Help:Article

An article is a content page about the knowledge – a character, item, enemy, game, person, etc. The goal of the NintendoWiki 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.
8. Underline all book titles.

Enhancements

1. Images to visualize the article.
2. Knowledge/Notice Templates.
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.

Naming an Article

There are several steps to follow when naming an article:

• We are an English wiki, therefore, the title of an article should be the first official english name.
• If there is no official English name, then the first official name of the subject in any language is used.
• If there is no official name in any language, then a conjectural title is developed if the subject is notable enough for an article.
• When naming an article, do not use abbreviations.
• When the article is about a person, the article should be named the way the person is often refered as, for example, Reggie Fils-Aime as opposed to Reginald Fils-Aime

Step by Step: Example Article

Let's say that the article "Nintendo Wiki" was created by a user, and it was part of the knowledge base. Here's the wikitext (what appears in the editbox) of this article:

is a wkii about the mario series. has many articles like super nes 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 Nintendo. It has many articles like the console Super Nintendo Entertainment System. An account must be created in order to edit.

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 an "The" to keep the sentence sensible:

The '''Nintendo Wiki''' is a wiki about Nintendo. ...

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

Describing the Subject

You need to add details about your topic. Here's some good starter questions: if it's a console, when was it released? What some notable games? Special characteristics? If it's a person, a small biography, relation ship to Nintendo, etc.

In our example article, we have one detail: Nintendo is is one of many articles on the wiki. Here we add some more about the wiki as well as more games:

The '''Nintendo Wiki''' is a wiki about Nintendo and its various series, such as Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, etc. It has many articles, such as Nintendo 64, Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and much more. The wiki si just starting and it is a project made by the NIWA, which is formed by the Super Mario Wiki, ZeldaWiki and Bulbapedia. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by Archaic, Bulbapedia's webmster.

Your details depend on the type of article you're creating. Think of the basics - a person who never heard about the article subject would need 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 {{stub}} 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 of the basics..."). Instead, we use phrases such as "the player", "a playable character should", "the racer could", "they must", etc. that still describes the person being talked to, indirectly or refers to the character they play in the game. This makes our articles more encyclopedic.

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

... A person must create an account to edit 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. However, no one link should appear twice in an article – leave other occurrences as plain text.

Sometimes, removing red links may seem as it is good for the wiki, because it makes it look better, but that actually does more harm than good. By removing red links you are reducing the chances of that article being created. Of course, if the links are unnecessary, or the article being linked to was deleted, then it's fine to remove them.

An example of how our article would look like:

The '''Nintendo Wiki''' is a wiki about [[Nintendo]] and its various series, such as [[Mario]], [[Zelda]], [[Pokémon]], etc. It has many articles, such as [[Nintendo 64]], [[Satoru Iwata]], [[Shigeru Miyamoto]], [[Super Smash Bros. Brawl]] and much more. The wiki si just starting and it is a project made by the [[NIWA]], which is formed by the [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[ZeldaWiki]] and [[Bulbapedia]]. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by [[Archaic]], Bulbapedia's webmster.

Note how even though Bulbapedia is mentioned twice in the article, only the first time is put as a link.

Italicizing Titles

The wiki has decided it proper to respect all games, series, movies, television programs, albums (music) and publications (print: comics, books and magazines) 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 Nintendo Wiki article gets better, we get to italizice the game title in the article. If said game appeared twice in the article, we would link and italicize the first time, and only italicize the second time.

The '''Nintendo Wiki''' is a wiki about [[Nintendo]] and its various series, such as [[Mario]], [[Zelda]], [[Pokémon]], etc. It has many articles, such as [[Nintendo 64]], [[Satoru Iwata]], [[Shigeru Miyamoto]], ''[[Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]'' and much more. The wiki si just starting and it is a project made by the [[NIWA]], which is formed by the [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[ZeldaWiki]] and [[Bulbapedia]]. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by [[Archaic]], Bulbapedia's webmster.

Navigation Templates

Navigation templates list a bunch of related link 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 .

Let's say that a template called {{gamingwikis}} was a navigational template listing all wikis related to video games. So:

...The wiki is just starting and it is a project made by the [[NIWA]], which is formed by the [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[ZeldaWiki]] and [[Bulbapedia]]. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by [[Archaic]], Bulbapedia's webmster.

{{gamingwikis}}

Categories

There are a ton of categories and subcategories on this wiki. The most basic are Consoles, Games, Characters, Persons and Companies. There are many subcategories to these categories as well. By simply typing [[Category:(Fullname)]], the article is automatically added to the category; be sure to not include a space between "Category:" and the name. 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 we have some categories such as Wikis, Projects and NIWA, our article would looks like this

...The wiki is just starting and it is a project made by the [[NIWA]], which is formed by the [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[ZeldaWiki]] and [[Bulbapedia]]. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by [[Archaic]], Bulbapedia's webmster.

{{gamingwikis}}

[[Category:NIWA]]

[[Category:Wikis]]

[[Category:Projects]]

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 "Nintendo Wiki", with the text

The '''Nintendo Wiki''' is a wiki about [[Nintendo]] and its various series, such as [[Mario]], [[Zelda]], [[Pokémon]], etc. It has many articles, such as [[Nintendo 64]], [[Satoru Iwata]], [[Shigeru Miyamoto]], [[Super Smash Bros. Brawl]] and much more. The wiki is just starting and it is a project made by the [[NIWA]], which is formed by the [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[ZeldaWiki]] and [[Bulbapedia]]. The wiki was created on May 12th, 2010 by [[Archaic]], Bulbapedia's webmster.

{{gamingwikis}}

[[Category:NIWA]]

[[Category:Wikis]]

[[Category:Projects]]

would be an acceptable article on the Nintendo Wiki.

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.

=Useful Coding

There is some basic coding that you should know how to use on an article:

• '''Three apostrophes''' make bold text.
• ''Two apostrophes''' make italicized text.
• <s>These tags</s> make striked text.
• <u>These tags</u> make underlined text.
• Asterisks in the beggining of the line make a list (such as this one). Add more asterisks to set the levels.
• #s make a numbered list.
• [[2 Brackets]] make links.
• [1 Bracket] makes an external link. Format: [URL Link title].
• HTML coding can be used in the wiki.