Spelling and Typography • Grammar and Usage • Tone • Links • Titles and Article Organization • Location Pages • Media • Outdated or Unused Content • Miscellaneous
This section of the Style Guide concerns article titles and article organization. It also provides guidance on appropriate topics for articles, and guidance on how to select an appropriate title for a new article. In general, articles should be focused, have a simple name, and be organized in a manner consistent with other articles of the same type.
Article Topics
Articles should be about a specific topic. This topic can be broad, like a "List of Minor Characters", or specific, like "Monoko", but it must be about something in particular. Do not create articles that serve as dumping grounds for miscellaneous information or observations about a game.
Articles should not take the form of any of the following:
- Dictionary definitions or lists of terminology. This is not a dictionary.
- Personal observations or reflections. This includes reviews, personal essays, blog posts, lists of fan theories, description of your "headcanon", fan fiction, or articles about terminology or phenomena you have personally invented. This also includes attempted self-publication of theses or other academic papers.
- Discussion forums. This is a repository of information, not a chat room or public forum. If you would like to discuss the contents of an article, use the Talk page of the respective article. If you would like to discuss Yume Nikki fangames in general, avail yourself of the numerous dedicated outlets for doing so, such as Reddit, Discord, Tumblr, etc.
- Advocacy or campaigns. The Yume Wiki is a neutral repository of information, not a place to push your personal point of view, promote something, or settle old scores. This includes self-promotion (of your blog, your YouTube channel, your personal projects, etc.), marketing or ad copy for a product, autobiographies, personal crusades against those you feel have wronged you, etc.
- News reports. This also includes reports about upcoming releases or events, predictions or rumors, or gossip about other members of the community.
- Directories. This would include lists of external or internal links, file storage repositories, articles consisting entirely of download links, etc.
- Random, indiscriminate collections of stuff. This would include things like lists of websites, collections of reviews, lists of quotations, lists of products, lists of random statistics, etc.
- Lists with inappropriate scopes. This includes both overly specific lists (for example, "List of female NPCs with red hair") and overly broad or unverifiable scopes (for example, "List of people who have played Yume Nikki").
- Entire reproductions of other texts. For example, Wikipedia articles, books in the public domain, magazine articles, song lyrics, etc.
- Galleries of images with minimal or no accompanying text. Images should be used to support article text, not be ends in themselves. The Yume Wiki is not the place for showing off your cool screenshots.
- Personal webpages. These guidelines also apply to user pages. While some limited personalization of your user page is expected and encouraged, do not build out your user page into your own personal website. These guidelines also prohibit practices like creating public memorials for acquaintances, using your profile for social networking or as a dating profile, or using the Yume Wiki as a file server for your personal files.
- Detailed plot summaries. While plot summaries are appropriate to include on a game's page, there is no need to describe every single possible detail or line of text (if any) that appears. A broad synopsis will do. Pages should also not be solely plot summaries, either.
Article Titles
General Guidelines
When creating a page on Yume Wiki, its title should clearly indicate the subject of the article.
The title should be the most widely-used or recognizable term for the topic. For example, while the "Red Maze" is a term that is used for a world in Yume Nikki, the world is much more widely referred to as "Hell", so that should be the article title.
The title should be a term that is natural to use and easy to search. For example, the official name of this world from Unaccomplished is "RVlFJ3MgYmFy", which translates to "EYE's bar" in Base64, is extremely difficult to search and remember. Instead, the page is called "Eye's Bar", which is far easier to remember and search. Note the normalization of title case, rather than using the stylized case.
The title should be concise and to the point. For example, Effects is short, concise title for this page, while "List of Effects that Appear in Yume Nikki" is overly lengthy and verbose.
It is good policy to check the names other people in the community are using, if any. For example, Yume 2kki locations may have names suggested in Version History or Map IDs.
Inventing Names
If no name has been adopted by the community or declared officially by the author, the editor must invent a name for the wiki.
When naming a page, it should generally be based on its original (usually Japanese) name, which can be found in a few possible ways:
- Opening the game using its engine and checking the internal name of the map or event
- Checking the name of the assets used, such as a map's ChipSet or a character's event CharSet
- In a changelog file, if any (for Yume 2kki, it is changelog.txt)
Do not use machine translation when researching a name. If you do not know the target language, seek the assistance of an editor who does.
