Style Guide

Welcome to the Blaseball Wiki Style Guide! If you are interested in contributing to this wiki, this is the place to start. Here, we cover the overall basics of creating a new page, our desired voice and style for Blaseball entries, and technical details related to style and working within the Fandom editor.

Mission Statement

Blaseball is the splort that always was and always will be. It is vast and unknowable, and the glimpses we catch are equal parts fascinating and horrifying. As we uncover new bits of Blaseball history, we seek to record those details as accurately and respectfully as possible. It is important that we try our best not to editorialize the unknowable history, but to represent it with honesty and clarity. Entries on this wiki should be written from an impartial perspective, simply recording the facts of events, encounters, locations, players, history, and more. The terrifying nature of Blaseball must be honored, and we do that best by treating all angles with careful consideration and respect.

Voice

The voice we should aim for is the dry, factual style you see on most online wikis, notably Wikipedia. This lends our fiction an air of seriousness and respectability, which makes for excellent dry humor. The events of Blaseball are often absurd, and we can tell these otherworldly, impossible tales with a dry wit that makes for a quietly exciting piece of fiction. One of the best entries exemplifying this voice is the Blaseball-Glolf Clonflict article by SleepySapho, which goes to great lengths to provide readers with a rudimentary understanding of the context surrounding events, while not explaining too much. Maintaining mystery is a key element to the wonder of Blaseball. This article represents a majority viewpoint of the events of the Clonflict, and as such reads as a reliable historical record.

There is still flair in this article, of course. Using well placed adjectives and adverbs to highlight the intensity of an event adds flavor to the story. Where it goes too far is when an article will speak of the great virtues and adventures of a player, or using flippant Internet-style language. We want to represent these players and events as real, tangible things.

If this sort of style is unfamiliar to you, we recommend starting with just recording the basic facts of a person. You may want to say "Blaseball Bob is the greatest player on the team and always wins us games from the most impossible of circumstances." Instead, try "Blaseball Bob is a skilled athlete and has a record of winning games against long odds." The difference here is that in the first example, the author is expressing their emotional connection to Blaseball Bob, and is therefore biased. In the second example, the author is making simple statements that are provable. Blaseball Bob is skilled, and we know he is skilled because his record shows his victories.

Overall, the key is not to pass a judgement on the subject of the article, but to simply tell the reader what the facts are.

Structure

There are two primary ways that you can structure an article, and they serve different purposes to different ends.

Inverted Pyramid Style

The Inverted Pyramid is a classic writing tool commonly used in journalism. The general principle is that first few sentences should communicate as many of the broad details as possible. This is suitable for a player article where the author wants the reader to learn the fundamentals of a player in a single paragraph. Later in the article, perhaps under a History subheading, the author can break down the details of the player's history. This continues to follow the concept of an Inverted Pyramid. The first paragraph should cover the basic details, and subsequent paragraphs can break down things in greater detail.

Linear Style

Linear Style is a more narrative-focused structure to use. This will often be suitable for recording historical events. Much like Inverted Pyramid, it is advisable to start the article with a paragraph describing the broad details of the content within. Then, using subheadings to break up the page, tell the story in a linear fashion. The Blaseball-Glolf Clonflict article above is written in this style.