Forum:Standardising references

We'll need a proper style guide eventually, but it's a little early for that; what would probably be a complex discussion requires more than a few participants. Still, one particular issue came to mind today that we should probably standardise now, because it's handled differently on almost every page (and even by myself): example references on character pages.

Examples for both fan art and fan fiction are highly desired, but there are different ways of going about it. Take Screwball's page: it doesn't just list fanfics where Screwball plays a major role. The examples are well-chosen because they represent different approaches to the character, and these approaches are summarised with a few sentences each. That's great for fan fiction; it's the ideal.

But sometimes describing examples isn't wise because an editor only knows in general terms that it fits the fan labor theme he's describing, because it would just repeat a pattern already mentioned for another example, or because there's nothing to describe: On the same page, there is also a sentence describing a specific fan art motif associated with the character, and the two examples are given not as summaries, but as referenced links. Summarising the images isn't necessary; they illustrate the prose sentence, links are enough.

I would like to extend this two-fold approach to the rest of the pages: The default would be to leave examples in reference form (using abbreviations when necessary to distinguish between different sets of references, as on Applejack). But if there are a couple relevant non-redundant sentences that can be added to describe specific examples, the reference formatting should be removed. This way, references would basically be used as a see-also section: for additional examples, see below. --Tulipclaymore 22:10, April 18, 2012 (UTC)