a comment explaining what change you made on the page you have edited (Example: Fixed typos. Added pics. Added info. Format fix. - etc) unless it's a very minor edit (a very small typo, for example) then you can just tick the 'this is a minor edit' box at the bottom of the page.

* When writing stats on any page (for example, +1 Luck), the correspondent emoji always goes after it. Example:
```
+1 Luck 🍀
```

* Try to not bold any emoji or they might not work on certain browsers.

* When writing diamond options on any page, the diamond icon goes before the number. To this end, you can also use the **diamond template** to avoid copy-pasting the gem emoji, if that's something you find time consuming. Examples:
```
(💎20) or {{D|20}}
```

* All pages need to have categories assigned to them. Please check similar pages to see which categories are appropriate.

* This wiki is in English, so English is the only language that can be used on these pages. The game uses US spelling so this is the preferred spelling to be used.

## URL naming conventions

* When writing URLs for new pages, please check similar existing pages and follow the exact same spelling/formatting conventions.

* Please note: capitals **matter** in URL, so pay attention to how you use them.

* If you need to use an apostrophe, make sure to use a straight apostrophe ( ' ) and not a curly one ( ’ ) or it will cause issues with the URL.

* All character pages URL need to contain both name and surname - if the surname is known. If a character has more than one name (because it exists in two different timelines running at the same time, for example), please write both names separated by a slash. For example:
```
https://romance-club.fandom.com/wiki/Name1_Surname1/Name2_Surname2
```
 If only one of the names has a surname, put the single name first, and the name and surname second.

## Images

* Please name your image files appropriately. Try not to upload files called "Screenshot-67-45.jpg" but actually name them according to what they are.

* Do not leave spaces nor use underscores in your image file names but **only use dots and hyphens**. Example: Don't use "Photo 1.jpg" or "Photo\_1.jpg" but use "Photo.1.jpg" or "Photo-1.jpg" instead. This helps with the backend coding and stops files from appearing in our 'unused files' list and possibly being deleted by mistake.

* The **Unused Files list** is regularly monitored by the wiki admins to avoid image cluttering. The aim is to limit the number of files that are uploaded but not visible on any page. Things like the wiki background banner and icons will naturally always be on this list, however every other file should always be visible to the general visitors on at least one page.

* If editing a gallery, please use Source Editor instead of Visual Editor. Old files that have spaces and/or underscores in their name will come up as errors if editing a gallery in Visual Editor.

* Both **.jpg** and **.png** files are allowed on the wiki, however keep in mind that you can't replace a file with another one featuring a different extension. For example, if you have a .jpg file that you want to replace, you can only replace it with another .jpg, so if your file has any other extension, you need to convert it first.

* Different pages use different types of gallery templates for images.
	+ The main book gallery template can be found here.
	+ The gallery for the generic Main Character images and the Love Interests images can be found here.
	+ The gallery templates for the wardrobe on the Main Character page are the following:
		- Starter looks
		- Makeup
		- Hairstyles and headwear
		- Outfits
		- Custom
		- Custom with Seasons tabs
	+ Although no longer very common on the wiki, the standard coding convention for generic image galleries is the following:
	```
	<gallery widths="185" orientation="portrait">PICS HERE</gallery>
	```
	 But you can also change the 'portrait' to 'landscape' or 'square' if the image needs it.

* If you want to add a link to an image in a gallery, please use the following formatting convention:
```
imagename.jpg|image description(optional)|link=imageURL
```
Please note, however, that adding links to images in this way makes the image itself not clickable on the desktop site, so the preferred method is to simply specify in the image caption which social media site the image is coming from, such as (RC Instagram), (RC Facebook) etc.

* If you want to add an image on its own to any page, you might have issues with overlapping paragraphs. To avoid it, use the **Clear template** to make sure a clean line break is added after your image.

## Troubleshooting tricks

* If you make a change to a page but it doesn't show, you might need to clear your cache. To do so, add
```
?debug=1
```
 at the end of your URL to fully refresh your page.

* If you want the title of your page to be different from the name of the page you used in the URL, you can write - on the source editor side - the following string:
```
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Title you want the page to have}}
```

## Individual pages formatting conventions

### Front Page

* The front page uses a simplified version of the **All Books template**. The same template - with slight variations - is also found on the All Books/Complete Stories/Ongoing Stories pages.

### FAQ page

* The FAQ page should **not** contain major plot spoilers.

### Other Pages

* **The wiki admin team ask all occasional contributors please not to create pages without asking an administrator first.**

* Upon creating a new page, a **preloaded template** will be offered to you in the menu on the top right corner of the page. This preloaded page will includes all the necessary headers, sample templates and recurring phrasing you need to create a page that is in line with every other page on this wiki.

#### Book pages

* The preload template for the book page can be found **here**.

* Individual book pages should **not** contain major plot spoilers.

* The only part of the book page that may contain spoilers is the Episodes Summaries, hence that will always come with a spoiler alert added before it.

* This page uses the **Episodes Summaries** template for the Episodes Summaries list at the bottom of the page.

#### All characters pages

* The preload template for the all characters page can be found **here**.

* All Characters pages always need a spoiler alert at the top of the page. See **Spoiler Alert** template here.

* The All Characters pages use the **All Characters template.**

#### Individual character pages

* Individual character pages are reserved only to Main Characters, Love Interests and side characters that have a significant impact on the story and a large number of interactions with the Main Character. Please do not create a new page without discussing it with one of the **admins** first.

* The preload template for the main character page can be found **here**.

* The preload template for the male love interest page can be found **here**.

* The preload template for the female love interest page can be found **here**.

* The preload template for the other character page can be found **here**.

* Individual character pages have a spoiler alert at the top of the page, however, you **do not need** to add a spoiler alert template as this is embedded already into the Character Info Box template.

* Use the **Character info box template** to outline the character's main info. Just leave blank any parameter that is not relevant. If you need to add a note in a small font to any parameter, you can do so by writing it in between <small> and </small> so that the note will appear smaller.

* If you want to add a reference link to any trivia or details that come from writers' interviews and are not immediately available from just playing the game, you can include a link to the source between the following code, that will make a little number appear next to the sentence you are writing, and create an automated list of references at the bottom of the page, with clickable links. To do so, write the following string right after the trivia:
```
Trivia here <ref>http://whateversource.com</ref>
```
Then go to the bottom of the page and write the following two strings **only**:
```
==References==
```

```
<references/>
```
This will create an automated reference list at the bottom of the page.

* If you want to add the same reference link to a number of trivia/info and have one single link at the bottom, use the following code:
```
Trivia 1 here <ref name="name1">http://whateversource.com/ </ref>, Trivia 2 here <ref name="name1"/>, Trivia 3 here <ref name="name1"/>
```
 Then go to the bottom of the page as usual and write the following two strings **only**:
```
==References==
```

```
<references/>
```
This will create the automated reference link at the bottom of the page.

#### Walkthroughs pages

* The preload template for the walkthroughs page can be found **here**.

* A walkthroughs page is always built with these templates, in the following order:
	+ **Spoiler Alert template**
	+ **Walkthroughs Header template**
	+ **Stat Box template**

* Following these, a combination of the following templates can be used whenever appropriate:
	+ **Episode title template**
	+ **Choice template**
	+ **Subchoice template**
	+ **Path scene template**
	+ **Subpath scene template**
	+ **Note template**
	+ **Max stat points template**
	+ **Gem needed template**

## Any more questions?

If you need any further clarification, please **ask an administrator**.