Manual of Style

For All Mankind Wiki
Rules, Policies & Guidelines

• Community Guidelines
• Manual of Style
• Image Policy
• Spoiler Policy
• Warning & Blocking Policy
• Userpage Policy
• Discussion Guidelines

Index

•

Help

•

Docs

The following are general guidelines for how pages in the For All Mankind wiki should be created and maintained.

General style of articles

Structure

Introduction

In general, all articles should follow the structure listed below. Important or mandatory sections are bolded.

The other sections or page elements are optional and often depend on the topic and on the amount of information available.

Headers

Section headers should be in sentence case (i.e. don't capitalize every word).

Headers should not contain or consist of links.

General structure and order on articles

The list below shows the general order of sections and elements.

• Stub & Hatnotes, if applicable. → {{stub}} / Category: Hatnote templates

• Infobox → Category: Infobox templates
  • If there is not enough info for an infobox, an image should be set on top right, if possible.
  • There is an infobox to display only the page title and an image (or more than one) which can be used for this. → {{Image box}}

• Quote (optionally) → {{Quote}}

• Introduction text
  • The first mention of a page's title within an article must be bolded.
  • The introduction should summarize the most important facts. These shouldn't be too long, more detailed descriptions belongs into the History section.

• History
  • The History section should be subdivided into Seasons, if applicable and if there is more than only a few sentences to say.
  • The History section can also be subdivided into other suitable sub-sections if that makes more sense for the content of the given article.
  • Season or other sub-sections can be further subdivided into more sub-sections if it makes sense.

• Gallery

• Behind the scenes
  • Everything concerning real life goes into this section.
  • Example: Facts about the real life version of a character, location, or vehicle.

• Trivia and/or Notes
  • Trivia & Notes are similar, but not the same. However, they can sometimes overlap. Try to use what fits best.
    • Notes is generally meant for facts about in-universe stuff related to the article.
    • Trivia can also contain facts about production or behind the scenes stuff.
  • Trivia & Notes are NOT meant for personal comments or speculation!
  • Examples: Info about discrepancies in the story would fit into Notes, while the info that an actor played more than one character would be better in Trivia.
  • Entries in both Trivia and Notes should be kept short.

• See also (recommended)
  • Links to pages that refer to this article or contain similar content.
    • Example: Other crew members of a mission, other similar organizations, etc.
  • See also can contain links to pages even though they have been mentioned and linked in the article already.

• External links
  • External links that refer to this article.
    • Most common: Wikipedia links. Use the {{wplink}} template for this.
    • There is a variety of other external link templates, see category External link templates.

• References
  • Typing {{References}} is all it needs here. → {{References}}

• Navbox, if applicable. (Only used on very few pages)

Note

External links and References should always be the last sections of an article!

Content

• All articles are expected to be written from a neutral point of view.

• Most articles, especially History sections, have to be written from an in-universe point of view.
  • Exceptions are Trivia, Notes and Behind the scenes sections, or production articles.

• Everything must be referred to in the third person.
  • First person pronouns such as "you", "I", "we", etc. are too personalized and damage the objective tone of the wiki.
  • Example: Do not write something like: "We don't know this yet." Instead write: "It is currently unknown."

• Never add personal comments or questions in articles.

• Do not add speculative content.
  Exceptions:
  • If the probability of something is very high, it might be acceptable (with explanation).
  • Trivia and Notes sections can occasionally contain somewhat more speculative things.

• Articles should be written in a manner that someone who has not seen the show (or not in a while) will understand it.
  • Don't expect the visitor to know (or remember) every character by their first name or even by their nickname! The first time a character is mentioned, the full name should be written (this is usually also the one to be linked). Later in the article, first name, surname, or nicknames can be used if they have been introduced before.
  • Relations should also be mentioned the first time they appear. For example, instead of "Tracy told Gordo something about Danny" write "Tracy Stevens told her husband Gordo something about their son Danny".

Linking

• Articles should link to other pages, but only once. This should usually be the first time that page is mentioned.
  There are exceptions:
  • The rule does not apply to infoboxes.
  • The rule does not apply to lists (including the "See also" section).
  • For very long articles, it can be acceptable to link to an already linked page again.
  • For pages that have sections which are usually directly linked to from other pages, the rule should count for every section.
    An example for this is the Timeline article. Visitors will follow links like 1992 which are redirected directly to that section, and therefore jump right into the middle of the page. Therefore, in such articles things should be linked the first time they appear in every section.
    Other examples for this are many lists, like the minor character articles.
  • If different terms link to the same page, both can and should be linked. Example: astronaut / cosmonaut / ujunaut.

