Help:Writing an article about a person

The YSTV History Wiki is naturally less serious and strict about the format and style in which articles should be written compared to Wikipedia, (compare David Crossley's first-person article to Thomas Schubert's more recent Wikipedia-style entry) but it can be helpful to keep the basic structure in mind.

Let's use Schubert's as an example. His page uses the {{YSTV Member}} template. You can see what this looks like to the left, along with the documentation for it below.

Writing an article about a person
Years Active	– Last year member was active (optional)
Positions Held	Positions member has held on comittee (separate multiple items with commas use plain text not links) (optional)
FLOPPYs Won:	List of FLOPPY Awards member has won (separate multiple items with commas) (optional)
Hometown	Member's home town (optional)
Current Location	Member's current location (optional)
Allegiance	The team to which a member holds allegiance (extremely optional, for the benefit of Tape Team's members)
Looks like	The physical appearance of the member (extremely optional, for the sake of describing Thomas Schubert's youthful looks)

Usage

Use in all pages for YSTV members in their articles. If you are writing a joke article, consider using {{Joke Member}} by replacing the first line in the below template:

{{YSTV Member
| first name = First name
| last name = Last name
| picturefile = Image File Name (optional)
| picturecaption = Image caption (optional)
| picturesize = Picture size (default 200px)
| active from = First year member was active (optional) (Please use the academic year a person started, e.g. if a person joined in March, write the year it would have been the previous September.)
| active until = Last year member was active (optional)
| positions = Positions member has held on comittee (separate multiple items with commas, use plain text, not links) (optional)
| floppys = List of [[FLOPPYs|FLOPPY Awards]] member has won (separate multiple items with commas) (optional)
| hometown = Member's home town (optional)
| current location = Member's current location (optional)
| current occupation = Members's current occupation (optional)
| website url = URL of member's homepage (optional)
| degrees = The degrees the member holds. (optional)
| allegiance = The team to which a member holds allegiance (extremely optional, for the benefit of Tape Team's members)
| appearance = The physical appearance of the member (extremely optional, for the sake of describing Thomas Schubert's youthful looks)
}}

Layout

There is no strict layout for a page about a person, just include sections for relevant information about the person. Most people should, in theory, have a section for all the productions they were on, a small bio and other things they achieved whilst at YSTV. If your 'About' subheading is at the top of the page with no text above it, consider removing it, as subheadings at the very top of the page often make little sense.

Feel free to add sections that are there purely for fun and entertainment, but please do be aware that the wiki is publicly visible, and may show up high in search engine results for a person's name. Post-university, when looking for work, potential employers may stumble across the page. Please make sure you are happy with the page about yourself, and don't add anything to someone else's page if you wouldn't be happy with someone adding something similar about yourself.

Additional tid-bits

The useability of the wiki is improved by interlinking pages. In theory, when one page links to a second page, that second page should have a link on it somewhere back to the first page. To find out what pages link to another page you can use Special:WhatLinksHere