MarioWiki:Manual of Style

An article is a content page about the knowledge – a character, item, enemy, game, etc. The goal of the is to add as many articles as possible to fill up the knowledge base, but some basic guidelines will help you get a good start either creating an article or expanding one. We have some specific criteria that should go into every article from its creation, and some enhancements to make it even better. Though not mentioned, all articles should have relatively good grammar.

Critical Criteria

 * 1) Bold and repeat the title of the article in the first sentence.
 * 2) Details – don't state the obvious. Provide some information about the subject too, as much as you can.
 * 3)  You  – use another term like "the player should".
 * 4) Link to as many other articles as possible once and only once.
 * 5) Italicize all game titles as well as linking them
 * 6) Navigation via templates
 * 7) Categorize with many categories

Enhancements

 * 1) Images to visualize the article
 * 2) Knowledge/Notice Templates like, ,
 * 3) Tables to lay out statistics neatly

How to Create or Edit an Article

 * Create: – Clicking on a red link brings you right to the edit box. Searching and then clicking "create this page" does the same.
 * Edit: – While viewing any article, click the "edit" tab, third from the left.

Step by Step: Example Article
Let's say that the article "Super Mario Wiki" was created by a user, and it was part of the knowledge base (in reality it is not and an article about the wiki itself, unlike Wikipedia, would be deleted). Here's the wikitext (what appears in the editbox) of this article:
 * is a wkii about the mario series. has many articles like super mario bros you must craete an account to edit.

First of all, the understood guideline "good grammar" is obviously broken. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, and we must at least look like one. Here's the same text corrected:
 * It is a wiki about the Mario series. It has many articles like the game Super Mario Bros. You must create an account to edit.

Now, we will run this article through the 7 critical criteria listed above and compare the final article to this.

Bolding the Title
We start out an article by restating the title of the article, and also bolding it for emphasis. This is a simple rule to remember and easy to add. Here we replace "It" and add an "The" to keep the sentence sensible:
 * The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Mario series. ...

When the article is a game, referring to Step 5, using 5 tildes ( ' ) for bold and italics.

Describing the Subject
You need to add details about your topic. Here's some good starter questions: if it's an item, what game did it appear in? What are the effects of the item? What specific level(s) did the item appear in? If it's a place, what game was it in? What events took place there? If it's a game, what features are there? How is it played? What are the game modes?

In our example article, we have one detail: the game Super Mario Bros. is is one of many articles on the wiki. Here we add some more about the wiki as well as more games:
 * The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Mario series and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, which you can create, like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, the plumber Mario]] saves Princess Peach from Bowser, is the main antagonist, such as in New Super Mario Bros. The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage but has not grown active until the past six months. There are over 5000 files uploaded and over 7,000,000 page views, and over 1000 users and 10 administrators (though a few are inactive). It is a very vibrant wiki – now sustaining over 500 edits a day. You must create an account to edit.

Your details depend on the type of article you're creating. Think of the basics a person who never played the game(s) your article's topic involves would need to know to get a fair idea what it is.

If you don't have any details to add, "don't state the obvious" by not creating the article at all – you don't know the topic well-enough. If you know a couple of details to make up 3-5 sentences, create the article but add as part of Step 6.

No You's
In this wiki, we opt against using the tempting word "you". This includes implied "you's" in a command (like just above: "(you) Think..."). Instead, we use phrases such as "the player", "the player should", "the racer could", "he or she must", etc. that still describe the person being talked to, indirectly. This makes our articles more encyclopedic.

Our example article fixes up two you's intentionally put in for this purpose, in the 2nd and last sentences:
 * ... which anyone can create, like ... A person must create an account to edit.

Linking, Linking, Linking!
Linking to as many articles as possible, created or not, adds greater navigation to the knowledge base. Created articles allow readers to move to a related topic, while red links (not created) give another user a chance to create the article (and go through these very same steps!), thus helping the wiki. However, no one link should appear twice in an article – leave other occurrences as plain text.

