MarioWiki:Manual of Style

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Revision as of 18:56, January 6, 2010 by Marcelagus (talk | contribs) (There's a section specifically saying use "such as" rather than "like". oops. :p)
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This covers how we would like an article to look on this wiki at creation. While not an enforced policy, try to follow it the best you can.

An article is a content page about the knowledge – a character, item, enemy, game, etc. The goal of the Super Mario Wiki is to add as many articles as possible to fill up the knowledge base, but some basic guidelines will help you get a good start either creating an article or expanding one. We have some specific criteria that should go into every article from its creation, and some enhancements to make it even better. Though not mentioned, all articles should have relatively good grammar.

Please do NOT create tiny articles just for the sake of filling in red links. Even if the article you are making is about a minor subject, try to put a decent amount of effort into it rather than a rush job.

Critical Criteria

  1. Bold and repeat the title of the article in the first sentence.
  2. Details – don't state the obvious. Provide some information about the subject too, as much as you can.
  3. You – use another term like "the player should".
  4. Link to as many other articles as possible once and only once.
  5. Italicize all game titles as well as linking them
  6. Navigation via templates
  7. Categorize with many categories

Enhancements

  1. Images to visualize the article
  2. Knowledge/Notice Templates like {{infobox}}, {{media}}, {{justreleased}}
  3. Tables to lay out statistics neatly

How to Create or Edit an Article

  • Create: – Clicking on a red link brings you right to the edit box. Searching and then clicking "create this page" does the same.
  • Edit: – While viewing any article, click the "edit" tab, third from the left.

Naming an Article

There are several steps to follow when naming an article:

  • The Super Mario Wiki is an English language wiki, so the name of an article should correspond to the first official international English name of the subject. For example, the name "Mario Strikers Charged Football" was established before "Mario Strikers Charged." Therefore, the title "Mario Strikers Charged Football" is used for the game's article. Some English names have changed over time though, and in these cases the common modern name can be used. For example, Princess Peach's first English name was "Princess Toadstool." However, she is commonly called "Princess Peach" in recent games, so the article's title is "Princess Peach."
  • If there is no official English name, then the first official name of the subject in any language is used. For example, the giant bird boss from Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins is named "Radonkel" on the wiki. The boss is unnamed in English, but has an official name in German, and since that is the only official name currently known, the title "Radonkel" is used for the article.
  • If there is no official name in any language, then a conjectural title is developed if the subject is notable enough for an article. For example, the unnamed mole people from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars have been given the conjectural name "Mole folk," as they are a notable species that appear throughout the game.
  • When naming an article, do not use game abbreviations. (e.g. Yoshi (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door) as opposed to Yoshi (PM:TTYD)).

Step by Step: Example Article

Let's say that the article "Super Mario Wiki" was created by a user, and it was part of the knowledge base (in reality it is not and an article about the wiki itself, unlike Wikipedia, would be deleted). Here's the wikitext (what appears in the editbox) of this article:

is a wkii about the mario series. has many articles like super mario bros you must craete an account to edit.

First of all, the understood guideline "good grammar" is obviously broken. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, and we must at least look like one. Here's the same text corrected:

It is a wiki about the Mario series. It has many articles like the game Super Mario Bros. An account must be created in order to edit.

Now, we will run this article through the seven critical criteria listed above and compare the final article to this.

Bolding the Title

We start out an article by restating the title of the article, and also bolding it for emphasis. This is a simple rule to remember and easy to add. Here we replace "It" and add an "The" to keep the sentence sensible:

The '''Super Mario Wiki''' is a wiki about the Mario series. ...

When the article is a game, referring to Step 5, using 5 apostrophes (''''') for bold and italics.

Describing the Subject

You need to add details about your topic. Here's some good starter questions: if it's an item, what game did it appear in? What are the effects of the item? What specific level(s) did the item appear in? If it's a place, what game was it in? What events took place there? If it's a game, what features are there? How is it played? What are the game modes?

In our example article, we have one detail: the game Super Mario Bros. is is one of many articles on the wiki. Here we add some more about the wiki as well as more games:

The '''Super Mario Wiki''' is a wiki about the Mario series and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. There are over 15000 files uploaded, 90,000,000 page views, 7000 users and 16 administrators (though a few are inactive). The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki – sustaining over 1000 edits a day. You must create an account to edit or create new articles.

