Style Guide

This is the set of standards for designing and writing articles on Audio-Drama.com.

Audio-Drama.com is a wiki encyclopedia devoted to all things related to audio drama as it relates to:

• Listening to audio drama
• Creating audio drama
• Purchasing or collecting audio drama
• The history or cultural significance of audio drama

Any new article should be of interest to a person who actively enjoys, creates, or wants to learn about audio drama. Proper articles could include:

• Websites that have audio drama freely available to listen to
• Websites that have audio drama available for purchase
• Websites that have articles about audio drama
• Websites that offer resources for creating audio drama, which could include:
  • Music and sound effects, either freely available or for purchase
  • Sizable directories of voice actors, either for hire or on a volunteer basis
  • Websites that might offer a valuable resource for voice acting, such as a database of different accents
  • This would not include generic hardware or services, such as sites that sell microphones or sound recording studios, but could include websites with articles on how to build your own personal sound studio or the proper setup of recording equipment

Articles that are not appropriate:

• Websites for individual voice actors, writers, or producers, unless the listed website also includes audio drama available to listen to, resources for creating audio drama, or detailed articles about audio drama.
• Pages of links. Audio-Drama.com is endeavoring to be a comprehensive listing of links to audio drama-related sites. Any sites that would be listed in a listing of links should be entered individually into their own articles. If you discover a large listing of links that you do not wish to enter individually, you can forward the main website link to the administrator of this site.
• Links to individual audiobook titles on online stores, such as Amazon, Audible, or others.
• Online stores that redirect to other online stores. Only the actual stores that sell audio drama should be listed.

Audio-Drama.com is intended to be a directory of websites where people can access information about audio drama. Every article should act as a reference to another website and any information or audio drama productions featured on that website. If a website hosts multiple audio drama productions, list all of those shows on the website's article, rather than creating a new article for each individual show.

Articles about audio drama can be about both fiction and non-fiction, just as long as the actual content is that of a story. Audio documentaries and personal monologues are acceptable, while things like poetry and round table discussion podcasts that do not also include audio drama would not be acceptable.

The best way to understand what constitutes a good article is to read some of the current articles, but don't be afraid to enter something new. The more content the better!

Anyone can read the information on this site, but you must be a registered user and logged in to create and edit articles. Once you are logged in, you will have access to the “Create an article” link on the sidebar, under the Interaction heading. Once you are on the “Create an article” page, you must select the letter of the alphabet that the new article begins with (known as the namespace), type the name of the new article, and press the “Add Page” button.

The page name will be used to create the actual URL for the new article. This places certain restrictions on the page name. When creating a new page, please keep the following in mind:

• The name of the page will be listed by its first headline name — the heading “Website Name” in the new page template — rather than the actual name that you enter for the new page. This allows pages to be listed alphabetically, while still allowing for the full names to be listed. This will be easier to understand as you read the rest of the guidelines.
• Do not start the new page name with the words “A”, “An”, or “The”. You can use these words in the first headline and they will appear in the listings with them.
• Most punctuation marks, with some exceptions listed below, are stripped from the page name when created. Using punctuation marks can cause errors in the page's URL, so please remove them from the page name.
  • Remove any apostrophes (') from the page name.
  • Remove any quotations marks (“) from the page name.
  • Remove any slashes (/) from the page name.
  • Remove any colons (:) or semicolons (;) from the page name.
  • Remove any question marks (?) or exclamation marks (!) from the page name.
  • Remove any parentheses (()) from the page name.
  • Any ampersands (&) should be replaced by the word “and”.
  • Periods (.) are fine.
  • Dashes (-) are fine.
  • Periods and dashes at the very end of a page name will be stripped from the name.
  • Most other non-alphanumeric characters will be stripped from a page name, so it is best to remove them when entering the page name.
• Page names are created in all lowercase letters in the URL. You cannot create more than one page with the same name, but using different sentence cases.
• If the name of the new page is a person's name please select the namespace of the person's last name.
• A website name that begins with a number should be placed in whatever letter that number starts with. For example, if a website's name starts of with the number 9, then that website's article should be created in the “N” namespace.

If you make an error when creating a new page name, press the Cancel button and begin again. If you notice an error in a page name that has already been created, contact the administrator of this site. Page names can be altered without affecting the article's contents.

If a writer only has one audiobook title available, the article should be created with the name of that one title. If a writer has a number of audiobooks available, the article should be created under that writer's name.

