Excerpts
I propose that excerpts for series contain the full name of a series in Japanese (romanized; there's no point in tossing kanji/kana in there - yes, I know I'm responsible for adding a fair bit of unnecessary Japanese text to the excerpts; I now realize that was stupid). They should also contain any official English localizations of the name and any common ways of referring to them that aren't necessarily official. The names should be ordered from most used to least used.
A reference to an author/director/producer is also helpful to situate the excerpt in context. In most cases, we need not include any other information.
So, for example, here are how some of these would work:
- madoka-magica - Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica (or "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" is a 2011 anime series produced by Shaft.
- chuunibyou - "Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!" ("Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions"), is a light novel written by Torako, with an anime adaptation by Kyoto Animation.
- naruto - Naruto is a manga series by Masashi Kishimoto.
- one-piece - One Piece is a manga series by Oda Eiichiro.
- shingeki-no-kyojin - Shingeki no Kyojin (or, "Attack on Titan" or "The Eotena Onslaught") is a manga series by Hajime Isayama. (lol jk)
- kara-no-kyoukai - Kara no Kyoukai (or, "The Garden of Sinners") is a light novel series by Nasu Kinoko. (note that we don't include "The Boundary of Emptiness" which is a literal translation of "Kara no Kyoukai", but isn't actually used as a title by anyone)
Now, there are some excerpts that will need additional disambiguation or references to other related tags. We should do so while still maintaining economy of space:
- fullmetal-alchemist - Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga; the 2003 anime; and the 2009 anime, subtitled 'Brotherhood'), or "Hagane no Renkinjutsushi" is a series by Hiromu Arakawa.
- dragon-ball - Use this tag for Dragon Ball (the manga by Toriyama Akira and the original anime) as well as Dragon Ball Z. For Dragon Ball GT, use [dragonball-gt].
- monogatari-series - The Monogatari series is a light novel series by Nisio Isin, including Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, Nekomonogatari, Kizumonogatari, etc.
- neon-genesis-evangelion - Neon Genesis Evangelion ("Shin Seiki Evangelion") is a 1995 anime series produced by Gainax. Use this tag for Rebuild of Evangelion, too.
- toaru-majutsu-no-index - A Certain Magical Index ("Toaru Majutsu no Index") is a light novel series by Kazuma Kamachi. See also [toaru-kagaku-no-railgun]. (and correspondingly for toaru-kagaku-no-railgun)
- fate-zero - Fate/Zero is a light novel series by Urobuchi Gen, and a prequel to [fate-stay-night].
What I'm basically getting at here is that we don't need all this cruft like "...is a shoujo manga series written by such-and-such" or "...consisting of 13 volumes and 42 episodes plus 3 OVAs" or "...in which John Q. Protagonist fights the demons and saves the world" - for the most part nobody needs that information to pick the right tag.
Wikis
I'm not as concerned with standardizing the wikis as I am with standardizing the excerpts, because the wikis frankly aren't that important. As long as they don't grow into enormous unmaintanable monstrosities, whatever, you know.
A few series tags may need to have some clarification about where they should be used (FMA, Raildex, Dragon Ball, and so forth), for which a sentence or two should suffice. Other than that, the only thing I think ought to be a mandatory feature of a tag wiki is a link to the Wikipedia article for the series - or, when there is no such article, a link to the next-best resource, which might be ANN or MAL or something.
Other than those basic requirements, I think that we should allow the tag wikis (but not excerpts) to develop organically - the tag wikis for Naruto, FMA, One Piece, and Bleach all seem like perfectly reasonable ways of approaching this - one piece of promotional art, a brief summary, a listing of related media, and links to relevant Wikipedia articles.
If we can agree on this, I'd be happy to go through the series tags and 1.) reformat the excerpts per my proposal; 2.) leave the tag wikis mostly untouched except to add Wikipedia links where they are absent; and 3.) cull any cases of plagiarism found in the tag wikis.
Update 2 May 2014: I have basically implemented this proposal for tags with few questions, but will leave tags with 6 or more questions untouched; see here for more details.