This page is deprecated and slated for deletion This policy has been superceded by the Manual of Style (for content and style issues) and AHS:About (for site policy issues). The ethos portions have been moved to Tao of AHS Wiki. The English grammar clarifications have been moved to AHS:ENGLISH.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to this Wiki; you're a great team to work with! Working together has grown the site by leaps and bounds since the start. So that we can work together on a polished, consistent, and complete project, here are some guidelines.

It is expected that this document will be replaced, in large part, by the Manual of Style.

Do's Edit

• Feel free to add pages, especially where there are red links for missing pages.
• Feel free to supplement stub articles.
• Be aware that while AHS is (by definition) an American show, the fans and contributors may not be. You may see unfamiliar terms, grammar, and spelling variants from all over the English speaking world. As a counterpoint, these may be altered to terms more familiar to Americans. For example: "Ginger" hair is far less commonly used in the US than "red", and may be changed accordingly for the broadest audience.
• Use the specialized templates where appropriate. This site uses Infobox character and Infobox episode extensively instead of plain Infoboxes on those types of pages. Read the documentation: it explains a lot.
• Be aware of the way some pages are structured. Some page types have special guidelines that we like to keep consistent. If they're in a Category, the Category may have a link to the preferred format.
• If you see an empty heading, your instinct should be "fill it", not "delete it". Trust me on this.
• Clean up the articles marked for cleanup. This doesn't mean blanking everything that's there, just removing what is repeated or mistyped.
• Keep your Source clean. (If you're confident enough to be using Template tags and you're not using Source Mode to edit 90%+ of the time, shame on you.) Only put {{Stub}}, {{Delete}}, {{Underconstruction}}, {{Merge}} at the top of the page, on their own lines.
• Get comfortable with internal and Interwiki links. They're a lot nicer to manage than external links, and almost always end up in the right place.
• Talk amongst yourselves! The comments section is a great place to suggest changes, especially if you're not sure about changing something yourself.
• Breathe and remember this is a hobby.

Don'ts Edit

• Don't alter the main launch page (or other significant pages) without clearing it with an admin.
• Don't move pages without a good reason and discussion. If you are clear to move a page, please be sure to leave behind a redirect so that we don't get broken links.
• Don't bulk delete someone else's work. Admins notice this sort of thing, and you may find your changes reversed. And Tate will take you into the basement if I tell him to.
• If you're citing an outside source, like Wikipedia or IMDB, don't just copy and paste. Attribution is good policy. Use <ref>Reference</ref> and <references /> makes this into automatic footnotes.
• DON'T change the templates. I will personally feed you to Infantata.
• Don't alter an article that is marked "Under construction". Someone is taking their time to contribute and it is taking longer than expected. Why don't you wait and see what they've come up with? You can edit when they're done or approved by an admin.
• Pretty please, no more Slideshows or Galleries.
• If all you're going to do is make a new page from a red link, leave a sentence or two, mark it {{stub}}, and walk away: don't. Wait until you have more time to devote to that page.
• DON'T take it personally if an admin rolls back your changes. There's usually a good reason. And that reason is usually "you removed somebody else's work and replaced it with something less worthy" or "you broke something beautiful".
• DON'T insult, berate, harrass, or otherwise act on dark impulses against another user. Not only will you be banned and blocked, you may be prosecuted and / or sent to live with Constance.

Style and Content Edit

• Media for characters (and eventually for episodes, particularly if we end up with screen caps): Thumbnails only on main pages. One or two videos at most on main pages. If there's more than that, make and link a Media subpage.
• Summary pages provide a topical overview of one or more pages. Often, these can be replaced with content in a Category page. If not, they should be deployed with caution. A great deal of nuance can be lost, and sometimes the journey through a good story involves reading more than one page for background.
• Some nitpicky grammar rules for English, by the way: You're a character or an actor in (not on) a fiction series or episode. An actor appears on (not in) a news or talk show if they're not playing a role. The series or episode is broadcast (not broadcasted or aired) on a network. They are not "aired", because FX, a cable network, does not go over the airwaves. Digital streams or downloads are similarly "streamed", "distributed", or as a blanket term "broadcast".
• Being an American Horror Story wiki, American English spelling and grammar are generally preferred. However, the new school of thought, even in American English, omits periods from most honorifics and styling. As an example, "Mr" is often used instead of "Mr.", and the like. This is a natural change in language usage.
• In character pages, it is preferable to reference events in <ref> tags than in narrative. Rather than "In Halloween: Part 1, Troy and Bryan threw eggs at the house", it reads more easily as "On one of the nights before Halloween, Troy and Bryan threw eggs at the house.[1]" (where [1] is a ref tag including the episode link). See Citation for more on this.
• Do not put ref tags, links, or anything other than plain text in a heading. Doing so makes the heading impossible to link to. On a related note, headings should be unique on a page. There should not be two === 2011 === headings. In fact, years in Plot sections should be offset by ''', not headings at all.
• Not everyone can see the Infobox. This is especially true of mobile browsers and screen readers. The Infobox should not ever be counted on as the sole source of a piece of information. It's also painfully easy to delete by mistake. When information can reasonably be put into the narrative, like occupation or relatives, it probably should be.

