Vault:Style Guide

This page documents the editorial and structural conventions established across The Vault. It exists to keep new pages consistent with existing ones — check here before creating unusual page types or departing from established patterns.

Language and tone

British English spelling throughout (e.g. organisation, colour, sceptic).
Neutral, measured tone. The Vault records reports as given; it does not assert that reported phenomena are real, nor dismiss them as false. Phrases like "said to," "reportedly," and "claimed" are used consistently for unverified phenomena.
For scientifically explicable phenomena (e.g. Sleep Paralysis, Hallucination), state the conventional explanation plainly rather than hedging it as "just a theory."

Real people

Living or recently deceased people are covered factually, using well-corroborated public facts. Avoid stating one party's disputed claims about another as settled fact — see David Farrant and Sean Manchester for the template on handling an ongoing, mutually disputed rivalry.
Partisan or single-source blogs (e.g. a subject's own fan site, or a rival's) are useful for detail but should not be the sole basis for a contested claim; attribute rather than assert where sources conflict.
Health conditions, convictions, or other sensitive biographical facts are included only when independently corroborated and directly relevant to the subject's notability.

Geographic links

Towns and cities get a normal wikilink: [[Bootle]]
States, counties, provinces, and other sub-national regions get a category link: [[:Category:Nevada|Nevada]]
Countries get a category link: [[:Category:United States of America|USA]]
Remember the leading colon (:Category:, not Category:) — without it, MediaWiki files the current page into that category instead of linking to it.

Category structure

The Vault is the root category, with no parent.
Content splits into subject-matter branches (Reported Phenomena, Parapsychology, People, In The Media, Hub Pages) and administrative branches (Vault Maintenance).
Flat tagging is retired for content pages generally — a page carries only its single most specific category, not a chain up to "All Files" or "The Vault."
Exception: all biography pages carry [[Category:People]] in addition to their specific subcategory (Psychic Mediums, Investigators, Researchers, TV Personalities, Witnesses). This is required so {{StatsBar}}'s {{PAGESINCATEGORY:People|all}} count on the Main Page reflects every person on the wiki, not just the handful of subcategory shells — PAGESINCATEGORY only counts direct members of a category, not members of its subcategories.
Only direct children of the root, and category pages one level below it, tag their immediate parent otherwise.

Infobox reference

Use the infobox matching the page's subject type — never mix:

{{CaseInfobox}} — a specific case, or a place used as a Hub Page (fields: type, region, first_report, status)
{{CategoryInfobox}} — category pages only (fields: scope, parent)
{{PhenomenonInfobox}} — a general phenomenon/ability/term, not tied to one case (fields: type, field, also_known_as, notable_case, status)
{{PersonInfobox}} — biographies (fields: born, died, occupation, known_for, status)
{{OrganisationInfobox}} — companies, societies, investigation groups (fields: type, founded, founders, known_for, status)
{{ShowInfobox}} — TV series (fields: type, network, presenter, first_aired, status)
{{FilmInfobox}} — films (fields: director, studio, release_date, genre, status)
{{BookInfobox}} — books (fields: author, publisher, published, isbn, pages, genre)
{{PublicationInfobox}} — magazines and periodicals (fields: type, publisher, frequency, first_published, status)

Before using ISBN, pages, or any parameter, check the actual template source — several fields were added to templates after some pages were already written using them (e.g. BookInfobox's ISBN field). If unsure a parameter exists, check the template rather than assume.

Category structure

The Vault is the root category, with no parent.
Content splits into subject-matter branches (Reported Phenomena, Parapsychology, People, In The Media, Hub Pages) and administrative branches (Vault Maintenance).
Flat tagging is retired. Content pages carry only their single most specific category — not a chain up to "All Files" or "The Vault." Only direct children of the root, and category pages one level below it, tag their immediate parent.
Geographic hierarchy: The Vault → Hub Pages → country category (e.g. United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Switzerland) → constituent-country category if applicable (England, Scotland) → county/region category → place-level page. Countries without internal subdivision built out yet (Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, USA) hold their content directly on the category page; once a sub-region is created, that content should migrate down and the parent trimmed to a pointer.
Subcategory/member lists are not written manually. MediaWiki generates them automatically from category tags — do not add a "Pages in this category" list to a category page.

The eponymous category pattern

When a place or topic needs both a browsable category and readable overview content, split them:

Category:X — structural only: infobox, one or two lines of scope, "what belongs/doesn't belong here" if useful.
X (the plain-titled page) — the actual readable article, filed into Category:X.

See Kent / Category:Kent and Precognition as the reference examples. Counties created as category-only (no separate article) are a deliberate exception once confirmed with the site owner — see the batch of English counties rebuilt as pure categories.

Growing a subtopic into its own page

When a section of an existing page accumulates enough independent detail, split it into its own page and trim the original section down to a short summary + link. Established examples: Precognition out of Psychic Ability; Ganzfeld Experiment out of Telepathy; Enfield Poltergeist and Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis out of Poltergeist. Don't duplicate detail across both pages after a split — the parent should point, not repeat.

Disambiguation

When a term names both a general phenomenon and a specific work (e.g. a book), the phenomenon keeps the plain title and the work takes a parenthetical qualifier — see Extra-Sensory Perception (book) vs. Extrasensory Perception.

Redirects

Use a redirect, not a duplicate article, when two titles genuinely describe the same subject from different angles with nothing to independently justify a second page (e.g. Medium → Mediumship; The Paranormal Channel → The Unexplained Channel).

Sourcing and external links

Cite real sources found via search; don't invent citations or fabricate hauntings for real, named locations without a source. If nothing turns up, say so honestly rather than filling the gap.
Amazon purchase links (`amzn.to` short links) cannot be verified by fetch — flag this limitation when adding one rather than presenting it as confirmed to match the exact edition.
Wikitext content should avoid `<code>[[...]]</code>` to display a literal category/link tag as text — MediaWiki will still execute it. Use `(nowiki)[[...]](/nowiki)` instead (replacing the brackets with <>).

Templates

See Category:Vault Templates for the full library and their individual documentation. Use {{Documentation}} for a new template's own noinclude block rather than freehand formatting.