If you want to create a new article, but the website you wish to link to has the same name as another article, follow these steps:

• When creating the page name, add a number in parenthesis at the end of the name. The number will depend on how many other websites with the same name already have articles. For instance, if there is one website with the same name, add a (2) to the page name. If there are three websites with the same name, add a (4) to the page name.
• Also add the number in parenthesis to the article's main heading.
• In the description, just after the website's name in bold, add this footnote: ((There are multiple websites with this name.))

See the following articles as examples:
old_time_radio_westerns_1
old_time_radio_westerns_2

When you create a new article, you will be presented with the following new page template:

====== Enter the website name here ======

===== Homepage =====
  * Website: [[http://www.URL.com/]]

===== Description =====
Enter the website description here.

===== Titles =====

==== Title 1 ====
Enter the first title description here.

==== Title 2 ====
Enter the second title description here.

==== Title 3 ====
Enter the third title description here, and so on...

===== Additional Links =====
  * [[http://www.URL.com/|Link Name]]
  * [[http://www.URL.com/|Link Name]]

{{tag>}}

This is the headline for the new article and it is how it will be listed. Unlike the page name, you can type any name into this field. For example, if you were creating a new page for a website called The Audio Comedy/Drama & “Things” Page: Just The Best!, you would do the following:

• On the main page, you would select the “a” namespace from the left-hand drop-down list.
• You would type Audio Comedy Drama and Things Page Just The Best as the name. This removes any unacceptable non-alphanumeric characters and will ensure that it is listed in alphabetical order under the “a” namespace.
• When you create the new page and see the new page template, you could type The Audio Comedy/Drama & “Things” Page: Just The Best! into the “Website Name” field. It will still retain all the alphabetical properties of the page name that you entered, but will be listed by this name, including all of the non-alphanumeric characters that were not acceptable for the URL name.

This is where you enter the URL for the website that you are writing the new article about. Please keep the following in mind when entering the URL:

• Just enter the URL into the http://www.URL.com/ field between the double set of brackets. Do not remove the bullet point or the “Website:” heading.
• While it is possible to have separate text from the actual URL — and this is actually encouraged for most other links — please just enter the raw URL into this field.
• For consistency's sake, include the http:// portion of the URL.
• If the website has or could have a www in its URL, please use it in this field.
• Unless there is a specific reason not to, type the website's main homepage URL. Even if the website redirects you to another page, try to type the shortest, most simple URL. For example, if the website www.example.com redirected viewers to www.example.com/main/index.html you should still enter the URL as http://www.example.com. However, if the audio drama portion is only a small section of the overall site, you could use a link that points directly to that content.

Enter the website's description here. This is the main portion of the article.

• Keep the article's text original. Do not plagiarize text from other sources. Some similarities between your article and the original source is acceptable, but if you are quoting a large section of text from another source, please use the <blockquote> tag or the blockquote button in the editing toolbar.
• The tone should be encyclopedic. Try to keep the language neutral and non-biased. Do not write in the first person or include any personal opinions. It might be tempting to use phrases like “the best place for audio drama!” or “the number one audio drama on the internet!” but avoid any such descriptions. Articles should simply describe the contents of a website and let any readers form their own opinions. Try to keep the language as matter-of-fact as possible.
• The first instance of website's name, as it is listed in the articles main headline, is listed in bold text. See the Formatting section below for more formatting rules.

This section is only used if the website has two or more specific titles or series that require detailed descriptions. In this section, leave the ===== Titles ===== headline as it is and insert the titles being described into the ==== Title 1 ====, ==== Title 2 ====, and ==== Title 3 ==== headline, or as few or as many that are required. If the website does not have any specific titles that require a description, then just delete this portion. Do not leave this as-is if it is not needed.

Any additional links should be directly related to the featured website. Unless there is a specific reason to do so, do not list links to different portions of the website. Any additional links should be directly related to listening to audio drama or contain valuable information not included on the main homepage link. For example, RSS feeds and iTunes links are acceptable, but links to Facebook and Twitter pages are not, unless they contain important information. The philosophy behind this is that each article should contain direct information about listening to or learning about audio drama. If a person wants to become a fan or follow a website, he or she can do that via the actual website. Here are some standard examples and their naming conventions:

• RSS feed
• iTunes link
• SoundCloud page
• Blog (This should be an external blog that is directly related to the website.)

Unlike the Homepage field, these links should use alternative text to describe the link, rather than just the raw URL. Also, the order of the most common types of links is (if they exist, and on a title-by-title basis): RSS feed first, iTunes link second, and other types after these.

Tags are used to categorize articles. There is a grid of check boxes under the main text area showing all of the tags. Select all categories that apply to the article. For consistency's sake, please keep tags in alphabetical order.

