Firefly (TV series)/Format

From Wikiquote

Firefly uses a common Wikiquote TV-show formatting scheme that provides unambiguous attribution of quotes in a dialog format, includes Wikipedia links to character pages, and organizes all quotes in chronological order, grouped by episode. The additional overhead of maintaining such organization can be intimidating for new editors, or even regular wiki editors who are used to one-line quotes, often without attribution.

This format page describes the formatting practices and provides text that allows editors to copy-and-paste format elements into the main article. It also describes how and where to add new quotes, especially if one doesn't know where the quote belongs.

Contents 1 Organization 2 Basic quote formatting 3 Shortcuts 4 What quotes to add 5 Verifying quotes 6 Character list

[edit] Organization

For maximum information content and readability, all quotes are organized by episode and listed in the order they appear within each episode. Since many editors may not know where a quote belongs, the following guidelines are provided:

1. If you don't know which episode a quote belongs to, add it to the end of the Unknown episode section.
2. If you know the episode, but are not sure when it occurs within the episode, add it to the end of the episode's section.

Other editors that monitor this page frequently will review the new quotes and move them into the correct position.

[edit] Basic quote formatting

MediaWiki, the software used to operate Wikiquote, does not provide convenient formatting for dialog. Many variations of HTML and wiki markup have been tested, but the following guidelines used on this page have achieved considerable popularity. (NOTE: These guidelines can be overwhelming in their entirety. See Shortcuts below on how to get started.)

• Each block of dialog is separated by the following HTML divider:

  <hr width="50%"/>

  This divider separates dialog blocks with a half-page-width horizontal line that distiguishes the blocks from the full-page-width lines that mark section headings.

• Each dialog segment consists of one or more text lines in the following format:

  :''[Mal confronts Niska's henchman in the cargo hold.]''

  :'''Mal''': This is my part of the dialog.

  :'''Niska Henchman''': ''[quietly]'' And this is my response.

  This is displayed by Wikiquote like so:

  [Mal confronts Niska's henchman in the cargo hold.]

  Mal: This is my part of the dialog.

  Niska Henchman: [quietly] And this is my response.

  Note the following:

  • Each line is indented by a colon (:). This is required to prevent multiple lines from being combined by the wiki software.
  • Each character's name is bolded by surrounding it with three apostrophes (''').
  • Each character name is fully capitalized (i.e., uppercase every first letter) and is followed by a colon (:) outside the bolding.
  • Optional context lines are italicized by surrounding them with two apostrophes (''). The text itself is surrounded by [brackets]. They should be complete sentences whenever possible. Context lines do not describe what the quotes are about, but rather describe the setting. They should be short, and be used sparingly. In general, the quotes should speak for themselves.
  • Optional stage directions (like [quietly]) are like context lines, except they should be as short as possible and are never complete sentences. They are used to indicate a speaking style or gesture that is crucial to understanding the quote.

• Regular characters and some recurring characters may have embedded Wikipedia links, so readers can click on them to read the corresponding Wikipedia articles. They look like this while editing:

  :'''[[w:Wash (Firefly)|Wash]]''': Hello?

  and look like this when displayed by Wikiquote:

  Wash: Hello?

  They should only be used for the first quote in which the character appears in each episode, to reduce the formatting effort. See Character list below for a copy-and-pasteable list of common characters.

[edit] Shortcuts

The most important element of Wikiquote articles is, of course, the quotes themselves. If you are just getting started contributing to these highly formatted quote pages, or you feel it's too much work, you can add a quote or dialog segment with only a slight amount of formatting and no context or stage directions:

:Mal: This is my part of the dialog.

:Niska Henchman: And this is my response.

which will look like this:

Mal: This is my part of the dialog.

Niska Henchman: And this is my response.

In additional to the quoted text, this minimal formatting ensures that each dialog line is on a separate physical line, and each line is attributed to a character. The editors who regularly monitor this article can add the rest of the formatting at a later date. But we encourage you to learn the basic rules as you get comfortable, and use the character-list text to provide readers with links to the characters' Wikipedia articles.

[edit] What quotes to add

The purpose of Wikiquote is to provide quotes that are memorable as presented in text form on a page. It cannot do justice to quotes that are interesting because of accompanying visual imagery or sounds that cannot be briefly and usefully described. It is also not a source for full transcriptions of programs or even of entire scenes. (The former is the province of fan sites; both it and the latter are technically copyright violations, which Wikiquote does not accept.) Please bear in mind when considering adding a quote whether the quote would be interesting to someone who has never seen the show, and has no means to see it. In other words, make sure the quote's "interest factor" can be demonstrated by the quote itself, with at most only a little contextual information. One exception may be notorious one-line or similarly short quotes that somehow exemplify the show itself, like a motto or a catch phrase. Consider, in this case, if someone might think of an odd expression (like "Hi-keeba!") and wonder where it comes from (Mystery Science Theater 3000, taken from Women of the Prehistoric Planet).

[edit] Verifying quotes

Editors providing quotes for TV shows and films should note that the vast majority of quote websites are notoriously inaccurate. Even well-respected sources like IMDb are plagued with quotes that people add as they remember them, not as they observe and verify by examining the program from which the quotes are taken. Even reviewing the program, one must consider how it may have been edited for telecast or presented in some form other than a canonical version (e.g., edited for time and/or content, deleted scenes from a DVD, alternate endings). And different people may watch the same scene and think they heard different words. Because of this, please be careful about using quotes from sources other than the original program. If there is any dispute about the accuracy of a quote, please bring it up on the talk page of the main article.

[edit] Character list

Below is a set of preformatted character names that can be copied and pasted into quotes to provide full formatting and linking to Wikipedia articles. They are separated into regular and recurring characters.

REGULAR CHARACTERS

:'''[[w:Malcolm Reynolds|Mal]]''':

:'''[[w:Zoë (Firefly)|Zoë]]''':

:'''[[w:Wash (Firefly)|Wash]]''':

:'''[[w:Inara Serra|Inara]]''':

:'''[[w:Kaylee Frye|Kaylee]]''':

:'''[[w:Jayne Cobb|Jayne]]''':

:'''[[w:Simon Tam|Simon]]''':

:'''[[w:River Tam|River]]''':

:'''[[w:Book (Firefly)|Book]]''':

RECURRING CHARACTERS

:'''[[w:Badger (Firefly)|Badger]]''':

:'''[[w:Adelei Niska|Niska]]''':

:'''[[w:Saffron (Firefly)|Saffron]]''':

As mentioned above in Basic quote formatting, these fully linked character attributions should only be used once per episode for each character, whenever the quoted character first enters the dialog. (If you find yourself adding a quote before the first dialog segment in an episode, you can add the fully linked version or not if you wish. Someone will likely come along and tweak it if necessary.)