Candypedia:Editing guidelines
Welcome to Candypedia, future editor! Here's how we'd like people to work on this wiki.
Contributing
If you leave a wiki open to the web, dangerous creatures will link to dubious pharmaceutical websites. Because of this, we whitelist editing access.
Join #group-project in the BCB Discord server and we'll let you in – we welcome new contributors eagerly and would love it if anyone took a stab.
Tone
Candypedia has a slightly TVTropesy, gently humorous vibe. Write clearly and precisely, with a focus on laying out the facts, but don't be afraid of a spoonful of sugar to make all the info digestible. Try to capture the collective voice of this fun, by-fans-for-fans resource, but don't be cloying or crack jokes that get in the way.
Consistency
Use the same styling, structure and layout across the wiki. That means looking at complete pages as models to imitate. Don't add or remove sections – we want a uniform experience for readers, from the peppy, punchy intro paragraph to the bullet-point style to the uniform footnotes.
Working on pages to make everything consistent is always appreciated.
Fan work and theory crafting
Keep it minimal. You can reference unofficial works and write stuff that's not explicitly in official materials – but only as small asides. The target audience is the general BCB reader, and they want to know about the real thing.
Creating new pages
Generally not needed. However:
- Don't bury your work. It's critical that all pages are accessible from the homepage or a navbox.
- Most pages that should exist do exist. Unless it's a new chapter, character or major location, consider that we probably decided against adding a stub for your page for a reason. But feel free to pitch it!
Generative AI policy
Candypedia would not be possible without LLMs (generative systems like GPT, Claude and Gemini). There's just too many chapters to synopsize and too few people in the community with wiki writing chops.
As such, there's certainly a place for AI-generated text here, but if you're using an LLM to write stuff for us, treat the wiki with care:
- Exercise restraint. Your writing would be better than the robot's. Try writing as much as you can first!
- Generate excellent prose or none at all. Nobody wants to read verbose, cliche-ridden blather from a robot, so pick your poison carefully. It might change, but generally what I mean here is: use Claude with a very carefully written prompt.
- Do a first-pass edit before uploading. Truly raw material is unacceptable. Cut it. Edit it down. Redo what's wrong.
- Label it with
{{Notice LLM Raw}}so a human can attack the prose and make sure it's up to scratch.
Also, there's no place for generative art on this wiki, so please don't upload any.
Contributing when you're unsure of yourself
We encourage people to give writing for the wiki a shot, but years of experience has shown us that some people are shy!
If you're ever struggling to structure and write for this wiki, remember that it's immensely useful to write a sloppy info-dump bullet-point draft with a bunch of reference links, and ask someone to wrangle it into a proper page for you.
Alternatively, there may be work available on the "Jobs" page that doesn't require writing at all, but is still very valuable to us. Start small! And don't be afraid to ask for edit access even if all you want to make is a small change!