MegaGlest:Style guide

To make the wiki the best it can be, we have a style guide meant to specify the best ways to write pages for the wiki. This is not necessarily a hard guideline, but may be followed at your choice, though it is strongly recommended. Above all, though, remember to use common sense!

Page Titles
Page titles should be clear, meaningful, and short. They should be made with the first letter of the first word being capitalized, and all following words lowercase (ie: 'Dark magic'). Please do not use camel case such as DarkMagic, as that makes searching harder, causes improper page indexing, and is not neat. When disambiguating from articles that may have similar names, you should use another word in parenthesis after (ie: 'Military (Techtree)').

Pages can be 'renamed' by moving the page. This will move the page to a new name, and generally create a redirect where the old page was (be sure to check what links to the old page, and fix any redirects, since you can not have a double redirect. Double redirects will not carry the redirect a second time. A list of these can be seen at Special:DoubleRedirects.

Abbreviations and Slang
Avoid using abbreviations, slang, 1337-speak, or any other form of communication. Proper english is required for proper readability. Abbreviations are acceptable as a second time (or more) that they've been mentioned in the article UNLESS they link to another page which will explain the abbreviation (ie: GAE is acceptable if the first instance of it links to the GAE page, which would explain what GAE is. Or, GAE could be used if the full name of 'Glest Advanced Engine' is used earlier in the article and it is apparent that it is what's meant by GAE).

Bold and Italic
Bold and italic fonts are both used to show emphasis, though you should take care not to overuse them, and they should be used primarily to help the viewer. Overuse is just distracting and difficult to read. In wiki code, italics are done with TWO apostrophes on each side, bold is done with THREE, and bold and italic can be done together with FIVE. However, there's few practical uses for both together, bold alone is more than plenty to stress a strong emphasis.

Categorize
All pages should belong in at least one category. This can be added at the bottom of the page when viewing or editing the page. Pages can exist in multiple categories, and if they belong in them, they should. If there is no category that suits them, go ahead and make your own category for the article. Note that categories often appear as red links, but that is fine because that simply notes that the category has no written content, and still contains a list of all articles in the category (please feel free to add a short description of the category as content). A full list of categories can be found at Special:Categories. Note that categories in red do not have content to their category page yet, even if they do have pages belonging to it. Do not make multiple categories for the same thing. For example, if there is already a "MG" category, do not make a "MegaGlest" category too. Some categories are maintenance categories, and therefore hidden, and can be found here.

Dates
Because of the international aspect of the wiki, dates should be added in international format, namely, DD MM YYYY, without commas. For example, use 30 May 2010, instead of May 30, 2010. Dates should have no commas, and should never be abbreviated as a method with slashes. The month should also never be a number, but the full month or its abbreviation (eg: Sept. for September).

Links
The first instance of something that has an article on the wiki should have a link, however, more than one is not necessary. For example, if Magitech appears several times throughout an article, the first instance of it should be linked, while the rest should not. External links in articles may be used too, but use them sparingly, and only if absolutely necessary. When creating links to another article in the wiki, there's no need for underscores. The wiki does this automatically. Do note that all case besides the first letter does matter. For example, you can link to the style guide with either style guide or Style guide, but you can't use Style Guide because the "G" is not capitalized in the page's title, and thus, that would give a missing page.

Images
Images are a must for the wiki, and an image is worth a thousand words. However, all images MUST be related to glest and should be used in an article somewhere (barring user pages). Images not used in any articles are candidates for deletion. Images should generally be right or left aligned, except for large images that would serve a purpose being center aligned. Also, large images should generally be shrunk down, since the user can click the image for the full size. Images in articles should generally be captioned to tell the point of the image.

Personal images are not allowed on the wiki, and this includes images meant only for use on your user page, images of yourself, images linked to only from external sites, etc;

Sections and Headings
To make articles easier to read, as well as to allow the table of contents to function, articles are broken into sections with headings. The heading1 only appears at the top of the page, and cannot be manually inserted. Header2 is the normal level, such as Style Guide above. Heading3 would be after heading2, and so on... In wiki syntax, heading2 is ==My Heading==, heading3 is ===My Heading=== , and so on. Headings should not contain any additional formatting, such as being underlined, as they need to be standardized on all pages too.

Fonts and Colors
Except when necessary and/or helpful to the article, avoid using different fonts or colors. Not only do they serve to cause confusion, but they may not show up well against the wiki's background. As a general rule of thumb, if it doesn't help the article, don't use it. There's no need to have color just to try to make something 'look good'. Color should be logical and made to help the user. For example, if a table of text is showing profit and loss, profit could be in green and loss could be in red to easily mark the differences. This benefits the users and is more for practicability than 'good looks'.

HTML
HTML is an alternative to using wiki-code. It is fine to use HTML code in many places, though if you can do it without much more difficulty in wiki-code, please do so. For example, don't use  for bold. Instead, use ''', which surrounds the text in the same was as the HTML tags, but is faster to type and more standardized. Ensuring that it's the same on all parts of the wiki opens the door for editors to come in, as well as is more compatible with the rich text editor, for those who use it.

Some features such as div boxes and CSS can only be done with HTML, and more than justify their use, should they be necessary. Contractory to popular belief, CSS can be used in wiki tables.