Posting New Mission Reports

So, you got Permission and you've published your first mission. Congratulations! To keep a reasonably well-organized list of mission reports, it's important that new missions be linked on the wiki. If you don't know how to edit the wiki, it's relatively easy. Check Help:Editing for general information and Help:Wikitext for a guide to wiki markup. Also be sure to read our Wiki Rules before you start.

A lot of this only has to be done the first time your agents complete a mission; after that, it's more updating previously created links and pages than creating new ones.

Posting a New Mission
We're going to assume here that you've just finished your first mission featuring your agents Alice and Bob. It's called "Mary Sue Goes to Rivendell," it's set in the Lord of the Rings continuum, and it takes place sometime in January 2011 HST. Here's what you should do:

1. Announce your mission.
New missions should be announced:
 * On the PPC Posting Board.
 * On the Current Events Page.
 * On the front page under "Latest Story Releases."

2. Add your mission to the Killed Badfic list.
This step is especially important in order to ensure that people don't overwrite each other's material by mistake. Instructions for doing this can be found on the Killed Badfic page itself. Be sure to also remove the badfic from the Claimed Badfic page if it is on there.

3. Link your mission from your agents' pages.

 * You can create a page for each agent if you have not already done so; see How to Make a Character Page for a suggested format. The profile you used when you applied for permission, or wrote when you created the agent, can usually be turned easily into the agent's wiki page. You may want to use the Agent Infobox Template for the agent's page.
 * On the page, you should note that Alice and Bob are partners, which department they are in, and that you are their author.
 * Remember to add categories (especially "PPC Agents" and their department) on each agent's page.
 * Agent pages can be fairly minimal, with just a short description (species, appearance, personality) and some basic data (creator, department, partner, missions); just create them so we know your agent exists and which missions he has been on. If your agent is doing a mission with someone other than their usual partner, make a note of it after the continuum annotation when you list the mission.

Example code for Alice and Bob's first mission, on Alice's wiki page:

4. List your mission on the Complete List of PPC Fiction.
On the Complete List of PPC Fiction, PPC missions and other stories are listed by department.
 * Create a new department listing if your agents are the first to post a mission report in that department; otherwise, find the correct department and division and edit that.
 * On the Complete List, link to your agents' homepage instead of to individual missions.
 * If your agents' homepage is already listed, all you have to do is increase the number after the entry. Links are ordered by number of missions, so make sure to move your link up the list when you add new missions.
 * Agent pages with missions updated in the last month should be tagged with the newly updated number of missions in red, a "NEW!" notice in lime green, and the current date. If you see dates more than a month old, remove the colors and tags.

Example code for Alice and Bob's first mission, on the Complete List of PPC Fiction:

5. List your mission under the continuum where it takes place.
This helps people in the same fandom find missions in their favorite continua.


 * If the mission is a crossover, list it on all relevant continuum pages.
 * If your agents are in a division dedicated to a particular continuum, check to see whether that division's "Complete List" section is linked from the continuum. If it is, you don't need to list your agents' homepage (it is already linked from the "Complete List"); if not, please add it.
 * If your agents have only been on one mission in the continuum, you should link to your mission and then list your agents and their department abbreviation. If they've been on more than one, list the agents' names and department first, then the missions.
 * If your agents only go on missions in one continuum, you can link to their page and put a number in parentheses after the link, like you did for the Complete List page, to save space.
 * If the continuum doesn't have a wiki page yet, create the page. If you are in a hurry, only a sentence or two is really necessary to describe the continuum; the page can be filled later. Tag it as a if the page is particularly short.

Example code for Alice and Bob's first mission, on the Lord of the Rings page:

Example code for Alice and Bob's second mission, on the Lord of the Rings page:

6. List your mission on relevant canon character pages.
This helps people find missions featuring their favorite characters.


