Do you have an idea for a new wiki? Please share it with us here
Take the Dharma Wants You test, all about Lostpedia, here

Lostpedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 1

From Lostpedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Naming convention for episodes

there should be one in here. some people are using ABC's 2x11, 1x02, etc. format, and others are using S02E11, S01E02, etc. we should arrive at a consensus as to what to use. kaini 13:29, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

I agree, that would also be a good item to include in this guideline. Season 1 does not have many individual article pages for the episodes. There should be more time in the summer to clean that up and make it more like Season 2. I believe we should follow what we have been doing for Season 2, which is to make the article title just the text name of the episode (with proper capitlization). The mediawiki does have a few bugs that we have had to workaround, such as the use of the '+' sign in an article title, or using a '?' mark for the upcoming episode title '?'. For wiki code, that will be named just '%3F'. The episode season and number can be stored in the infobox for the episode. I don't think anyone wants to used piped links for every reference to an episode (ex [[S02E01 Man of Science, Man of Faith|Man of Science, Man of Faith]]).
   Jabberwock    talk    contribs    email   - 13:23, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
Not just in titles, either, but also for when referencing episodes in other articles, i.e. "in 2x15, Maternity Leave" vs. "in S02E15, Maternity Leave". kaini 13:29, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
I see your point, but I don't think this is necessary in most articles. It would break the flow of the article. When I updated the Season 2 episodes with an infobox, I included the season and episode numbers as a field so they would be displayed on the article page. This is just my opinion. What do others think?
   Jabberwock    talk    contribs    email   - 14:53, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
I personally can't remember by heart what happened in let's say S2E11, but if someone mentions "the hunting party" - bells start ringing. In Lost, every episode is named - it would make sense to use that name instead of the production code etc, there's no need for using 'cryptic' number sequences at all when referring to an episode. In a list, sure, why not... but in an article, the proper name for the episode should do. --skks 15:16, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
I agree in general, and we shouldn't use production codes in page names. It may, though, be helpful to mention the production code, especially when chronology is being discussed on a page. Know the order the episode was shown helps put things in context (like when people learned certain information). A unified way of citing the production code might help. -- Lostpedian 17:45, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
Each convention has its benefits. Episode names ring bells, and production sequence gives a hint to the chronology for those who haven't memorized each title and order. I've tended to pipe the title or short number when linkifying references. That way, both show up if one's browser displays the link-to URL. FWIW, I've started using kaini's form, since there are redirects to the episodes-by-title in place. —Dmuk § 12:25, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Italicise titles

Italics are generally reserved for emphasis, names of vessels (aircraft, spacecraft, ships & trains), non-English words and phrases (such as Latin), and titles of long or complete works. Quotation marks should be used for shorter titles. The series name of a TV show could be categorized as a "longer-work". Example: The Lost episode "Dave" showed Hurley in a mental health institute.
   Jabberwock    talk    contribs    email   - 14:42, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Fine with that. I was thinking of episodes in the context of this wiki as "longer-works", but I'll go with you. Your way agrees with Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and so would be an easy transition for anyone coming from there. -- Lostpedian 17:43, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Lost in page titles

Since we don't want to have to bother with including "Lost" in so many titles manually, a solution would be to modify the wiki code as described on MediaWiki talk:Pagetitle. Besides, honestly, page "ranking" rarely uses the HTML "TITLE" element (since the website owner controls that too much and can skew rankings)... but the TITLE does change how the link is displayed in search "results". -- Lostpedian 17:43, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

While I agree that overuse of the word "Lost" in article titles will look stupid, there are articles where this makes sense, such as Lost Season 1 and Lost Season 2 where they refer to the TV Show and Season number. These pages are typically very old in the wiki and may have external sites that link to them.
   Jabberwock    talk    contribs    email   - 19:10, 23 April 2006 (PDT)
Speaking of "Season 1" and "Season 2. Shouldn't the LostPedia main page link to these two instead of "Lost Season 1" and "Lost Season 2"? It's just a small issue, but it would look better IMO ;-) --Jambalaya 07:20, 24 April 2006 (PDT)

Nice combination of some ideas so far?

Perhaps a nice convention to adopt would be to have a 1x15, 2x04, etc. field in the infobox for season/episode, and to use italics exclusively to refer to episode titles. i like this idea a lot!
kaini 19:05, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Thanks

Thanks for working on this everyone. It looks like the issues between Lostpedian and GodEmperorOfHell are cooling down. I will support the decisions of the SysOps in 99% of the cases. I'm glad you guys worked it out without me having to get involved. If it's not completely worked out, please work it out. ;) Admin 18:08, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

"Lost" instead of "LOST" ?

