The Orville Wiki
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The Orville Wiki

The Manual of Style is the policy for editing The Orville Wiki articles. It is heavily encouraged that all new users read it before contributing.

Purpose

The Orville Wiki serves to provide educational information on the characters, cast, and world of the The Orville. Good writing is best accomplished with clear and consistent language and formatting throughout all of the articles. This Manual's policies were written with the aim to encourage cohesive editing patterns while ensuring articles are easily understood by the reader.

What follows are general guidelines for how pages should be created and maintained. Similar to Wikipedia, if a rule hinders the website or page development, a guideline can be altered or ignored.

Universal etiquette

For all aspects of editing that are universal to all articles on the wiki, regardless of category.

  • The first mention of a page's title within an article must be bolded. Any mention of the title afterwards needs no special style.
  • Any mentioning of previous episodes within must be italicized.
  • Use the official name for an in-universe vessel or spaceship when it first appears in an article, then use its casual name each time afterwards.
    • However, there is a stylistic exception to this rule: you may use the official name again if the ship has not been mentioned after a long time.
  • Official names for in-universe vessels and spaceships are to be italicized as well, their casual names however are not.
    Ex. The USS Orville is usually referred to by its crew members as simply the Orville. The Orville's official name is italicized, but its casual name is not.
  • This is a wiki based on an American television series, and therefore adopts American English rules for all spelling and grammar.
    Ex. Alara Kitan received a medal of honor from Captain Mercer at the end of Command Performance.
    Using the Commonwealth spelling of "honour" would be against this guideline.
  • An article should hyperlink to other pages only once, and preferably the first time a page is mentioned. There are several exceptions:
    • The rule does not apply to templates or lists.
    • You may hyperlink to another page again in exceedingly long articles where the hyperlink may be considered "buried" or easily missed by a reader.
  • Cast members who play unnamed roles should not have Wiki articles. Instead, use a direct link to their IMDb page. Exceptions:
    • Notable or famous cameos.
    • Cast members who become noteworthy due to their connection with the show. This exception should be invoked rarely and only on exceedingly important occasions.
    • This rule does not limit the ability to create a page for a crew member who has also had an unnamed role as an actor, such as Kit Stølen.
    Ex. Adrianne Palicki the actress portraying Kelly Grayson should have her own page, Eddie Davenport who plays Guard #1 in If the Stars Should Appear would have their IMDb linked instead.

Verb tense

  • Generally, in-universe articles must be written in third person and with past tense.
    • However, an episode's synopsis and plot sections are written in present tense.
  • By default, production and other out-of-universe information is written in present tense.
    • However, use past tense for past events and topics that are no longer meaningfully existent.

Article Bodies

Characters

Any pages involving characters in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Quote
  • Introduction
  • History
    • Subsections for important arcs that occurred within the series
      • If the character being edited served within the Planetary Union, write Career instead of History, and place everything before their time in the Union under Early Life.
  • Personality
  • Trivia
  • Appearances
  • Categories

Species

Any pages involving species in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Quote
  • Introduction
  • History
    • Subsections of important milestones for the species evolution
  • Biology
    • Subsections for complex or important aspects of their genome
  • Notable Members
  • Trivia
  • Categories

Planets

Any pages involving locations in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Quote
  • Introduction
  • History
    • Subsections for important milestones
  • Geography
    • Subsections for complex or important aspects of the landscape
  • Culture
    • Subsections for complex or important aspects
  • Trivia
  • Appearances
  • Categories

Vessels

Any pages involving vessels in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Quote
  • Introduction
  • History
    • Episodic subsections in chronological order of debut
  • Description
    • Subsections for complex aspects
  • Design
    • Subsections for complex aspects
  • Personnel
  • Trivia
  • Appearances

Episodes

Any pages involving episodes in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Quote
  • Introduction
  • Plot Synopsis
  • Cast
    • Main Cast
    • Guest Cast
  • Trivia
  • Categories

Cast

Any pages involving the cast in The Orville should be formatted in a specific order:

  • Infobox
  • Introduction
  • Background
  • The Orville
  • Trivia
  • Categories

Miscellaneous

For any pages pertaining The Orville that don't fit into any of the previously explained categories, there is no official uniform policy for formatting and must be created/edited to the highest quality on context alone.

Common sense is heavily encouraged when editing pages on this nature. Format it in a way that follows The Orville Wiki's guiding principle of consistency and cohesion. There will be no degrading pages in obviously unhelpful ways for no reason other than this Manual doesn't specifically inhibit said actions.

Images

Images are a very important aspect of articles, as they're one of the only visual mediums a reader has instant access to which illustrates the subject in question.