Inline links

There is a variety of internal and external inline link templates. Check this list.

• Inline links to Wikipedia should use the {{wpl}} template. This adds a small "W" at the end of the link, indicating to the reader that this link leads to an external site.
  • Example: {{wpl|Joel Kinnaman}} creates this: Joel Kinnaman^W
  • Example: {{wpl|Joel Kinnaman|Joel}} creates this: Joel^W
• Links to IMDb should use the {{imdbl}} template. See the template documentation for how to use it.
• For other external links used inline inside text, the template {{el}} can be used.
• For internal links to sections or anchors on the same page, the template {{al}} is suited.
• For other inline links, check the list linked above.

External links

• For external links used in lists, there are several external link templates (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, ...), as well as a general template suitable for any external link.
• There is also an archive template to link to archived versions of external web content: {{Arch}}

Links to list entries

• For All Mankind is full of technical terms and abbreviations not everybody is familiar with. There is a Glossary collecting these terms. For most entries in the Glossary, there is a redirect page that leads directly to the term in the list. Terms in articles should be linked to that redirect page so that in case a full article will be created about that term later on, no other links will go broken.
  • Example: Instead of linking the term S-IVB to [[Glossary#S-IVB]], link it to [[S-IVB]], redirection will bring the visitor to the correct place.
  • All Glossary redirections can be found in the category Redirects to glossary.
  • If a term does not exist in the Glossary, add it and also add a redirection to that term in the Glossary. Every term in the Glossary is also a HTML-anchor^W. Also add the redirection-page to the above category so it can be found easily.

• The same applies to characters on the Minor Charaters pages. They should all have a redirect page, sending them to their entry on the collective page.
  • That way, if a characters will suddenly appear again in later seasons, the former redirect page can be used to create the article and no links will go broken.
  • These redirect pages should be categorized, with all usual character categories. This ensures that also the minor characters will appear in all relevant categories.
  • Example: The redirect page of Penny Chen would looks like this:

#REDIRECT [[Minor characters (Season 1)#Penny Chen]]
[[Category:Characters]]
[[Category:Female Characters]]
[[Category:Characters season 1]]
[[Category:Flight controllers]]
[[Category:NASA personnel]]
[[Category:Redirects for minor characters]]
[[Category:Redirects for minor characters S1]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Penny}}

This can be simplified by using the multi-categorization template {{Cats}} and {{Defsort}}, which then makes it look like this:

#REDIRECT [[Minor characters (Season 1)#Penny Chen]]
{{Cats|c,f,c1,flight,cnasa,rdmc,rdmc1}}
{{Defsort}}

• Another article that should always be linked to through redirection is the timeline article as already mentioned above.
  • Every year and every decade have a redirection page that brings visitors directly to that section.
    Examples: 1999 or 1960s.
  • Note that the visual editor and the autocompletion of the source editor will suggest to link to [[Timeline]] when you start typing something like [[1966]], which is NOT what your want.

• Other list style articles with sections that should or can be linked directly include:
  • Real world characters in For All Mankind
  • All bonus video articles

• Most of these kind of articles (and their available redirects) can be found through the redirection tracking subcategories found in Redirects, as their redirect pages are tracked and collected there.

Citations

See also: Referencing (help page)

• Content should be cited from which episode it came from. This helps verify the plot point or very specific information (e.g. birthdays), and also tells the reader, when exactly something happened in the series.
  • Use the {{TVref}} template when citing like this:
    • <ref name=":207">{{TVref|2|7}}</ref> (→ visit the template page for more details on usage)
  • Other available referencing templates are {{TVref-s}} (for references with screenshots), and {{BVref}} (for bonus video references).

• Information from other sources, like social media or online magazines should refer to the corresponding article, tweet, or post.
  • There might be a suitable external link template for this in External link templates.

   Don't forget to add {{References}} below the last section whenever the article contains any <ref> </ref>-tags!

Sorting

Persons

Characters, actors, and crew members should be sorted by their surname in categories.
Usually, this is done by the {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word^MW, which dictates the order the page is listed.

However, in the For All Mankind wiki, this is done automatically by the infobox for all character, actor, and crew pages.

No additional action is needed, unless in some special cases like in the note below.

Note

In many Asian cultures, such as Korean, the surname comes first (e.g. Lee Jung-Gil's surname is "Lee"). But since he's from DPRK, he uses that format and no sorting would be needed here. In such cases, the infobox' sorting automation can be disabled with a parameter if needed.