Avoid using redundant tags. For instance, an article marked with the old time radio tag would not require the full cast or sound effects tag, since almost all old time radio shows were full cast with sound effects. Another example is any article marked with the streaming tag would not need the free tag.

It is possible to manually write new tags into the tag field, but please refrain from creating new tags. Every tag that is created will appear under the main text area. If there are too many tags then the edit window will become unwieldy. Discuss any possible new tags with the administrator of this site and they may be added if the new category merits its own tag.

The following is a list of approved tags, and the conditions for which they are appropriate:

Audio-Drama.com allows any registered user to edit any article.

• In order to avoid conflicts, only one person can edit an article at a time. When one person is editing, that page is “locked” to any other edits. Other people can still read the article, but not edit it. A page becomes unlocked after the current editor either saves the changes or cancels them. To insure that a page does not become locked for an extensive amount of time, pages will become unlocked after fifteen minutes of inactivity. If you are editing a page and do not save or cancel any changes for more than fourteen minutes, you will see a pop-up message alerting you to the fact that the page will become unlocked in one minute. To reset the lock timer, you can just hit the Preview button and resume editing.

• The first instance of website's name, as it is listed in the articles main headline, is listed in bold text. This is the only text that should be in bold.
• Any series name or proper title should be in italics.
• Any individual episode of a series should be in quotations marks.
• Nothing should be underlined. Underlining text might make it seem like a link.
• Use plain apostrophes and quotations marks. If you are cutting and pasting text from another source, such as a word processor, that might reformat these characters into their “fancy” versions, it is not a 100% guarantee that they will render correctly on all browsers. This wiki will automatically display normal quotation marks as the fancier variety.
• Likewise, use three individual periods for an ellipsis. As with quotation marks, the one-character ellipsis mark may not render correctly on all browsers and this wiki will automatically render normal ellipses as one character.
• See Formatting Syntax for other types of formatting syntax, such as lists, footnotes, and special characters.
• Even though this wiki supports the following elements, please avoid using:
  • Images
  • Tables
  • Embedded HTML
  • Emoticons

Audio-Drama.com was created and is maintained by an American. That said, there is no hard rule against other variants of the English language. The administrator endeavors to spell-check entries, and in doing so, uses an American browser-based dictionary. This might result in a properly-spelled British English word being rewritten as an American English language word. This also applies to grammar, abbreviations, and other structures of language. Hopefully, this should be a rare occurrence. If, for some reason, there is a dispute with no clearly correct rule, the decision would most likely be to use the American English format.

Audio-Drama.com accepts links to all appropriate audio drama websites in any language. If you would like to create an article for a website in a language other than English, include the non-english tag with the article. Also, in order to make sure that each article is appropriate, please include an English translation for each header and block of descriptive text. For example, an article that links to a Spanish-language audio drama would have something like this for the description portion:

===== Description/Descripción =====
This is the descriptive text for the article.

Este es el texto descriptivo para el artículo.

The following is a list of typographical conventions that should be used consistently throughout this wiki. Variations to these conventions could be edited to make them adhere to these rules.

• Only use one space after a sentence. Double-spacing after a sentence is a holdover from using manual typewriters and is no longer applicable in modern typesetting. This wiki automatically renders double spaces as single spaces.
• Use the serial comma, which is a comma that precedes the conjunction before the final item in a list of three or more items. For example: Let's listen to the adventures of Arthur, Ford, and Marvin.

Here is a list of words and their proper spellings and formats. These rules do not apply to proper names or titles, but in all other instances, please adhere to these conventions.

• audio drama
• audiobook
• fan fiction
• fan-made
• fan-produced
• full cast
• old time radio (do not use OTR or any other abbreviation)
• pre-production
• role-playing
• science fiction (do not use sci-fi or any other abbreviation)
• sound effects (do not use sound FX or any other abbreviation)
• spoken word
• superhero
• voice acting
• voice-over

Any article can be deleted by editing the article, removing all of the text from it, and saving the article. Please do not delete an article without a good reason. If you think an article has been erroneously deleted, you can restore it by going back to the article's URL page, clicking on the Old revisions button, selecting the revision you would like to restore, and saving the page.

If an article has a link to website that is down, mark the article with the dead_link tag and post the following code to the very top of the article:

<box|**Dead Link**>
This link was reported dead on (enter the date).
</box>

This will create a banner at the very top of the article. The text can feature any information that you would like to include. Including the date that it was discovered to be dead would be helpful.

Sometimes a website is only temporarily down, so do not delete the article right away. Articles that have had the dead_link tag for a significant amount of time may eventually be deleted.