Your details depend on the type of article you're creating. Think of the basics - a person who never played the game(s) would need to get a fair idea what it is.

If you don't have any details to add, "don't state the obvious" by not creating the article at all – you don't know the topic well-enough. If you know a couple of details to make up 3-5 sentences, create the article but add {{stub}} as part of Step 6.

No You's

In this wiki, we opt against using the tempting word "you". This includes implied "you's" in a command (like just above: "(you) Think..."). Instead, we use phrases such as "the player", "the player should", "the racer could", "he or she must", etc. that still describe the person being talked to, indirectly. This makes our articles more encyclopedic.

Our example article fixes up the "you" in the last sentance:

... A person must create an account to edit or create new articles.

Linking, Linking, Linking!

Linking to as many articles as possible, created or not, adds greater navigation to the knowledge base. Created articles allow readers to move to a related topic, while red links (not created) give another user a chance to create the article (and go through these very same steps!), thus helping the wiki. However, no one link should appear twice in an article – leave other occurrences as plain text.

Our example article includes one User namespace piped link for Porplemontage, but in articles, mostly all links are to other articles. Note only the Mario series page is created as of 03:29, 2 March 2007 (EST).

The '''Super Mario Wiki''' is a wiki about the [[Mario (series)|Mario series]] and its related series, [[Wario (series)|Wario]], [[Yoshi (series)|Yoshi]], [[Donkey Kong (series)|Donkey Kong,]] and [[Super Smash Bros.]] It has many articles, such as [[Super Mario Bros.]], [[Super Mario World]], [[New Super Mario Bros.]], [[Bowser]], [[Extra Life]], [[Goomba]] and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber [[Mario]] saves [[Princess Peach]] from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. There are over 15000 files uploaded, 90,000,000 page views, 7000 users and 16 administrators (though a few are inactive). ... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by [[User:Porplemontage|Porplemontage]], and is now a very vibrant wiki – sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit or create new articles.

Italicizing Game Titles

The wiki has decided it proper to respect all game (and series) titles by italicizing all of them as well as linking them when need be the case in every article. When linking and italicizing, the syntax is ''[[Article Title]]''.

As our Super Mario Wiki article gets better, notice that the second occurrence of "New Super Mario Bros." is still italicized, just not linked.

The '''Super Mario Wiki''' is a wiki about the [[Mario (series)|''Mario'' series]] and its related series, [[Wario (series)|''Wario'']], [[Yoshi (series)|''Yoshi'']], [[Donkey Kong (series)|''Donkey Kong'']], and ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' It has many articles, such as ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', ''[[Super Mario World]]'', ''[[New Super Mario Bros.]]'', [[Bowser]], [[Extra Life]], [[Goomba]] and much more. In most of these games, such as ''New Super Mario Bros.'', the plumber [[Mario]] saves [[Princess Peach]] from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. ...

If certain templates, such as the Articleabout one, already have the italicized code in them, be sure to still italicize the title of the game or series.

Navigation Templates

Navigation templates list a bunch of related characters, enemies, items, games, etc. to the article. Sometimes an article is already on one of these templates in red, waiting to be added, sometimes you will have to edit the template to include it. Sometimes there is no navigation template yet for your type of article – Special Moves doesn't have many templates yet. If there is a related template, though, add it – has the same effect as linking, but even better.

Let's say that a template called {{gamingwikis}} was a navigational template listing all wikis related to video games. So:

... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by [[User:Porplemontage|Porplemontage]], and is now a very vibrant wiki – sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit or create new articles.
{{gamingwikis}}

Categories

There are a ton of categories and subcategories on this wiki. The most basic are Items, Games, Characters, Places, Species, Allies, Enemies, and Special Moves. There are many subcategories to these categories as well. By simply typing [[Category:(Fullname)]], the article is automatically added to the category. An article can be in as many categories as it fits, but as part of our criteria it must fit in one. Don't say an article cannot be categorized – very few pages, if any, are uncategorized besides the Main Page, an exception.

Let's say the categories that WikiIndex uses for us – Gaming and Vibrant – exist here. In that case:

... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by [[User:Porplemontage|Porplemontage]], and is now a very vibrant wiki – sustaining over 1000 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit or create new articles.
{{gamingwikis}}
[[Category:Gaming]]
[[Category:Vibrant]]

Note that some templates add categories automatically to articles using an advanced

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