StrategyWiki:Guide/Other ways to contribute

This page has everything you need to get you started creating and editing StrategyWiki pages.

How to Contribute
On StrategyWiki, anyone is free to create or modify game strategy guides! There are many ways to help out. Here are a few ideas:


 * Create a new guide for a game that doesn't have one yet. Right now we're small, but we're growing. You can help out by starting a page for your favorite game and working on it over time. Gradually, other people might contribute to your guide too, and soon it will be the best around!


 * Update an existing guide if you spot any mistakes or if you think you could say it better. This site is all about collaboration, so feel free to jump right in and contribute.


 * Photographers go into a game and take screenshots to explain parts of a game that words cannot. In a similar fashion, cartographers make maps or charts for games to better explain things. Artists hunt down official game art with which to beautify the guides. StrategyWiki guides are expected to have at the least a title image on the main page and boxart on the game data page.


 * Format a guide if it's looking a little bland and you're familiar with Mediawiki markup. Divide pages into sections, split long pages, add in images -- anything you like to improve presentation of your favorite guide.


 * Copyedit a guide if you're a stickler for spelling and grammar and can't stand seeing a page with a mistake. With so many authors working on one guide, mistakes are bound to slip in.


 * Check for errors in cheat codes and glitch descriptions. A single button out of place could be the difference between victory and a reload screen.

Editing Pages
In order to begin editing pages, you will need to register for an account. Don't worry, the process is very simple. Look at the top-right of the page to find a "log in" button, then fill out the information on the page that appears and you'll be editing articles in no time.

Once you have an account, all you have to do to modify the page you're reading is click the "Edit" tab above the page's main heading. This will display the page and the page's edit box below. Simply enter your changes into the edit box and click the "Save page" button, and your generous contribution will be instantly visible to all the visitors to the page.

If you want to try out a few edits without fear of messing up a page, you can use the sandbox. It's the perfect page to learn how to edit and test Mediawiki markup.

Oh, and don't worry about messing something up. Wiki pages keep track of all the changes that have ever been made to them, from the most recent edit back to the very first version of the page! Nothing is ever really lost, so dive right in!

Wiki markup
Mediawiki sites have a fairly complex and unfamiliar formatting syntax. To learn how to format your pages, please check out Help:Editing (and try your new skills in the Sandbox). There you can learn everything in a quick and easy reference!

Templates
You can use templates to help give your guide a consistent appearance between its pages and with other guides on the site. See the template help page for information about how to use this powerful feature.

Discussion pages
Every page also has an assocated "talk page" that can be viewed by clicking the "Discussion" link on the right-hand sidebar. These pages are usually used to aid collaboration between multiple users who are all making edits to the page.

Creating a Guide
What's that? Your favorite game doesn't have a StrategyWiki guide yet? You can create it! The easiest way to get started is to type the full name of the game you want to work on into the search box (at the top-right of every page) and press the "Go" button. If nobody has started a guide for your game, the search result page will tell you so. Then, just click on the "this exact title" link to begin editing your guide's first page!

NOTE: do not under any circumstances use & (ampersand) or ? (question mark) in the page name. These are used for special functions and pages using them in the title will be troublesome to work with. Any characters other than these two are fine, and there is no problem using these characters within the page itself.

Before you start
First of all consider what type of game you are writing about. A platform game with a few dozen levels may be simple enough to cover on a single page, while a strategy game or RPG will usually require many pages. The advantage of the wiki format is that any number of pages can be added and removed as the guide evolves from basic notes into a heavily detailed resource. There are generally two guide formats on StrategyWiki, as follows:

One page format
A simple one-page guide that covers all the important information about the game. This type of guide is best suited for games which do not require a very long walkthrough.

Book format
The second format breaks a guide down into many pages which each describe a certain aspect of the game. This is useful to create walkthroughs which have many long sections. To work with multiple pages, we suggest naming your pages like so:

Name of Game/Section Name

For example:

Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Introduction

This allows you to divide up your guide into a logical structure.

When using this format, please do not allow more than one subsection (subpage) in the page name. For example, Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Characters/Link would not be valid, but Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Link would be. This rule may change in the future, but for the time being, please do not break it.

Writing guidelines
When writing, always maintain a single focussed "voice". Do not refer to yourself ("I", "me", etc.) in the guide, unless it is specifically necessary (e.g. "User:NameHere has found that collecting all five keys within 30 seconds can actually be done, as long as...". However this is solely for the purpose of asserting that something is possible, rather than claiming glory for having achieved it.

Always give alternate options. Many solo guide writers often choose what they say is the best way to complete a certain objective, but another gamer might choose another route. If there are multiple ways to do something writing them all out could be useful to the reader.

Avoid spoilers!
Revealing main plot points such as the identity of a main boss at a point in the walkthrough earlier than that at which it occurs in the game is generally considered bad form. However, in some cases plot points are revealed by the game box, manual, or introduction. These are not considered spoilers as it is highly likely the player knows of them. An example would be the death of a central character in Grand Theft Auto Advance--this is stated right on the back of the box.

Adding side notes
If you want to mention helpful things to do along the way that are not part of the current stage of the walkthrough (for example sidequests or specific things needed for later in the main game) use Template:sidebar.

Copying from other guides
Copying from other guides released into the public domain or under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is perfectly acceptable, however when copying from another GFDL source you are required to provide a link back to the source. When mirroring an entire guide from another site putting the notice on the first page only is considered acceptable.

Screenshots and illustrations
Do not go overboard on screenshots. Each screenshot should have a specific purpose, such as demonstrating a particular task (such as finding the correct book to open a secret passage), or a boss's various evolutions or movement patterns, or a list of enemies so the player can learn to recognise and differentiate between them, and so forth. If the thing in question is not clearly visible it may be useful to draw a circle or arrow similar indicating it. For the sake of simplicity do not write on the screenshot, the explanation should instead go in the picture caption or in the walkthrough body. For more involved steps it may be necessary to label different parts "A" and "B" or similar.

Similarly, featuring an overworld or screenshot map without any annotations is probably of little value. Such should serve to either show all the major locations in the game world or else to highlight hidden goodies, enemies, etc.

Helping others find your guide
To help other people find your new guide, you should place its main page in several categories. We already have categories set up for systems and genres. To add a page to a category, simply put the following into your page:

Replace NAME with the category name you would like to use. To put your page into more than one category, just duplicate that line and change the name.