Is it okay to use "Lost" as a capitalized word rather than an all upper case "LOST"? It just looks a bit cleaner than using those big upper cases :-P --Jambalaya 07:15, 24 April 2006 (PDT)

Well, LOST certainly looks unmistakingly like the title of the show. and it beats Lost in clarity. †††GodEmperorOfHell††† --07:24, 24 April 2006 (PDT)

This does raise a bit of a metaphysical question -- What is the name of the show? Is it Lost or LOST? I mean, the title as seen on TV clearly uses a capital "L", while ABC, in various promotional material, seems pretty content to use only the initial capital. Hmm....

Just found this stylebook -- wondering why it isn't more widely known or main page linked?

Jenolen 09:05, 9 June 2006 (PDT)

personally i prefer LOST. it's not an acronym but it is a common word, so it lends a certain gravitas when in caps.. 22:09, 17 June 2006 (PDT)

I vote for LOST in all caps.. and italicised where possible.. LOST =D --Nigedo 19:51, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

Over in Jeopardy!-fan-land, we're not so annoying as to call it JEOPARDY! all the time. Lost will do... Robert K S 08:18, 2 November 2006 (PST)

Lost, in italics. -Chris[dt7] 04:53, 6 November 2006 (PST)

  • LOST in caps, its the name of the show frankly one capital letter doesn't give the show the importance it deserves. --Princess Dharma (banned) 18:51, 3 February 2007 (PST)

Not in caps, maybe in Italics. -- Iron Man  Send a message  View contributions  12:22, 2 May 2007 (PDT)

Templates

Please merge this info to the list of templates article. I added a link to this under the existing bullet point for templates
   Jabberwock    talk    contribs    email   - 08:01, 24 April 2006 (PDT)

  • {{Stub}}
    • Place this on articles where little info is added and you know there's more to be added.
  • {{CanonWarning}}
    • Warning text for articles that is based mainly on material where there's uncertainty whether or not the source is part of the official canon.
  • {{NonCanon}}
    • Warning text for articles that is based on clearly unofficial material, thus making it not part of the Lost canon.
  • {{Season2nav}}
    • Navigation bar for articles about episodes in season 2. Should always be placed before the text.
  • {{Infobox_Flashback_Character}}
    • Infobox for minor characters that only have appeared in one or more flashbacks.
  • {{Infobox_Island_Character}}
    • Infobox for characters that we more or less regulary encounter on the island.
  • {{Infobox_Castaway_Character}}
    • Infobox for characters that survived the Oseanic plane crash.
  • {{Authenticity}}
    • A warning message for articles that appearently isn't about anything Lost-related. Not to be confused with {{CanonWarning}}.
  • Fanon
    • Signals fancreated content for the Lost-universe (aka fanfiction).
  • {{Clear}}
    • Places the HTML-tag "<div style="clear:both">" in the article. This is a CSS-hack to prevent div-boxes to overlap eachother.
  • {{Rprotect}}
    • Sysops use this to flag articles as locked while restructuring.
  • {{Protected}}
    • Used by sysops to mark an article as non-editable due to vandalism.

Done. --Jambalaya 10:03, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

started a major overhaul on this policy

fresh input needed. needs someone else to clarify a bit further, condense what's there, and maybe add some stuff too. kaini. 22:07, 17 June 2006 (PDT)

Templates should have some 'user' guides

Particularly those that take keywords, stating whether links are permitted or not (personally, I don't dread the red links as much as some do).

  • listing when to use a partcular template, what categories it includes (or creates), and whether there is an implicit action (such as {{delete}}) implies a discussion and possibly eventual removal of the page).
  • when templates can be protected, and how.
—Dmuk § 12:16, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
needs a bit more work; but somewhat addressed... kaini. 19:57, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

Converging & Diverging

Discuss the why and when of using:

  • #REDIRECT to converge similar (or mis-) spellings to a single page
  • Disambiguation pages for words or meanings that can reference multiple things
—Dmuk § 12:16, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
addressed, i hope! kaini. 19:56, 25 June 2006 (PDT)

Use of image resources and Commons

Image inclusion seems to be all over the place. Wikipedia uses the commons site to reduce duplication, but there doesn't seem to be any linkage from within lostpedia. Not sure if this would cause the universe to implode or anything less dire, but.. why not?

