Help:Style

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This is a guide to the style, layout and formatting that should preferably be used on FSDB. It does not cover more technical issues such as how to use certain formatting or how to edit. Take a look at Help:Editing for that.

First of all, if you're unsure about how to do something, don't let that scare you away. You won't really break anything, and even if things look less than you hoped for, just revert your edit or ask someone else to fix it. And if you take a look at how other pages accomplished something you are trying to do, you might be able to figure out how to do it for yourself.

Remember that this is a guide, not a rulebook, so if you think it might look much better if you did things a bit different from what this page suggests, then go right ahead!

Contents 1 General tips 2 Article names 2.1 Articles about people 2.2 Redirects 3 Page structure 3.1 Lead section 3.2 Sections 3.2.1 Heading levels 3.2.2 Table of Contents 3.3 See also 3.4 External links 4 Spelling 5 Linking 6 Stubs 7 Categories 7.1 Subcategory creation

General tips

• Write concisely and clearly
• Write an article as you would want to read it
• Write in a way that encourages interest in the topic
• Write so that the article can be expanded in the future
  • Insert appropriate links to other articles, even if they don't exist yet
  • If a section should be there, add it, even if you don't write more than a line about it
• Write what you know - and if you don't know, try to find out
• Use headings and pictures or new sections to break up long blocks of text
• Trivia sections should be no more than a couple of bullet points, a page of excessive bullet points should be edited into prose

Article names

Article names should either match the proper name or common usage of a subject (including capitalisation), where possible. If there is no obvious correct name, use the name you would be most likely to link to from another article. In most cases, only the first word of the article should have a capital letter. Do not use capital letters for subjects that are not normally capitalized. It is also fine for article names to start with The, A etc. if those words are part of the actual name. Just make sure to sort the article within its category properly (see below).

If it is not possible to use the correct title - for example, an IRC channel, which starts with a # - name the article something like Fallout Studios IRC channel and put this template at the top:

{{wrongtitle|title=#estudios}}

Link to the article with piped links ([[Fallout Studios IRC channel|#estudios]]).

Articles about people

When it comes to articles about people, there is one general rule: respect the wishes and privacy of whoever you write about.

Generally speaking, a nickname should be used rather than their real name for articles about people, unless they only go by their real name. If they include their real name on their profile or website or generally use both a real name and a nickname, then it's probably allright to mention their real name. But if it's not something they obviously want known it may be inappropriate to include it.

Similarly, do not give a person's current age or year of birth, or any other details that might constitute an invasion of privacy, unless you know that person is ok with it. Of course if the person the article is about added those details him/herself (check the history page) then you can assume it's allright.

At the start of the article, mention their real name (if appropriate, see above) and list any public nicknames they may have (or used to have) in parentheses. Use bold text for all these names, especially if you have created a redirect from that name to the current article. In subsequent paragraphs, start with whatever name is commonly used to refer to them, and then use an appropriate personal pronoun for the rest of the paragraph.

Note that articles about people should be written in the third-person. So don't write articles about yourself with 'I' because that makes it harder for others to add information to it.

Redirects

If there are many possible names for an article, you should pick the best one and then add redirects from the other pages to that page. Do this by editing the other pages and placing #REDIRECT [[Main page title]].

If the subject of an article properly starts with 'The' or a similar article (e.g. The_Hunter), you should generally use this and redirect from the name without the The.

Page structure

Lead section

The lead section is the text right at the start of the article, before any headings. It's the most important part of an article, because it's usually the first thing people read. Therefore, the lead section should contain a brief summary of what the article is about, so that anyone who is looking for something specific can see whether an article is what they're looking for just by reading the first one or two paragraphs.

The full name of the subject (the name of the article usually) should be prominently present in bold text. Other names, aliases and abbreviations that commonly represent the same concept should be included, also in bold, and you should add those pages as redirects to the article's main page. That way, anyone looking for that article through another name will still end up in the correct place.

Sections

Each article should be divided into sections once it becomes too large to have as one piece. Avoid the characteristic 'wall of text' which only scares readers off and makes the article hard to read.

Headings are used to start sections within an article and to separate various sections from each other. They should therefore be used rather sparingly, and only to actually divide an article into various sections (like how this article itself is divided as well). Headings should not be used simply because their text is bigger.

The title of each section should start with a capital letter, but any other words in the title should not be capitalised unless the title contains a proper name. When editing an article, there should be an empty line before the header in the article's code, to clearly separate the header from the previous text. Avoid putting two empty lines before the header unless it is really necessary, as this will also create more space between the previous section and the heading.

