LAFF:Manual of Style

This article is a basic guideline how to document events and members. While this in not official policy, it is recommended to follow this guide to help keep a uniformed look of across this site. Any discussions in regards to this guide can be brought up at Lake Area Furry Friends talk:Manual of Style page.

Events

On-going events are to be listed on the Community Portal page. Events are in order of frequency of occurrence and then by when they occur during the year. For example of frequency of occurrence note that on the Community Portal that the coffee nights are a weekly event and are listed above our monthly Bowling event. For example of when an event takes during the year, note that are New Year's Eve Party is the last event mentioned on the page and other events such as the trips to the Dells and Ren' Faire occur prior to that.

One-time-only or defunct events are to be listed at the very bottom of that list in a similar order.

Events should be documented as follows:

A description of the event. This should include a brief history as to what the event is about, where it is located, who started it, and when it was started.

Below that is to be a section include a summary of the event such as:

• When it was started
• Who originally hosted the event. Here you would provide links to a member's profile on this site so they may be contacted personally for further details.
• Who currently hosts the event. Here you would also provide links to a member's profile on this site so they may be contacted personally for further details.
• Date
• Time
• Current location. In this field you may provide a link to the business's article on Wikipedia or their web site and a street address with a link to Google Maps
• Average cost of the event
• Is the event fursuit or ear and tails friendly?
• Expected activities
• Average number of attendees
• Regular attendees

Below that you may provide external links to communities or photo galleries dedicated to the event. You are also encourage to provide a picture of the event so the article won't appear so dull. Lastly you should make use of the geographical tags and categories so visitors can locate events in their area.

Members

The member list is divided alphabetically into sections. If your name is not listed then please add [[Category:Members]] to the end of your biography page on the Main namespace (not pages beginning with User:). You will be automatically added to the list. If you are known by other names you may create a redirect on that page and also include a [[Category:Members]] to be listed twice (or leave it off your main page if you have a very long name, such as "The Reverend" Ash Maurice Cairo).

Once your link(s) have been created, you may want to start drafting your own member page. Your member page it meant primarily for sharing a short biography of yourself and basic on-line contact information. If you already have a biography on WikiFur you are still encouraged to create a basic page on this site and then from that page provide a link to your WikiFur profile and then follow that with a link to your user page on this site, basic contact information on various IM and social web sites, and categories for region, species, birth year, and events attended. If you have information you would not wish to disclose to the public but would like like to share it with the local furries it is recommended you do so on your user page.

In the current absence of a generic template to create your member profile members are asked to follow the following format:

• First, a quick biography of yourself. Again, if you have have a profile on WikiFur, you may simple place a link to that profile here.
• Next, a section with your picture. You can additionally break-up this section into a simple one-row, two column table. Each column should be of equal length and aligned to middle and center. The right column is to be used to display your best picture and the left and the right column is to be used to display a gallery of other pictures. Please include a caption with your picture in regards to who created it and the year it was created. If you have no current picture you may omit this section.
• Next would be a simple table with one-row and two columns. Each column should be of equal length and aligned to the top and left.

The right column is to provide information such as:

• Alternate names you are known by with links to their pages
• Your birthdate. If you wish not to reveal your age you may omit the year of birth
• Sexual preference. You may omit this if you please
• Gender
• Species
• Region
• Martial status

These should be presented as a bulleted list as shown above.

The left column is to provide contact information such as an e-mail address, IM contact information, Second Life, MU*, IRC and other social networking sites in a bulleted list format. It is preferable to list your e-mail information first, then your IM contacts, then contacts to Second Life, MU*, and IRC, then finally links to your pages on various social networking sites.

Pages for alternate characters can use a similar format for displaying pictures of that character and a basic biography, but may substitute their contact information of an italicized link to their primary profile.

Below that should be "tags" stating which location you currently reside in and which events you regularly attend. This are to be centered to the page.

Sounds too complicated? It's not really. View the source of this section and other member pages to get an idea how tables are created and sections are broken off. If the you need some help formating your profile, please fill out what you can in and then notify an administrator for further assistance in formatting your profile.

User page

Although a user may use a user page however he chooses, generally each user is also a LAFF Member and has a biographical page on the Main namespace. Therefore many users may prefer to simply redirect their User page to their main page using this syntax:

#REDIRECT [[Yourname]]