Getting Started

Thank you for visiting this site. Double thank you if you want to contribute to this site. We are aiming to be simple as possible. We are primarily concerned with connecting people to other places on the web.

So first off lets talk about the type of information we want in the wiki. We are trying to educate people about Idol Culture by directly providing articles on different aspects of Idol Culture. We hope that by creating entries for Idols, the companies that employ them, the notable staff that work at those companies, and assorted cultural topics, we can have an easily navigable road map of the Idol world.

We should use as much Japanese as possible because: 1) it is a uniting language for people in Idol Culture; and 2) it helps when we want to conduct research in Japanese. So where applicable, please Title (Header 1) things in their native language, using the Native Name with the Romanization in parenthesis if needed. For example, 山口百恵(Yamaguchi Momoe). However, when creating entries we create them with the Romanized Names for the wiki's urls.

[[Yamaguchi_Momoe|山口百恵(Yamaguchi Momoe)]]
  ^ creates the page      ^ link name for page
    in english            in the native language

Every time you open a page editing screen it will, above the typing box, have useful reminders including how to access the syntax page. That page goes into more detail than this page about all of the syntax you can use with Dokuwiki (our friendly wiki software).

When you want to emphasize a word, phrase, or sentence in the wiki, USE ITALICS! Do not use bold.

Use un-ordered lists when listing things on the wiki. Do not used ordered lists (lists with numbers). This is done by indenting with two spaces and then using an asterisk.

Flush with margin
  *indented two spaces and using an asterisk
Flush with margin

Try to use official pictures if at all possible. If you use fan or media pictures, please say where you got them from. Give credit where due. To add information to a picture. Click on it in a page, this will take you to the full sized picture. Then click on “view in media manager.” Then click on the “Edit” tab. Go down to photographer and put in the photographer, or the website you got the picture from.

Try to provide captions for the images, especially if it is not immediately apparent what it is.

{{wiki:dokuwiki-128.png|The logo of DokuWiki}}
  ^adds the image         ^the caption to the image

DO NOT LINK FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES! Upload the pictures here, using the media button.

When romanizing Japanese, try to use the Modified Hepburn Style. This is to set a direction and is aspirational. Just try to adhere to it.

• Basically ん is always “n” no matter what it follows 頑張れ(Ganbare), not Gambare. Also when ん proceeds a vowel or y we use an apostrophe ex. 簡易 (Kan'i).
• There is one exception to using the Modified Hepburn style! Modified Hepburn uses macrons to describe long vowels, like for 学校 (Gakkō) and 金曜日 (Kin'yōbi). We will not use the macrons for Titles and Page Names on this wiki (If you wanted to use them in the body of the Entry, you may access them in the Special Characters button on the Edit Page's Toolbar). So 東京 (Tōkyō) = Tokyo, 歌謡曲 (Kayōkyoku) = Kayokyoku, and お姉さん (onēsan) = Onesan.
• But do not worry too much, if there are small errors in the romanization and people can generally tell what it is, we will leave it be. This is not an academic publication. No need to delete a whole page because its named “近藤真彦 (Masahiko Kondou)” instead of “Masahiko Kondo.” We all can clearly see tell who the page is about. Spelling errors on the other hand…

Tags are always the at the top of the page, they are even above the Title (Header 1) of the page.They should be the first thing you see.

Tags will be added as the need comes up, but right now we will use tags to describe:

• What type of entry it is;
  
• What city the entry is based in (if applicable);
  
• What country the entry is based in (if applicable);
  
• The year the entry was established (when they became an idol, when the company was started, etc…);
  
• If the Idol does something other than being a vanilla idol, the genre they fuse with should be noted under the Genre tag.
  

If you are creating a genre tag and it has 2 or more words, please use camel case like CityPop for the genre City Pop. The Genre tags are to describe the music a specific Idol has released. It should not be used for companies or events, but it can be used for culture, if the entry pertains to the genre.

