Zelda Wiki talk:Quality Standards

Please can this page be categorized?

Theories
I have a theory. I want to post it. There does not, however, seem to be any How-Tos in posting theories and I think that this is where the How-to should go. I ask the administrator's opinion in this matter. Masterweaver 22:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Is this what you are looking for or no? 23:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually the very thing you just mentioned is a work in progress. We are writing up something like this for posting theories. 01:05, May 28, 2009 (UTC)


 * For now, the best thing to do is post it in the Discussion tab for the intended article, or your talk page. We'll look it over and let you know whether to add it or work on it more. I hope this is understandable, we are trying not to get overloaded with theories. 03:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The Theory section for the Quality Standard page has now been added here. 09:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Namespace
Normally, matters like standards and such are in the Project (i.e., the Zelda Wiki.org) namespace. Is there a reason it's in the main namespace here? Heimstern Läufer 01:07, 18 September 2007 (EDT)


 * To be honest, I think it was created to fill a red link, rather than having been written in advance. I've moved it now. --Adam 01:53, 18 September 2007 (EDT)
 * Cool, thanks. Heimstern Läufer 03:04, 22 September 2007 (EDT)

Changes
There are a few changes that should be made to this page. I'll dump them in the sandbox.--Matt 20:59, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Alright, awesome. I only glanced through it quickly, but the only changes that I noticed were the addition of the illegal content point and the bolding of the text . Was that it? Let me know, and I'll add this in. --Ando 21:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

There are a few word changes. Second sentence of the stub paragraph. Last sentence of the copying articles from Wikipedia paragraph. First sentence of the citing sources paragraph. Also I suggest moving this page so that the word "standards" is capitalized. As it is, it is a little embarrassing.--Matt 21:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Alright. I figure that the rest of the staff will be cool with this, so I'll change it now and move the page. --Ando 21:16, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, now we need to go through and see which pages link to the original "Quality standards" page and change the capitalization of the "S" on them; how embarrassing is it to have a bunch of stuff be redirecting on the project namespace? --Ando 21:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You'll probably be using this anyway but just go to this. Ignore the images, those are from templates.--Matt 21:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, you did that fast.--Matt 21:27, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Haha. Aye, I used the whatlinkshere page. Edited the templates then the help page. It was only like, what, five edits? Many less than I expected. --Ando 21:28, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Speaking Style
To be encyclopedic in nature, any chance we could have a written Quality Standard of not using "The Player" & "You"? 02:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I propose; Speaking Style; ZW strives to maintain an in-universe speaking style to articles. The most common issue is usage of "You" and "the player" when referring to a controllable character such as Link or someone/thing he controls in-game.

Clearly articles pertaining to Hacks, Glitches, Console systems, and other such removals from immersion this wouldn't be necessary. 01:52, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Language and Localization
Could there be changes made to the Language and Localization section so that differences between versions could be mentioned? NoA is not infalliable, and have often made up quotes entirely in localization. For one, almost the enitrety of the original American transaltion of A Link to the Past was poorly done and had to be rectified in the GBA version. There are some minor differences also between the Japanese and American versions of TWW and TP, but it is not currently policy to bring this up in an article. Because the games are a Japanese creation made by Japanese game designers, shouldn't the original versions at least be acknowledged?Ganondorfdude11 17:19, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Whenever you translate something you can't just have it as a direct translation. The cultures are radically different. So the wording of just about everything has to be altered to fit the societal and culture norms of the target audience. This is localization and it must be done. In the old days this was not as big of a concern. That's why the first three Zelda games were not translated and localized perfectly. They didn't see it as a big need then. But from Link's Awakening on they put in to more importance. They check and recheck for errors now and try their best to get it right the first time. As far as canon is concerned, it is a common misconception that the Japanese versions are absolute canon. That is not the case. They are only canonical within the realm of the other Japanese games. It does not cross over to its translated versions. Meaning quotes from Japanese versions are not canonical within the realm of the NoA localizations of the games. And as Zelda Wiki.org is based in the United States of America, and a vast majority of the membership will only be aware of the NoA versions, the NoA versions are the highest form of canon. Hence why all the article names are the NoA names for the characters, places, and games. Not the Japanese ones. And as far as theories go, they would all be radically different in each language set. For example, German theories would be very different from those here in America. Like it or not, there was a lot of effort put on the NoA side into localizing theses games. To the point that they are technically different games entirely from the Japanese ones. Plastering the articles with large amounts of quotes and references from other languages would be messy and illogical. 17:44, June 4, 2009 (UTC)
 * That seems a bit U.S.-centric, though, doesn't it? The Japanese created the games, so the Japanese text would be the highest canon, wouldn't it? NOA, while doing a general better job of localizing than they did in the 90's, wholesale added lines in TWW that implied a linear timeline, later contradicted by Eiji Aonuma. In Twilight Princess, they invented lines about how the sages were Zelda's tutors, when Auru was Zelda's tutor in Japanese. The fact that there are different localizations precisely means that only the Japanese should be canon.Ganondorfdude11 20:41, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The NoA versions will remain the higher canon here as this is an English Wiki. However, not allowing any mention of the original texts is a bit extreme. I believe it would be acceptable to have and such differences mentioned in trivia sections in articles. And original Japanese names can remain in the first sentence of pages. I think the rest of the staff will agree there, so I'll go make sure that point is clear in the policy. 21:14, June 4, 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be great. I understand the need to cite the English version, as the wiki is in English. The problem I had was with ignoring the Japanese when a discrepancy occurred.Ganondorfdude11 21:32, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

