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

Bold and repeat the title of the article in the first sentence.
Details – don't state the obvious. Provide some information about the subject too, as much as you can.
~~You~~ – use another term like "the player" or the name of the playable character.
Link to as many other articles as possible once and only once.
Italicize all game titles as well as linking them.
Navigation via templates.
Categorize with many categories.
Underline all book titles.

Enhancements

Images to visualize the article.
Knowledge/Notice Templates.
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 referred as, for example, Reggie Fils-Aime as opposed to Reginald Fils-Aime

Step by step: example article

Let's say that the article "NintendoWiki" 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 Super NES. 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 '''NintendoWiki''' 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 '''NintendoWiki''' is a wiki about Nintendo and its various series. Though it is just starting, it is supported by NIWA and members of its component wikis, Super Mario Wiki, Zeldapedia, and Bulbapedia. Like the wikis of NIWA, you must create an account to edit and create new articles.

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", "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:

... Like the wikis of NIWA, a person must create an account to edit or create new articles.

Linking, my boy!

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, linking should not occur every time a term appears – most occurrences of a word as plain text, linking only if they are far apart.

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 '''NintendoWiki''' is a wiki about [[Nintendo]] and its various series, consoles, and so on. Though it is just starting, it is supported by {{NIWA}} and members of its component wikis, [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[Zeldapedia]], and [[Bulbapedia]]. Like the wikis of NIWA, a person must create an account to edit and create new articles.

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

Template linking

Based on the Bulbapedia model, templates used for linking to similarly-named articles, known as link templates, have been created on the NintendoWiki. These templates are often used to remove parenthetical additions to a link, especially where many articles have that specific parenthetical addition. They may also be used to replace prefixes, especially in Nintendo's game series where new titles are simply subtitled.

Example:

The '''Nintendo 3DS''' is Nintendo's currently-announced next-generation handheld console, a successor to the [[Nintendo DS]]. While it is unknown if {{pver|Black|White}} will be released strictly for this console, or with enhancements for it, it is currently known that a remake of {{zel|Ocarina of Time}} will be appearing on the system.

Please keep in mind that a template should not be created for every individual link, however, links to NIWA's member wikis should always be by use of templates.

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 NintendoWiki 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.

Example:

The '''Game Boy Advance''' is a handheld console manufactured by [[Nintendo]]. Much like its predecessor, the [[Game Boy Color]], the Game Boy Advance was held up greatly by Nintendo's flagship series, with the Pokémon series taking the lead with its bestselling games ''Pokémon Ruby'' and ''Sapphire'', ''FireRed'' and ''LeafGreen'', and ''Emerald'', as well as with remakes of titles from Nintendo's older consoles, with ''The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past'' and ''Super Mario Advance'' appearing on the console.

Navigation templates

Navigation templates list several related links to the article they are placed on. Sometimes an article is already on one of these templates in red, waiting to be added, and sometimes the template must be edited to include it. Sometimes, no template yet exists, and must be made.

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

The '''NintendoWiki''' is a wiki about [[Nintendo]] and its various series, consoles, and so on. Though it is just starting, it is supported by {{NIWA}} and members of its component wikis, [[Super Mario Wiki]], [[Zeldapedia]], and [[Bulbapedia]]. Like the wikis of NIWA, a person must create an account to edit and create new articles.

This would put the gamingwikis template at the bottom of the page, and using this, people will be able to navigate better between related 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 ~~strikethrough~~ text.
<u>These tags</u> make underlined text.
Asterisks in the beginning 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, though wiki coding is preferred where there is no overlap.

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