Random But Useful - SCP Foundation (2024)

This page is a collection of information that I've found useful, and maybe others will find something useful as well. This is a work in progress pretty much by design.

This Style Sheet is to help me develop and compile a standard way of formatting stuff for SCP articles. This is by no means an official document, though I'm going to list formats for official terminology that (I hope) are used consistently among SCP articles.

1. Measurements: In a measurement, add a space between the number and the unit (e.g., 2m). Don't add a comma to a compound measurement (e.g., 5 ft 10 in). Decimal values between -1 and 1 should have a zero in the units place (e.g., 0.4g).
   Exceptions:
   • Temperature: 20°C
   • Latitude and longitude: 40°N, 85°W
   • Percent: 10%
   • Acidity: pH 3.4
   • Caliber: Beretta 9mm
2. Significant digits: Broadly, in a measurement, all digits 1 through 9 as well as 0s between non-zero digits are significant digits (e.g., 12000kg has two significant digits, while 12007kg has five). The number of significant digits of a measurement is determined by how precisely the measurement can be taken. The number of significant digits should remain constant when a measurement is converted (e.g., 12000kg = 26000lb, but 12007kg = 26415lb). See Wikipedia for more information.
   Rule of thumb:
   • Rough estimates, ballpark figures, and difficult measurements get one or two significant digits.
   • Standard measurements get three or four digits.
   • Getting five or six digits requires good equipment, and any more would require exponentially better equipment or special circ*mstances.
   • Exception: GPSs can give latitude and longitude to six decimal places, meaning GPS readings routinely give eight or nine significant digits. [confirm]
3. Punctuation
   • Commas: Generally, as long as a comma doesn't split a subject from its verb (unless setting off a parenthetical phrase) and doesn't break the flow of a sentence (that is, don't put a comma where you wouldn't pause if the sentence were spoken aloud), go nuts.
   • Hyphens: Use hyphens in words that a dictionary says are hyphenated, and in compound modifiers that would be ambiguous otherwise. Note that Ghost will remove any hyphens he feels are unnecessary.
   • Apostrophes: The only plurals that use an apostrophe are single letters (e.g., mind your p's and q's). No other plural takes an apostrophe, including acronyms and numbers (e.g., SCPs or 1980s). I got over it, and so can you.
   • Semicolons: Semicolons join sentences in place of a comma plus conjunction, and with adverbs like "however". They are also used to separate items in a list that include commas already.
4. Terminology
   • Technically, an SCP is the Special Containment Procedure for an item that is contained. Calling an object that is contained an SCP is incorrect usage and should be avoided in technical and official documentation. Colloquially, however, contained objects are often referred to as SCPs, and may be referred to as such in less formal settings.
   • Foundation is always capitalized, though any "the" before it need not be.
   • Classes are always capitalized: Safe, Euclid, and Keter.
   • Site names are capitalized and hyphenated, and their numbers have at least two digits: Site-19, Area-02.
   • Overseers are O5 level— letter oh, number five. Individual O5s are numbered 1 through 13, thus O5-1, O5-2, through O5-13. A leading zero is sometimes added to 1 through 9: O5-01.

N.B. Even though I've been promoted to Senior Staff (a decision which still boggles my mind), I don’t want to give the impression of speaking for or on behalf of the rest of the Staff. The information that follows comes mainly from observation, experience, common sense, and being scolded by the Staff at least ████████████ times.

Rule Zero: Show some civility and respect.
Show some common courtesy to your fellow site members, and some respect for the site and the people who run it. If you’re a jack-ass, people will hold a negative opinion of anything you do before even looking at it.

Rule One: Always leave a note about what kind of change was made.
Down under the main editing box is a small textbox titled "Short description of changes". Text entered here shows as comments on the Recent Changes list and the version history of the page in question. Your changes will be more likely to be received favorably if people know what to expect. Note that once saved, these comments can't be edited.

Specific Suggestions
Start small.
When in doubt, ask in the forum and/or in the chat.
Use a dictionary.
Don’t piss off the staff.
You will not please everyone all the time.
Treat Technical Writing and Creative Writing differently.
Edit longer documents in a word processing program.
Listen.
Use the tools (preview, compare, chat).
Learn how Wikidot formats documents.
Learn about specific admonitions from admins.
Preview substantial revisions in Pastebin.
Don't edit while impaired (sleepy, drunk, or otherwise loopy).
Follow recent changes.