Our example article includes one User namespace piped link for Porplemontage, but in articles, mostly all links are to other articles. Note only the Mario series page is created as of 03:29, 2 March 2007 (EST).
 * The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Mario series and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, which anyone can create, like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, is the main antagonist, such as in New Super Mario Bros. The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage but has not grown active until the past six months. ...

Italicizing Game Titles
The wiki has decided it proper to respect all game titles by italicizing all them as well as linking them when need be the case in every article. When linking and italicizing, the syntax is  Article Title .

As our Super Mario Wiki article gets better, notice that the second occurrence of "New Super Mario Bros." is still italicized, just not linked.
 * The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Mario series and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, which anyone can create, like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, is the main antagonist, such as in New Super Mario Bros.

Navigation Templates
Navigation templates list a bunch of related characters, enemies, items, games, etc. to the article. Sometimes an article is already on one of these templates in red, waiting to be added, sometimes you will have to edit the template to include it. Sometimes there is no navigation template yet for your type of article – Special Moves doesn't have many templates yet. If there is a related template, though, add it – has the same effect as linking, but even better.

Let's say that a template called was a navigational template listing all wikis related to video games. So:
 * ... There are over 5000 files uploaded and over 7,000,000 page views, and over 1000 users and 10 administrators (though a few are inactive). It is a very vibrant wiki – now sustaining over 500 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit.

Categories
There are a ton of categories and subcategories on this wiki. The most basic are Items, Games, Characters, Places, Species, Allies, Enemies, and Special Moves. There are many subcategories to these categories as well. By simply typing  , the article is automatically added to the category. An article can be in as many categories as it fits, but as part of our criteria it must fit in one. Don't say an article cannot be categorized – very few pages, if any, are uncategorized besides the Main Page, an exception.

Let's say the categories that WikiIndex uses for us – Gaming and Vibrant – exist here. In that case:
 * ... There are over 5000 files uploaded and over 7,000,000 page views, and over 1000 users and 10 administrators (though a few are inactive). It is a very vibrant wiki – now sustaining over 500 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit.

Note that some templates add categories automatically to articles using an advanced tag.

''Congratulations! The article "Super Mario Wiki", with the text''
 * The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Mario series and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, which anyone can create, like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, is the main antagonist, such as in New Super Mario Bros. The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage but has not grown active until the past six months. There are over 5000 files uploaded and over 7,000,000 page views, and over 1000 users and 10 administrators (though a few are inactive). It is a very vibrant wiki – now sustaining over 500 edits a day. A person must create an account to edit.

''would be an acceptable article on the Super Mario Wiki if such an article was allowed. Now try it with a real article!''

Any article lacking in one of the seven criteria can and should be edited to correct its faults. This works not just for creating articles, but expanding and improving them too!

''You can also move on to the three enhancement steps to learn how to further improve an article. There are no examples for these steps.''

Images
Finding an image for an article can be difficult. Google doesn't always work, and not everyone has access to sprites. If you are lucky enough to find an image, upload it, see Help:Image and Help:Media for syntax, and then add it to an article. Generally, a small image would use the frame, right and caption commands, a large image would use the thumb, right and caption commands – though somethings different alignment is necessary. The first image should go on the first line of the edit box, even before the first sentence, and then additional images can be added inbetween sections as size allows.

If an article needs an image to help illustrate a point but you can't find one, add to the top of the edit box, which leads into the second enhancement.

Other Templates
Category:Notice Templates, where the image template is categorized, contains a few templates for use in articles. needs to be put on all games not released but confirmed. goes on games released at most a month ago. These go on top of the page, always, as well.

In addition, there are some templates that form a table to fill in quick statistics – for example, provides basic information about a game,  puts the RPG stats of an enemy from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. These special templates should go into every article it applies to, in this case every game and Paper Mario: TTYD enemy respectively.

We suggest searching through templates to get a feel of what templates are available besides navigational ones.

Tables
Tables are sometimes the best way to display information. For example, instead of listing all the courses of a racing game and their accompanying locations, staff ghosts, and other information would go more nicely in a table than a simple list following a repetitive pattern many a time. A great example of an article using multiple tables is Mario Kart DS, a featured article. It uses tables to show course information, mission information, point spread comparisons from past versions, and kart ratings.