We on The Ghost and Molly McGee Wiki strive for a more uniform and professional wiki experience, and in order to do so, we have editing policies that serves to help users with the necessary guidelines for editing articles on the wiki, exercising some form of formality and grammar. Please keep in mind that these policies are constantly updated if necessary, so we recommend reading them constantly.
All rules listed on the General Policy page also apply to the Editing Policy.
General
Language
For the purpose of maintaining consistency, and because the subject of this wiki originates from the United States, words on this wiki should conform to the spelling used in American English. This applies only to main namespace pages, not talk or user pages. Although no user should be harassed or punished for using other regional spellings of words, editors are encouraged to conform text in articles to U.S. spelling. If you come across a word spelled the way it is in another country (for example if you see "color" spelled as "colour"), just change it to the U.S. English spelling and be done with it.
Articles
For a major explanation on creating and adding content to the articles on this wiki, see the Article Layout Manual.
Avoid making articles with conjectural titles. Please make sure the article name for a subject is its official name. Similarly, please do not use nicknames or alternate names for an article's title. (e.g. "Molly McGee" instead of "Main Character.")
The definite article (the) and indefinite articles (a/an) should be avoided in article titles except when they are part of an official title.
POV
Situations must be discussed in a disinterested tone, giving no bias or preferences and avoiding giving unimportant issues undue weight. Avoid the use of imperative form and second person (you) when writing articles.
Undoing or reverting edits
In case a user is undoing one of your edits, please don't engage in edit wars with that user to keep your edit and instead ask them on their message wall why they are undoing your edit, or if you are the user who is undoing it, take the initiative and explain to the user on their message wall why you are doing it. Avoid outright reverting edits that seem to have been made in good faith unless it is very obvious vandalism. If you must do so, explain why, either in the edit summary or on the user's message wall. Give respectful criticism so they can learn how they can improve their contributions if they make poor edits.
In case the user persists in keeping their edit even if you have explained the reasons for the removal or your edit is being removed without a valid reason, contact a staff member.
Sources and References
Adding references
To reference an external page, use the following format:
Note that the name allows you to reuse the same reference later in the article. If you want to reuse it, use the following format:
The Cite web template is used to create citations of web sources and thus have a better order in the references of the articles.
Source quality
Not all sources are created equal. Please consider the nature of the source you are citing. Websites that are editable by users are not considered reliable sources.
Good sources:
- Disney websites (including press releases and official social media pages)
- Websites citing official press releases or specializing in television (e.g., tvguide.com)
- Any verified Twitter account (e.g., @DisneyBrandTVPR, @InevitablyBill.)
- Tumblr accounts used exclusively by Series crew
Bad sources:
- IMDB
- TV.com
- Wikipedia (unless it gives citations and you verify their accuracy)
- Unverified Twitter accounts
- Blogs, opinion pages, etc.
- Unverified, leaked material (content could change before airing)
Specific issues
Straight vs. Curly (Smart) quotes
The only acceptable type of quote designs are the straight quotes (' ") since they are available on your keyboard to type short-handedly and majority of the articles uses the straight punctuation characters. This means that curly (smart) punctuation characters (‘ ’ “ ”) are not acceptable due to the symbols being outside of a common keyboard and being tedious to render in the articles using keyboard shortcuts.
Use of commas
As The Ghost and Molly McGee Wiki entails an American television series, please follow the American English usage of the comma, known as the "Oxford comma" or "serial comma", when appropriate. This comma generally separates the final two items in a series. For example, "Molly, Scratch, and Libby are best friends" is preferred instead of "Molly, Scratch and Libby are best friends".
Confused on when to use commas between adjectives? If the sentence contains adjectives, ask yourself:
- Does the sentence make sense if the adjectives are written in reverse order?
- Does the sentence make sense if the adjectives are written with "and" between them?
If you answer yes to both of these questions, then the adjectives are a coordinate set and should be separated by a comma. Examples of coordinate and non-coordinate adjectives:
He was a difficult, unfriendly frog. (coordinate) They have a white frame picture. (non-coordinate) She wore a wide silk dress. (non-coordinate) Your mother has a soft, friendly gaze. (coordinate) The relentless, powerful summer sun beat down on them. (1-2 are coordinate, but the third is non-coordinate.)
