Guidelines for Editors [under construction]

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This will be extended and is not a “must”, this is merely a collection of ideas on how to create and structure articles and information in the database

  1. Plot summaries
    Every movie article should have a little plot summary / synopsis of about 100 words or so, introducing the main plot idea, the main characters and what the movie is all about without going into much detail or giving away interesting clues. It is best to play around with sentence structures to fit as much information as possible into a very small paragraph.

  2. Images
    For DVD/home video covers, we show them at a 200 pixels maximum width but larger versions should be uploaded. Other images: same thing, ideally upload high resolution versions and then scale these down in the articles you want to use them. You can request deletion of images if better quality or different sizes are available to you.

  3. Links
    Every article has a little links heading, where you usually find links to the IMDb or external reviews. Please don’t link to external pages that are commercial or of questionable content (for example bootleg sites). It is always a good idea to link to a fitting forum topic of this forum, if it is related, so that someone who visits the Blindman page on the front page can quickly jump to our Blindman discussion topic here. The goal is to have the Forum and main site quite closely connected.

  4. Texts
    To maintain a high standard, please only post texts that are of sufficient quality in terms of language, grammar, punctuation, whitespace and vocabulary. Please only post texts without any mistakes in them. Ask other editors for peer review if necessary. Use a spell checker.

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  1. DVD/BluRay sub pages
    They have separate headers for countries and include the following information per release: Distributor/company, region code, images format (incl. aspect ratio), audio information (type and languages), extras, amazon link if available, cover image, information on version (cut, uncut, director’s cut, international version, restored/remastered version etc) AND title of the film as on the cover. Last but not least: release date.
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  1. Film review pages

to increase the visual appeal and functionality of a film review page, I suggest the following:
a) have at least one link back to the film’s database page.
b) turn all suitable names, titles and years within the text into wiki links so people can follow up on information (for example if you mention and actor, turn it into a link to the actor’s page in the database)
c) include pictures, at least a poster or lobby card to cut down on the boredom of pure text
d) play around with text formatting. if the film’s title re-occurs in the text, or other titles, why not make them bold or in italics.
e) divide your text into a number of coherent paragraphs, that makes reading easier
f) don’t forget to sign your review, so people know who wrote it. Leel free to link to your own page (the signature button does that for you) or forum profile
g) don’t forget to [[Category:Reviews]] it, and link to it from the film’s database page
h) if your review is in a language other than english, please Category:Yourlanguage it, so it appears listed on the Category:Yourlanguage page
i) does your review have spoilers? include a warning :wink:

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What other aspects should we have some guidelines for? Are these helpful?