Archero Wiki:Style Guide

Talk Page This page shall serve as a guide for how articles should be formatted on the Wiki.

TL;DR

Use standard layout; keep with the currently existing theme & organizational scheme.
Use standard format; maintain the basic standards of neatness & photo/videographic placement.
Be accurate; make sure your info isn’t bogus.
Be objective; no opinions!
Be brief; concise and clear!

Those are the essentials — always keep them in mind when adding new info to an article. For more info on what constitutes each of these tenets, keep reading.

Standard Layout

It’s fairly obvious that one should strive to use good grammar and spelling when editing pages, and that one should try to remain somewhat professional. However, there’s more to it than that. Keeping pages standardized is one of the biggest tasks our Wiki attempts to undertake — a page should follow Standard Format. Read further for info on how each page should be laid out.

Gallery

The Gallery section should contain either a small assortment of images, or an actual <gallery> tag wherein abundant but nonetheless relevant images can be collected. If there are no images available, or if they are all placed inline, then this section is not necessary. It should either be last or second-to-last.

Footnotes

The Footnotes section exists to contain <references/> tags, if there are any <ref> tags present. If this section exists, it should always be the very last.

Templates

Templates on the Archero Wiki should follow this format.

Categorization

Any templates that are created should be properly categorized. This should ideally be done by adding {{documentation}} to the bottom of the template, & then including the category within the /doc template. That can be done by placing the following code within the documentation template:

<noinclude>[[Category:Template documentation]]</noinclude>
<includeonly>[[Category:Infobox Templates]][[Category:Templates]]</includeonly>

Standard Format

This is much more miscellaneous than the above, which was about layout. Format regards image placement, video restrictions, grammar.

Videos are heavily restricted on the Archero Wiki. If it does not have an express purpose on a page, then chances are high that it will be deleted. Videos should not be placed on pages unless they offer pertinent content directly related to the topic of the page.

Positionally speaking, videos should be small & out-of-the-way. They can be placed within a gallery, a reference (if used to prove something), or in unobtrusive areas if used inline, although that last should be rarely. Videos specifically commissioned as guides or walkthroughs may be placed prominently at the top of some pages, but this is even more unorthodox.

While there are currently no restrictions on uploads, their page placement is standardized. Images should only be placed inline (that is, in the text itself) when said image is particularly pertinent to the adjacent text & is accompanied by a description. Images that are related but not necessarily pertinent can be collected into a <gallery>. However, even when inside galleries, images should not detract from the article, and should all serve at least slightly different illustrative purposes from each other.

Perhaps the biggest problem the Archero Wiki faces is point of view. Third person should be the universal standard to ensure that our pages are professional. It is advised to rework any instances of first or second person point of view into third person wherever possible.

While it is preferred to keep things grammatically consistent, we currently lack the means to enforce this. Instead, as opposed to only capitalizing proper nouns, all phrases that have articles made after them should be capitalized to ensure easy standardization across the site.

Footnotes, or references, can be used to hide away small addendums that would be awkward to type inline. Besides that, they can be used as a means to verify the authenticity of a certain statement. If this latter is the case, then it should be noted in the reference in addition to the external link.

Objectivity, Accuracy, & Brevity

Accuracy is pretty simple — pages shouldn’t include random information that isn’t known to be true, as that’s not what wikis are for. A wiki is fact, not clickbait and overspeculation. For example:

Incorrect: “Breaking newz! The Pink Pentagon is confirmed! I saw it today on a YouTube thumbnail — it’s probably worth 9002 XP! I bet it has 2600 HP. This is amazing!”

Make sure information comes from reliable sources, and not one YouTuber’s thumbnail or the like. Articles should not contain misinformation — what good does that do? Is anything learned? Clearly, one must ensure that the content they add is helpful to users.

Objectivity means “not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased”. Now what this means is that you shouldn’t put opinions in articles. For example:

Incorrect: “The Predator is a horrible tank and the only tank worse is the absolutely unusable Overlord — it is obviously hard to control and you can’t get a good score with it.”

The issue with this is that no one can prove that the info is correct — it’s just what some random editor thinks. Even if there is more than one editor who thinks such, you must recall that wikis are collections of facts, not blogs. Thus, only objective statements that are actually true should be included in articles.

Brevity just means “briefness”. Now, at first glance you might wonder why this is necessary. Shouldn't paragraphs be embellished a little? The truth is, long-winded explanations are hard to read. For example, take this:

Incorrect: “Overlord Drones are the solemn property of the previously mentioned tank specifically, but only one of those discrete and autonomous bodies, and they can only be controlled (or otherwise belong to — they can also be set to automatic mode by disabling Auto Fire, accessed through the key imprinted with the Latin alphabet letter “E” on any standard United States QWERTY English keyboards) by one player (although it is possible that that player is actually multiple players, using one account, though for our intents and purposes we will consider that to be one player, or more accurately, “entity”).”

All that this said was “Overlord Drones can only be controlled by one specific Tank”. Compare those two phrases — which one would you want to read through, if you were looking for quick information? Would you choose the long, tedious first paragraph? Or just the second sentence? A wiki is home to information, as previously mentioned — not walls of text that people cannot read. Always remember while editing that short and sweet is a treat.