Main Page/Welcome

Take your time to get acquainted with the basic rules.

• There is a hierarchy here. Like that or lump it.

Fandom prides itself on the notion that "wikis are not owned by their founders, nor does the founder's opinion carry more weight in disagreements than any other user's opinion". This does not fly here. Myself and RacingFreak/Nik hold the most weight in terms of rank and opinion, and further hierarchies will be assigned based on the number of valuable contributions a user makes. This is a meritocracy, and without a clear-cut leader, things will fall into chaos and anarchy fairly quickly.

• Don't be afraid to speak up.

That said, if you feel the Wiki could be improved or changed in any way, be sure to use the suggestions page to voice your ideas. If there's a consensus or the idea sounds really good, it will likely be implemented.

In terms of aesthetics, I do not really plan to update the wiki's appearance beyond the default MW layout. Most of what I've seen is just horridly generic Semantic Web mundanity that the usual suspects (i.e. Fandom) are trying to shove down everyone's throats. I like my web pages to have a certain "look" to them, as well as appear more predictable and encyclopedic.

• Please familiarise yourself with templates.

Take a look at either of these pages. Note how they have a lot of categories, as well as infoboxes?

That's because they use templates. Every category is dynamically added through templates, that is to say automatically generated when the correct information is input. Please do not manually add categories to articles, or you will be warned. If the template interface looks intimidating to you, don't feel that way. It's literally a case of declaring a template with double curly braces; {{}} and then filling in the parameters before dividing them with vertical lines which you can obtain either by looking at the source of each template, or copying an instance of a template from another article and modifying the information where applicable.

There are two major benefits to templates; it massively reduces page size by transcluding (copying from one page unto another), and if there's a mistake or something that needs to be added, the template can be modified and then all instances of that template on the Wiki will be simultaneously updated.

Again, if this seems a little overwhelming, just remember that someone went through a great deal of setting the website up, creating something from nothing, and the least you can do on your part is to memorise a few template formats.

• Image uploading is disabled to non-admins.

If you wish to see a picture on here, please use the correct Discord channel (once it is created) so they may be cleaned up, sourced correctly, and uploaded at the right time. This is to avoid a similar situation as last time where members would flood the Wiki with low-quality images, necessitating clean-up.

• Declare your pages in advance.

If you want to work on a page or two, then announce your intentions beforehand so that multiple people aren't working on the same thing. You can use this page to "reserve" articles. From here you will have one week to write your article, else it is forfeited and someone else is allowed to write it. You can request as many pages as you want.

• Furthermore, work on pages in your userspace BEFORE putting them online.

This will allow me to review your page before it goes live, and make any necessary corrections/alterations. Use my talk page to draw my attention, and you can use this page for matters outside of the Wiki so long as it's tangentially Top Gear or automotive journalism-related. If I and/or RacingFreak are not available for whatever reason, upload pages without our blessing at your peril. If you become a trusted member, you may disregard this rule. For protected pages, if you would like to modify or improve one, discuss your ideas on the talk page first.

• All articles are to be written from the perspective of an indefinite point in the future UNLESS something is presently ongoing.

This prevents the need to continually update articles should something suddenly change (i.e. a car being taken out of production, a company going bankrupt etc.) and means an article only has to be written once. This basically means use "was/were" in 99% of applications unless it's something that is happening right now, or due to happen imminently.

• Similarly, major changes occurring outside any of the shows on this Wiki (e.g. incapacitating injuries, cars being scrapped, name changes etc.) are NOT to be reported unless they occur during the span of a particular show.

It may sound callous, but on this wiki, the life of a television presenter or magazine author begins and ends with their involvement in the show or journal in which they worked for, and anything outside of that is irrelevant. Sabine Schmitz and Tom Boswell's deaths for instance are only to be reported as they occurred during their tenures as presenter on the show and were otherwise expected to continue. Another example is if Jeremy Clarkson were to have changed his name to "Jennifer" in 2015/16 as per the original stipulation of his wager, the page would only refer to him as "Jennifer" when describing events following the name change, with all preceding events and the article title itself retaining the name "Jeremy", as that is the name he was most commonly known by for over 55 years.

• Once a page is finished, submit it to the Wayback Machine so that it may be preserved.

That way, if the website were to ever go down, it can be revived at any time simply by mirroring the pages back into a live form. Please make sure you enable outlinks as that allows it to capture more pages at once.

• This wiki operates on a primarily Anglo-centric perspective.

As most automotive programs are British (including the earliest known example, Wheelbase), the British dialect of English is to be used in most articles, along with British-market car names (i.e. Vauxhall over Opel) unless the car in question was never sold in the UK, or an import car was used instead. An example of this is the Dodge Viper, which despite being known as a Chrysler in the UK, mostly appeared in its American form throughout TV shows. American programmes or shows with significant American involvement (such as The Grand Tour) are allowed to use American English vernacular and spelling variations such as "season" for instance.

• You are responsible for your account.

If the security of your account is ever compromised, whether by another individual or by a bot/script, it is your responsibility to report this so that I may disable it. Failure to do so will result in a presumption of malicious activity and will likely result in a ban.

• No plagiarism, please.

This basically means no copying from Wikipedia or from the obsolete Top Gear Wiki at Fandom. You have a brain, you have hands, write. Don't steal. Source each of your citations by using the <ref> feature.