Dogcraft Wiki:Guidelines

See also: Wiki FAQ

Articles on the Cyberdog Nation Wiki should be informative, helpful and answer all the questions someone may have about whatever the article topic is. Articles should also be impartial and cohesive, covering all the positives and negatives about the article's topic. In alignment with the server rules, we also expect all articles to adhere to the "PG-13" policy, so inappropriate material is not permitted.

The wiki permits articles about anything to do with the Dogcraft.net server. However, this does not mean everything is necessarily worthy of a page. We would rather have a smaller range of high-quality pages than a broad range of basic and low-quality pages. Often times a single page is more effective at explaining a topic than multiple; we want the wiki to be easy to navigate and gather information from.

Writing a good article

Thank you for taking interest in writing an article for the Cyberdog Wiki Project!

What deserves an article on the wiki?

Articles on the wiki can be about anything, provided they are within the scope of the Dogcraft.net server and community. This can range from, but not limited to, builds, projects, settlements, groups of players, events on the server, guides on how to play on the server and historical occurrences / phenomenons. However, we do have some exceptions of things that don't warrant an article.

• Overwhelmingly negative topics. It's no secret to anyone that over the years Dogcraft has had some rough times. As stated in the guidelines introduction, we encourage writing impartial articles, including covering the controversies and opinions of certain topics (provided it is PG-13). However, covering individual drama between players isn't probably worth documenting on the wiki.
• Highly niche topics such as inside jokes within a subset of the community. Of course, it's interesting to read about community subsets and groups, but you should include the niche topics within an article about the group rather than in a separate one. For example, this is why there is no "Bean War" or "The Riddening" article and instead we mention these topics within larger articles about the broader topic.
• Builds and projects that have yet to begin construction. We strongly discourage writing speculatively about what "will" happen. We would love to have your article when your build is a little bit further on, or has started construction.
• Articles about/containing topics intended to be held within confidence. Once you publish an article to the wiki, it cannot be truly deleted. This includes topics about server moderation processes. We also like to discourage talking about banned users, unless they are particularly noteworthy.

How should I structure my article?

We like to lay out articles in a particular style. We recommend reading a range of articles to see our style in effect, but you can find a rundown on our style detailed below. However, if this seems too complicated, don't worry. An administrator is able to do some of the technical stuff and restructuring for you, once your article has been made.

• Introductory paragraph, giving a brief definition/outline of the topic, including times, the world it is on and players involved.
• Additional headings covering the topic in more detail. You may want to include:
  • History about the topic
  • For builds, discuss the building style and architecture.
  • For projects, talk about the goals and management of the project.
  • Transport links and how to get to the project, if necessary.
• Infoboxes and navboxes, where neccessary.
  File:Adding an Infobox.PNG
  • To add an infobox, click Insert → Infobox and choose the one appropriate. If there isn't one appropriate for your article, then chances are you won't need one.
    • When filling out the "Status" box on an infobox, you should use one of the Status Categories by typing "{{" and searching and selecting for Active, Inactive, Cancelled, Complete or Defunct as appropriate.
    • Remember, you don't have to fill out every single box in an infobox, only the ones that are appropriate to your project. If you can't come up with something for a box, or simply don't think its necessary, then don't include it. At the same time, there's no point having one if it contains no useful information.
  • Navboxes go at the bottom of your article. Go to the bottom of the article and type "{{". Review our list of Navboxes and decide which one is right for you, then search for the name of that navbox in the search bar. If it's an article about a build, project or settlement on a particular world, you're going to want to add a Survival 1/2/3 Navbox, otherwise if it's about server information, a Server Information navbox, or for an event an event navbox.
• Once you have saved your page, go to the bottom and add categories as appropriate. For example, add a "Settlements" category if it's a settlement, a "Survival 3" category if it's a thing on Survival 3, etc.

Writing tips

Avoid fluff

Avoid writing more than necessary; keep your pages as concise as possible. Take this excerpt from a previous version of the "Hydropolis" article, for instance.

"At this point, the ideas of the founders came together to offer the absurd idea of creating a city in the water surrounding the city, inspired by Havana and Akkara: however ideas were only starting to brew."

This excerpt contains unnecessary phrasing; a trap which can be easy to fall into. The grammar here makes the point of the excerpt harder to ascertain for readers and dramatizes the meaning. For example, words such as "absurd" and phrases like "however ideas were only starting to brew" are unnecessary. Here's a simplified version of the passage that removes the "fluff".

"Inspired by Havana and Akkara, the founders came together and settled on the idea of building a city on the waters surrounding the existing guardian farm"

Remember, the goal is to write the most useful/interesting articles, not the longest ones.

Embolden the article name/topic in the first paragraph

It is customary to embolden the article name in the introduction section of the article. This allows the reader to relate the contents of the article back to the topic. This should only be done at the first mention of the topic and should include mentions of redirects. You should not use bold text for any other purpose.

Link to other pages on the wiki

File:AddingLinks.PNG

Select the text you want to link and press Control+K on Windows (Command+K on macOS) to add a link to another article page. You can also enter a web address to add an external link. You shouldn't go overboard with this so it's generally good practice to only add a link for the first mention in a page.

Use paragraphing

Long walls of text are hard to read, particularly on mobile, so ensure you break them up and use paragraphs.

Use citations/references, if necessary

File:References.PNG

It's not always mandatory to do this and should only really be done if they are available, but you can use the Insert → Reference feature to add a reference to your page, perhaps linking to another web page.

This may be useful in the case where your article contains a lot of links to forum posts or external resources, but it also requires doing Insert → Reference List at the bottom of the page to work. We'd like to avoid bloating articles with unnecessary references (after all, this is a game), so please apply restraint with this feature.

Adding images

A picture can explain a thousand words. You can add an image by clicking on the picture in the toolbar and they are really useful as both a point of reference to readers and to break up a long wall of text.

Adding galleries

Galleries are likewise useful for viewing a number of images of an area. However, they are a bit complicated thanks to Wikia as you have to search for the images within the wiki. You should first upload your images using the Upload Multiple Photos function, then enter the filenames into the search bar. It's a bit finicky, but galleries are a nice thing to have.

Articles on Settlements

We're no longer categorizing Cities and Towns separately, as we determined that it was too subjective. We still wish to distinguish cities and towns somewhat using different infoboxes, to give readers an "at-a-glance" idea of the scale of a particular build, but we felt like separating the two was too vague and was not helpful for navigation particularly.

Assistance

The Cyberdog Wiki Project has two administrators who are able to provide assistance with editing, should you need it. We recommend you join the Cyberdog Wiki Project discord if you need help with creating your article, want to discuss with others about articles, access a wider list of World Downloads and show off your new article with others.

Administrators

• William278 - founder, bureaucrat, administrator
• darparnioxDC - bureaucrat, administrator

Project Discord

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