  • Due to The Orville Wiki's status as an educational platform for the Fox television series of the same name, most (if not all) images used on articles should be protected by United States Fair use laws.
  • Every article should have at least one image of the article's subject sized to at least 250px, and at most 750px.
  • Images must be of clear quality enough to indubitably recognize what is being shown. This likely means any images that are taken from cameras or mobile devices of the show playing through a computer or television set will be omitted.
  • Any pictures added to the articles must be promotional material from Fox or stills from episodes. Fan-made images on the pages are not accepted.
    • Cast and Crew are an exception to this rule. While fan-made content is still not allowed, their images obviously don't need to be Orville related. In that case use official pictures from photo shoots, Comic Con panels, or interviews.
  • Gifs are allowed to be used within articles, however, we do prefer images for most cases. If a gif works very well in a certain context or the editor wishes to illustrate something that they can't find an image for, using a gif is allowed.
    • Gifs should not be used as the main image inside Infoboxes under any circumstances.

Templates

There are many different templates used throughout The Orville Wiki with varying meanings and effects.

  • Maintenance templates such Stub or Delete must be placed at the top of the article above all the content regardless of formatting etiquette. When a page is need of special attention from the community or staff it has to be seen with as much ease as possible.
  • Character, vessels, species, and other non-maintenance related templates should also be placed at the top of their respective articles, no exceptions.
  • It is not required that every field in the template be filled in, especially if said information has not been revealed in the series. The only requirement is that at least two fields are placed so that the template itself is actually visible to readers. No matter of how poorly known a concept is, there should be enough information to fill that out.

Categories

Categories on a surface might seem like a minor aspect of wiki development; but serve the important role of recommending other Orville related pages to users and maintaining content on website.

  • Every article must have at least one category. This is no exception to this. If an article exists on The Orville Wiki there must be at the bare minimum one category it can be placed into and connected to other articles.
  • By extension, no categories on the Wiki should lead to "dead ends"; every category must belong to at least one parent category, up to the root.
    Ex. The category Characters is connected to the category Content which is connected to the category Browse which is connected to the The Orville Wiki and so on.
  • Though category creation is not directly prohibited, it is still heavily encouraged for users to only create new ones if the category doesn't exist anywhere on the wiki and is largely warranted. Like most other nebulous ideas presented in this Manual, this is expected to be handled on a case to case basis.
  • Only certain species are given their own category (namely those with multiple articles that apply to their artifacts or cultures, or several characters of that species have articles). A good rule of thumb to follow is if a species has more than three named characters it likely has or warrants its own category.
    Ex. As of Season 1, Bortus, Klyden, and Topa are all Moclans who appear in the series. Therefore, they have their own category. On the other hand, Isaac is the only Kaylon to appear in the series and is therefore not given a category for his species.

Trivia

Trivia is a section of every article dedicated to small, interesting, and quick bits of information on the page's subject.

  • Any information added to the trivia section must be truly worth noting. Content that is already easily identifiable or unimportant to the character does not constitute as valid trivia and should not be added.
    Ex. John LaMarr likes soda is not trivia, as it's far too basic of a claim to deserve special attention. On the other hand Kelly Grayson having impressive hand-to-hand fighting experience based on the fact she is able to defeat Pria Lavesque in combat is worth noting, as that is uniquely relevant to the character and connects directly into an episode plot.
  • Do not mention points already addressed within the article. Trivia is meant for information that is not always possible to rely within the body paragraphs, not to repeat something already established.
  • Only post trivia relevant to the page it is being written on.
    Ex. Gordon Malloy was born on Earth, one of the worlds within the Planetary Union is not directly related to the article's subject and therefore should not be trivia.
  • Trivia should not exceed more than two sentences. If more information is necessary or an alternative point of view is to be discussed, put everything onto an addendum connected to the original trivia point in question.

Quotes

Quotes are presented near the top of most pages and are meant to set the tone for whatever is being discussed. Nonetheless, there are some standards that must be met in order for quotes to feel relevant and not intrusive to the pages.

  • The quotes themselves need to be actually relevant to the article in which they are posted on. How that is determined depends, either a quote from the subject in question or about the subject from a third party can all be recognized as valid.
  • For pages dedicate to in-universe content, quotes must be something said within the series. Out of universe dialogue or comments from cast, crew or production will not be counted as a valid quote.
    • This is not the case with out of universe content.
  • All quotes must be at least one full sentence and sensible even when out of context.
    Ex. Having Claire Finn's quote be "Yes, sir, I am. Welcome aboard." would not be acceptable. Even though she did say that quote in Old Wounds and it is a full sentence, it doesn't illustrate Claire's character nor does it make sense without understanding Ed Mercer's beforehand comments.

Conjecture and Bias

The Orville Wiki is designed to provide objective and canon information on all of its content. For that reason speculation, bias and conjecture are strictly prohibited, in some ways more extremely than others.

