Styleguide

Please find below guidelines on how to write texts and how to convert certain Chinese names in our RiC Wiki.

Content

Chinese-only names

A lot of Chinese artists, organizations, magazines, titles, etc. do not feature an English name. Rock in China has so far either translated their name into an adequate English translation or has stayed with the pinyin conversion.

In general the following naming rules apply:

1. If an English name is available it should be used (e.g. Brainfailure)
2. If an adequate English translation is available it should be used (e.g. The Falling, X-Music Magazine)
3. If none of the above is available, the pinyin transcription should be used (e.g. Hu Ma Ge)

A list of so far used name conversions is stated below:

Chinese	Pinyin	English Name	Name to be used in RiC
通俗歌曲	Tong Sú Ge Qǔ	X-Music Magazine	English name
我爱摇滚乐	Wo Ài Yáo Gǔn Yuè	So Rock! Magazine / So Rock! Records	English name (for magazine and label)

Using Pin Yin

In general if Pin Yin is writing for page names, please separate each individual character / tone by a space, e.g.:

Ye Cha instead of Yecha or

Zhong Li Feng instead of Zhong Lifeng

Usable Templates

In order to give similar kind of pages a similar appearance several template pages were generated for throughout usage:

• Form:Add a New Artist
• Form:Add a New Record
• Form:Add a New Event
• The {{?}} template, indicating vague date information
• The templates {{zh}}, {{ja}}, {{de}}, {{fr}} & {{it}} indicating links to web sites not in English.
• Use the template {{Yaogun Stub}} in case a band page is not complete and needs rework with the help of yaogun.com

Interlanguage Links

There are other projects in the world also looking at Rock in China and RiC is exclusively working with them to spread the news of Chinese rock:

Metalcon - German portal

Yaogun - Japanese portal

With the normal interwiki links (e.g. {{metalcon|hollow-chn-}} or {{yaogun|metal/hollow.htm}}) we will get links to the page and with the language prefixes (e.g. [[de:hollow-chn-]] or [[ja:metal/hollow.htm]]) we will get languages in the menu on the left (bottom). For Metalcon we need to use the last part of the URL. For Yaogun we need everything after yaogun.com/artist/

Chinese Names to be added as Redirects

As nearly every Chinese artist or venue has a Chinese (character) name in addition to their English translation, at RiC, we are adding the Chinese characters as redirects to the Artist Page (either titled in English or Pinyin), so that searching gets easier. Thereby the following additional categories for the redirect page are a minimum:

#REDIRECT [[ENGLISH BAND NAME]]

[[Category:Artists]]

[[Category:Artists (Chinese names)]]

Best would be if the redirect page sports the same categories as the artist page, so that each category will hold both the English name and the Chinese characters.

The difference between artists and musicians

Within this wiki there are two distinct categories and data classes being used for sometimes (confusingly) the same thing:

• Artists --> Category:Artists
• Persons --> Category:People

Whereas the first category contains BOTH musical groups AND musical (solo) artists, the second group comprises of only individual persons. For standard band / musician formations that is easy to implement, e.g. Kaiser Kuo is a musician playing in the band Spring Autumn and hence Kaiser Kuo is categorized as a PERSON and Spring Autumn is categorized as an ARTIST.

However if one looks at e.g. Jiebing Chen one notices that two pages are being setup:

1. Jiebing Chen
2. Jiebing Chen (Artist)

It is necessary to set up two pages (that are interlinked) as both classes are storing different properties which are not the same. E.g. the INSTRUMENT that a person plays is stored on the PERSON class, whereas the YOUTUBEID with an example song is stored on the ARTIST class.

Reason behind is that (usually) a PERSON is adopting an ARTIST NAME or a STAGE PRESENCE or an IMAGINATIVE FIGURE to perform. E.g. a lot of Hongkong pop singers adopt an English name instead of their Cantonese birth name for recording and publishing music. Hence all MUSIC-related activities that are related to the STAGE NAME are being documented on the ARTIST page. All PERSON-related activities (filmography, early life, death, etc.) is documented on the PERSON page.