 * Check to see if a page for the character already exists. If so, you may add to it.
 * If not, find out if there are other missions that prominently feature this character. If the character features in ten or more missions, it might be good to have a page about them, but please exercise restraint and ask the Board if you're not sure.
 * Check existing pages for a "PPC Missions Featuring This Character" section. If it doesn't exist, add it. Include the following text:
 * List your mission under the appropriate year.
 * List your mission under the appropriate year.

Example code for Alice and Bob's first two missions, on the Legolas page:

7. Make sure your mission is linked to your agents' home department.
This helps people find a certain sort of mission that they like to read, like assassinations or exorcisms. In general, a department page should be linked to its "Complete List" section, rather than to individual missions. However, if a department has an official homepage, the official homepage should be linked directly from the department wiki page.


 * Check to make sure that your department's wiki page has a link to its "Complete List" section. If it doesn't, add it.
 * If your agent transferred from one department to another, or was temporarily "borrowed" by another department, list his missions under the department where he completed the highest number of missions. Again, the other department page should have a link to the "Complete List."
 * If you created an official Web page for your department or division, put a link on the department or division wiki page as well as on the "Complete List" section.

Extended Format Guide
If you don't quite understand how to add your particular mission, this should help.

Treatment of Titles
Make sure you use quotation marks to set off titles of short works, such as missions. (If your mission qualifies as a novel, you're doing it wrong.) Either double or single quotes is fine; just make sure you're being consistent with what is already on the page.

Also make sure you use italics to set off titles of long works. Most continua fall into this category, and this goes for truncations of the title, too (e.g. Narnia). Exceptions occur for titles of some series (e.g. Old Kingdom, Firebird Series) and tabletop games (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons, World of Darkness). If you're not sure, check the continuum page, Wikipedia, or another trustworthy source.

Crossover Missions
If your mission is a crossover, make sure to list all the continua involved any time you would add a continuum tag.

On Alice's page:

On a continuum page, the name of the continuum in question need not be listed, only the crossed one(s).

On the Lord of the Rings page:

Co-writes, Temporary Partners, and Guest Characters
Any time your agents are joined on a mission by other agents, their names and department abbreviations should be included after the continuum designation. For instance, if Alice and Bob had help from the Department of Implausible Crossovers in their third mission:

On Alice's page:

If Alice and Bob are assigned a temporary partner, trainee, intern, etc., that is noted in much the same way, using the appropriate title. If the character is a trainee, no department tag is needed.

If Alice is temporarily working with someone other than Bob:

On Alice's page:

On the Lord of the Rings page:

Note that in the above example, British usage places the comma outside single-quotes around the mission title. In North American usage, the comma would go inside double-quotes.

Missions in Multiple Parts
This may come up if you're posting missions in a LiveJournal or some other service with a character limit. In cases like this, it's helpful to link to all parts of a mission so people can easily find them without having to hunt down the "next" button (if there is one) and hope it really does go directly to the next part of the story. List multiple parts like this:

Some General Rules

 * If you're not sure how to add your mission to the wiki, go ahead and ask for help; nobody will bite your head off. It's a relatively minor job to do, and most likely somebody will offer to put up the mission for you.
 * Once you've learned the basics, don't worry too much about messing up. Even if you mess up a page, it can just be reverted back to the way it used to be before you made your mistake. A good page for trying things out is the Sandbox.
 * If your mission is NSFW or NSFB, mention that in a note after the link to prevent unnecessary squickage. This may be the same note as the continuum annotation.
 * Useful info about links:
 * Links to a different page on PPC Wiki are the page title enclosed in double square brackets: Mary Sue
 * If you want the link to say something else, put the page title first, then the word(s) you want it to be: annoying glittery brat
 * To link to a subsection, use name of link
 * Links outside the wiki are enclosed in single square brackets:
 * If you want your outside link to say something (and you should), put that phrase after the link, separated by a space: Alice and Bob's Site
 * Wikipedia uses the same code that this wiki does, so its Linking page may be helpful.