Instructions can be found in the documentations of these infoboxes.

Episodes

Episodes are sorted by the episode number. This is also done by the infobox.

Other articles

{{DEFAULTSORT}} may be used for other articles. If a page begins with "The", then the article should be sorted by the second word.

Redirect pages for minor characters also need defaultsort applied. See section Linking above.

Images

Main article: Image & file naming policy

See also: Licensing and File info page

Before uploading any files, make sure to be familiar with our image and file naming policies. The following is just a small summary, please also read the main article.

• Images should be of good quality and high resolution. The .png format is the preferred file format.
• All images have to be named meaningful and need to be properly categorized and licenced. There are templates to make this an easy task.
• If real life images are used, they should either appear inside the Behind the scenes section, or it must be noted that they are not from the show!
• Low quality images and images with meaningless filenames will become deletion candidates and will eventually be removed.
• Before uploading new images, especially episode screenshots, always make sure the image does not exist already. Duplicated images will be deleted.

Naming

• For all screenshots from episodes, we use the following naming convention:
  • FAM <episode-number> <timestamp> <description> → e.g. FAM 309 43.31 Dimitri Mayakovsky.png
• There is also a naming convention for all other types of scrennshots, like from the bonus videos or trailers, etc.
  Read the Image Policy for details.

• Any other kind of images that are not screenshots, like real world or behind the scene pictures, should always use a meaningful filename!

Licensing

Main article: Licensing

All images uploaded to the For All Mankind Wiki must be properly sourced and licensed. There are several templates to make this an easy task, check the main article linked above.

   Note that files not following our image, filenaming, or licensing policies will become delete candidates and be eventually removed from the wiki.

Units

Measurement

The international metric SI system^W is the preferred measurement system of units.

Exceptions: If units are quoted from the show, like in "Apollo 10 aborted 8 miles above the lunar surface".

Date format

International date formats (DMY or YMD) are preferred over US-only formats (MDY).

The show itself uses the DMY long format (e.g. 5 September 1983).

Never use the US-only short format m/d/yy.

Most people outside the US will read something like 10/5/92 as 10 May 1992, not as October 5, 1992.

Infoboxes

In infoboxes, the DMY long format (15 April 1972) is the preferred format.

Tables

Whenever space matters, use the ISO 8601^W format (yyyy-mm-dd). Alternatively, use DMY (5 June 1983).

If the date is a sortable field in the table, the ISO format is the only one that works.

Articles

In article texts, both the DMY format (10 May 1972) or the long US format (May 10, 1972) are acceptable.

Page status indicators

Main page: Project: Page status indicators

Page status indicators are the small icons seen on the top right corner of articles. They are added to pages either automatically through infoboxes or other templates, or have to be added manually to the page through a special template. Learn more about this in the main article linked above.

Templates

Main page: Project: Templates

There is a wide range of templates for various things. Existing templates should be used whenever suitable, they help making things appear in a consistent way across the wiki. Templates can be found by browsing the templates category and its sub-categories. General information and a list of the most often used templates can be found in the article linked above.

Character & Actor pages

Generally, every character or actor can have their own article. However, some characters may have a too small role to really write more than a sentence or two, and/or may not need their own actor page. There is a minor characters page for each season, where these characters can reside together.
Example: Minor characters (Season 1) (2, 3, …)

Also, if a character only appears in very few episodes, instead of an actor page a direct link to IMDb can be set. There is a template for this: {{imdbl}}.
This should be done so in the character article's infobox AND in the cast-section of the episode(s).

General guidelines

Characters

The following criteria may define a character as a candidate for the minor characters page:

• The character appears in only 1 or 2 (exceptionally 3) episodes, AND:
  • is not credited with a name, i.e. "Reporter" or "Officer".
  • has a name but plays an insignificant or very small role.
  • does not even have a speaking role.

There are also some exclusive criteria:

• If a character appears in more than 1 season, they do NOT qualify for the minor characters page, no matter how small their role is.
• If a character appears in 3 or more episodes, they should have their own page, unless there is really nothing to write about them.

Characters with an important role or real life characters always deserve their own page, no matter how big/small their presence is. In other words, although some characters may appear in only 1 episode, they can be highly relevant, or important enough to get their own article.

Generally, common sense should be used. If there is hardly anything to write about someone, they may not need an own page. If there is enough to make an article (which could also be many relevant images, or an interesting real life backstory), just do it.