Folk artists not necessarily adopt a specific name for their music activities (such as Jiebing Chen above), however folk artists are often present in more than one band or project. As such the PERSON page is the more important of the two for these musicians and all their own musician activities would become documented within e.g. Jiebing Chen (Artist) or any of the project / groups / bands the musician played with.

If that gets complicated, think of COMEDIANS and how they usually have certain fixed ROLES they enact on stage. Some of these comedians release CDs or DVDs solely about one ROLE and some of them even go as far as enact that ROLE in their daily life. E.g. German comedian Hape Kerkeling has the following roles:

1. Evje van Dampen
2. Gisela
3. Günther Warnke
4. Hannilein
5. Horst Schlämmer
6. Rico Mielke
7. R.I.P. Uli
8. Siegfried Schwäbli
9. Uschi Blum
10. Wolfgang

out of which Horst Schlämmer got his own movie, own TV appearances and own cinema advertisements. Yet Horst Schlämmer is not Hape Kerkeling as it is just a stage presence created for a purpose of distributing comedy.

There is no system in the world that can truely map all the nuances and details present in human life, yet we hope that this system brings the ideal of mapping music close enough.

Artists - Troupes and Orchestras

The term "Artist" includes amongst others the following musical groups:

• Bands
• Solo Artists
• Projects
• One-time happenings
• Troupes (incl. dance troupes)
• Orchestras
• Ensembles

Formating

Used skins

Please note that currently there are a number of Skins being used by Rock in China, either as the subpages are being i-frame-included in another website or for other purposes (e.g. special sub-page or better readability).

Currently the following Skins are being used:

Skin Name	Color Scheme	Preview
Jazzy	White, navy and indigo	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=jazzy
Midi2008	dark grey (#333) and light green (#6FBE6B;)	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=midi2008
Modern	White and dark blue #036;	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=modern
Strawberry	Black, forestGreen and light green #A0CB3B;	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=strawberry
Ric	black & red	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=ric
White	white & red	http://wiki.rockinchina.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=white

Hence in case hard or fixed formating via the <style> attribute is being used, take note of the above color schemes.

CSS class

Every skin in RiC wiki uses its own CSS file, usually called "Main2.css" in the respective skin folder.

There are a number of classes available for formating within the RiC wiki that can be used consistant throughout the individual skins without causing breakage in the style.

E.g. the following CSS class has been created for special pages headers:

Class Name	Usage
menu-background-header	Format for major page divider, i.e. headers as in Main Page
specialmessage	used for special purpose messages
collapsibletemplate	collapsible table at the bottom of any page, e.g. Template:Midi

menu-background-header

table.menu-background-header th {

background-color:#222;

}

mainpagechooser

table.menu-background-header th.mainpagechooser { background-color:#000; !important; }

specialmessage

div.specialmessage {

width:95%;

border:2px solid #0000aa;

background-color: #00005f;

padding:7px;

}

collapsibletemplate

div.collapsibletemplate {

border:2px solid #300;

padding:3px;

margin:3px;

}




div.collapsibletemplate table {

width:100%;

border-collapse:collapse;

border-width: 1px;

border-style: solid;

border-color: #100

}




div.collapsibletemplate table th {

background:#300;

}

Using collapsible tables

On various pages collapible tables are being used, e.g.:

You can either use a template, e.g.

{{Artist Location}}

to include the above or

write directly the code in the page that you want to have it included:

<div class=collapsibletemplate>

{| class="collapsible collapsed" border="1" cellpadding="2" ! colspan=2 | '''Origin of Artists'''

|-

| style="width:120px" | City Provinces:

| [[:Category:Beijing Artists|Beijing]] | ...

|-

Please note that the <div> element must have the class=collapsibletemplate defined in order for the format to be shown correctly.

To enable the collapsible characteristic, please ensure that the table {| has the class class="collapsible collapsed" associated.