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.

This document is under construction. We'll be revamping this and adding more guides soon, so stay tuned!

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.

Inclusiveness

All language used on the Blaseball wiki should be inclusive. Blaseball is a splort for people of all backgrounds.

Bigotry, including but not limited to discrimination or hate speech based on race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexuality, religion, disability, age, socio-economic status, or any other attacks on one’s personhood, will not be tolerated. We write in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, and inclusive community.

There's no bigotry in blaseball.

You may wish to include content in your work which could be harmful, or connected to sensitive, traumatic, or triggering experiences. Please act with care when handling sensitive topics, and use content warnings to help readers make informed decisions about engaging with articles.*

This project is a collaborative effort, so consider working with other members in the community to explore creative options. Be open to making changes to your work to ensure that remains the case as time goes by. Minimize harm, work in good faith, and look after each other.

*At this time, we don't have a universal method of placing content warnings on pages. At the top of a section that needs a warning, please write a standalone line saying "CONTENT WARNING: [blank]" and fill in the blank with the relevant topic.

Making a New Article

To create or edit articles on this wiki, a Fandom account is required. This Help article covers the specifics of creating a new article. Creation of new content on this wiki is largely collaborative, so please read the rest of this guide before getting started.

Writing Techniques

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. This is not comprehensive, and if you find a different structure serves your article better, feel free to use it.

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.

Collaboration

One of the key tenets of writing an article on the Blaseball Wiki is collaboration. The vast majority of content on this wiki is directly related to players and teams. Authors should not unilaterally create histories for things relating to teams. Please join our Blaseball Discord server, which you can find an invite to in our sidebar. There, you can collaborate with your fellow fans on how to create the personalities and stylings of your team.

For non-team related things, collaboration is still appreciated but not strictly necessary. Some great lore has been written by individuals and posted without much collaboration. That being said, the key to integrating your unique creations into the overall tapestry of Blaseball is still going to make use of collaborative writing.

Statistics and Other Knowable Facts

Certain things in Blaseball are fully knowable, such as a player's name, when they have been incinerated, and their statistical breakdown, among other things. These bits of information are not up for alteration by anyone but The Commissioner. As such, they should be portrayed on this wiki accurately. There are Blaseball Researchers who are working to unveil the inner functions of Blaseball. Any such information is welcome on this wiki within their proper spaces, as long as it is accurate and true.

Formatting

When writing pages remember to put the first use of the page's name in bold and to put any names and proper nouns in italics.

When creating a player page (in the instance where a new player is brought into the game), see any of the other player pages for inspiration on what to add to the page. At the bare minimum, please add an Infobox with the Player template to the page, and fill out their name, team affiliation, star rating (as seen on the Blaseball website team pages), and status. Any other fields are optional. Status is a record of if the player is Alive, Active, Intact, Retired, Dead, Incinerated, or any other state of being relevant to the player. Write a brief paragraph at the top which includes their name, team affiliation, how long they have been with their team, and one or two more relevant facts, if applicable.

Dead Links

In other wikis, having dead links is considered messy and frowned up. On this wiki, tactical deployment of links to pages that don't exist is a method by which to imply forbidden or cursed knowledge that cannot be allowed to exist. Use this sparingly for comedic effect.

Renaming a Page/Redirection

To keep our links clean, please use best practices for pages that are misspelled or no longer needed.

For pages that are misspelled, please use this Help page for a step-by-step guide for renaming pages.

For instances where you are combining pages or otherwise abandoning a specific page, please use this Help page for redirecting to the new article.

Terminology

This section will dictate the proper presentation, spelling, or syntax of terminology on this wiki. Unless otherwise noted, the overall style of the wiki should be written in AP Style, with the notable exception that we use Oxford commas.

• Blaseball
• Internet League Blaseball
• Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, etc.

Other Guides

• Wikitext: If you're new to editing wikis in general, try this guide. We cover the different text editors and the formatting language that wikis usually use.
• Citations: Citations can be a bit tricky, but they're critical to how wikis work: they enrich articles and help verify statements.
• Images: We love seeing images in the wiki, but they can be a little tricky. This guide walks you through most of the ways you'll want to use images in the wiki.
• Templates: Wikis make use of "templates", special pages that can be dropped into others. We use these to save time and have consistent designs.