• Cover - The cover tag should be used if the idol often covers other Idols, this is more expansive than just utaite and odorite Idols. For example W, Up Up Girls (2), and Johnny's Juniors can all be tagged with the cover tag, despite releasing their own music, the tag is not just for local idols who primarily cover national idols. Although the tag primarily will be filled with local idols who cover National Idols. An Idol who rarely covers other Idols should not be categories with that tag.
• Alternative - The Alternative tag is for Alternative Idols, like Bish and Baby Metal, not the musical genre alternative music.
• Events - The Events tag is for reoccurring Events like festivals and conventions. So one off events like a concert or a handshake event should not have an entry on this wiki. But events that are likely to occur in regular intervals should be on the wiki. We want to use the Calendar to link to one off events and reoccurring events, however, we only want to document the history of reoccurring events on the wiki. You can see a template for Events pages in the Templates section of the creating entries page. Events are another type of page that we can bring a large amount of detail to. Please be as detailed as possible for the large events in our community. The best example of an event would be the Tokyo Idol Festival.

Please do not create tags outside of these 4 areas (what, where, when, and genre). But within the 4 areas, we can create tags as needed. Genre Tags will likely be the most diverse, but let us try to not over do the tagging process.

Next lets talk about the Idol Entry Pages. So in general, we do not want create huge entries with tons of information on the Idols. We want to link to places that have huge entries with tons of information on the Idols. Since the wiki is aiming to be a routing hub, lets just put people in contact with the good info. We do not want to duplicate efforts. We do not want to do work that other groups are already doing. We want to link to work that others have already done. We want to do the work that this wiki was intended for: connecting fans to idols.

For Entries on more obscure topics, we can be a bit more verbose with our entries. Please be very detailed with an Entry on a Local Idol, tell us everything you know. But for Morning Musume, just keep it short and link to the H!P wiki or Wikipedia, which both have excellent articles on the girls. Like-wise for the Golden Era Idols like パンプキン(Pumpkin) who have no English Wikipedia Page and a very Short French Wikipedia Page, feel free to be as detailed as possible, but on a Golden Era Idol like 中森明菜(Nakamori Akina) who is quite well known, please do not write a lot, because others have already written so much.

So every page must have a Title and at least one official link. All other sections are secondary. The Title should be a Header 1. It should be the only Header 1 in the page. The Official Links section should be designated by a Header 2. Headers are important as they determine what is in the Table of Contents.

As mentioned above, Titles should have the Native Name, and then if needed, a romanization in parenthesis after it.

Other secondary sections include (but are not limited to):

• the picture (If the group changes members often, please just use their logo, so we do not have to update the page so frequently);
  
• the biography (We should try to keep this below 2 paragraphs [10 sentences] for well known acts);
  
• a single video that best represents the current group (in the biography section);
  
• links to articles concerning the entry (can be news publications, magazines, or even fan publications);
  
• a list of all known fan communities (regardless of the language, therefore include English fan communities, Japanese fan communities, Arabic fan communities, French fan communities, any and all fan communities should go in that section);
  
• a section for posting links to other idols who have covered the Idol's whose page we are on; and finally
  
• a section of each of the years an Event has been active.
  

All Secondary Sections should be designated as Header 2.

If you need to have multiple sections within a Secondary Section, please designate them as Header 3.

All other types of pages will be simpler. You start with descriptive Tags at the top. Give the Entry a Title (Header 1), Give what ever information you need, then you add any other relevant sections (Header 2). If there is a need for sections within a given Relevant section add it as a Header 3.

You can find templates for these pages at the creating entries page. You are not required to use the Templates, but you are required to follow the general rules that are set forth in this page. If a rule is vague, its vague on purpose, so do not worry too much about it, if a rule is explicit then its a big deal, please follow it!

Both Culture and Idol Events will have a page to create random entries, but Companies and Staff will not. Create them as they come up in the Idol Entries.

Culture and Events Entries are the main exception to the rules here. With this wiki in most pages we will be attempting to be as brief as possible, but in these we want to be as detailed and verbose as possible. We still want many links to articles and videos on the subject matter, but the entries themselves should be as detailed as possible.

You can create a talk page for each page by clicking the edit button and clicking on start a discussion. You can use talk pages to discuss the actual entry (I was thinking of adding a section for this, or maybe we should split the article in half, or because this is so common maybe we should find better links, or I changed the old format because it was too long).

Please sign your contributions to the talk pages.
To insert your signature click on the insert signature button in the edit page's toolbar. — jigenbakuda 2019/02/15 09:25

This is what the auto inserted signature looks like.
 --- //[[jigenbakuda]] 2019/02/15 09:11// 

You can insert your signature manually like this.
 --- //your signature here