Help:Contents

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Editing articles

Before you start writing or editing content, you might want to glance through the Editing Guide at Wikipedia.org (We are using the same wikiscript, so the same techniques apply). ChriSchaeffer has also started a "cheatsheet" for the most common codings, you can see it here. Another good way to learn how to use the few tricks you need is to to click the edit button on any of the content pages and look how it was done - you can also experiment with the preview feature (just don't click "save" on a changes you don't mean to make). You can also experiment on your own user page, and do try out the buttons on top of the editing box - they can make things a lot easier!

Most of all: don't worry about editing! All changes you make can be reversed if there's a mistake, you can't permanently destroy anything! :) Also, when you first start writing, it doesn't matter if you don't add links and styles and categories etc - someone else will come along and polish it. :)

That's it for the technical side of things. The rest of this Help page is guidelines meant to help you customize your writing to fit the purposes of this particular wiki.

Respect copyrights

Don't add any material if you are not sure about the copyrights. Read more about the potential copyright issues of this project.

Live in the Now

Be a wolf. Describe the persons and places in the present tense - unless it's someone we know from the stories that has died decades ago. Examples: Fitz is, Satrap Esclepius was. However, this is only a guideline. If you're unsure, don't let it prevent you from writing an article, someone else will come and fix it if needed.

Short descriptions or long essays?

Many of the characters are so minor that we barely know anything else but a name, hometown and profession about them- and that's ok. For the main characters, it is a good idea to use sub-headers for organizing information that covers decades of events. Although still works-in-progress, the articles for Fitz, The Fool and Burrich are good examples.

Character titles and article names

Whenever the character has a title, mention it in the article. Do not make it a part of the link/name of the article unless the character has a first name that we do not know. Examples: Lady Patience and Lady Marthi Duparge - but Duparge (lord). This is to avoid confusion between entries meant for families in general (Duparge) and individuals. The Farseers go best without the "Farseer" part too, as goes anyone who has many names, but is most often referred to simply as "Fitz", "Molly" or "Kennit". Don't add Kings or Satraps or anything like that to the rulers' names either (except in the article itself of course). Avoid using "the" in the article names also, unless it's really part of the name like "The Fool". Whenever the "the" is an inseparable part of the title, saved it as "Name, the" (ie. "Golden Fool, the") - this is a wish made by our resident librarian. ;) And don't worry, redirects for "the Name" will be made even if you forget/don't know how to make one.

Avoid repeating and duplicating links

Most of the time it's enough to link a name once in an article - the first time it is mentioned. If you're not sure that the article you're linking to exists, or you're not sure how the existing article's name is formatted (with or without the title, for example), use the search box. This should help us avoid creating a page for "Fool" and "the Fool", for example. (Again, mistakes happen and redirects fix them, don't worry.)

Is it starting to buck you already?

"Buckkeep" for our purposes is the castle, the keep itself. It's easier to refer to it as just "Buckkeep" instead of adding the repeating "castle" after it. Then there's Buckkeep town, Buckkeep stables, Buck River, Buck Point, Buck and a bucking bronco that Burrich is trying to tame.

Sneak around a bit

It's a good idea to use the "What links here" feature in the toolbox to see what articles are linking to the one you're working with - there's probably facts you'd like to mention from the point of view of the character you're writing about. Another good tip is to write the name of the character to the search box and choose "containing" instead of just hitting enter on any one result - this way you see where the character has been mentioned even if there's no link to your article, or the link is slighly different from what it should be.

Avoid book titles

Try not to write sentences like "In the beginning of Royal Assassin Fitz thinks that Molly might be dead". Instead, try to connect it to the events in the story line, for example: "After returning from the Mountain Kingdom to witness Kettricken's betrothal, Fitz thinks that Molly might be dead." It takes more time and effort, but the results are worth it, because it gives the sense of continuity to your article. There are of course times when you can't avoid mentioning the books, for example if there is an inconsistency about some character or place in several books, as well of course in the book pages.

Use templates

This is a newish feature that is still in the first stages of development, but you can and should still use it. You can see the current templates here - whenever you create or edit any article about the universes that have templates (currently Realm of the Elderlings, Gernia, Ki & Vandien, Tillu & Kerlew, Liavek); you should add the template code to the bottom of the page, just before the category/categories. It doesn't matter that some of them are still in the first draft stage - the beauty of the templates is that whenever the template itself is changed, those changes are reflected on every page the template was inserted. So start pasting them around! :)