Point of View and Tense Edit

Plot descriptions of episodes are almost always written in the present tense, with the audience "omniscient" point of view. While this may seem unfamiliar for narrative, it reads much better when the episode is experienced "as it is happening". This is true even of flashbacks.

Character pages, on the other hand, are typically written in the past tense.

When editing episodes that have already aired, it is important to not contaminate the Plot with information from the future. That means that, for example, once Rubber Man's identity becomes known in later episodes not to go back and replace his name in Pilot, thereby spoiling the mystery. The exceptions to this are the Raised Questions answers, and Guest Stars (where a "database" of sorts fills in potentially missing information). When in doubt, just don't add future information, period.

Neutral Point of View Edit

Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. In objective articles (Episode Pages, Character and Episode Spoiler Pages, Character Pages, and Production Pages), efforts should be made to maintain that the content is as neutral as possible. Not everyone enjoys or appreciates the series in the same way as the editor.

• Avoid stating opinions as facts. "Evan Peters is an attractive man." is an opinion. "Evan Peters has many admirers." is a fact.
• Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. "Ben Harmon is a successful psychiatrist." is an assertion. That he is a psychiatrist is a fact.
• Avoid presenting uncontested assertions as mere opinion. "The Murder House seems to hold a murderous past." lends undue doubt to something we know to have happened.
• Prefer non-judgmental language. "Tate Langdon is pure evil." is a judgement by moral standards that are not shared by the entire readership.

Verifiability Edit

Verifiability on American Horror Story Wiki is the reader's ability to check cited sources that directly support the information in an article. All objective information in American Horror Story Wiki must be verifiable, but because other policies and guidelines also influence content, verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. Verifiability, and not truth, is one of the fundamental requirements for inclusion in American Horror Story Wiki; truth, of itself, is not a substitute for meeting the verifiability requirement. No matter how convinced you are that something is true, do not add it unless it is verifiable. Information supported by actual broadcast episodes, including captions, are considered implicitly verified when (and only when) the episode is actually broadcast for the first time.

It must be possible to attribute all information in American Horror Story Wiki to reliable, published sources that are appropriate for the content in question. However, in practice it is only necessary to provide inline citations for quotations and for any information that has been challenged or that is likely to be challenged. Appropriate citations guarantee that the information is not original research, and allow readers and editors to check the source material for themselves. Any material that requires a citation but does not have one may be removed. For help on adding citations, see Citing sources. This policy applies to all objective material in the mainspace (Episode Pages, Character and Episode Spoiler Pages, Character Pages, and Production Pages).

In terms of Spoilers and Commentary pages, text and pictures from articles may be copied into the site ONLY IF the work referenced has attribution.

For photos and images, proper licensure and source is expected. Just being "out there on the Internet" does not make a photo free to use on this Wiki!

Original research Edit

The term "original research" (OR) is used on American Horror Story Wiki to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist. This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources. To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented (and as presented).

The prohibition against OR means that all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed. The verifiability policy says that an inline citation to a reliable source must be provided for all quotations, and for anything challenged or likely to be challenged—but a source must exist even for material that is never challenged. That "Paris is the capital of France" needs no source, because no one is likely to object to it and we know that sources exist for it. The statement is attributable, even if not attributed.

Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them or violate their copyrights. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material.

What makes a page (or category) significant? Edit

It's a fact of wiki: Not all pages that do exist, should exist. Some of those articles are marked as stubs, and will always be stubs because there's the sense that there's more to say about the topic than there actually is. Brief pages that provide only a few sentences with no valuable information aren't particularly helpful. Just because a character is named does not mean they should get a page. Finding such a page is like running for your life and finding a dead end alleyway. Characters, in particular, should only get pages if they have significance and / or relevance to plot or main characters. The deciding factor is whether they can reasonably be linked to by more than one page, and whether those links are reciprocal.

Categories Edit

Here's my take on categories: They should only be applied if you can actually say something relevant about all members of the group as a generalization. In the Category:Ghosts example, there are things that can be said about the entirety of the members (the rules and mythology of ghosts in this show's paradigm). The same can't be said of ALL male vs female characters. Ditto main vs recurring vs guest. Over-organization can become an easy compulsion to follow.

Adding categories like "Sex" and "Teen Angst" to a page, 30 at a time, is also not very helpful. Articles are not like blog posts where they require as many tags as possible. The category system was not designed to be used as thematic tags like keywords, and is primarily for housekeeping, article management, and site navigation. The extraneous tags make administration and navigation more difficult.

What it boils down to is: Is adding the additional organization a solution in need of a problem?

See Forum:Character Categories for more on this.

Administrator Rights Edit

At present, Isaac, Laurean, and Izzy are the only admins. At this time this site is too small to really require any additional admins. Actually, if you look at the Help:User access levels#Administrator additional rights admins receive, you might agree that most of the power and glory (that's a joke, since this is a thankless hobby) of being an admin is really nothing compared to what the basic user can accomplish (when you have to rollback a dozen changes on a page, you'll truly appreciate that). In the future, once the site has more content, we may reconsider granting additional rights. I (Isaac) inherited the admin position after the site was abandoned by the founder, and I have had to learn a lot about Wiki editing in under a week. I'm continuing to learn more all the time, and I expect that most of the contributors here are in a similar situation.

Thank you for your time and contributions, and we all look forward to what you have to offer!

Isaac Joseph Fischer