MarioWiki:Manual of Style


 * This covers how we would like an article to look on this wiki at creation. While not an enforced policy, try to follow it the best you can.

An article is a content page about the knowledge - a character, item, enemy, game, etc. The goal of the Super Mario Wiki 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.

'Please do NOT create tiny articles just for the sake of filling in red links. Even if the article you are making is about a minor subject, try to put a decent amount of effort into it rather than a rush job.'

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" or the name of the playable character.
 * 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 can edit but you must craete an account to make pictures

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. Anyone can edit, but you must create an account to upload images.

Now, we will run this article through the seven 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 a "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 five apostrophes ( ' ) for bold and italics. Note that the title doesn't need to be bolded again after the first time (e.g. in image captions, infoboxes).

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 location, 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 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, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. There are over 45000 files uploaded, 90,000,000 page views, 15000 users and 14 administrators (though a few are inactive). The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki - sustaining over 1000 edits a day. Anyone can edit, but you must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

Your details depend on the type of article you're creating. Think of the basics - a person who has never played the game(s) would need to get a fair idea what it is. There are a few things that should be avoided when writing, such as adding speculation, rambling on about insignificant details, or putting overly dramatic or dark spins on things; a full list of common writing issues can be found here. Padding should also be avoided, and if you don't know the topic well-enough to do more than state the obvious, don't create the article at all. Newly created stubs will be deleted automatically so try to add a decent amount of information to the page you are creating. Remember, it's the amount of info that matters, not the length, and simple subjects will inevitably have small articles, but that does not make them stubs.

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

Note that when using pronouns to refer to the player, use the gender indeterminate "they" (or "their", "themself", etc.); "he or she" can be used occasionally, but "he/she", "s/he" or anything else with a "/" separating gender-specific terms is never to be used. Only using one gender (male or female) to refer to the player is also incorrect.

Our example article fixes up the "you" in the last sentence:

... a person must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

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. In general, only the first occurrence of a subject in an article should be linked to, with all subsequent occurrences in the body text written as plain text only, to avoid redundancy and clutter. However, longer pages can sometimes have multiple links to the same subject, provided the links do not occur back-to-back, and are instead spread throughout different sections of the article. Duplicate links appearing in lists, tables, infoboxes, image captions and navigation templates are also allowed regardless of the length of a page.

Our example article includes one User namespace piped link for Porplemontage, but in articles, mostly all links are to other articles. Note only the Super Mario franchise page is created as of 03:29, 2 March 2007 (EST).

The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Super Mario franchise and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. There are over 45000 files uploaded, 90,000,000 page views, 15000 users and 14 administrators (though a few are inactive). ... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki - sustaining over 1000 edits a day. Anyone can edit, but a person must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

Italicizing titles
The wiki has decided it proper to respect all games, series, movies, television programs, albums (music), publications (print: comics, books and magazines), tabletop games, and unique brand names of merchandise by italicizing all of their titles, as well as linking them when need be the case in every article. When linking and italicizing, the syntax is  Article Title . Song titles and episode names (i.e. of television series) are not italicized, but written in quotation marks.

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 Super Mario franchise and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. ...

Navigation templates
Navigation templates list a bunch of related articles. Most templates pertain to a particular game (such as ) and will list all the characters, items, etc. that appear in that game, although others will list all the specific types of a certain group of species, items, etc. (such as ( or ). Sometimes an unmade 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 subject or game. But if there is an appropriate template, add it - 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:

... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki - sustaining over 1000 edits a day. Anyone can edit, but a person must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

Categories
There are a ton of categories and subcategories on this wiki, and every page can fit into at least one of them, if not many. But it's not as simple as putting every applicable category you can think of onto an article. As explained on Categories, categories are organized so that very specific categories are placed on articles, and in turn, those categories are part of more general categories, leading up to the bare basics like Category:Games, Locations or Species. So, while Dimentio technically fits in Category:Characters, Category:Paper Mario series characters and Category:Super Paper Mario bosses, only the latter category should be used, as it is the most specific option.

Simply type  , and the article is automatically added to the category; be sure to not include a space between "Category:" and the name.

Let's say the categories Gaming, Wikis and Websites exist here, and that Wikis is a subcategory of Websites. In that case:

... The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki - sustaining over 1000 edits a day. Anyone can edit, but a person must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

Note that Websites isn't on the article, but it can still be reached by going through Wikis, just as this article can still be reached from Websites by going through the intermediate subcategory.

Also note that categories and templates often overlap in subject matter. This is perfectly fine, however templates are expected to provide enhanced navigation assets for readers (i.e. subdividing a large group of related pages by more specific criteria, such as characters vs. items appearing in the same game). If a category or a group of categories adequately links a group of pages, a template may not be needed at all.

''Congratulations! The article "Super Mario Wiki", with the text''

The Super Mario Wiki is a wiki about the Super Mario franchise and its related series, Wario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Super Smash Bros. It has many articles, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros., Bowser, Extra Life, Goomba and much more. In most of these games, such as New Super Mario Bros., the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist. There are over 45000 files uploaded, 90,000,000 page views, 15000 users and 14 administrators (though a few are inactive). The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage, and is now a very vibrant wiki - sustaining over 1000 edits a day. Anyone can edit, but a person must create an account to upload files or create new articles.

''would be an acceptable article on the Super Mario Wiki (if such an article were 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! The following sections deal with specific aspects of writing and additional features that can be added to the articles.

Capitalization and italics
The first word of an article section name is capitalized and proper nouns are capitalized. Subsequent words that are not proper nouns are not capitalized. Titles included in section names are italicized just like in regular text.

Section headings
An article's top-level body headings (typically level 2, surrounded by ) should not contain any links (e.g.  ), since this makes the show/hide function cumbersome on mobile, and linking to the section may not work correctly. While it's always preferred to use links in the body text rather than in headings, lower-level headings may be a link when there's no convenient place for it within the section itself.

Article sections should be separated by a blank line in wikitext, unless the line contains the template or similar. In addition, a blank line should precede the list of navigation templates, categories, and interlanguage links, which are all grouped together at the bottom of the article. For example:

Trivia

 * This is a trivia point.