Wikipedia:WikiProject Water Margin

Welcome to the Water Margin WikiProject!

Introduction
The WikiProject Water Margin is a group dedicated to improve all of Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the Chinese classical novel Water Margin. Our goal is to enhance Wikipedia's coverage of Water Margin by creating, expanding, and maintaining such articles, to serve as the central point of discussion for issues related to the novel in Wikipedia as well as providing guidelines and recommendations. The scope of this project includes all topics related to the Water Margin, such as its characters and adaptations.

Scope
The project generally covers all articles related to the Water Margin, including its characters and adaptations. We aim to provide accurate information and original research is not encouraged. The novel itself and other studies done on it can be used as sources for any information. Personal opinions and interpretations are strictly not to be added in.

Areas we are interested in:
 * Characters: The 108 Liangshan heroes and other supporting characters from the novel. Most, if not all, of the articles for these characters have been created and are regularly maintained by the active editors in this project. Additional information may be added but they must be accounted for.


 * Adaptations: Generally refers to the film and television adaptations of Water Margin. It is good to point out the differences between the adaptations and the novel but original research is strongly discouraged. Please ensure that reliable sources are cited if information on the differences is to be included.


 * References to the real world: Information on how the novel and some of its characters have impacted Chinese culture and other aspects of Chinese society. This is what is currently lacking in most of the articles under this project.

Naming conventions

 * Follow Manual of Style (China-related articles)

Character articles

 * Introduction
 * Include the character's name, nickname and rank in the 108 Liangshan heroes. Take Wu Song's introduction for example:

"Wu Song, nicknamed 'Pilgrim', is a fictional character in the Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. He ranks 14th of the 36 Heavenly Spirits of the 108 Liangshan heroes."


 * Before joining Liangshan
 * Quote the novel's description of the character. Provide a short write-up on the character's story before he/she becomes an outlaw.


 * Joining Liangshan
 * Provide an account of how the character joined Liangshan. Indicate the character's role in Liangshan. For example, Wu Yong becomes the chief strategist of Liangshan. Include as well the character's involvement in the campaigns after the Liangshan outlaws have been granted amnesty by the imperial court. End off with a few sentences on the character's eventual fate.

Templates
There are a variety of infobox templates and auxiliary boxes available for use in the Water Margin articles.

A few general guidelines apply to all of the infoboxes:
 * 1) Most of the fields in each infobox can be omitted if desired; the choice of which ones are appropriate for a particular article is left to the discretion of the article's editors.
 * 2) Multiple values given in a single field should be separated by both commas and, where appropriate, line breaks; merely spacing them onto separate lines can confuse screen reader software, and is ambiguous when long terms wrap onto multiple lines in their own right.
 * 3) In general, the use of flag icons is not recommended.


 * Water Margin character infobox: Used for all Water Margin characters. See the infobox's page for more information on what is to be filled in.


 * Water Margin characters: include at the bottom of each character's page


 * WPWaterMargin: add to each article's talk page

Categories

 * Category:Water Margin: Place all articles in this general category


 * Category:Water Margin characters: Place all character articles in this category

Key points
Expand the articles on the Water Margin characters: Not in terms of fictional content. We know that there are people capable of reiterating details from the novel, but this is not what we're looking out for. What we hope to see are more edits on the impact of the novel and its characters on the real world. There are many well-known characters from the novel, such as Lin Chong, Lu Zhishen and Wu Song, who have heavily influenced some aspects of Chinese culture and society.

Members
Please add your name (in alphabetical order) to the list below if you're interested in joining this project. Please include a few short sentences on how you think you can contribute to the project as well.

You may wish to add this to your userpage.


 * 1) Chensiyuan
 * 2) Lds - the founder of the project. I've been contributing to almost all Water Margin-related articles since 2005.
 * 3) Shadowy Sorcerer - Just finished the book. Knowledgeable on other classic chinese novels, can read traditional mandarin... slowly.
 * 4) 飘零之琴
 * 5) Tyrhonius - Correcting factual errors in the biographies of the Liangshan chieftains.
 * 6) Kayau (talk · contribs) - if I get more time, I might expand some of those for DYK, and for Wu Song, Lu Zhishen, etc., I could help getting them to GA.

Related projects

 * WikiProject China
 * WikiProject Chinese history
 * WikiProject Novels

External watchlist

 * WikiProject Water Margin watchlist