User:Erik/Film ratings/doc

The following template has been adapted from Album ratings

'Only add a rating if you cite it with a reference. For further information on sources, see WikiProject Film.'

The template is not to be a substitute for a section in paragraph form, since a review can not be accurately boiled down to a simple rating out of five stars, or a phrase like "unfavorable". If an article is lacking a reception section in prose, but the information is presented in table format, the prose maintenance template can be used to tag the section for expansion.

The reviews should be listed alphabetically in the Reviews field. The information in the reviewer field should be the name of the source. Don't forget to wikilink to the relevant article.

The information in the score field should be the rating given in the review (e.g. "4/5"). The rating should use the same format as in the review, to accurately portray the score of the review. For star ratings you should use the star rating template; for example, entering, will render:. Numerical ratings, letter grades and other non-symbol ratings should be shown using plain text in parentheses, like (3.5/10), (B) or (90%). If no rating is given in the review you should use one of the words (favorable) or (unfavorable) to describe the review, possibly allowing for (ambivalent), (mixed), (extremely favorable) and more, but keep it short and simple. If you cannot summarize the review, don't include it in the template.

After the rating should be the citation of the source of the review. Per Citing sources do not add reviews without a citation. This means a properly formatted footnote, in most cases providing the author, date, and source, along with an external link if available. Do not use an embedded link with no information (e.g. link) as this promotes link rot and is inconsistent with Wikipedia's policy on embedded links. If you must use an embedded link, be sure to manually provide a full citation in the article's References section per Wikipedia:Citing sources.

Note that this template can only accept two score aggregators—Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes—and 12 individual reviews. Feature films from major studios may have over 100 professional reviews in the United States alone. When determining which reviews to include in this template, ask yourself the following questions: Try to choose a broad sweep of particularly important reviews that are indicative of the general impression that this film has left on the community of professional reviewers. Some films will have a near-universally positive reception, others will be almost entirely negative, and many will fall somewhere in-between.
 * How well-known or influential are these sources?
 * Do the reviews in this template accurately reflect the opinion of a majority of reviewers, or does it emphasize particularly negative or particularly positive reviews?
 * Do the reviews reflect a broad scope of reviewers—that is, are there reviews from popular general interest sources such as magazines and newspapers and publications devoted specifically to film? Are there reviews from multiple time periods that give an impression of the legacy that a film has left? Do the reviews chosen for this template reflect a bias toward a certain region or school of thought on film?

For example, entering



will render

and generate the following footnotes with the sources:

Syntax
Required fields:


 * rev#
 * the name of the reviewer, goes from rev1 to rev12
 * rev#Score
 * the rating given by the reviewer, goes from rev1Score to rev12Score

All of the following fields are optional:


 * title
 * can be used to provide a custom title for the table, otherwise, it will default to "Professional ratings".
 * subtitle
 * used to add additional text before the collapsible section. This is necessary to add if want a longer title, as long titles via the "title" parameter will not center correctly.
 * state
 *   –  the table will be collapsed (hidden) by default. This is useful for very long tables.
 *   –  the table will start out collapsed if there are two or more tables on the same page that use other collapsible tables. Otherwise, the table will be expanded. For the technically minded, see MediaWiki:Common.js.
 *   –  the table will always be expanded and the [hide]/[show] link on the right will not be displayed.
 * If set to blank, the table will always start out in an expanded state.
 * width
 * sets the width of the table; default is 23em.
 * MC
 * Metacritic score
 * RT
 * Rotten Tomatoes score

Usage
Category:Wikipedia rating templates Category:WikiProject Film templates