Also, some guidelines to the use of copyrighted images and how to properly credit sources would be useful.

—Dmuk § 12:43, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

i don't know enough about this area to add this. volunteers? kaini. 20:19, 24 June 2006 (PDT)

How long have we been working on this article?

Well, I think this article has been on discussion forever, and AFAIK it seems it will take long for it to be complete and agreed upon. I personally think it's good. I wish We could be done by the begimnning of season three.


In other news the other day I was wondering how Wikis work as a good democracy should, as you see, Mexico has problems in this regard now. I wish my country could be run as this wiki, we are in the middle of an enormous flamewar. --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 12:08, 14 July 2006 (PDT)

Conventions for dating Lost Experience clues?

So we're running into some issues properly dating the clues that are rolling out fast & furious in The Lost Experience. See the talk for The Lost Experience clues/July 25 & The Lost Experience clues/July 26 for details, but the basic question is should clues be dated for the local time that they are discovered (so Australian players may be a day ahead), the local time they are created (US-based clues get dated on US time), or LostPedia Standard Time (which is US PDT for our signatures)? Thoughts? --Jajasoon 08:17, 25 July 2006 (PDT)

  • What are you suggesting, making different lost experience clues articles for different countries? --Phmall 19:17, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
    • No - I think that clues should be linked to LostPedia Standard Time (PDT), but don't want to offend non-American contributors--Jajasoon 19:55, 25 July 2006 (PDT)
      • I'm a non-American contributor and would not find it in Lostpedia Standard Time offensive in the slightest. To be honest, I pay very little attention to the time of posts etc anyway. Although its a worldwide site, I don't see a problem in it being on US time --Nickb123 (Talk) 04:23, 8 August 2006 (PDT)
      • OK - I created an entry for LostPedia Standard Time or LST for dating/timing entries & updates. --Jajasoon 05:50, 10 August 2006 (PDT)
      • My local time is Central, so it's a one hour difference for me. --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 07:45, 10 August 2006 (PDT)
      • i'm GMT, but i use PDT for my sig. a moot point for me, because i'm not participating in TLE, just observing, really. --kaini. 08:16, 10 August 2006 (PDT)
      • I'm in the eastern time zone, most of the time.--CaptainInsano


Language Bit

I don't like the bit that says about "if English isn't your native language, ask a SysOp to check it for you" - it just feels a bit offputting in my opinion. I'm probably reading way too much into it, but I would assume anyone editing on here understands the English language, and more often than not non-native speakers have better writing skills than natives anyway! Grammar will be revised naturally through other editors noticing it, its stupid to have it in the article I think --Nickb123 (Talk) 10:10, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

My first language isn't english. you would be surprised the corrections I have done to input from users I later find out come from the States. Regarding Sysops, three of us are not native speakers. We could change the line to: "if English isn't your native language and you are unsure about any part of your contribution, ask a SysOp to check it for you" --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 10:29, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

I was thinking more scrap the language thing altogether, or just say "If you don't feel confident with your spelling and grammar, you could always ask a sysop or fellow user to review it." To be honest, I'd rather it just go completely --Nickb123 (Talk) 10:34, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

Done. --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 10:42, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

I agree with Nick's revised statement, and would revise it to suggest "If you don't feel confident with your writing style, spelling, or grammar, please write 'Proofread me' in the summary of your edit, alerting the grammar police to review your contribution." As a teacher of writing to very bright college students, the correlation between native speaking & adequate prose is weak, as often the worst writers are native speakers. --Jajasoon 10:46, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

By any means, please add it. wish it could be standard protocol. --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 10:50, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

Beautiful!!!! Now let's hope the word is spread (spreaded???) --†††GodEmperorOfHell††† 10:59, 16 August 2006 (PDT)

