Welcome to the Lylat Wiki, all about the Star Fox series! If you'd like to help out, please take a look at our community portal.
Lylat Wiki:Quality Standards
|
|
|
| This draft policy is recommend by a member in accordance with LW:Draft. You are free to make small changes, as long as the original purpose of the policy is preserved. Any feedback should be provided on the talk page. |
[ Articles | Sections | Lists | Tables | Templates | Images | Music & Videos | Categories ]
| Five steps to making a featured article |
|---|
| Stage 5: Becoming a featured article |
| Stage 4: Becoming a good article |
| Stage 3: Becoming a decent article |
| Stage 2: Becoming a stub article |
| Stage 1: Becoming a new article |
What makes a good article? The Quality Standards explains the composition of a good article for Lylat Wiki (stage 4 of LW:5StFA). Various topics are covered here, like how to expand on a stub. A good article is widely considered to be one of the best articles on the wiki. A decent article is not as comprehensive like a good article, as it still requires fixing before reaching that status.
Language
Most importantly, articles must be written in a clear, encyclopedic tone. Do not add any biased, informal and/or opinionated content into an article. Other words to avoid using includes:
- jargon and other colloquial terms: this includes gaming terms, scientific, or slang terms
- weasel words: these are words that appear to be specific but are not.
- promoting the subject: this is when the writer makes a template promoting the subject
Point of view
An article must be written in a third-person perspective, otherwise known as "in-universe". Avoid using first-person and second-person narratives. A third-person perspective means that the writing is "neutralized". Articles must only contain information relating to the subject and must not overwhelm the reader with details.
Similarly, certain audiences might have an easier time understanding an article, such as if there are too many technical details. The article must be written in a way to accommodate every reader.
A "good" article features a decent blend of all three point of views. If an article needs more of a specific type of reference, add one of these tags to it:
Cleanup
An article may not be well written and poorly sorted. Any article in need of a rewrite should be tagged with {{rewrite}} and provided with a reason, if possible.
Prose
wikipedia:prose is a type of language that is most often used by people during communication. Unlike poetry, bulleted or numbered lists, and tables, prose requires full sentences integrated into paragraphs. An article should oftentimes prefer the use of prose. For example, the bulleted list can be converted into prose:
- Fox McCloud is James McCloud's son
- He leads Star Fox
- He is friends with Falco Lombardi
resulting in:
Fox McCloud is James McCloud's son. He leads Star Fox and is friends with Falco Lombardi.
Tense
- Past tense: This should be used when describing the history or background of the subject.
- Present tense: This should be used when describing the gameplay.
- Future tense: This tense should be avoided.
Verification
Verification is needed, as any person can arbitrarily add unreliable information. The reader of an article expects to be provided accurate information on the subject. If a fact has debatable reliability, it must be marked with a reputable external source. In most cases, a reputable source is an official website relating to Star Fox. For more info, see LW:CP and Help:Citing Sources. Here are some other things to know about citations:
- If a statement needs to be verified, add {{CitationNeeded}} after the sentence.
- Do not use opinionated links or criticism for citation. If an article has this issue, add {{criticism-section}} to the appropriate section. A critical review of a subject is allowed on a personal user page or community page.
- The wiki cannot predict the future, so speculation is not allowed. If there is any future or upcoming event (such as a new Star Fox game), sources must be added.
- An "External links" section is different from the "References" section, as it directly links to the subject's page on another site, such as Wikipedia, IMDb, or GameFAQs.
- Try using a variety of reputable sources for an article, so that the information does not heavily reflect that from one link.
Original research
Original research is one of the biggest problems involving article content. This is content, usually theories, that look reputable but were made up from the reader itself. Sometimes it may even be based on an official publication. Original research is similar but less distinguishable from blatant fanon.
Style & Content guide
A good article contains information that is easily accessible to the reader, as well as sections that accurately reflect the content. Each reader has their own way of reading an article, so an article must attempt a variety of methods at displaying information to the reader. For example, if the information is stored on an image, it can be described in text form for non-visual readers.
Most articles must be divided by section, with the use of using === header tags. The section title must accurately describe what it is about. For example, if a section is intended to be about a character's appearance, the section can be appropriately named "Appearance".
