Kerbal Space Program Wiki:Guidelines

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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.

Linking to other articles

It is recommended to link without changing the link text (aka only with [[link target]]) with suffixes. Also when linking parts the name shouldn't be hidden. Either use the general page or the part name, so a visitor can always see, what is meant. So instead of “All command modules except the one have torque.” (source code: All [[Command module|command modules]] except the [[EAS-1 External Command Seat|one]] have torque.) it should be rewritten as “All command modules except the EAS-1 External Command Seat have torque.” (source code: All [[command module]]s except the [[EAS-1 External Command Seat]] have torque.). Because the first character is always uppercase a link to Command module doesn't differ to command module, but doesn't apply to any other character. For example cOmmand module won't link to Command module.

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), and Kerbonaut, which is referred to as "astronaut" ingame (see also Kerbonaut#Naming and Astronaut Complex). The official name of Parts can be retrieved by looking into the part.cfg of the part.

If an object in KSP gets renamed, like the Inline Clamp-O-Tron (previously Hull-mounted Clamp-O-Tron), the old name should 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

Linking to parts

When linking to a part, it is recommended not to hide the link target. So when it links to a part directly the link text shouldn't be the type of part. For example instead of [[FL-T100 Fuel Tank|liquid fuel tank]] either [[liquid fuel tank]] or [[FL-T100 Fuel Tank]]. This helps readers to see what the link is about and, depending on the situation, if a statement is applying to the specific part linked or to all similar parts. For example the following sentence which hides the link target can be misleading:

The LV-T30 Liquid Fuel Engine uses fuel from liquid fuel tanks.

An inexperienced user may think there is only one liquid fuel tank or the LV-T30 only works with the FL-T100. Instead it should be written in one of the two ways:

The LV-T30 Liquid Fuel Engine uses fuel from tanks like the FL-T100 Fuel Tank.
The LV-T30 Liquid Fuel Engine uses fuel from liquid fuel tanks.

There is a third option, if there is no general article about the part type. This applies for example for the EAS-4 Strut Connector: There is no article strut but instead it redirects to the part page, which unfortunately hides the link target even further. But has the advantage that the links don't need to be changed, if in the future additional struts are available and there is a dedicated article about them.

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:

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. The pipe trick helps linking need to write the target twice:

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.

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.

Galleries

This is more like a first draft, but some have huge galleries where a lot of them show primarily their craft and not necessarily something interesting otherwise.

The galleries shouldn't be too long and should show primarily the described object of the page. So for example in an article about a body an image of a craft on top of the surface of that body shouldn't be added to the gallery. Instead such images should be only in the categories. An exception to this rule is when similarities is shown. For example an image of Kerbin and its moons can be used in Kerbin's gallery even when Kerbin is not the primary focus, but other objects shouldn't then not be in the focus. Another exception is when something else is visible, usually the craft to get there to get a screenshot, but it's moved out of the way to an edge or corner. If there are to many images (around 15 to 20), they should be properly categorized and then the category should be linked but not additional images added.

Images on a gallery shouldn't use any mods which are visible, as not every player is using the mods shown on an image. Mods which aren't adding parts or change textures are usually fine, as long as the GUI is not shown. Exceptions are of course pages which talk about the shown mod.

Articles which need attention

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

The community portal can also be consulted for more information.

See also

Additional resources

  • Helpdesk, helpdesk for this wiki
  • Help:Contents, help of the English Wikipedia
  • Help:Contents, help of the Wikimedia which is the organisation developing MediaWiki and maintaining the Wikipedia projects
  • Project:Help, help on MediaWiki which is the software used by this wiki
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