Serious editing required

This page is very difficult to read and needs some serious editing attention. To begin with, why is the TOC hidden? I cannot fathom a reason for doing this and it only makes it next to impossible for any user to find what it is that they're looking for. Second, the infinite bullets makes it just as near impossible to read. The primary reason Wikipedia (and yes, I fully understand that this isn't Wikipedia, but I'm trying to make a point) has a policy on limiting bullets is for the very reason of reading and comprehension. Bullets are useful when creating a list (or a draft outline), but not when describing information. I also see that some templates, such as {{rewrite}} is missing. I think that a lot of this should be split apart on separate pages with more details and examples. They also should be linked in the Help page, so that users can actually find them. Comments? Magnoliasouth 17:06, 9 October 2006 (PDT)

i agree regarding the bullets; i drafted a lot of this article, and was going through a bit of a 'bullet fever'at the time. the templates are also outdated, because i haven't been about much lately, and the article hasn't received as much revision as i would like in that time. on the other hand, i think the 'add to me!' bullet points were acceptable for a policy that hasn't been institutionalized yet. sometimes it's nice to give people a little push to upgrade the article. if i have time i'll try and make it a bit more human-readable, anyway. --kaini. 18:31, 9 October 2006 (PDT)
I see what the "add to me" meant then, but I think a real explanation would've worked better. I had no idea that this was what it meant. :P I have an example of a table (here) for tag use, but there are parts of the article which a table would definitely not be useful for. What do you think? Magnoliasouth 18:38, 9 October 2006 (PDT)

Are we ready to vote on this policy?

What else is needed before we're ready to vote on this policy? --Admin 16:33, 30 October 2006 (PST)

Notes Before Theories?

I've noticed a couple articles have the Notes section before Theories and a couple have Theories before Notes. To me, it's better to have Notes before Theories because 1) a lot of what is said in Notes is reiterated in Theories, so by the time someone reads down to that part of the article, it's a moot point, and 2) not everyone is interested in a theory on everything. Theories are important, but sometimes people just go to the article to read the pertinent information in the article. Is anyone with me on this? --Mr Vain 06:22, 1 November 2006 (PST)

I'd say Notes should be before theories, since I assume Notes is limited to factual observations of the episode. The page should be visibly divided: everything above the Theories heading is fact, and everything below is theorization and should be read as such. --Minderbinder 06:36, 1 November 2006 (PST)
  • Yes, I strongly agree with Minderbinder's suggestion, I would say we should keep a rule to have the Theories as the last section in any article, maybe only followed by "See Also" if available, but grouping togather all facts-based sections above it. -- 07:26, 2 November 2006 (PST)
  • Agreed, Notes, Trivia and every other section (aside from "appendix" items such as credits, links, "See also" etc) should precede Theories. Anything that is canon/factual should come first before speculation (to be honest, I thought we had this written policy already, maybe not). --PandoraX 07:30, 2 November 2006 (PST)
The general rule has always been that theories comes last. However, its being discussed whether the theories should go on their own page. -- Plkrtn  talk  contribs  email  08:31, 7 November 2006 (PST)

Australia in Lost

I don't think the Style Guide should make any exceptions for the policy forbidding "...in LOST" in article titles. Instead the article called "Australia" should be retitled to more accurately reflect its purpose. TortureMeSayid 06:03, 5 November 2006 (PST)

The article on Australia is, like all the other country articles. To highlight the real world information about the country. the in Lost articles are designed to show you the country from the aspect of the show. This seems to me a better way of handling it, than having them both on the article, or perhaps renaming the country articles to "... in the Real World" -- Plkrtn  talk  contribs  email  08:34, 7 November 2006 (PST)
Something like the latter was what I had imagined - that all the country articles would be renamed to something like "Air dates in Australia". That reflects their purpose better, I think. Sorry, I didn't make it clear that I was only using Australia as an example, as the article does. TortureMeSayid 12:01, 7 November 2006 (PST)

Proposal: Referencing material

I feel strongly that all information on Lostpedia should be referenced by source (episode or crew member or podcast, etc.). This will make it easier to confirm information, track down the original source, and cross reference things. Information from particular episodes can be refereced by a link to the article page but named for succinctness by the episode number in parenthesis (2x12). This is probably all we can expect from contributors but it would be cool to go even further and have two links, the first to the episode article page and the second to the transcript page, which could be sectioned out to the different scenes (2x12 / s4). Of course within an episode article itself it wouldn't be needed to reference the article within the article itself, but refereces to other episodes could still be thrown in, and links to sectioned anchors in the transcripts might be useful as well. In the case of the timeline, a lot of the reasoning that is put in to constructing it could easily be referenced in the article itself in the same way that the Star Trek timeline is referenced (1x02 - three days before episode) or (2x7 - Rose says it's Thanksgiving which is a Saturday). This would make the reasoning more apparent and factual, and also save time hunting for the particular justifications in the discussions page. --Jackdavinci 08:30, 3 December 2006 (PST)

