How To Write An SCP Rewrite

Summary:

How To Rewrite How To Write An SCP

How To Write An SCP Rewrite

Silberescher 24 Apr 2017 17:33

Part of being a new admin is cleaning up projects left behind from work with the old admins. Two years ago, give or take, Troy approached me with the task of rewriting the How To Write An SCP guide. The current one, we felt, was outdated and put too much fluff between new writers and the information they need to start contributing to the SCP series.

So I rewrote it. But when the time came to push it through past early admin feedback to site implementation, shakeups in staff structure at the time resulted in it ricocheting from team to team and captain to captain until it was in the authority of nobody in particular.

The draft still stands, here:

http://scpsandbox2.wikidot.com/silberescher-4

For the record, this was meant to be stripped down to the simplest elements of the process: idea, draft, feedback, post. TroyL and I planned for an additional guide, some kind of "How To Write A Better SCP" that touched on things like crosslinking. That's still on the table. (A rewrite to the Guide Hub was also finished, but that's for another thread.)

I'm opening this up to anyone on staff who has feedback to contribute. This affects everyone, from Rewrite to Crit to Images. It's also likely that site rules have changed in the 548 days that it's been left untouched, so I'd appreciate an eye out for that.

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

RJB_R 24 Apr 2017 17:47

I really like this, and have a few suggestions for things I think would improve it.

• On the first tab, including a paragraph about the "Universe" and how SCPs exist in shared but not mutually exclusive space/talk about positive ways to link to and reference other stuff on the wiki.
• In the formatting tab I would change "An addendum" to something like "Addenda or addendums". I also think this needs the format for things like interviews and testing logs, with proper notation that these formats can be remixed and edited to the writer's hearts content.
• I would divide the posting section into things you do before you post the article, then things to do after. More readable that way and those are more or less the two distinct phases in the action of SCP posting.
• In the Images tab, we now have an Image Use Policy that can be linked to instead of/in addition to the Site Rules. I would also make a specific note about not uploading excessively large image files in addition to not posting big pictures.
• In general I think linking to more writing essays as "further reading" would be helpful. I can understand only linking to official staff guides but there's more out there for people to learn from.

We've needed an update to this page for a long time and this seems like a clean break from the iterative patchwork of a guide we have at present. I fully support this endeavor.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Last edited on 24 Apr 2017 17:48 by RJB_R Show more

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

MayD 24 Apr 2017 20:14

This is overall pretty good, but I do have some concerns and comments.

• I definitely feel the Format tab should have code for interviews. That way it will get the concept of expanding articles past the basic formatting rolling in new writers' heads. I would suggest a sleeker format than what is currently in the guide, more or less just dropping the "Interviewed" and "Interviewer" parts, as I feel that weighs down the code.
• It may not hurt to mention that each section header should be bolded, as it's not uncommon for people to only bold the main sections and nothing else, or not bold anything at all.
• We should give more focus to actually getting feedback. Right now, there's a single mention of feedback on the top of the posting page. Honestly, a tab between Format and Posting is what I would suggest. There we can talk about the use of the sandbox, and where and how to go about getting feedback, such as on the forums and chat. We could also throw in a line about no full drafts in the forum.
• We should specify that every page needs a rating module.
• There should be a bigger break between talking about posting SCPs and talking about posting tale. Like just a line separating the two, would work.
• I feel talking about tags in the posting section is a bad idea. A lot of newbies mistag their articles because they don't know what they're doing. I think it'd be better to say that they should leave tags alone and let a more experienced member take care of them.
  • On another note, I thought we didn't do the _letter tags for tales anymore. I know my tale that I wrote a few years ago had that tag removed somewhat recently.

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

sirpudding 24 Apr 2017 21:04

If it is going to cover tales as well as SCPs, perhaps it should also generally cover GOI formats as well; not the specifics (for which it should direct writers to the hubs or formats themselves where there is no hub) but rather more generally that you need to just post to the correct URL. Since this seems to be a point of confusion.

Incidentally is the "new tale" dialog box in Contribute even needed anymore, since the indexing no longer requires it? The fact that tales require a special procedure but other pages do not is, I think, the source of the confusion in the first place.

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

RJB_R 24 Apr 2017 23:34

I also think these are good suggestions to consider, but the Contribute box would be another matter unless the scope of this proposal was expanded.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

subtletea 25 Apr 2017 00:57

Roget gave me permission to post on the matter. I think that at least some of the basic coding snippets under the template page would be worth keeping, because for somone who's really not good at even basic coding on wikidot, it's very helpful to just be able to copy and paste rather than have to spend an extra half an hour trying to get coding right. I speak from personal experience.

Re: How To Write An SCP Rewrite

MrWrong 25 Apr 2017 06:08

In addition to the other points raised in this thread…

Containment procedures

Perhaps have it as 'Special Containment Procedures', to make it clear. Some might misconstrue it as only being 'containment procedures' in the headings.

Include a tag consisting of an _ and the first letter of your username (or Dr if your username starts with Dr. or Doctor). A user named Silberescher would add the tag _s. An author named Dr. Silberescher would add a _dr tag instead.

Is this still valid? If I am not mistaken, Tales no longer do this.

Also, I think stuff like Text Formatting, rating module and footnotes should be retained in the new version. These are helpful to those who have never worked with Wikidot and similar interfaces before.