Actors

Rules of thumb:

• Actors of characters that appear in more than 3 episodes should get their own page.

• Actors of characters which appear in 3 or less episodes can be linked directly to IMDb instead.
  • Use the imdb link template for this: {{imdbl|<character-name>|<imdb-code>}}
  • Example: {{imdbl|Joel Kinnaman|nm1172478}} produces Joel Kinnaman .
  • See also: {{imdbl}}

As always, there can be exceptions. Say, a famous actor who has a very short cameo could still get their own page.

Structure of particular pages

   Note that for Character, Actor, Crew, and Episode we have preload templates that add all needed structure to a new page, ready to be filled.

   →   See Project: New page

• Characters
• Actors & Crew
• Events, Locations, Vehicles, etc.
• Episodes

• Infobox → {{Character}}
  show/hide code

{{Character
| name         = 
| image        = 
| fullname     = 
| birthname    = 
| nickname     = 
| gender       = 
| birthdate    = 
| birthplace   = 
| deathdate    = 
| deathplace   = 
| deathcause   = 
| restingplace = 
| monuments    = 
| family       = 
| nationality  = 
| occupation   = 
| affiliation  = 
| rank         = 
| title        = 
| party        = 
| missions     = 
| awards       = 
| realperson   = 
| actor        = 
| seasons      = 
| firstseen    = 
| lastseen     = 
}}

Note

For more parameters & options check the template's documentation.

• Quote (optional) → {{Quote}}

• Introduction text
  • These shouldn't be too long. Try to summarize the character progression, but don't make it a second biography section. Details belong int the History section.

• History
  • Season x
    • Event x-1
    • Event x-2
  • Season y
    • Event y-1

• Gallery (optional, recommended)

• Behind the scenes / Trivia / Notes (optional)

• Appearances¹
  • Only if the character will not get an own actor page.

• See also (recommended)

• External links (optional)

• References → {{References}}

• {{DEFAULTSORT:surname, first name}}

• Categories
  • Only very specific categories need to be added, most general categories (male/female, characters, and many more) are added through the infobox.
    • Best to just preview first and see if all categories are already set.
  • Additional categories can also be set with infobox parameters cat1, cat2, ... (see the infobox documentation)

---

(1) Appearances: If there is (or will be) an article for the character's actor, there is no need for an Appearances section, as this information will be in the Credit section of the actor, and most basic information is in the infobox (season, first/last seen) already.
If the character's actor will NOT receive its own page (see Character & Actor pages above), an Appearances section can be added.

Use the following template for this: {{Credits}}. Example: {{Credits|102|104|109}}

• Infobox → {{ActorCrew}}
  • The infobox serves for both actors and crew. Filling in either the character or the job parameter will categorize them correctly.
  • Social Media will appear as icons, fill in all you can find.
  • As usual read the template's documentation for help, details, and examples.

show/hide code

{{ActorCrew
| name        = 
| image       = 
| fullname    = 
| birthname   = 
| alias       = 
| nickname    = 
| gender      = 
| birthdate   = 
| birthplace  = 
| nationality = 
| height      = 
| awards      = 
| status      = 
| spouse      = 
| partner     = 
| family      = 
| character   = 
| seasons     = 
| episodes    = 
| firstseen   =  
| lastseen    = 
| imdb        = 
| tvmaze      = 
| tmdb        = 
| homepage    = 
| twitter     = 
| facebook    = 
| instagram   = 
| tiktok      = 
| vk          = 
| youtube     = 
| vimeo       = 
| flickr      = 
| spotify     = 
| reddit      = 
| linkedin    = 
| wikipedia   = 
}}

Note

These are the commonly used fields for actors.

For more presets, other parameters, or options, check the template's documentation.

• Introduction text
  • Example: '''Bob''' is a Martian actor. He portrays [[Bob]] in the [[Apple TV+]] series {{FAM}}.

• Credits
  • Use the {{Credits}} template here. Read the documentation on the template page for details.
  • Example:

{{Credits
|title = Season 2
|203|204/credits only|205|206|207|208|209|210}}
{{Credits|all = 3|collapsed=1}}

• Further optional sections may include:
  • Filmography
  • Trivia
  • External links

• {{DEFAULTSORT:surname, first name}}

• Categories will be added automatically by the infobox if the fields are filled properly.

Most other articles should generally follow the structure as listed on top of this manual.

Suitable infoboxes

See also: Project: Templates § Infobox templates

As always see the template's documentation for fields, options, and examples.

