Style Guide
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The Basics • Ships • Factions • Bases • Planets • Systems • Commodities |
Hello! Welcome to the Discovery Mod Wiki Editing Style Guide.
- Note: Please refrain from editing this Guide. If you have style suggestions please discuss them on the Talk page or on the Discovery Forums
This Guide is intended as a reference for new and veteran wiki editors to acquaint themselves with the styles and formatting in use by the Discovery Mod Wiki. Following the directions and examples in this Guide will help the numerous people working on the Discovery Mod Wiki to maintain a consistent format and style across all of the wiki pages. Please be considerate of your co-editors and readers by attempting to keep consistency as much as possible. Consistency in style and format leads people to being able to find things quicker, to read faster, and to find the required information more efficiently.
If anything doesn't make sense or you don't understand something please give it some tries first and if you really don't get the idea, discuss it in the talk page. We are always aiming to improve this Guide. If you are really struggling to comprehend what is going on, or are looking for ground-level basic wiki editing help then please see the following: This wiki uses MediaWiki. For a more detailed overview about editing please consult the MediaWiki Handbook or Wikitext example page.
The Basics
Below are some 'rules' that should be adhered to, for across-the-wiki style and formatting consistency. Information added to the wiki pages should be factual and not biased or subjective to any person's opinion. If you think a ship "sux" keep those comments to yourself. We are looking for information that is useful and true. If that "suxxy ship" turns a full 360 degrees in two hours, then please do write that up.
Remember that Wiki interprets a linebreak as an actual <br> or even a beginning of new paragraph. To avoid redundant whitespaces, you should not add linebreaks between the infobox template and the text content itself, otherwise the text looks nudged down. The descriptions goes directly below the templates.
Spelling
Spelling should be in the American international form. If you are unsure what the American international spelling is for a particular word, just leave the word as written for other editors to correct. Below are some examples of US / UK words.
- Tire / Tyre
- capitalized / capitalised
- color / colour
Proper Nouns
A proper noun is the name that an item, place or person is known or called by. Proper nouns should have their first letter of every word of that noun capitalized. For example: "John Smith" is correct. "New york" is not correct.
Please use all words of a proper noun where required. e.g. James Powell, Ames Research Facility, Cadiz Base. There are exceptions to this rule and the Guide will go into further detail at the relevant places.
Page Titles
Page titles should be in First Letter Capitalized format. This excludes conjunctions (of, and,). To keep track of these conjunction titled pages, please list them here if found or created, stating the page title and type of page.
- Jump_Gate_and_Trade_Lane_Parts (commodity)
Page titles should be expanded. This means, please refrain from making pages titled "BPA", rather, expand the abbreviations so that "BPA" becomes "Bretonia Police Authority". This can be achieved by using piping links, or simply writing out the abbreviations.
In Text Links
In text links can use both lowercase words and uppercase. Use your discretion for which one is appropriate. Usually proper nouns will be first letter of every word capitalized.
| Lowercase Links |
| Passengers are civilians who have money and courage for interstellar travels. As transports are favorite targets for pirate attacks, many passengers find it safer to travel to distant places in freelancing ships. You will find passengers willing to travel on almost all populated planets, price they will pay you generally depends on the length of the route. |
| Uppercase Links |
| This lush green world is the home of the Cambridge Research Institute - an institution devoted to pure scientific research. The idyllic green fields also find themselves home to the manor retreats of New London's aristocracy during the warmer months of the year. Bretonia's epidemic food shortages required the planetary regents to place scientists and farmers together to develop more bountiful crops, making Cambridge the primary food supplier for Bretonia. Now many Cambridge scientists sympathise with the Gaians echo-terrorist movement, prompting the formation of political groups such as The Green Front and igniting bitter debates among researchers on topics such as terraforming. |
Piping Links
A piped link is when the highlighted words direct you to another discovery wiki page that does not use those words in the Title. The pipes should direct to the plural of items and subjects, unless it is a proper noun. See below for examples. The format is as follows [[Actual Piped Link|Words that are diplayed]].
*[[Bretonia Police Authority|BPA]] *4 [[Class 4 Guns]] *1 [[Class 7 Turrets|Class 7 Turret]] ****note the 's' missing when piping from a single weapon.
Results in:
- BPA
- 4 Class 4 Guns
- 1 Class 7 Turret ****note the 's' missing when piping from a single weapon.
Wiki lists
Wiki list sorting screws up when prices do not have the "$" in front of the price. Please add the dollar sign to all price lists and cost fields.
Images
Any pictures that you upload should be well lit and the viewer should able to easily and clearly see what the subject is. Dark pictures with the sun backlighting the ships, although artistic, are unacceptable for this wiki. Please use well lit, isometric viewpoints for ships; well lit, well framed pictures for planets and bases. The pictures and images should be uploaded in the .jpg format and be of minimal filesize and reasonable pixel size (minimum of 800 x 600 is a good size to aim for). Example Image Specs:
- Odin (598 × 480 pixel, file size: 32 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
- Gas_miner (800 × 600 pixel, file size: 35 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
- New London (535 × 528 pixel, file size: 61 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Note: Please use the lowercase ".jpg" extension, and not the UPPERCASE one.
Note2: There are some differences between filetypes of images used:
- A jpg file does not have transparency. They are small in size and are suitable to be uploaded to this wiki directly. They are the thumbnails and medium pictures that you see when you go to a ship/system/etc... page.
- A png file can have transparency and the filesize is usually a lot larger. These cannot currently be uploaded to the Wiki directly, but instead should be hosted on Imageshack or Photobucket.
Categories
Every page should have an appropriate category. Every category section should go at the base of the page - the very last thing on the page. See the specific subject for more information. Clicking on this "Categories" link will take you to the categories so that you can see what categories are available if you need more than basic ones. Try to fit them into an existing Category first, but if that isn't possible feel free to make more as needed.
In general, one or more of these categories below will suffice:
[[Category:Liberty]] [[Category:Kusari]] [[Category:Bretonia]] [[Category:Rheinland]] [[Category:Outcasts]] [[Category:Corsairs]] [[Category:Civilian]] [[Category:Natural Phenomenon]] [[Category:Unnatural Phenomenon]] [[Category:Commodities]] [[Category:Weapons]] [[Category:Bases]] [[Category:Planets]] [[Category:Ships]] [[Category:Stations]] [[Category:Systems]] [[Category:Factions]] [[Category:Player Factions]]