Introduction
An introduction is the first paragraph on the article. It should generally be used to summarize the subject, which is described more in depth from its sections.
If there is an issue with the introduction, it can be marked with one of the appropriate templates:
- {{intro-too-short}}
- {{intro-too-long}}
- {{intro-missing}}
- {{intro-rewrite}}
History
In order to better understand a subject, it is sometimes useful to know their in-universe and real world history. For example:
- Real world: What inspired the creation of a character?
- In-universe: How did a character get to where they are? How was their aircraft designed?
Quotes
A character article can contain quotes from that character. If there are too many quotes, the list of quotes must be made into a subpage.
Plot
We all like to know generally what happened in a game, but what if you are in the middle of playing you look up how to do something, and by accident, you read to much. When this happens, the plot has been spoiled for you.
including the plot is important for an article - we need to know what when on, in order to get a full understanding of the subject.
- {{too much info}} - in the event too many details are given, and it detracts from the quality of the article.
- {{too little info}} - if there is little to know information of the plot, and it is important to the article.
- {{spoiler}} - a template to hide important plot details you don't want people to know, should they care for something like this.
- If it is needed, one could mark {{unmarked spoiler}} to a page that needs edited to either hide or remove the spoiler information. Please discuss on the related talk page after a marking, to see how and what should be hidden and what should be removed.
Trivia
A trivia section should contain bulleted lists of little tidbits of information. These each should still follow our spelling and grammar rules. There is just no need to put it in prose, unless it really does work out better that way.
- {{prose}} - to recommend it be prose.
- {{bulleted list}} - to recommend it be a bulleted list
needs reorganized
Think an article needs to be reorganized? is it missing sections that you know should be there? Then mark it with one of the following templates:
- {{sectionalized}}
list of non-notable stuff
In the event an article has decrease in quality to the point of not containing anything notable and being no more than a list, please place {{list-of-non-notable-stuff}} on it.
Linking
One of the beautiful things about wikis, are there ability to wikipedia:hot-link to other articles. But how often should something be hot-linked? and how many links should an article have?
- Well, first, if you are linking to a word multiple times in an article, please only do so once per scroll-height - i.e. the amount you can see on a page without scrolling up or down.
- Second, only link words that are not commonly used. So, no "is", "as", "of", etc.
- Third, if you wish to link outside of the wiki, please link in accordance with LW:IWP.
Terminology
In the event you find a page that needs some linking help,
- A page without links going to out to other pages is known as a dead-end. Please mark it with {{deadend}}.
to disambiguation pages
A disambiguation page exists to guide visitors of the wiki to specific articles, that have similar titles to other articles. Disambiguation pages aren't meant to be the receiving end of a link from another page. If you find a page that has one or more links to a disambiguation page, please place {{Links-to-disambig}} on the page or fix the links to the proper page yourself.
Other
These are some other things that can come up about an article. If these questions are raised, an the article survives, then it is a testament to it's quality and the efforts of those who helped make it.
incomplete
An article is missing a rather large piece, or maybe many small ones. this could be Walthough missing a stage, a gallery missing screenshots, whatever. If feel this is so, then please, place {{incomplete}} on the article, and place why it is so on the talk page of the
notability questioned
Should an article be part of the wiki? place {{notability questioned}} and find out....*evil laugh*
Multiple issues
Should it be, that an article has multiple issues within it, that placing all the templates would take up to much content space, please remove all addition maintance templates, and place {{Multiple issues}} on it, and be sure to preserve the dates the article was originally marked for each marking.
To Become a Good Article
To become a Good Article, and article first needs to of been certified as a decent article, in recent times. If it has been too long since the last evaluation, and many changes have been made to the article over that time, it may need to be re-evaluated before
Second, the article needs to be thoroughly tested in each of the above topics. Only when an article:
- has minimal error in grammar, spelling, verifiability, reliability,
- statifies all applicable policy and guidelines at the current time, within reason, and
- has a diverse use of internal-links going out and coming in,
Will the article become "good".
Once you have a decent-level article ready to be reviewed, seek out a good-level reviewer and ask them to review the page. If it passes, replace the article's -decent-level template with a -good-level one to show the article's promotion.
See also
Credits
We thank the contributors of the following pages as they were a big inspiration to this page:
