Silent Hill Theories Wiki:Manual of Style

The Manual of Style tells the rules for editing on the Wiki. These rules should be followed whenever editing on the Wiki. If you need help understanding these rules, contact an Admin.

If you are new to the editing style of Wikia, please look at the Wiki Help page.

Standard formatting rules

 * One theory per page. If a certain theory is multifaceted, that's fine. This will only serve to prove your point, but if you have several different theories regarding the same topic, they require their own pages.
 * When putting titles of media, write them in italics. For example: Silent Hill (film), not Silent Hill (film).
 * When using titles, put the necessary colons in. For example: Silent Hill: Homecoming, not Silent Hill Homecoming.
 * Keep "the", "of" and "and" lowercase unless it is the beginning of a sentence. For example, it's "the Order," not "The Order."
 * The names of monsters, people and places are to be capitalized everything else should adhere to standard formatting rules.
 * Keep unnecessary words out of links unless it is part of the title. For example, link "Hilltop Center," not "the Hilltop Center."
 * This Wiki is professional. Use modern American English and avoid slang terms. Also, do not use curse words unless it is part of a quote.
 * Keep yourself out of the article and remain objective, not subjective. Do not say something like "I think." Instead write in third person, for example; "The player/Heather must burn the painting" rather than "You must burn the painting."

Headings
When adding a sub-heading into an article, use sentence style capitalization and not title style capitalization. For example:
 * See also (right)
 * See Also (wrong)

Linking
Articles should link to the Silent Hill Wiki so that newcomers will have as much information as possible.

This can be done by adding the following with  on either side:

w:c:silenthill:Alessa Gillespie|Alessa Gillespie

Then when you add the closing brackets to either side  it becomes the following:

Alessa Gillespie

When linking to Wikipedia you would do the following, making sure once again to add  on either side:

Wikipedia:Silent Hill|Silent Hill

Then when you add the closing brackets to either side  it becomes the following:

Silent Hill

Only link to a page once in an article. For example, if you have already linked to Alessa Gillespie do not make another link to the same page again.

Referencing a character or person
When referencing a character or person, the first time they are referenced their name needs to be complete, and linked to the appropriate Silent Hill Wiki page. Afterwards they can be referenced with their first name only.

Theory creation rules
The Wiki has a simple but fair approach to people creating theory pages. But we have four simple rules in regards to formulating and creating theories:
 * Theories must be well thought out and provide a substantial deal of information to the reader (not a couple of sentences), and preferably will cite evidence in order to support the theory.
 * Do not make up information simply for the sake of posting a theory. All theories should have some factual basis, though it is understandable that there will not be evidence to support the theory in its entirety.
 * It is possible to share a theory proposed by another individual; however, if a theory is copied and pasted, the cite of the original theory must be posted. A warning to cite the information will be given. If it is not cited immediately, the theory will be removed.
 * It is preferred that users submit full theories straight away, but with time constraints this can be quite difficult. If you still have more information to add to your theory please make sure to add the "WIP" template. You can do this by surrounding the word "WIP" with on the theory page. Make sure this is above the main body of your content.

Questions
The Wiki also allows users to submit question pages. These pages include well thought out questions to certain elements of the games/films to promote the community to think up new theories. Here is an example of a question page, Helen Grady (Madness)

Page header and content bar
Whenever a page is added two very important templates must be added to the page.

The header is a bar at the top of the page, which dependent on the type of page (theory/question) will show different information.

For theories three types of information will be shown.


 * If the theory is an unconfirmed, confirmed or debunked theory.
 * The current review stage of the theory (more onto this later)
 * The Facebook share button.

Therefore whenever adding a page for the first time make sure to add the "Header" template surrounded by. Then add two variables, the first being either "UnconfirmedTheory", "ConfirmedTheory" or "DebunkedTheory". This all depends on the theory, but most will be "UnconfirmedTheory"; however, in some rare cases they may have been confirmed by the developers meaning add "ConfirmedTheory" instead. Sometimes though theories will get disproved and will then later be labelled as "DebunkedTheory". This allows users a greater insight into your theory.

So when adding the header make sure to add |Unconfirmed (or Confirmed/Debunked) after "Header". The only exception to the rule is a question page, therefore when adding a question make sure to add |Question instead of the other three.

The second variable will always be |Review when adding a page for the first time (more on the review process later); "Header|UnconfirmedTheory|Review" surrounded by is an example of the final template.

At the bottom of the page is the content bar. The content bar is different dependent on the game the theory is based from. So for example if the theory page is in relation to Murphy Pendleton, then the Silent Hill Downpour content bar should be added at the bottom of the page.

To add this template surround the word "SHDContent" with. Below is a list of all the naming conventions for the rest of series.


 * SH1Content - Silent Hill 1
 * SH2Content - Silent Hill 2
 * SH3Content - Silent Hill 3
 * SH4Content - Silent Hill 4
 * SH0Content - Silent Hill: Origins
 * SHSMContent - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
 * SHHContent - Silent Hill: Homecoming
 * SHfilmContent - Silent Hill (film)
 * SHRevContent - Silent Hill: Revelation

Review Process
In order to provide the best well thought out theories to our users we have a simple review process. So all newly submitted theories will go through the process, which is conducted by our Admin team to make sure that they adhere to the four golden rules as mentioned earlier.

If the theory doesn't meet all four of the criteria then we'll change the "Review" tag in the header to "Info", after a short while we will then inform you that a theory needs updating (with a seven day period to update) otherwise it will eventually get marked as a "candidate for deletion". Make sure to update as soon as possible otherwise it will get deleted from the Wiki.

However, if all four golden rules have been met then we'll change the "Review" tag in the header to "Author:(User Name)" the user being the person who submitted the theory, this essentially means the theory has been published. After adding this it will automatically categorize your theory (for example Author:Hazardsfury) into a author category allowing all users to view published pages by author. We also think this is a cool way of giving the submitter some recognition. Here are all my theories just to show what I mean.

Categories
Do not create pointless or redundant categories. For example, do not make a category for "Silent Hill", as that would be redundant. Another example of redundancy would be a category for "theories."

All character theories are categorized by that characters name. For example when creating a theory on Travis Grady, the category would be Travis Grady. This is because there will be multiple different theories on this character, so all characters have been assigned their own category. This is also the case for all monsters encountered in the games/films.

Plot related theories are categorized by game/film. For example if a theory has been created for the plot of Silent Hill: Homecoming categorize the plot theory as Silent Hill: Homecoming.

When submitting a question there are only two possible categories to add; Question (games) and Question (films).

If you're unsure where to categorize any other theories don't be afraid to ask any of our Admins.

Article organization
Article organization should be in this order, from top to bottom:
 * Header Template
 * Infoboxes/Image
 * WIP template (if the theory needs more work)
 * Short introduction into what the theory is about
 * The bulk of the article, under the heading "Theory"

...and near the end of the article:
 * Trivia
 * Gallery (all galleries should have a width of 120)
 * Content Templates