  • Agree - Rather than timeline issues, my desire is for more accuracy in supposedly factual statements that go beyond common knowledge regarding the real world, whether they be about biographies (e.g. see Evangeline Lilly) or fan slang (e.g., see Peanut butter). However, setting up complete citation-and-reference template system like WP might be overdoing it for now. I'd be happy with just an unmarked external link at the end of factual statement like this [1]. -- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T 02:40, 15 December 2006 (PST)
  • Comment: original research - One confounding factor here is that unlike WP, Lostpedia allows editors to conduct original research. Referencing an episode transcript, or uploading a screencap to cite a statement is easy, as is adding an external link to another source such as news media, podcasts, interviews. As a solution, we may have to create some simple citation templates to cover unusual situations of original research, such as "source from self" or "source from unpublished interview", in the cases that editors have direct access to information. Certainly these are conspicuously less verifiable, but rather than limit information, at least it has been marked so that the reader may evaluate it accordingly. An example of "source from self", for example, is the article for Mark Stitham, having been edited by User:Stitham, the actor himself. ( If I interviewed Stitham over email, then that would be the unpublished interview template.) The same goes for the article Speaker, or my own summary of events at Sunset on the Beach. -- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T 12:59, 5 February 2007 (PST)

Formatting of Lost episode titles

I've noticed recent efforts along the lines of formatting Lost episode titles, and wanted to start a discussion in the MoS-in-progress before significant effort is spent along these lines.

Unlike the formatting of the title "Lost", Lostpedia has actually been consistent in the formatting of episode titles. Lostpedia has precedents that are different from WP, so sticking to WP MoS guidelines prescriptively does not make sense. In this case, LP is a Lost-specific wiki, so MoS-exceptions for frequently-used Lost content make sense. The use of double quotations for episode titles is currently a proposal from some users (e.g., Robert KS).

IMO this MoS specification will create more inconsistency in LP. Cosmetically, it's cluttering, especially as the majority of episode names are wikified, resulting in a nonlink-link-nonlink format. Another difference of LP with WP is that multiple wikification of the same term within the same article is tolerated, exacerbating the cosmetic issue. Wikification normally shouldn't dictate formatting, but in this site, for these terms, it's an issue. Practically, such a requirement for formatting these elements causes an undue and unnecessary burden on this particular site.

Because LP is a Lost wiki, and because episode titles are of core importance, I propose that episode titles not be specially formatted, except by wikification. Alternatively, I would prefer italicization to double quotes or underlining. Italicization has the merit that any inconsistency in implementing this policy is not as visually jarring as it would be for double quotes.

The only exception I would make is for the punctuation-only episode title, which would otherwise be confusing for other reasons: "?".

(Sidebar: in most cases the most frequent items of use are the ones that need to be streamlined with exceptions: In the English language, these include conjunctions, and irregular conjugations for our most frequently used verbs.)

-- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T23:57, 12 December 2006 (PST)
  • Note: I just spoke with Robert KS, and I want to re-emphasize that I think the hard work he is doing in LP and this MoS article are great, and I think he is great. Just so that's clear =) . I just wanted to start a dialog, and noticed that he had made many edits along the lines of this issue, so the point was just to clarify where I was coming from with opening this discussion. Again, the use of some formatting for titles is technically correct. If we must use one, I prefer italics. I also present one argument for not using formatting for Lost episode titles, because this is cumbersome because this is a Lost wiki... and it may have undesirable aesthetic results (some arising from partial implementation because it's such a huge task), and separately, arguments that quotes are less preferable than italics.
Along the same lines, we also have inconsistency in the presentation of the title Lost. Should we address this as well? We have LOST, 'LOST', "LOST", "LOST", Lost, 'Lost, "Lost", "Lost", and probably a few more. We're not deciding which one is the "right answer"; we're deciding which one(s) we are using. I am opting for one of the non-capitalized versions.
-- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T12:17, 13 December 2006 (PST)
  • In regards to how to handle Episode title names... I would tend to agree with the comments made in a previous section above, #Italicise titles. In that section, quotes are suggested. Regardless of the choice however, we could centralize/standardize the formatting of the titles using a template. I went ahead and made a template just now to demonstrate this: e.g., {{ep|1x07}} will automatically translate to: "The Moth". (I only added the boldness to emphasize how this worked). {{ep|3x06}} = "I Do", {{ep|2x11}} = "The Hunting Party", etc.--Dagg 13:18, 13 December 2006 (PST)
  • The template is a great idea. Standardizing the use of this template across editors, when episode titles are such a frequent item (in old and new articles) may be difficult.
I also wanted to reiterate the cosmetic notion, with respect to how frequently episode titles are used. Normally I too would strictly follow Strunk & White; with the note on italics vs. quotes, there is no doubt that the use of quotations are correct. My reasons for making an exception are pragmatic and wiki-specific (i.e., Lost episodes in a Lost wiki merit an exception). I provide examples below to illustrate cases where I believe the use of quotes (for this element on this wiki) would be inconsistent, a cosmetic issue, and difficult to implement across in a large, constantly-changing wiki. As a new example, my opinion is that quotes don't belong in tables, subheads titles, such as in the following articles which make heavy use of episode titles.
  1. Songs featured in Lost
  2. Airdates of Lost
  3. Episode list
  4. Portal:Transcripts
  5. Timeline:December 2004
  6. Timeline:pre-crash
  7. Lost Season 1 - (subsection titles)
-- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T13:34, 14 December 2006 (PST)
  • Re: Having ep titles in quotation marks- This is not such a good idea, because how are you supposed to differentiate episode titles (eg. "The Other 48 Days") to actual quotations spoken by characters (eg. "It's every man for himself")? I think it would be better to have something like single apostrophes - ' - instead of quotation marks (ie. 'The Other 48 Days'). --SilvaStorm
  • Capitalization would be one way to differentiate these, but I've seen traditional news sources sometimes putting 'Lost' in single quotes. -- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T 02:32, 15 December 2006 (PST)
  • If this were to come to a vote, I would have to vote to extend the off-Lostpedia-standard to Lostpedia: Use quotation marks around episode titles. I personally agree with the Wikipedia guideline. Regarding people getting confused about "quotes", versus "episodes": do you have this same argument with the standard used on Wikipedia?--Dagg 09:28, 15 December 2006 (PST)
  • NOTE: I've merged this subhead (beginning with silvastorm's comments) with the main discussion thread of episode name formatting, if that sounds fine with everyone. -- C¯ _Santa_ ¯T 13:30, 15 December 2006 (PST)
  • I think this is not a convention yet agreed to on lostpedia, and so I took it out of the naming conventions rules section until we can come to a better consensus. I personally think italics look better, and since the majority of articles appear to be handling it that way over quotes, I think we should use that as the standard; there is no one "episodes are like chapters" format that we *have* to follow, and even official ABC sources often italicize epis, so I don't see why we can't. I do disagree with Santa that we should have no convention, though; because I think things look nicer when you have one standard (whether quotes or italics, on all pages). I say we put it to a vote. --PandoraX 07:32, 21 December 2006 (PST)
    • I personally think quotes look better, because it is a standard used by most professional-looking reference sites I have seen. Some non-encyclopedia sources italicize the episode titles, but I like to think of Lostpedia as an "encyclopedia" that follows standards of encyclopedias. For me, it boils down to: which is proper when citing an episode?: 
 "Deus Ex Machina." Lost. No. 1x19.
 "War Against Iraq Begins."  Nightline. 16 Jan. 1991.

or: 

 Deus Ex Machina. Lost. No. 1x19.
 War Against Iraq Begins.  Nightline. 16 Jan. 1991.

That being said, I'll be happy to go along with the consensus. --Dagg 07:59, 21 December 2006 (PST)

  • I'm going to change my vote now. I was under the impression that more pages had the italics already, and that would just be the easier way to go with standardizing changes. Having looked at more pages lately and making note of this, it appears to actually be a pretty good split, with a small majority actually with quotes. To me, it doesn't make a huge difference except I'd like to stick with one or another, so I'm going to put my vote with quotes. --PandoraX 07:32, 22 December 2006 (PST)

How should episode titles be handled?

Italics (i.e. Confidence Man)

"Quotes" (i.e. "Confidence Man")

  • Refer to my argument above.--Dagg 07:59, 21 December 2006 (PST)
  • Vote change, see above. --PandoraX 07:32, 21 December 2006 (PST)
  • Lost is the book; episodes are its chapters. Or, Lost is the album; episodes are its songs. Robert K S 07:30, 2 January 2007 (PST)

Either--No standard/convention

Retrieved from "http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Lostpedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_1"