Events

• {{Event}}
• {{Competition}}
• {{Battle}}

Note

All event-templates have previous/next fields to be able to link between them.

Locations

• {{Location}}
• {{Station}}
• {{Space station}}
• {{Country}}
• {{Celestial body}}

Vehicles

• {{Spacecraft}}
• {{Space station}}

Missions

• {{Mission}} - for all kind of missions
• {{Apollo}} - for Apollo missions

Organizations

• {{Organization}} - also suitable for companies

Other

There is also a generic infobox that can be used if none of the above fit. Its fields can be defined by parameters:

• {{Generic infobox}}
  • See the template's documentation for details.

• Subpage tab → {{Subpage tab}} or {{Subpage multitab}} (for season premiere articles)

• Infobox → {{Episode infobox}}
  • {{Episode infobox|<epcode>}} e.g. {{Episode infobox|401}}
  • For almost all cases, the episode code is all what is needed. All data is taken from the database template {{EpData}}.

• Episode preamble → {{Episode preamble}}
  • {{Episode preamble|<epcode>}} e.g. {{Episode preamble|401}}
  • This template does all what's needed and also recognizes if an episode has already aired or is yet to be released.

• Synopsis → {{Episode synopsis}}
  • {{Episode synopsis|<epcode>}} e.g. {{Episode synopsis|401}}
  • This template does all what's needed, including the Synopsis header.

→ The 3 templates above take their data from {{EpData}} and {{EpTitles}}. Read their documentation for how to update the databases.

• Plot
  • Detailed plot summary. Can be devided into sub-sections if needed.
  • As this is usually not added at page creation yet, the template {{Episode plot stub|<<SeasonNo>>}} should be put here.

• Cast
  • List of cast and characters, in the following order:
    • Main cast (credited in intro)
    • Guest stars (credited in end credits)
    • Co-stars (credited in end credits after the guest stars)
    • Other (uncredited, usually listed on IMDb)
  • Insert an empty line after each cast type and use the following code for headers:
    {{Castheader|main}}
{{Castheader|guest}}
{{Castheader|co}}
{{Castheader|other}}
    
    
  • The cast lists should also be split in columns, and we make the whole content of the section collapsible.
    The template {{Castsec}} will do this for you. Use this code:
    

==Cast==
{{Castsec}}

(cast lists come here)

{{Castsec/end}}

• The individual cast lists (main, guest, ...) can be created with {{Castline}} and {{Castlist}}.
  See documenation of castline for instructions.
  → Show full cast section example

==Cast==
{{Castsec}}
{{Castheader|main}}
{{Castlist|start}}
{{Castline|Joel Kinnaman|Edward Baldwin}}
--- more main castlines here ---
{{Castlist|end}}

{{Castheader|guest}}
{{Castlist|start}}
{{Castline|Noah Harpster|Bill Strausser}}
--- more guest castlines here ---
{{Castlist|end}}

{{Castheader|co}}
{{Castlist|start}}
{{Castline|Brian Houtz|Reporter No.2 (1x01)|nm3474111|Reporter #2}}
--- more co-star castlines here ---
{{Castlist|end}}

{{Castheader|other}}
{{Castlist|start}}
{{Castline|Jim Meskimen|Richard Nixon|a=u|a2=Voice}}
{{Castline|Richard Nixon|Richard Nixon|nm0633271|Self|a=au}}
--- more uncredited castlines here ---
{{Castlist|end}}

{{Castsec/end}}

• Appearances
  • Gallery of appearances for Events & missions, Vehicles & vessels, and/or Locations & stations.
    Use this template: {{Appearance gallery}}
  • If possible use screenshots from the episode. Browse the image categories to find one.
  • If there isn't a suitable image available, then a better one from a previous episode is fine.
  • Items should be ordered by their appearance in the episode.

→ Example: Into the Abyss#Appearances

• Media (optionally)
  • E.g. Videos related to that episode.

• Trivia and/or Notes (optionally)

• Episode Navbox
  • {{Episode Navbox|<epcode>}} e.g. {{Episode Navbox|305}}
  • The navbox template also adds the external link section with links to the episode's transcript and soundtrack.

Notes

Categories are added by the infobox.

Default sorting is handled by the infobox.

See also

• FAM Wiki: Index of contents
• Image policy
• All rules & policies of this wiki
• Referencing
• Templates help
• CSS classes & fonts
• Page status indicators
• Preload templates
• File info page
• Character tagging system
• All about licensing
• FAM wiki news
• FAM wiki community page

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