This page contains our standards for new pages on the Wiki. Pages will be allowed one week from the day they are created to meet these standards. Pages that do not meet these standards by then may be deleted or folded over into other pages.
Note that all pages must follow the guidelines in our page standards.
Word count
All newly created pages must meet a minimum word count of 100. If you cannot meet that requirement, the article would not have enough information for the readers.
National cultures
Pages about national cultures or ethnic groups as a whole are banned on this wiki. However, pages about aesthetics originating from a certain culture is more than encouraged. What this means is that a page should not generalize an entire nation, culture, etc. as one thing. Rather, a good page should split the artistic history and subcultures of a national/ethnic group into different pages. A page titled "Japancore" that lumps together Kawaii, woodblock prints, anime, and samurais is not allowed, but different pages such as "Kawaii," "Ukiyo-e," and "Sengoku Jidai" will stay.
If a nation also has a visual culture of stereotypes and self-parody, a page about that will also be kept, so long as the article discusses it without stereotyping the entire nation. Indeed, many nations participate in patriotic visual culture, and are proud of it, so it is not disrespectful.
The same concept also applies to Internet Aesthetics and media tropes that generalize a nation. As long as the article states where and how the aesthetic is interpreted, it may stay. As an example, an article claiming that the Romanii people live like Gypsies in media will be removed, but an article explaining and describing that this is a fictional stereotype will stay.
This rule is kept in place because in the past, articles that are blatantly racist against ethnic minorities have been made.
Personal Aesthetics
We do not accept pages for personal aesthetics (this includes any aesthetic that does not exist outside one person’s mind and creations). To meet our requirements for notability, an aesthetics must be found and exemplified repeatedly online in communities on Tumblr, images on Pinterest, and various other sources. What the wiki will consider "existing" is that searching up the name brings up multiple Pinterest boards, Tumblr posts, Instagram posts, etc. If the name does not bring anything up, it will largely be assumed to be nonexistent. Alternatively, if the page explains an aesthetic that does not have an official name, but can pinpoint an estimated origin and way of expression, it can stay.
The wiki does not allow created aesthetics because this site serves as a place to know information about online and offline trends, communities, fashions, etc. Personal aesthetics are hyper-specific to the creator of the page's tastes and ideas, and that most writers of these pages are trying to express their own ideals and self-promote. This goes against the ethos of most, if not all, wikis, which depend on contributors to be factual. While being creative in your personal aesthetics is encouraged, the main goal is to document and be a reliable resource for people learning about different trends and communities in real life and online; multiple pages for things that don't exist chips at the reliability.
The best comparison as to what not to do is creating a work of fiction. Many deleted pages were approached as if they were inventing or writing a story. A good page should instead be more like reporting, with the page creator observing the aesthetic and then adding it to the wiki.
The way some pages are written also may tip off the admins that the aesthetic is a personal one. These often break the norms of professionalism and objectivity.
- Links to the social media accounts of the page creator or Discord servers so that the reader may follow and join the creator's "community."
- Describing personality traits and emotions. Most, if not all, aesthetics do carry across emotions, but the traits written in personal aesthetics tend to not directly translate into visuals (i.e. describing the aesthetic as "spontaneous and individualistic" but the photos are of neat kawaii stationary.)
- Pushing forward an incredibly specific philosophy as front-and-center of the aesthetic without there being a documented community beforehand. The aesthetic becomes for these people as opposed to being by the people.
- Disparate media and music sections. It typically results from the varied personal taste of the page creator, with the creator wanting to add all of their favorite things in a single aesthetic. For example, Harry Potter has a very different mood from the grunge band Nirvana, but because the creator likes both, both would be in the media section.
In addition, promoting a personal aesthetic, trying to form a community, and making something for a marginalized community should be done on another social media platform, not a wiki. Pages that center around an ethnic/gender/sexual minority participating in a pre-existing aesthetic will be deleted.
There are multiple aesthetics that can qualify a page but do not have an official name. For example, Pink Parisian and Auroracore. In this case, the creator of the page can create a name but not claim credit for inventing it. Specifying that the name was created for the wiki is encouraged. The moderators know that the aesthetic "exists" because of the visual and thematic consistency, as well as there being a way the aesthetic is communicated or an origin.
However, pages where the aesthetic was created by a person AND THEN gained notoriety are accepted.
Visual diversity
Aesthetics must have more than one photographic subject. There need to be at least five distinct, separate visuals. For example, a non-existent "Rosecore" page exclusively focused on images of roses or rose printed fabrics will be deleted. Of these five visuals, four of them cannot be copies of a pre-existing aesthetic.
Notable single-subject aesthetics will be placed into the Single-Subject Aesthetics page.
Uniqueness
The aesthetic subjects of a page on the Aesthetics Wiki should be recognizably distinct from all existing aesthetics. If the aesthetic is inspired by existing aesthetics, at least two aspects should be significantly and obviously different. These aspects can include, but are not limited to, philosophy, color palette, time period, fashion, and visual focus.
So, for example, a page on "girlbloggers" should not be separate from "Waif." These are the same aesthetic that came from 2020 Pinterest that simply goes by two different names. In contrast, "Kawaii Gamer" and "Kawaii" are separate pages because one came from 2020 Western TikTok, and one describes a concept existing prior to TikTok's founding.
Pre-existing media
Do not add aesthetics centered around pre-existing media. Pre-existing media includes TV shows, movies, books, video games, comic books, graphic novels, and fictional characters. Pre-existing media almost always has elements of different aesthetics, so it’s useless to add a completely new aesthetic that is already too similar. Examples include StarWarscore and Harrypottercore, which have elements of Spacial and Retrofuturism, and Witchcore and Dark Academia respectively.
If a particular piece of media (e.g. the original Star Wars trilogy or the Harry Potter series) is a good example of an aesthetic, it can be cited on the aesthetic's page. This rule applies to all forms of media.
However, if the fan base of a musician creates an Internet Aesthetic that does not directly reference the artist, but is heavily inspired by them, it may stay. For example, Morute and XO were created from the fan bases of Nicole Dollanganger and The Weeknd. They do feature the musicians in some images and posted songs, but most images in the aesthetic do not reference the musician. In contrast, a "Beatlescore" blog that has every single image be of the Beatles or Beatles merchandise, is not divorced enough from the artist to have its own wiki page.
It is also important that there is proof that there is a community. If there is only one Beatlescore blog that does post Beatles-adjacent visuals that do not directly reference them, that would not be allowed because the aesthetic community is not big enough. However, the articles on the wiki that originate from fan bases do have a fairly large group of people in the aesthetic.
Company Aesthetics
Aesthetics related to specific companies are largely based on the level of influence as a design company. For example, a single company creating a new design aesthetic is going to stay as a page, but a company with a merch line incorporating elements of other previous design aesthetics is going to be deleted.
Sections
New pages must have an introduction, an aesthetic Infobox, a Visuals section, a Gallery, and preferably at least one other section.
There should be at least one sentence in the introduction and the Infobox should have an image and 3 of the main fields filled out. The Visuals section should list at least 5 distinct visuals, four of which cannot be copied from another aesthetic. The gallery should have at least 1 image that is different from the image used in the infobox.