Rule Infinity: Show some respect and civility.
See Rule Zero.

Not sure what class to make your SCP? Try the Locked Box test:

• If you can lock the thing away somewhere, leave it alone, and nothing will happen, the thing is Safe.
• If you lock something away somewhere and leave it alone, but there's no telling what will happen, it's Euclid.
• If you lock something away, leave it alone, and all hell breaks loose, it's Keter.

Also, I'm on a personal crusade against SCP Slash. There are only a few cases where assigning more than one class to an object makes any sense, often involving a provisional classification. That other kind is, um, frowned upon as well.

The statistic called IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is defined as a normal distribution with mean μ=100 and standard deviation σ=15. The upshot is that you can calculate what percentage of a population should have an IQ above (or below) certain values, especially when Wikipedia provides these values out to 6σ. Anyway, the percentage of population with greater than a given IQ:

>100: 50.00%, 1 out of every 2
>115: 15.87%, 1 out of every 6
>130: 2.275%, 1 out of every 44
>145: 0.1350%, 1 out of every 741
>160: 0.003167%, 1 out of every 31,574
>175: 0.00002867%, 1 out of every 3,488,557
>190: 0.00000009865%, 1 out of every 1,013,684,744

So right now, there should be six or seven people in the whole world with an IQ of at least 190. (Conversely, there should also be six or seven people in the world right now with an IQ of less than 10.) How IQ is actually quantified is left as an exercise to the reader (though the method used isn't so important if they all use the same scale).

What about Marilyn vos Savant and her record high IQ? Essentially, her score of 228 came from older testing methodologies (using the ratio of mental age to chronological age) and so she wouldn't score so high on newer tests, in addition to the inherent difficulties in measuring extremes of intelligence. On this scale, she would score at least 185.

N.B. This is neither "How to Create an SCP" nor "How to Write an SCP". This is the process to add the SCP you have written to the Main List.

• Create a page. In the SCP Series 5 or SCP Series 6 page, find an unused number (one marked [ACCESS DENIED]). Click the link for the nonexistent article, and when prompted that the page does not yet exist, click Create Page.
• Fix the title. By default, the title of a new SCP page is in the format "Scp 999". Capitalize and hyphenate the title to bring it to standard format: "SCP-999".
• Paste the contents. You did write it up in an external word processor, didn't you? Either way, enter the contents of the article into the text box.
• Preview. Underneath the comment box (marked "Short description of changes") is the Preview button. Use it often— this will show how your SCP will really look on the wiki. Check the preview to make sure the SCP looks right, and read through it one last time to check for lingering errors.
• Add a comment. You should add a comment to every change you make to the wiki. New pages are no exception, even if the comment's just "New SCP".
• Save. Once you've looked over your SCP for the umpteenth time, click Save (down next to Preview).
• Upload pictures, if necessary. If your SCP has a picture (or several), and you haven't uploaded it elsewhere, you can upload it on the new SCP page. At the bottom of the new page, click Files, click "Upload a file from your computer", click "Select Files", browse to the folder with the pictures to upload, select your picture, and click Open. You can upload multiple files at once; when all the files to be uploaded have been selected, click Upload Files. Once uploaded, refresh to make sure the pictures show up like you expect.
• Add tags. If you feel confident tagging your work, consult the Tag Guide. Click "Tags" at the bottom of your new page and add the applicable tags. Please note that we have a team who tag articles, and it's totally fine to let them handle tagging the new pages. The team searches for pages with no tags, so incomplete tagging prevents the team from finding the article.
• Add the new SCP to the Main List. Edit the SCP Series page to change [ACCESS DENIED] to whatever you want to name your SCP.
• Announce your new SCP. Go to the Announcements section of the Forum, click the current New SCP Announcements thread, click New Post (at the very bottom), and announce your creation. Be sure to link to your new SCP by typing, e.g., [[[SCP-999]]] to get SCP-999. You can also announce your new SCP in the Realtime Chat.

Once it's posted, proceed to the next stage of SCP creation, Feedback and Adjustment. I recommend Kevlar.