Heading levels

As a general rule, the 'largest' heading that should be used in normal circumstances is the level 2 heading, which is also the heading that says 'Page structure' at the start of this section. It is created so:

==Heading name==

Within each section you can create subsections by using smaller headings, with increasing amounts of = signs on both sides of the name. Try to avoid creating many different levels of heading though, as two or three levels are generally enough for most articles. A level 5 heading should rarely be needed, and a level 6 heading (which is even smaller than normal text) even more rarely if at all. A level 1 heading is also rarely needed, as it is very large and looks exactly like the heading at the top of each article.

Table of Contents

A Table of Contents is added automatically to an article whenever it at least four headers. By default it is added at the end of the lead section, before the first real section of the article. If you would rather move the Table of Contents somewhere else in the article, you can write __TOC__ anywhere in the article to place it there. This can be useful for articles with relatively long lead sections, for example. It can also be used to position the TOC differently, such as floated to the right of the text:

<div style="float:right">__TOC__</div>

If the article is small and does not contain enough headings to automatically create a TOC, yet you want to display one anyway, simply write __FORCETOC__ anywhere in the article and a TOC will be generated regardless of article size. Similarly, if you would rather not have a TOC at all, use __NOTOC__ anywhere in the article to suppress the TOC entirely.

See also

The See also section is used to link to other wiki pages, either on FSDB or somewhere else, that are related to the article but which were not included as links in the main text of the article. It is technically not required for every article to have a See also section, but certainly preferred as it gives visitors an opportunity to read more about a certain subject.

You can link to Wikipedia by adding Wikipedia: at the front of your links. Items in the See also section should be presented in an unordered list.

External links

The External links section contains off-site links to related web material. It is by no means required for every article, but any article where there is useful information related to it elsewhere should preferably have at least a few links.

The links themselves are presented in an unordered list. If there are large numbers of links, divide the sections with a horizontal rule (----) and use different buttons, or use subheadings.

Spelling

Of course you should try to use proper spelling when writing an article. You can use Wiktionary to look up words if you're unsure about the spelling or meaning of a word. However, English has the problem of having two standardised spellings in use: international and American spelling. The basic rule therefore is to spell as you know, and to only correct a word's spelling if it's wrong in both spelling standards. So don't correct armor > armour, but correct amror to either of them depending on your preference.

Linking

You should use links to highlight certain words and make it possible to follow them to other articles. In general only the first mention of a topic on a page should be linked, unless the page is long and the link is likely to be missed. It might also be useful to link to an article a second time in tables or lists that provide links to many articles at once. That way, all the links are in one place together.

Stubs

Very short pages (generally two paragraphs or less, excluding links) that could be expanded are termed stubs. These pages should include the {{stub}} template.

However, some articles might be rather specific and it really may not be possible to write any more about them, as all that can be said has already been said in the article. In that case it is probably not a stub, but it might be better to merge the article with another page.

Categories

Categories help organise articles and offer visitors a way to browse through related articles without direct links to them. Articles are added to categories with [[Category:Name of category|optional text to sort by]]. While category tags may be placed anywhere within an article, the standard place for them is at the end, either all in one line or on separate lines.

Like article names, category names should only be capitalised for words that are normally capitalized - thus, Category:Fallout Studios would be correct, but Category:Hosted Projects would not: the correct name is Category:Hosted projects. Categories cannot be renamed/moved like other articles, so please keep this in mind when creating new categories.

Regarding sub categories, the most specific category wins. For example, if you are categorizing a certain C&C faction, it belongs in Category:Command & Conquer and not Category:Games, which is the parent of Category:Command & Conquer. Otherwise, parent categories would find themselves filled with duplicates of what was listed in the sub categories.

If you are unsure of what category something belongs in, place it in Category:Unsorted, and someone else will take care of it. You should avoid leaving an article without any categories at all, as this may cause the article to become lost.

If you upload an image it too should be placed in an appropriate category. If you are unsure of the appropriate category for an image you should place it in Category:Unsorted images so that others can find it easily.

Subcategory creation

Generally speaking, if there are a decent number of items in a category that have something in common, they should be moved into a sub category to help make the categories better sorted. To do this, change the category links to the new name on the pages that need to be moved, then click on one of the resulting red links and create that page, adding the original category to it to make that its parent.