  • All articles are expected to be written from a Neutral Point of View. The Orville is a television series that often deals with controversial ideas that have no definitive right or wrong answers. The Wiki articles must convey the ambiguity of the situation fairly by showcasing both sides in the most unbiased and reasonable ways possible.
  • Most information on The Orville Wiki is expected to be sourced. Instead of simply writing an episode title next to a point, users are to create an official citation section on the page and instead leave foot notes that redirect to the previously mentioned citations section. Any information, sourced or not, is still open to scrutiny from other members of the community.
  • When writing pages everything must be referred to in the Third Person. First person pronouns such as "you", "I", "we", etc, are too personalized and damage the objective tone that The Orville Wiki strive to illustrate.
  • Due to the general scope of The Orville universe compared to the amount of available or released information, exceptions occasionally have to be made in regards to speculation. One prime example of when speculation is justified is in the case of naming. Every article needs to be called something, and due to The Orville not always providing definitive names for certain characters, planets, species, etc, limited speculation is necessary in those cases when creating articles.
    • There will sometimes be other situations in which limited speculation may be needed to improve a Wiki page. As with other situations of this nature, it will be handled on a case to case basis.
  • Trivia is allowed to be of a somewhat speculative nature. However, the trivia must have some basis in canon, entirely unfounded ideas with absolutely nothing in the series to support it is prohibited.

Reverting

Every user regardless of their status or seniority have the ability to undo edits on The Orville Wiki. Our goal is to have as many contributions as possible count but to also maintain the highest quality for the articles. There are some important rules which, when followed, help us achieve both of these ends.

  • The revert button is not a toy. It should only be used as a last resort whenever an edit presented is completely unusable to the article in question. Anything less than that should simply be tweaked to something more appropriate, if the original contribution wasn't noticeably productive to the page in question.
  • Every time an edit is undone there must be at least a sentence long explanation why. Undoing edits without explaining why is not only frustrating to other contributors, but is largely unhelpful as often times they don't know what it is they did incorrectly, and may do it again soon after.
    • This is of course not applicable to spam or obvious vandalism. Which may be undone without any written explanation at all.
  • Avoid getting into "revert wars" whenever possible. They seldom lead to anything productive and can be disruptive to the community as a whole. If a revert is undone, and that action is then reverted, do not continue undoing the edit. Instead, go to the message board of the user who initiated it or talk in the article's comment section and discuss the situation until a mutual conclusion is reached. If that isn't possible, contact a local Administrator to make the final decision.

Page Creation and Deletion

Page creation is one of the core aspects of building a wiki and a community. However, as The Orville is a huge universe with such a vast array of content, there are specific guidelines for what constitutes being worthy enough to have a page created.

  • The general rule of thumb with article creation is that if there isn't enough content to fill up an entire page, the character/concept doesn't have an official name, or users won't often be interested in looking it up, the article doesn't need to exist. Brief information about very minor characters or one off planets/species can easily be added into paragraphs or sections of larger articles.
    • Pages should only contain information that is relevant and desirable to document. Just because a character, location, or concept might've appeared or did something in a certain episode does not warrant it being written on their designated page. Only add what is necessary to understanding the history and role the article's subject plays within the series.
  • Articles that fill up less than a page should not be created even if they may "theoretically" become more content heavy in the future. Only create it after that information has been revealed within the show, articles are meant to be filled as soon as they're created, not to be placeholders for what's to come.
    • Episode articles however are an exception to this rule, as we know with certainty they will be given more content soon. In those cases, making short pages on future episodes is not in violation of this policy.
  • Characters/concepts that don't adhere to the aforementioned policies but are nonetheless still important to document can be placed on Minor pages.
    Ex. The Navarian and Bruidian Ambassadors were vibrant characters in Cupid's Dagger. However, due to the lack of information on their actual backstories and personalities, paragraphs for them should simply be written on the category characters instead of having their own pages.
  • Articles that are created need to be on topics that have a sustainable amount of professionalism.
    Ex. A page on the Top 10 Most Popular Crew Members on The Orville would not be worth creating, as it doesn't have anything to do with encyclopedic content that this wiki strives to create.
  • Articles on subjects not related to The Orville do not warrant their own page, even if said topic has been mentioned within the series.
    Ex. Kermit the Frog should not have his own page on this Wiki, even though Captain Mercer did mention him in Command Performance; he is not a character in The Orville and is not relevant to the information this Wiki is trying to convey.
  • Administrators or Content Moderators can delete pages that violate these policies at their own discretion. However, users are within their right to question or challenge any instance of this occurring. The Administrator/Content Moderator should always provide a coherent explanation. If the majority of the community believes a removed page was actually relevant to the wiki, it can be undeleted.
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