Gongjin's Campaign Memorials:Rules

Thank you for taking the time to check the rules for this Wiki.

By just looking at the Contents Menu you should already get you a good impression of the rules. For details, read further.

The rules were established with the three goals of this wiki in mind. These goals are:

1. To create an encylopedia that is historically correct.
2. To create an encyclopedia that will be considered by our visitors as reliable.
3. To create a large encyclopedia with large, complete articles. No summarizing, no details left out.

References & Sources: the more the merrier

When writing about historical subjects it's important to let the reader know where you have your information from, so they can always check what you're writing. This is a common thing in any book or article about history, thus also for this wiki.

Adding sources and referencing your edits will also help to make our wiki look that much more reliable and trustworthy. When it comes to sources: the more different sources the merrier! Apply a references-tag at least once to every paragraph. It gives the reader the impression that you've done extensive research on the topic. When writing an article from scratch, please do so using at least 5 different sources.

See our Style Guide for information on the referencing-system we're using.

References: English or Chinese?

It's great if you can read traditional Chinese and very helpful to the wiki, but keep in mind that many of our readers can not understand Chinese. Sources and References are there to show the reader where we got our information from, but also for the reader to be able to double-check what we've written. The vast majority of readers can not do any double-checking if all our sources are Chinese.

Therefor we urge our editors to use professional English source material whenever they can. Or use one of our own translations.

• You can refer to Chinese sources if you leave a complete translation of the sentence you are referring to in the references section. The translation must be your own, and not copied from Wikipedia, Kongming.net, Koei Wiki, etc.
• Please refrain from using Chinese sources if you do not speak Chinese yourself and have to rely on online translators.
  Google said about its translator that it's good for translating few words, but not when translating larger amounts of texts. It helps getting the gist of a sentence, but it's not accurate. Furthermore it will look rather odd to the reader that someone who does not speak Chinese uses Chinese texts as his/her (primary) source.

References: internet

• Wikipedia can not be used as a source.
• Koei Wikia or other wikis about the Three Kingdoms can not be used as a source.

• Online articles, written by a professional (such as the ones at Jstor), can be used as a source.

Be extremely cautious when using other well-established Three Kingdoms websites, such as:

- Kongming.net
- the-scholars.com
- 3 Kingdoms Frontier

These sources can never be your primary source for any article you write, but we understand they can provide interesting information. Information you find on these websites should be double-checked with a professional English source (and the professional English source should be the source you list under the References header, not the website - thus the website should hardly be seen under any References header or Sources header). Otherwise, you can consult at the forums.

When you're in doubt

Use the Comments Section!

If you want to make an edit, but you're actually not sure if the edit you're about to make is correct, then please ask in the comments section under every article! For example if you want to edit the infobox of the Yellow Turban Rebellion by adding Pei Yuanshao to the 'Officers' section, but you're not 100% sure if Pei Yuanshao was a historical or fictional character, please ASK before you take any further action.

Copying from Other Works

Do Not Copy From Wikipedia

The website Wikipedia is not reliable when it comes to Three Kingdoms articles. If you do wish to take some from Wikipedia, please discuss it with fellow users here and/or consult a reliable source to check that what was written by Wikipedia is indeed true.

Some of Wikipedia's contributors can read Mandarin and they make more and more use of the Sanguo zhi in Chinese. Their translations are often messy though and they seem to make use of an online version of the Sanguo zhi which is full of errors (even names are sometimes written incorrect and Wikipedia just takes it over). Moreover, users who can not read Mandarin are unable to varify anything of what's written.

All reasons why Gongjin's Campaign Memorials advices not to use Wikipedia, or at the least be careful when you do.

And furthermore, what's the purpose of having your own wiki if you copy everything from another? :-)

Do Not Copy From Other Wiki’s

There are several wiki's out there about the Three Kingdoms, but we have yet to run into one that references to reliable sources.

Do Not Copy From Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三國演義), written by Luo Guanzhong is a novel containing a fictional story based on the historical Records of the Three Kingdoms. Do not use this work for articles about actual history.

Do Not Copy From Koei

Koei and Omega Force base their games on the fictitious novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a novel containing a fictional Three Kingdoms story.

Do Not Copy From Other Works/Websites IF it does not have references/sources

No referencing to reliable sources means we can not check that which is written.

Copy From Reliable Sources

Copying from reliable sources is allowed. Here at Gongjin's Campaign Memorials we make a distinction between Early Sources (such as Records of the Three Kingdoms, Book of Jin, etcetera) and Modern Sources (such as works written by Rafe de Crespigny and Robert Joe Cutter). It is OK to copy as much as you like from the early sources (don't forget to add ref tags!), but modern sources are copyright protected and only small portions may be copied (again, don't forget to add ref tags!).

Uploading Images with URL in Description

When you upload pictures that you found on another website, please include the URL of that website in the image description so that we can confirm the picture indeed depicts the person it is believed to be depicting.

Quality & Quantity

Gongjin's Campaign Memorials strives to create articles larger than any other out there. Not just to be larger, but to create articles that are as complete as possible, with no information or detail missing.

Example:

• Wrong: "In 193 Cao Cao attacked Yuan Shu in Yan Province and drove him away southwards."
• Right: "In the third month of 193, on the day wushen (2 April) Cao Cao attacked Yuan Shu at Fengqiu city in Dong commandery, Yan province. Cao Cao besieged Yuan Shu but before the siege was completed, Yuan Shu had already fled southwards to Xiangyi city in Chenliu commandery."

As you can see the "Right" version shows a much more detailed and much more telling side of the events. This is what Gongjin's Campaign Memorials aims at.

Article Layout [Style Guide]

main article: Article Style Guide