Space Engineers Wiki:Styling Guide

Space Engineers Wikia Styling Guidelines are to help keep consistency in style throughout the site as well give rules on the use of pages. They are in combination with The Community Guidelines (CGL) and Wikia Terms of Use (ToS). In the case that a Space Engineers Wikia Styling Guideline violates a CGL or ToS, the guideline is to be ignored.

Contributors should not be intimidated by the guidelines. They are here to help the more serious contributors and help quell disputes. Making a mistake or two is fine and will not result in a ban or other punishment. Users should Assume Good Faith and politely fix or report the issue. Chances are that any mistake will be fixed by the next person to see the page with no grief.

All Pages

The Following guidelines will generally apply to all pages in the "Article" namespace, regardless of page type or subject. Some exceptions are made for top level pages and the Main Pages.

Attribution

As with all information every where, and always, contributors should Attribute sources and know that anything posted here is automatically released under the CC-BY-SA Licence.

Language Preferences

American english or British english?

Professional Writing

• Third person: Articles should never use "you" or otherwise talk to the reader specific, nor use "I," "we," "us," or otherwise have the writer refer to self. "One" as a pronoun should also be avoided as it is often a replacement of "you" (and it is tacky).
• Gender Specific: Avoid "him/his/he, her/hers/she" and other gender specific references. In the case that it is best to use them, use "he or she" "him or her," or "his or her(s)." A good substitute can be "the player"
• Contractions O.K.: Contractions are acceptable, but writing out the words looks nicer.
• Culture references: Cliches, Colloquialisms, Catchphrase and other Popular Culture references should be avoided. Many people of other cultures will use this site to find information on Space Engineers. Using the aforementioned methods may make understanding more difficult for them and potentially mislead and even offend.
• Define In-Game and Game Community Terms:

Page Creation

• Singular vs plural - (item vs items, Weapon vs Weapons, which should it be?)
• Proper Capitalization: All words are Capitalized, except articles (a, an, the)
• Intentional use of redirect pages - (if something has multiple names in-game, a plural largely changing a word from singular [moose vs meese], or a common name among the community than in -game, can a redirect page be used to make linking easier?)
• Category page use - (should cat pages be used as top level or other wise sole page for information on a subject?)
• Personal article/Template/Category pages

Linking

• To link to another article inside League of Space Engineers Wikia, place double square brackets about the word to be linked ([[ ]]).
  • Example: [[Space Engineer]] will produce Space Engineer
• Link once (Fist use on a page only or first use for every h2 header? maybe both, depending on page?)
• Do not link terms linked in info boxes... they are already linked.
• Link terms that may be used in specific ways in-game, especially if they have another meaning out of the game.
• To link an article to an external site place single square brackets about the "URL" and space, then the text to be displayed to be linked ([ ]). External links will show up as blue with a box and arrow.
  • Example: [http://www.google.com google] will produce google
• Linking an article to Wikipedia: Use {{w| }} and put the link inside,
• Linking an article to other Wikia sites: {{wikia|name of the wikia|link after /wiki/}}.
• If an article does not exist by the given name, or if a URL is invalid, the link will show up as dark red, like this.

Headers

• Use proper capitalization.
• Avoid other styling like bolding, underlining, and italicizing.
• Make all Headers unique, regardless of level (this is for linking sake, e.g. [[Page Name#Header]]).
• Avoid punctuations and special characters (again, this is for linking sake).
• Headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
• Headings should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
• Include one blank line above the heading for readability in the edit window.
• Headings should be descriptive and in a consistent order.
• Headings should be nested sequentially:
  • the automatically generated top-level heading of a page is H1, which gives the article title;
  • primary headings are then ==H2==, ===H3===, ====H4====, and so on until the lowest-level heading ======H6======.
  • headings should be nested sequentially, neither using random heading levels (e.g. selected for emphasis, which is not the purpose of headings), nor skipping parts of the sequence.

