View source for ImperianWiki:Contributing Guidelines

All players who have logged over 300 hours on a character may contribute to Imperian Wiki. Here are a few general things to keep in mind, as well as a guide to editing and creating articles.
*Always adhere to [[:category:policy|the wiki's policies]].
*If you are totally unfamiliar with wikis, check out http://en.wikipedia.org
*What's a wiki anyway? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wiki?]

Articles entered into the Imperian Wiki archives need to have a certain structure and format in order to ensure readability and consistency throughout. Plus, there are just certain ways of formatting the information such that it flows well within the online system used to present it. Furthermore, please ensure that you adhere to our [[:category:policy|policies]] at all times.

=Content=

When writing the actual article body, please keep the following in mind:

* Refer to factual items using the wiki link markup (e.g. <nowiki>[[foo]]</nowiki>), but only in the first reference (or if it's not obvious). No need to make every word in the body a link.
* Always remember to add a category to the article.
* If you need to share information or comments about an article, use the "Talk"/"Discussion" tab for that page.
* Use UK English to be consistent with in-game text - honour instead of honor,  colour instead of color, et cetera.
* When creating links, make sure you check the plurality of any existing topics.

==Privileged Information==
* Please do not share information that should reasonably stay private (organisation posts, private communications, guild help files, etc).
* Basic quest information is allowed, especially for newbie quests. However, outside of the newbie quests, just give general information rather then step by step instructions.

==Imperian-specific considerations==
* In pages about areas, individual places within the area should be bolded (unless they are linked).
* Other areas and all NPCs should be linked, not bolded or italicised.
* Adventurers are not usually linked (see [[ImperianWiki:Contributing Guidelines#Adventurers of Note|Adventurers of Note]]).
* Some categories have special meaning. For instance, areas, townes, councils and cities all classify different types of places (with special in-game meanings). Make sure you are using the correct category.
* Locations should link via the entire proper name. For instance <nowiki>"[[Fenash River]]" not "[[Fenash]] River"</nowiki>.

==Standardised Formatting==

We are using the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style Wikipedia Manual of Style] for basic formatting guidelines.

==Spelling==

You should '''always''' use UK English on this wiki (as in Imperian itself)! Please feel free to edit any posts that do not conform to UK English spellings.

=Articles=

Articles are generally snippets of information on a specific topic. They may contain sections and subsections if it's a particularly long topic, but it must not be overly broad and contain lots of factual information. Be '''objective''' in all things when authoring a bit of lore. This is a compendium of all the facts related to Imperian, so make sure you remain objective in tone and phrasing.

==Article Naming==

Articles are referenced by their names, so choosing an appropriate one is very key. Most information can be referred to by its proper name, such as "Predator" or "Theroc". Sometimes, it's helpful to further qualify a name if it's possibly ambiguous we do this by appending a parenthetical to the end. For example: "Peace (affliction)" could differentiate between "Peace" (referring to the realm of a the dead goddess).

If an article's title has more than one word, ''DO'' use spaces. "Ithaqua Forest" not "IthaquaForest".

===Namespaces===

When choosing a name, do not include a colon (':') in the name. This is reserved for 'namespaces' a feature of the wiki system and used only in very special circumstances. Do not change pages that already have a namespace on them. For example, "Help:" and "ImperianWiki:" should not be removed or changed to a different namespace. At this time, please do not change any pages in the "Help:" namespace.

==Categories==

All (or almost all) articles should contain at least one category. Categories are added at the end of an article and usually refer to a group or classification for that article. For instance, the page "Elemancy" is in the "Profession Skills" category. There are in fact sub-categories as well (clicking on [[:Category:Profession Skills]] will bring you to that page, which lists articles in that category -- but you can see that even that page is in the "Skills" category).

'''Note:''' If an article belongs in a sub-category, there is no need to include it in the more generic category. For instance, "Uncharted Areas" is a sub-category of "Areas", so any article referring to an uncharted place need only include the specific category ("Uncharted Areas") and not the more generic one ("Areas").

=Editing=

When you edit an existing page, please be considerate and summarise what you did in the Summary field.

=New Pages=

New pages can be created in wiki-fashion by creating a link in an existing page/article or by simply trying to access that page in your browser directly. For example: <nowiki>"http://wiki.imperian.com/My new article"</nowiki> should (in most modern browsers) take you to the correct place and you may edit from there. Take care, however when creating these 'orphaned' pages. Because they can be hard to find if an existing page does not link to them. And chances are, if the topic was important enough to have an article, it is mentioned in some related article(s).

Also, when creating new pages, feel free to go back to older, related pages and create any links that may seem appropriate.

==Adventurers of Note==

See [[ImperianWiki:Adventurers]] for more information on when pages should and should not be created.

[[Category:Policy]]