Difference between revisions of "DiabloWiki:Policy"

Revision as of 17:03, 25 November 2008

This is the 'policies of DiabloWiki that all contributing members are expected to follow. Most of these policies work exactly like other wikis.

Articles

When making new articles, check the current boilerplates to see how to structure the actual article.

Standard Article Structure

If there are no boilerplates available for your article, use this simple structure:

• Brief introduction (*). 1-2 lines of text, starting with the name of the article, in bold text. Just make an extremely brief explanation of the article.
• Game information (**). Add any information available on the topic for the actual game. Can be quite extensive, use subsections.
• Background/Lore (**). Add the "Universe" perspective. Can be quite extensive, use subsections.
• Older games. Add info referring to older games in the series.
• Development. Add any other information relating to the development of this topic.
• Trivia. If there are any links to funny/Easter egg information, add here.
• Media. Add images, a wiki gallery and links to other media.
• Related Links. Add any links that are closely related to the topic.
• References (*). List the sources used in the creation of the article.

• (*) = Very important.
• (**) = At least one of these.

Long Articles

If an article starts to become too long (if you get a warning when trying to save), you should consider moving out sections to separate articles. If you do so, keep a small section with a brief description of the topic left, either as its own section or as part of another heading. You should also make sure to link back to the original article, as they most likely will be related.

Categories

Make sure any article or category you create fits nicely into the DiabloWiki category structure.

Headlines

Headlines are used as normal. The main headline look like this: "== Headline ==", and all subheaders add one equal sign on each side to create a headline structure.

Titles

• Almost all titles in a wiki adhere to the general principle that all words are written with minor letters, and only use capitals in titles (example: media coverage versus High Heavens). DiabloWiki itself transform the first letter of any title to a capital letter, which is unimportant for the naming. It's the equivalent of the first word of a sentence. This holds true with articles, boilerplates, categories and templates. If in doubt, check with other contributors.
• Disambiguations (cases where two articles or two categories with the same name mean completely different things) use a space and a parenthesis with a clarification like this: Barbarian (Diablo II class) or this: Category:Locations (lore). The word in the parenthesis is always minor letters.
• Articles are almost exclusively used in singular ("Barbarian" instead of "Barbarians" etc). If it is at all possible to use singular form, do so.
• Category titles use a similar logic to articles, where a two-worded category title uses a minor letter for the second word like this: Category:Art books. Categories are almost exclusively used in plural ("Category:Maps" instead of "Category:Map").