There are many exceptions to using the original name. Reconsider using the original name if:
- The name is too similar to (or the same as) the name of another article;
- The original name sounds awkward when translated into English;
- The original name is nonsensical;
- The name uses a pun that does not translate into English;
- The name is a generic technical name (for example, "MAP034", "npc1", "char_b", or "Room C");
- The original name would be unreasonably difficult to search or remember (for example, a string of numbers, or a name containing mathematical symbols or other rare characters);
- Or the original name uses special characters that cannot be used in article names (see below).
All articles should be named in title case, except when using official names. The editor who creates (or moves) the page should ideally mention the method used to (re)name it.
Prohibitions on Article Titles
Special Characters
The characters < > # [ ] | { } _ cannot be used in the title of an article. This is a limitation caused by how MediaWiki stores pages.
Never use the special characters & or ?; these are reserved URL parameter delimiters, and doing otherwise may break APIs (e.g. those used in external projects like Yume 2kki Explorer or YNOproject) making use of wiki content.
Alternate names will need to be chosen. For example, the character page ***-tsuki uses that name instead of the more common ???-tsuki due to this limitation.
Grammatical Articles
Avoid using an article title starting with the grammatical articles "A(n)" or "The", even if it appears to make sense grammatically. Using them makes it harder to find, sort, and link to the page. For example, Spaceship is always referred to as "the Spaceship," but does not include "The" in the page name.
There are some exceptions such as when the name is a title. See Wikipedia's guidance for further details, which may be applied to Yume Wiki. Pages using official names are not required to follow this guideline.
In cases where an article is included at the start of the page name, the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} function should be used.
The function should be placed at the end of the page, and if any categories are listed at the end, the function should be placed in the first line.
The following example is taken from the page of Yume 2kki's The Magic Nexus:
==Gallery==
<gallery>
…
</gallery>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Magic Nexus, The}}
[[Category:Yume 2kki In Development]]
[[Category:Open for Cross-Author Connections]]
[[Category:Yume 2kki Hub Worlds]]
[[Category:Yume 2kki Connecting Maps]]
Important note: Some Yume 2kki page names may still include grammatical articles due to using an official name or because changing a legacy name would cause issues in YNOproject's expedition feature. The community has agreed to avoid renaming these pages. Discussion may still be reopened to move these articles, but it requires notifying the YNOproject developers in the official Discord server. Do not move these pages without notifying YNOproject's developers.
Official Names
If an official name is available, use it if possible. Some namespaces, such as Collective Unconscious, use official names in the majority of cases.
For content on Yume Wiki, it is not required to ask authors for permission to name things; however, it is courteous to use requested official names. Editors should mention that the name is officially requested by the author in the edit summary of the page creation (or page move).
Page titles using official names are exempt from some of the preceding guidelines. The exceptions are:
- They may include the definite articles "A(n)" or "The" and should not be renamed to omit it.
- They may be in a different case than the normal title case, such as .flow's hole in girl using lowercase or Collective Unconscious' RED DREAD DEATH using uppercase.
The reason behind these exceptions is to preserve the author's intention completely.
Page titles are not exempt from the following guidelines, even if specifically requested by the author. They must still:
- Not be too similar to another article's name;
- Not be generic technical terms (for example, "MAP034", "npc1", "char_b", or "Room C");
- Not be too unreasonably difficult to search or remember (for example, a string of numbers, or a name containing mathematical symbols or other rare characters, like ℂ00ℒ ℣℣0ℜℓⅆ or similar);
- And not contain the prohibited special characters <, >, #, [, ], |, {, }, _, &, or ?.
Yume 2kki Location Naming
For Yume 2kki worlds, in the official Discord server, there is a naming process for locations that involves a suggestion phase and a voting phase. The idea of the naming process is to have a dedicated space for community members to discuss, suggest, and vote on world names.
After at least 24 hours have passed since the new content has been made available to download, a thread will be created for each location. In each thread, users can suggest names for the location.
After at least 72 hours have passed since the thread has been created, a poll will be created for each location using all of the suggestions, limited to one suggestion per user.
These polls last for 72 hours, with the winner being chosen as the name of the location. A tiebreaker poll will be held in case of tied results.
The Lead Section
The lead section of an article should provide a brief overview of an article's topic in a neutral style. Most lead sections will begin with the phrase "Subject is...". For most pages, this section will only be one or two sentences in length. Avoid going into fine detail or using technical explanations in this section.
Display the subject's name in bold as early as possible in the article. Only bold this first instance. If there are alternative names, list them and bold their first instances as well. For example "Heian Era Village (formerly known as Mosenite) is an area...".
Specific Page Templates
Some page types on the Yume Wiki have specific templates. Follow the layout order in these templates. The currently available templates are: