SOMA Wiki:Manual of Style

Template:Official

The following is an example page which every page on the wiki must conform to. This page provides a detailed layout and instruction for what sections a page should have and what information should be put in said sections.

One of the most important parts of creating and editing wiki pages is the structure of the article. The information on the article should be organized in a hierarchy manner with section headers dividing up the page's content to make navigating the article much easier.

No one is gonna want to read a messy article where the information is all over the place. Even if the information is good it creates the illusion of being incomprehensible as the article will be un-appealing from a visual perspective. You wouldn't read a story or novel if every page was an unformatted giant wall of text without paragraphs or chapter numbers to split everything up, and the same philosophy applies to wiki articles.

Note that this page is subject to change and any comments or suggestions about the layout should be forwarded to the talk page.

If you want more details regarding general wiki etiquette then see Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Below the line break is the outline itself. If you require a blank slate of the below section see Boilerplate:Character.

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Template:Infobox character test

This section of text should be a brief introduction to the article and should only consist of one or two sentences. A few important things to note about this section:

1. The first instance of the article's subject being mentioned (like the name of the character) should be bolded. This is done by putting a ''' before and after the name.

e.g. '''Simon Jarrett''' --> Simon Jarrett

Example:

The manual of style is an example page which appears on the SOMA Wiki. It is dedicated to teaching users how to properly format articles.

Description

This first paragraph of the description section is used to describe a character's physical attributes. This can range from basic details of their attire to any notable physical traits that distinguish this character from others. Avoid adding unnecessary details to this section like their eye or hair color. A paragraph for their physical description should suffice.

The second paragraph and onwards should detail the character's personality.

Feel free to use as many paragraphs to express this section as needed, but avoid repeating information.

The entire personality portion of this section does not need to be made if the article is referring to something like the Anglerfish.

Behavior

This section is unique to enemy articles. It should describe their in-game behavior and abilities.

Avoid making the section delve into a tutorial on how to bypass the monster. Remember that this section, and the article in general, is suppose to say "What it does." and not "How to get by it.".

Biography

This section is dedicated to discussing the events of a character's life across the entire SOMA universe, in chronological order. From their earliest mention or appearance in the timeline up until their death or last known appearance or reference. The information given here should be entirely factual and not contain any speculation.

A new paragraph should be created whenever the event or scenario a character is in changes.

Some important things so note when writing these sections:

• Do not put plot points in a timeline format. It makes the article read clunky and gives off the impression that the section was lazily done.

• If you're discussing how an event in SOMA that requires player input, try to avoid putting it in a how-to or step-by-step format. If the plot point involves a series of tasks or a puzzle to solve then it's acceptable to summarize instead of going into detail.

Major Event 1

Should the biography of a character be rather bulky, it can be divided up into sections. Each section should be appropriately named regarding either the location or the situation the character is in during their description in this section.

Major Event 2

Feel free to use as many sections as you need. Just make sure that the sections themselves are big enough to warrant being there. Each one should have at least two paragraphs.

In SOMA

If the Biography section details a lot of the character's life before the events of SOMA, then this section should be created to discuss their in-game appearance. If they are referenced in some way or form during SOMA's campaign then that should go here too. Remember, this section should only be made if details aside from their appearance in SOMA are mentioned beforehand in the Biography section.

In Transmissions

Same as above, only for the mini-series Transmissions. Also if this section and the In SOMA section exist on the same page then this one should be placed before the In SOMA one, as Transmissions and other derivative works will most likely take place before the game's events.

Appearences

This section is the equivalent to the Biography section, only for any non-human characters and locations. Any non-human characters and locations should have this section in place of Biography.

Same rules placed on the Biography section apply here as well. However you probably will not need to split this section by major events, as hardly any non-human characters, such as enemies, tend to make recurring appearances. A few paragraphs should suffice.

Trivia

• If there are any interesting facts or background knowledge about the entity in question place them here. This is not a place to put speculation or any random facts, just tidbits of information that aren't necessarily important to the article but interesting to know.
• Like this.

Gallery

Put interesting or relevant images of the entity here, please only put images that are relevant to the actual article here and avoid adding redundant photos. See SOMA:IMAGES.

Jorge.png

It is also a good idea to add a caption to your images.