The relentless, powerful, oppressive sun beat down on them. (Both 1, 2, and 3 are coordinate.)
For more on the use of the comma, see this page by Connecticut Community College or this page by Purdue University.
Use of apostrophes
Like the comma, please follow the English usage of the apostrophe. This is noted for decades and years, e.g., '90s instead of 90's/90s or 1990s instead of 1990's.
On the difference between "its" vs. "it's", note that "its" is a possessive pronoun of a subject's quality or object (ex: Brighton is a city in the US, its symbol are the turnips); whereas "it's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has", indicating status or position of the subject (ex: Perfektborg it's best known as the perfect town).
When using apostrophes to make citations, leave out punctuation marks that are not part of the citation (ex: "Episode". instead of "Episode."); however, if they are part of the citation, they can go inside the apostrophes. For quotes, final punctuation marks must be inside apostrophes (ex: When saw it, Pete said "it looks pretty good.") but note that this excludes non-final punctuation marks such as comma or colon.
Verb tense
Works of fiction are generally considered to "come alive" for their audience. They exist in a kind of perpetual present tense, regardless of when the fictional action is supposed to take place relative to "now". Thus, generally you should write about fiction using the present tense, not the past tense.
Examples:
- Homer presents, Achilles rages, Andromache laments, Priam pleads.
- "Darth Vader is a fictional character from Star Wars."
- "Holden Caulfield has a certain disdain for what he sees as 'phony'."
- "Heathcliff, who is taken in by the wealthy Earnshaw family as a child, falls in love with their daughter, Catherine."
- "Friends is an American sitcom that was aired on NBC."
Date and time formatting
Read this article from Wikipedia for more on date and time formatting and standards. Below are excerpts from that article.
Acceptable date formats: The following date styles are acceptable in Wikipedia articles, subject to rules included thereafter:
Format Example Scope MMMM D, YYYY
Full month name, space, numeric day, comma, space, full yearSeptember 8, 2001 Everywhere D MMM YYYY
Numeric day, space, short month name, space, full year8 Sep 2001 This format is only in references, tables, lists or areas where conciseness is needed. MMM D, YYYY
Short month name, space, numeric day, comma, space, full yearSep 8, 2001 YYYY-MM-DD
Four-digit year, hyphen, two-digit month, hyphen, two-digit day2001-09-08
Unacceptable date formats: The following date styles are not acceptable in the The Ghost and Molly McGee Wiki except in external titles and quotes:
- The ordinal suffixes, articles, or leading zeros (except for the YYYY-MM-DD format) are not used in the wiki. A comma is not inserted between the month and year, nor is a period inserted after the day (June 10, 1921); however, when using mdy format, a comma is required between the day and year. When a date in mdy format appears in the middle of text, include a comma after the year (The weather on September 11, 2001 was clear and warm). Type the full year string instead of using the apostrophe to abbreviate the first two digits of the year.
Incorrect Correct 9 June 2001 June 9, 2001 9th June
the 9th of June
9. JuneJune 9 June 9th June 9 June, 2001 June 2001 9 June, 2001
09 June 2001June 9, 2001 June 9 2001
June 09, 2001June 9, 2001 '01 2001
- An exception to this guideline is when a specific style of a date achieves notability within a culture, such as the Fourth of July (does not adhere to ordinal nor spelled out guideline, yet is acceptable).
- Do not use year-final numerical date formats (DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY), as they are ambiguous: "03/04/2005" could refer to 3 April or to March 4. For consistency, do not use such formats even if the day number is greater than 12.
- Do not use customized variations of the YYYY-MM-DD format. E.g., do not replace hyphen characters ("-") with any other character; do not change the order of year, month, or day. Use leading zeros for days or months when needed to make these fields two digits.
- Yearless dates (March 5) are inappropriate unless the year is obvious from the context. There is no such ambiguity with recurring dates, such as January 1 is New Year's Day.
- Do not use Roman numerals, such as "MMXII" for "2012", to denote years.