Editing Rules: General
This page is a list of general editing rules that apply to all pages.
Contents
Community
The Video Game Music Preservation Foundation thrives on its community. It is important to help out and encourage new editors rather than insult them for not getting it right. Be courteous and patient; nobody is expected to immediately become familiar with all the templates on their first day! Naturally, bullying will not be tolerated; be excellent to each other!
Tone
Since this site is meant to be encyclopedic, try to keep a professional tone to your writing. However, it's also about video games, which are meant to be entertaining, and we want the site to reflect that. Feel free to add more creative text in screenshot captions or other areas that aren't as important for conveying music-related information.
Opinions
When describing games, composers, companies, etc., try to use factual language rather than personal opinions. Widely-held opinions are acceptable, for example, you can write, "Final Fantasy III (SNES) is a well-loved game," because it ranks so highly in review sites or, "Silver Surfer (NES) is extremely hard," because so many sites rank it very difficult. However, try to avoid subjective opinions like, "Koji Kondo is the best composer," or, "the creators of Die Hard (NES) are terrible."
Name Referencing
This site uses the modern professional referencing technique of last name identification. The initial mention of a name should be a person's full name, but subsequent mentions should use just the last name. For example:
Koji Kondo composed the music to Super Mario Bros. (NES). Kondo did this by converting music he played on a piano into hexadecimal values for use in an audio driver."
Dates
The VGMPF uses the ISO 8601 standard for date layouts. That is YYYY-MM-DD with each section separated by hyphens and with leading zeroes. So, the American format of July 15, 2013 should look like, 2013-07-15.
The VGMPF had been up for a few years before this standard was used, so some of the earlier pages still have non-standard dates and editors are encouraged to update any old formats that don't match.
Dates In Tables
When dates are displayed in a table, such as a composer's gameography or a chronological list on a series page, use the following rules:
- Less precise dates should be listed after precise dates. For example: 1991-09-20, then 1991-09-??, then 1991-??-??, then 199?-??-??.
- Games released on the same date should be alphabetically sorted by title.
- These rules should only be ignored when a game is known to have been released before another despite their missing precision (for example, a sequel released in the same year as the original, but with a name that appears earlier in the alphabet). When games are sorted outside of the expected order above, make a note in the Discussion page to explain why.
Remain On Topic
This site is about the creation, content, and history of video game music. Posts that are off-topic or link to off-topic site will be considered spam and be removed with a polite warning given to the user. Users who continually post spam will be blocked. However, you may create off-topic posts on your own user's talk page.
Updating Templates
Over the years, the site has improved the design of its templates, but many pages still use the older styles. This gives the site a non-uniform and dated look. Editors are encouraged to, at their leisure, upgrade old pages to meet the new template design specifications. Try to update the more-popular pages first, as they will be seen the most, and their layout is more likely to be used as a starting point by rookie editors.
Claiming a Page
Since this Wiki is a public endeavor, its content is owned by the community itself, not any one individual editor. However, most pages are created by an individual editor who put a lot of work into it, and it is considered impolite to make major modifications without considering them. Naturally, spelling and grammatical errors can be fixed without asking, as can filling in unknown credits, adding new rips, screenshots, etc., but if you intend to make a large change to someone's writing, it's best to either ask permission to make the change, or suggest that they fix their work. Check the page's history and find the primary editor and talk to them about it on their user discussion page. Naturally, if the original editor is no longer active, you may change their work without their consideration.
