User talk:Sylphoid

Manual of Style
Until an official manual of style can be established, all guideline and style guide information will be listed here. Additionally, old Gamepedia wikis do not support blog posts, so this is the best I could do.

The Manual of Style is a style guide for Risk or Rain wiki articles and related content. It establishes our in-house style, to help editors produce content that follows a consistent, clear, and precise language, layout, and formatting. Consistency promotes cohesion, which is important for readers to follow.

A more expansive set of guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

Structure
Different pages with different sections will not have the same information, but there is a general structure for every article. The follow sections should always be shown in this order:
 * 1) Notice: This includes cleanup, construction, and outdated templates.
 * 2) Disambiguation:
 * 3) Infobox: Corresponding information is displayed here.
 * 4) Introduction: This covers a brief overview of the article. It can also include the patch it was introduced in.
 * 5) TOC: On most articles, the TOC will automatically appear before the first section. However, FORCETOC is necessary for the Heresy items.
 * 6) Main Page: This covers the main information of the article or goes in further depth.
 * 7) Survivors, Items, Monsters, and Version History have varying section orders, but they should all be consistent.
 * 8) Version History: If content has changed over the course of the game, that information is listed here.
 * 9) Gallery: The gallery shows images otherwise too bulky to fit into the main article.
 * 10) Trivia: This covers tidbits of information not appropriate for the main page, or make references to content outside of the game.
 * 11) Navigation: Navigation templates go at the end of the article.

Spelling
American spelling, grammar, and sentence structure is used on the wiki and any templates involved. There is one exception:
 * If quoting a source, never alter any part of the quotation, even if it does not use American spelling or contains spelling errors.

Captialization
Capitalization should be reserved for proper names only. All survivors, items, skills, monsters, and locations are always capitalized. The only exception is for quoted content.

Several concepts have exceptions for capitalization, which include:
 * Directors

Commas
Use commas to structure large numbers.

Tense
All sections should follow the same tense.

Vocabulary
Formal use of language is mandatory on all official wiki pages.

Third Person

 * All articles are written in third person.
 * Never use 'you' when referring to the reader.

Formality and neutrality

 * Never use contracted forms.
 * Never instruct readers in directing information, or presume readers knowledge about specific information. Do not inject point of view or subjective perspectives.
 * Strategy sections may take some liberties with recommendations, but should also give reasons for why specific outcomes may or may not work.

Version History

 * Dev notes should be italicized.
 * Dev notes should not contain any links.
 * Bug Fixes can contain links.
 * Lore entries should not be EntityLinks, but normal links instead.
 * All items, monsters, survivors, skills, status effects, and entities should be template linked.
 * If something says 'Lunar Chimera' but does not specify which one, do not link.
 * New Survivor Skins should link to SurvivorName.
 * Do not include strikethroughs.
 * All typos and formatting issues should be preserved as is unless it significantly impacts reading.

Pronouns

 * Bandit, Captain, Commando, Engineer, Mercenary, Mithrix, and Newt use male pronouns.
 * Artificer, Heretic, Huntress, Loader, Her, N'Kuhuna and Beetle Queen use female pronouns.
 * Acrid, MUL-T, REX, and most monsters are genderless and use it.

Categorization
Every page should have a category, including images.

Source Editor Markup

 * Add spaces on either side of the text in a heading.
 * Ex: == Header 1 ==
 * Add a space after the asterisk, hash, and semicolon symbols in lists and definitions

Link Templates

 * For entity link templates (and relevant templates like SurvivorLink, ItemLink, MonsterLink) Avoid using multiple templates in the same paragraph.