Article Guidelines
From Mizahar Lore
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This article is about a rule of the game. |
These article guidelines are a set of instructions for writing wiki articles in Mizahar. Their purpose is to give the reader easy and consistent access to information. The wiki contains a lot of information which evolves and is added to in time. Structure and style go a long way towards making it solid and easy to read and maintain. Unlike other sites, we write our documentation with the reader in mind.
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Style and POV
All contributions to the wiki need to be written from a neutral, out-of-character point of view (POV), like an encyclopedia. Characters in Mizahar will probably not have access to information in the same form as written in the wiki. Everything stated in the article is true, and considered canon. This does not mean an article cannot contain unverified claims or speculation, but it must be referred to as such. "Some people in Mizahar believe that..." and "It is generally thought that..." are perfectly acceptable forms. Sometimes, factual truth will not be included in the article, for example because it is part of a moderator's ongoing plot and would spoil the mystery for the players involved. Again, this is acceptable. The important thing is that the POV be neutral, unbiased, truthful and not belong to an actual Mizaharian character.
Most of the time, this neutral POV works best in explaining things for the reader. Mizahar is, however, a fantasy setting, and it may sometimes be useful to include in-character text written by actual people in the world. Quotes can be added with the {{Quote}} template and are ideal for making an article more interesting and colorful. If you need a full-size IC text, you will have to use the IC: namespace. You can see it at work here: IC:Tale of Wayhali Namiche. All articles starting with IC: are put in this special area and have a unique look that stands out from the rest of the wiki.
You should use the IC namespace if you plan on making the text available to characters in Mizahar. The typical example is a book; you can talk about a book named XYZ in article "XYZ", and include its actual text in article "IC:XYZ". The former would obviously link to the latter. Please do not make an IC article when a normal one would serve the same purpose just as well. The neutral POV exists for a reason: namely, because it's much easier to read, understand and talk about. If a main wiki entry and an IC entry are in conflict, the main wiki entry takes precedence.
Article names
You should strive for the shortest title you can think of: "Crime" is better than "Crime in Mizahar". You should generally pick a singular name ("Cat" over "Cats"), but plurals can be accepted when writing articles on a group of things: just make sure there is a link to the singular, as well. You can make one as a redirect. #REDIRECT [[Cats]] on the "Cat" page is acceptable.
Article names always begin with a capital letter. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs are also capitalized. Articles such as "the", "a", "an" only appear if they are an integral part of the name (e.g. The Spires).
Structure
You are strongly encouraged to structure your article in a logical way. An article with less than two paragraphs of text should be marked as a {{Stub}}, which tells people it should be expanded. An article does not need to be marked if it is short but complete. On the other hand, if your article is longer than four paragraphs, you probably need to structure it with sections.
A wiki article should be arranged as follows.
Boxes
Boxes are at the very top and give important info on the nature of the article. This article has one, {{Rule}}, informing you that it is about a rule of the website. Boxes are also useful because they place your article in relevant categories (Category:Rules in this example). If you need to insert more than one box, OOC-related boxes such as {{Rule}} or {{Stub}} should go before IC-related ones like {{Quote}}. A quote, if present, should be the very last box. If you do not include a needed box someone will do so for you.
Boxes can also appear at the start of sections and subsections, though this is very rare in our wiki.
Infoboxes
An infobox, if present, should go right after the boxes. Infoboxes are colored panels filled with information on the right side of an article. They sometimes contain an image. See Auristics, Kelvic or Sahova for examples of well-done infoboxes. Ask an admin if you are unsure whether an infobox exists for your article type; they might even create a new one for you. Use similar articles as a model: click the 'Edit' link and look at their source code. Some article types even have 'dummy' entries for your convenience.
Infoboxes are like flashcards and serve the same purpose: keep the information short and sweet. They also categorize your page without having to worry about it.
Summary
Assuming you are structuring the article, the summary is the most important part of it. Do not assume the reader has the time or inclination to go through the entire article. The summary should give them the big picture about the topic, the things they absolutely must know. It should be one or two paragraphs at most. Summarizing is a tough skill, but a very useful one.
The summary must contain the article's name and topic as early as possible, and in bold text. Note how "article guidelines" is bolded in the first sentence of this article. If possible, the article should start with its own name. If the topic has less common, alternate names they should also be listed in bold. Do not go on tangents in the summary: instead, take things away until you can't remove anything more.
Sections
Your first section begins after the summary. If you have at least four sections or subsections, will add a table of contents after the summary. Most of the time, it's fine the way it is, but you can suppress it with the __NOTOC__ statement. Reasons for removing the TOC include excessive size and bad visuals in IC articles.
Dividing things into sections and subsections is not always straightforward. You can read articles of the same type for ideas: for example, races have an established pattern of History-Biology-Society.
If your sections grow longer than five or six paragraphs, consider splitting them into subsections. If a section grows so long it distracts the reader from the rest of the article, though, you may be better off branching it into a whole new article. See Alahea for an example of a general article that refers to more specific ones.
References
References are just links to threads in the forums. Most articles do not include this part at the moment, but that will change as the boards populate with more roleplayed material. If an article references a roleplayed event, the links can be listed in this section.
Navboxes
A navbox is a box you may place at the bottom of an article. See Magic or Nyka for examples. It is a listing of articles in the same series (magic and geography, in these examples). Navboxes help the curious reader decide what to do next and serve as portable categories. Right now there are only a few navboxes, but they are easy to make.