StrategyWiki:Guide/Walkthrough

StrategyWiki can be fun and exciting for both readers and editors. Now that you're familiar with how to use the site from the Getting Started section and how to use Wiki markup, the walkthrough will take you through the steps to make helpful contributions in accordance with the styles and guidelines of the wiki. Whether you're starting a new guide, adding a page to existing one or just enhancing the content that's already there, this guide will help to ensure your edits are in the right place with the proper formatting.

Things to remember

There are some important and fundamental differences between wiki content and traditional guide writing.

• Nobody "owns" the guides. All content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.
• There are no closing comments sections. Each guide is considered to be written by the community. Writings speaking for the community, or any other for that matter, are not welcome.
• There is no copyright section. The disclaimers link at the end of the page outlines the terms of the license.
• No contacting section. That means no e-mail addresses or chat handles. Use talk pages, instead.
• No credits section. A list of contributors is recorded automatically by MediaWiki (click on the history tab to see).
• No attribution. All edits are automatically attributed (click on the history tab to see).
• You can use rich text formatting and some HTML. (bold, italic, hyperlinks, etc.) using MediaWiki markup, or, in rare cases, HTML if no MediaWiki equivalent exists.
• Tables are allowed, as long as you use wiki markup for them.
• Images that enhance understanding of a guide are allowed, and encouraged. We provide a place to upload images onto our servers.

Where to start

The first thing is to choose a game to write for. It's best to choose a game you like and have played through completely to be fully able to write about it. Think about how you will go about collecting information and how to organize information prior to creating pages for it. Here's a few tips for starting off:

• You will need some amount of motivation or ambition to work on your chosen game. If you meet another fan also interested in working on that game, that's great; this will distribute the workload.
• You don't have to immediately jump into writing the walkthrough, which is oftentimes the hardest part. If you want to concentrate on an item list or boss strategies, that's fine.
• Changes go live the moment you hit save. You can write as much or as little at a time as you like.

Solutions or strategies for the most difficult parts of a game are very valuable for many readers, as most players won't look up a walkthrough until they get stuck. So don't worry if you're not yet ready to write an entire walkthrough. As this is a wiki, the solutions and strategies you write will be expanded into a full walkthrough later on.

Writing guidelines

The primary purpose of StrategyWiki is to inform, not entertain. Guides should contain a minimum of "fluff" (also known as drivel) and focus on providing relevant details and describing what the player has to do. A very small amount of uncontroversial "fluff" makes the text more digestible, but keep it to a minimum and to the point: less is more and you're not writing a game review. Similarly, all guides must be objective and devoid of personal opinion.

When writing, always maintain a single focused "voice". Do not refer to yourself ("I", "me", etc.) in the guide.

Different techniques and strategies may be suggested with the goal of determining the best technique or strategy. Many solo guide writers often choose what they think is the best way to complete a certain objective, but another gamer might have a different opinion. If there are multiple ways to do something, writing them all out could be useful to the reader.

Spelling and grammar should be checked by contributors before an edit is saved. The newer versions of Mozilla Firefox automatically mark spelling mistakes in text boxes. You can also copy the text into Microsoft Word or another word processor and run a spell check. If proper nouns specific to a game are used, please ensure that they are correctly spelled and capitalized.

Crediting sources

If you find yourself in the situation that you need to credit information, do so in the edit summary. Because information (including cheat device patch codes) cannot be copyrighted or otherwise protected, you can take cheat codes or item stats from other guides as long as your wording and presentation of those details are sufficiently different.

Organize well

Keep paragraphs short. Their size will vary depending on screen resolution and font size, but as a general rule you should start a new paragraph whenever something major takes place or it just seems like a good time. For example, in an adventure game, using a paragraph for each major location or location change is probably a good idea. Whatever is most fitting and appropriate for the guide while not being redundant is welcome.

• Use {{sidebar}} for notes that accompany a page that aren't a necessary feature of it. Use the sidebar to indicate the location of ancillary information which will help those looking for those things, while not interrupting those only interested in the core subject of the page.
• Take notes on paper or in Notepad while playing the game, as it is a lot easier than playing back through whole portions of the game just to describe something you didn't before. You can, of course, look up videos or other guides to refresh your memory if you forgot to make a note of something. But remember not to copy directly from them.
• Don't bother using tabs or multiple spaces to align text. These don't appear in the final page or don't have the desired effect. If you want to lay something out in a specific way, use proper wiki formatting instead.
• Don't use more than a single blank line between sections. Any more than one will create obvious blank space in the saved page, which generally looks bad. This applies to the tops and bottoms of pages as well.
• Don't use ASCII artwork on StrategyWiki. Use images instead.
• Don't use any form of JIS (e.g. JIS encoding or Shift-JIS) for Japanese. Instead, use normal Unicode characters (e.g. ゼルダの伝説). Modern browsers support both, but Unicode works immediately, whereas JIS requires the user to first manually change the character encoding in order for the characters to display correctly.

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 (Game Boy Advance) – this is stated right on the back of the box.