Heading use (and misuse) examples

Correct	Random/chaotic	Skipping levels
[Article lead here] ==Section== [level 2] ===Sub-section=== [3] ==Section== [2] ===Sub-section=== [3] ====Sub-sub-section==== [4] ==Section 3== [2]	[Article lead here] ====Section?==== [4] ===Section?=== [3] ==Section?== [2] ==Section?== [2] ====Section?==== [4] ===Section?=== [2]	[Article lead here] [Level-2 section missing here] ===Section?=== [3] ==Section== [2] [Level-3 sub-section missing here] ====Sub-section?==== [4] ==Section== [2]

Table Styles

• Small Tables (generally less than 20 cells)
  • Use the following css class:
  • Float the table if it is narrow (one, two, or three narrow columns)
• Large Tables (generally more than 20 cells)
  • Use the following css class:
  • Avoid floating a large table as it may end up placing text in a vary narrow area beside the table.

Note: Avoid tables that require a huge amount of space. If they are best for a set of information, use the collapsing tables class and default to the collapsed position. This will help keep articles shorter and help readers find information below the table they might otherwise miss.

Visual Media

• Caption rules
• Image Format pref: png vs jpg (if any)
• use of gifs
• use of videos
• Qty of media on a page (use of galleries) - (try to keep the number low ish to keep page load time down)
• giving credit to creator/owner

Player Suggestions

• Player suggestions, tips, recommendations, strategies and methods on pages are generally discouraged. This site is for information about the game proper, not how to play the game.
• Contributors are encouraged to use blogs and personal pages to express their suggestions, tips, recommendations, strategies and methods to be shared. Those pages and blogs may be proper to link on appropriate pages.

Categorization Rules

• All Pages: Every page should be in a category. If a contributor does not know what category a page should go, it should remain uncategorized so that an admin can use the "uncategorized pages" tool to find it and place it in the appropriate category.
• Lowest Relevant level only: do not place a page into all the categories in a nest. Only the lowest category that is appropriate is needed.
• Max number of categories for a page (?): Do not place a page into lots of categories. If a page will fit into more than 3 categories, then it may need to be worked.
• Creating a new category: In general, contributors should avoid making new categories. If a new category is appropriate, then the category page should be filled in with content. Categories should have more than 5 pages in them to be justified.
• For more help with categories, see Help:Category
• games guide app - (want to develop this?)

Page Type Specific

The Following are guide lines to the layout and styling of various page types. They (mostly) include the templates needed.

Weapon Page Styles

Pages about weapons

Block Page Styles

Pages about Blocks

Tool Page Styles

Pages about tools

Resource Page Styles

Pages about Resources

Mechanic Page Styles

Pages about Game Mechanics (e.g. armor, damage, movement, etc.)

"Method" Page Styles

Player concepts widely regarded as standard methods of doing things in the game, like the "meta team cop" of league of legends

Templates

Templates are preformatted blocks of text and/or code that are used repeatedly or have small amounts of content that change often. The are generally places at the top of a page, though that is not always the case.

Common, General Wikia Templates

• {{clr}} - Clears a full line between the lowest pixel of content above the tag, and the highest pixel below the tag. Commonly used just before a new header while an image or floating table (i.g. table of contents) is placed in the previous.
• {{Stub}} - This indicates that an article is to short to justify its own page. It either needs to be expanded or placed as part of another article.
• {{Delete|Reason}} - See Below.
• {{Main|Page}} - This is used to refer back to a page that explains a topic in more depth. Generally used in top level pages that give an over view of many game mechanics or content.

Special Templates, Mostly Unique to this Site

• {{Cleanup|Reason}} - Clean Up template is used to indicate that the article does not follow the styling guidelines and needs reworking.
• {{WIP}} - If an article is still under construction, placing the {{WIP}} tag on it will indicate that it is a Work In Progress and should not be deleted or taken as complete. This should only be used if there is a large amount of work to be done and will be worked on in the near future.
• {{Info Component}} -

Deletion

Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to:

• Copyright violations and other material violating the non-free content criteria.
• Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish
• Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject).
• Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed.
• Redundant or otherwise useless templates.
• Categories representing over-categorization.
• Files that are unused, obsolete, or violate the Non-free policy.
• Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace.
• Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia.

subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page.

Since only Admins are able to delete the pages, regular users may mark the page for deleting by using the {{delete}} template.

Power User Privileges

Admins, Staff, and some other contributors maintain the privilege to change or diverge from the styling guide lines at any time.