"Style"
Does the article style thing apply to user pages and talk pages, too? I am Jigglypurin. (talk) 02:48, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Things to edit
Hi, if I find a something to change, just discuss it here? I know this is relatively unimportant, but in the article: "When describing a character in the title, only what is need to know should be in it." - "need"->'needed', right? (Also to be honest I'm confused when it says "when describing a character") -- KokoroSenshi 01:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Redirects vs. Spelling/Capitalization
Hey everyone. I wanted to talk about the Wiki's policy on in-line redirects, because there are a few instances where it clashes with spelling/capitalization. While editing the "amiibo (Rune)" article, I naturally made links to some of the more mundane items from. Notably, I mentioned "materials" in sentences and made corresponding redirects using an alternate spelling (i.e., materials instead of "Materials"). To me, this seems more natural and correct, as the capitalized spelling of "Materials" seems awkward in many cases. Personally, I may also not remember to capitalize "Materials" when mentioning them without a redirect. There are other examples of rather mundane elements (e.g., barrels, crates, treasure chests) were - personally - I'd prefer to use a non-capitalized word. The redirects were corrected to direct redirects - which is, of course, in accordance with the Wiki's style guide. However, it still seems incorrect to me and I just wanted to bring the point up. Especially, because I have edited quite a few other wikis, were proper spelling/capitalization was encouraged over direct links. It's not the most pressing issue, of course. But it's creating a bit of a rift between proper (and, most importantly, coherent) spelling and underlying wiki functions. -- Tadayou (talk) 10:29, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * All terminology is to be capitalized, a policy which isn't going to change. If something is an article, it's usually terminology, so you just need to remember to use capitalization when linking. It might seem awkward to you since other wikis don't do it, but how we operate isn't dependent on how others do. TriforceTony (talk) 14:06, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. I wasn't even implying ZeldaWiki should change based on how others operate. I just wanted to relay why it seemed noteworthy to me. Anyhow, is this policy written down somewhere? I was going through some of the FAQs/Guides (also because of this discrepancy) but didn't find anything on capitalization (or, possibly, was looking in the wrong space). -- Tadayou (talk) 14:15, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * To add to the question, to what extent does the terminology rule apply? Is "item", "dungeon", "Zelda timeline" or "options" to be capitalized, for example? -- Tadayou (talk) 14:33, 11 April 2017 (UTC)


 * As the guidelines are presently being rewritten, I don't believe it's written down at the moment.
 * I don't believe so for those instances, though the outlier in those would be the Zelda timeline. If you mention the "Zelda timeline", it should only be once and should link to the eponymous page. All further mentions of the timeline should just be along the lines of "the timeline." TriforceTony (talk) 09:02, 12 April 2017 (UTC)


 * So for clarification: When I write a section on the timeline, I'm writing it capitalized when linking to the page but lower-case in other instances? So for example: "Eiji Aonuma has announced that the game is placed at the very beginning of the Zelda Timeline. This is in contrast to several in-game references, which point to a placement in different branches of the timeline."? Because that is were the rule becomes a little counter-intuitive. I also wrote the Gameplay section on the article yesterday and was very unsure which terms to capitalize and which not. For example, there is an article on Armor and the term is surely terminology. There is no such article on Weapons, however (as the games usually refer to sub-classes, i.e. "Swords", "Bows", etc.) - which could lead to a sentence like "Link can equip a huge variety of different Armor and weapons.".
 * I don't want to be a pain in the a** with my inquiries, so I hope they don't come across the wrong way. I'm very aware of the benefits (and necessities) of style guides - which is also why I want to follow the rules established on ZeldaWiki. This particular issue doesn't seem quite well-defined and it seems to me that a few noteworthy grey areas remain, especially with rather common words. If there's no discussion on the policy itself, as you established, than maybe it is at least something you can consider for the future iteration of the guidelines. -- Tadayou (talk) 09:54, 13 April 2017 (UTC)