Editing Guide

Thanks for your interest in editing the Sample Source Wiki. While undoubtedly many people feel that it would be fairly easy to slap up what they think is a valid sample quote and move on, it would save me the hassle of having to fix every entry by hand (just for the sake of anal-retentiveness) if you followed these simple guidelines to keep the wiki as clean, smooth, and consistent as possible.

Thank you, --Ssmodk

Basics

To make things as clear as possible and to be sure that I'm doing everything absolutely correct, I always use the Source Editor to be sure the wiki is doing exactly what I want it to do. Wikia is making regular changes to the Visual Editor, but you can never be quite sure what it's doing without looking at the source and it tends to add unnecessary or wrong code in the process of attempting to format things; therefore, I recommend setting your editor for the Source Editor.

To set your editor for Source, go to your user icon at the top of the screen (you need to be signed in for this, so this doesn't help those that want to do some drive-by anonymous edits without a Wikia account; just get one already) and click on My Preferences. Under My Preferences, choose the Editing tab. You'll see the Preferred Editor drop-down under the first section, Editing experience. Once Source editor is chosen, everything else will make a lot more sense.

Samples

The individual samples are undoubtedly the easiest aspect of the format and, should the Artist and Source pages already be in place, adding a new sample should be quick and simple.

To add a sample, going to the existing page for the media the sample is taken from (movie, TV, recording, person, etc.) and go to the heading for the artist you're adding a sample for. If the artist exists on the site but is not on the page for that source, add it with the following code:

==Artist Name==

The artist's name should always be placed alphabetically between the artists that come before and after it, not last on the page or anywhere else. If the artist's name begins with "The", you can ignore that but still add it to the artist's name if it is a part of it, particularly if it's listed as such on Discogs. The first letters of an artist's name should be capitalized, even if it normally isn't. (The same goes for the first letters of song titles and album names; I don't care if you think articles shouldn't be capitalized - you're going to do it or get the fuck out.)

After you find the appropriate artist, enter the sample alphabetically by the name of the track. You'll first add a bullet followed by the speaking character's name, a colon, and the quoted sample, inside quotation marks.

*Guy's Name: "Holy shit! It's a sample!"
*Some Other Guy: "I've been known to listen to songs with samples in them."

For the love of God, do use appropriate grammar and spelling. Also, be damned sure that you've checked that the sample is saying what it's saying. Don't work off of memory. Don't attempt to decipher it only from the song. Type out specifically what is said in the film, TV show, etc., and then check it against the sample to be sure they didn't tweak it or remove words for whatever reason. Where there are long pauses... ellipses... are... acceptable... and useful. Where several lines from the movie are removed but the remaining lines are played continuously, as if they were from a single, unedited sample, feel free to center the ellipsis to denote that ... words or sentences are missing in the middle of the line or lines.

If the sample is a sound effect, add the usual bullet, then list it within single brackets as below, using the minimal amount of description to get the point across.

*''[Don getting shot]''
*''[alien bursting out of Robert's face]''

If the sample is a conversation between two or more people, it obviously has to be listed separately to maintain its integrity as a single sample but to be able to follow the dialogue. We're going to accomplish this by placing the sample in double bullets. Therefore, a single bullet will show up to denote the individual sample and then a series of second bullets, indented to the right, that will follow the flow of the conversation.

• • Guy 1: "Says a thing."
  • Guy 2: "Says a thing back."
  • Guy 1: "Now let's end the sample..."

The formatting around bullets can be a bit finicky, so be sure to leave a line break between any samples before and after the double-bulleted conversation. While it won't visibly show the line breaks outside the code, it'll make sure that the bulleting happens as it should and bullets don't disappear or end up where they shouldn't be.

*Guy's Name: "Holy shit! It's a sample!"

**Guy 1: "Says a thing." **Guy 2: "Says a thing back." **Guy 1: "Now let's end the sample..."

*Some Other Guy: "I've been known to listen to songs with samples in them."

After you're done entering the samples, end it with the song's title and the album/EP/single the track originally (or, if necessary and less confusing, most-notably) appeared on. (If the track originally appeared on a 12" single in 1982 that was an edition of 14 copies, you'll be forgiven for listing the album as the compilation of singles they released on CD in 1997.)

To possibly make the code for this less confusing, let's look at it first and then take apart what it means.

::'''"Song Title"''' ''(Album Title)''

Though it's probably not the best system, this is how we list things: first double colons to indent the line the appropriate amount of space, then triple apostrophes (which is the code for bold lettering), the song's title (inside quotation marks), then triple apostrophes again (to end the bolding), followed by a space, double apostrophes (to start italicizing), the title of the album/EP/single (inside parentheses), and double apostrophes again (to end the italicizing). Simple? No. But you'll get used to it.

If you have any special notes, place them in parentheses, in italics, indented equally, above the song title line.

::''(from the German dub)'' ::''(from episode 403: "TV Show Episode Name)'' ::'''"Song Title"''' ''(Album Title)''

Sample Sources

{{Movie infobox |title = |image = |imagewidth = |imagecaption = |imdb = |wikipedia = |discogs = }}

Artists

{{Artist infobox |artist = |discogs = |wikipedia = }}