Difference between revisions of "Kerbal Space Program Wiki:Guidelines"

Revision as of 09:55, 13 July 2013

At the moment the content was only added by xZise and Ruedii, so it is likely far from complete and may not reflect the opinions of the other admins.

These guidelines help you in writing good articles and maintaining a consistent style with already existing ones.

General Editing

Some suggestions to help you be more constructive in your edits:

• Be assertive: Don't be afraid to make changes. If you make a mistake in grammar or wording another editor can always correct it. If you put your added information in the wrong section of the page, it can always be moved. Just because your edit was corrected doesn't mean it wasn't appreciated, in fact quite the opposite, if it wasn't liked it would be simply deleted. If you are absolutely uncertain if something belongs, or how to phrase something you can always bring it up in the talk page and let someone else put it in.
• Use common sense: Generally the phrasing should use minimal point of view, and should phrasing. Unlike Wikipedia, game perspective is fine, but other obvious rules still persist.Try to avoid expressing things in manners that may be considered offensive, and make sure all content is related to Kerbal Space Program in one manner or another.
• Give other users the benefit of the doubt: It's generally a good idea to presume best intentions unless there is no way that good intentions could be presumed. This reduces arguing. It is simple to fix a mistake, but you won't do a good job of it if you are presuming the other person was making the mistake intentionally.

Naming articles

Kerbal Space Program specific content

Content from Kerbal Space Program, like the celestial bodies and parts should be named like the official naming ingame. The only exception at the moment is Kerbol which is officially called the Sun (see also discussion about naming Kerbol). The official name of Parts could be retrieved by looking into the part.cfg of the part.

If an object in KSP get renamed, like the Inline Clamp-O-Tron (previously Hull-mounted Clamp-O-Tron), the old name redirect to the current name.

Other articles

General articles like aerobraking should use the common English capitalization: Only names begin with an uppercase character. The same applies to linking where most articles should start with a lowercase character (if they aren't a name).

Linking to Wikipedia

It is possible to link to an Wikipedia article with using the [[ and ]]. For example Kerbal Space Program in the English Wikipedia:

• [[w:Kerbal Space Program|Kerbal Space Program]] generates Kerbal Space Program
• [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Program Kerbal Space Program] generates Kerbal Space Program

For further information see Interwiki link on the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Not all codes work directly, so to add a link to the German Wikipedia it first has to use a recognized prefix on this Wiki:

• [[w:de:Kerbal Space Program|Kerbal Space Program]] generates Kerbal Space Program (German)
• [[de:Kerbal Space Program|Kerbal Space Program]] does not work and generates a red link Kerbal Space Program

Usually a w: as a prefix followed by a prefix from the Meta-Wiki does work. All available interwiki links are shown at Special:Interwiki and lists also non Wikimedia related projects.

Linking to other project resources

To link to the official Kerbal Space Program forum or blog it is possible to use the prefixes thread and blog. It is not possible to link to a specific post (yet) with thread. The bug tracker IDs can be linked with tracker.

• [[blog:184|KSP 0.21 Update News]] generates KSP 0.21 Update News
• [[thread:23902|Saving an Assembly]] generates Saving an Assembly
• [[tracker:787|Bug #787]] generates Bug #787

Moving and deleting pages

Only sysops can move or delete any pages. To request a page to be deleted, simply add {{Delete|reason}}. Blanking the page is not sufficient or necessary, because the content is still available through the version history. It is only recommended to blank the page if it is a spam page which links to external sites, as this prevents search engines to index those links. Any page which uses the delete template will be added to Category:Nominated for Deletion.

With {{Move|new name|reason}} a page can be requested to be moved to the new name. This will add the page to Category:Move Requests. To aid the sysops with the moving of the page, it is recommended to check using Special:WhatLinksHere which pages link to the old name and then to change the links to the new name. The new page should at first have a redirect to the old page so those links won't get red. It will later be overwritten by the moved page. The advantage of properly moving the page instead of copying the contents to the new page and deleting the old one is that it saves the version history.

Talk page

If you have a question about something in an article you could use the talk page. To make it easier for other people to follow the discussion please create always a new topic (for example with the Add topic button on the top) if it is a new discussion. Also sign your posts with --~~~~ so others could see who was saying that at what time. Note that the time is for the timezone CST/CDT (UTC-6:00/UTC-5:00) and may differ with the times display in the Version history.

When you see a comment on the discussion page which isn't signed use {{unsigned}} to sign it for them.

Articles which need attention

Those pages lists articles which need to be created or edited:

• Category:Update Requests lists outdated articles
• Category:Stubs lists incomplete articles
• Special:LonelyPages lists all pages which aren't referenced from other articles
• Special:WantedPages lists all red links

See also

• Translating articles
• Templates
• General discussions