Help:Article Guideline

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What makes a good article? This help should be a loose guideline for new articles. What Topics are used and what content should they provide? What kind of marker and templates should be used?

General layout

Each pages should have a straight and clear structure ordered by information density:

1. Language Bar

Here you can see in which languages this article is translated already. The flags are linked with corresponding articles in other languages.

2. Wiki boxes

This is the place for special Wiki-Informations like marking the article as a stub or indicate that a translation is missing.

3. Special Information box

Now the reader sees a short and remarkable information provided by boxed infos. There are several templates that can be used. These templates also add a category link.

There are special boxes for rooms, objects, etc, that provide all needed informations including icons and images in one spot. A list of infoboxes can be found here.

4. General information

The introduction is an essential part of an article. It's the basic description of the content and ties basic relations to other articles. The length of this part depends of the overall amount of information about the content. For larger articles it's recommended to split up the content to several topics.

5. Special topics depending on the contents article

These topics depend on the content and it's hard to predict how these part could look like. Large articles should be split into logical parts, for example special behaviours or mechanics.

Each topic should begin with a short heading (== Heading 2 ==) followed by the content. Larger topics can be split up into smaller sub-topics beginning with === Heading 3 ===.

Never ever use 1. level headings (= Heading 1 =), they are reserved for the auto generated page title!

6. Trivia

This part of an article should provide minor informations, fun facts and non game related things fitting to the content. All these informations should not be essential for gameplay. The informations should be provided as a list. For a general feel what could fit into this topic, check other pages which provide a trivia heading.

7. References

The wiki should provide informations and pure facts. Some gathered informations may come from several sources like forum posts, tweets, videos and other resources. Be so kind and add a reference to the information. At the moment there are two templates, one for the reference link in the text ({{Ref|1}}), and a template for the reference topic ({{Reflink|1|http://introversion.co.uk}}).

Especially non-obviously mechanics provided by the developers are a good example for references.

8. Group box

Some articles are part of a bigger group. These groups often have special boxes for the footer with lists of all contents and related links. The box templates also provide the group link.

Examples are the boxes for {{Footer Staff}}, {{Footer Rooms}}, {{Footer Objects}} and {{Builds}}.

Bugs & History

Chapters of reported Bugs or History have been omitted, because the maintenance could hardly be done in so many articles and the informational value is very low. For reporting any bugs, the Mantis Bug Tracker System should be used.

Use of images

Description

Most articles would benefit from images. An image says more than a thousand words. The best way to include an image is to add the image floating right as a thumbnail ([[Image:PAlogo.png|thumb|Description]]).
Images shouldn't be to big and fit to the text passage where they are placed, and so using the thumb option (as shown in the example), is a good choice and can contain a short description. This ensures, that images wouldn't burst the layout apart depending on selected user options or when using mobile devices.

Please don't spam a page with images. Use this feature wisely to improve the article.

In some articles like campaigns it may be useful to have some more images. Therefore a gallery at the bottom of the page (see GABOS) may be the better solution.

Things you shouldn't do

• Don't add speculations to an article
• Don't state your mind in an article
• Don't use too much formatting like bold,italics, etc.
• Don't spam the article with non-saying images
• Don't place boxes in the middle of an article. Boxes should provide eye-catching informations on the beginning of an article or provide group-summary on the bottom of an article
• Don't sign your edits in other places as talk pages.

Tips

• Please use the search before you start a new page, even if you come across a dead link. Sometimes links contain typos and create a dead link, although an article exists
• Check existing pages to get a feeling of the style of the wiki
• Before you change an article, think about what you do. Small changes can cause the article to look strange or not well developed
• If you have any doubts, use the talk page before you change anything