Style Guide

This article aims to provide a comprehensive style guide for all Heroes and Generals Wiki articles to follow. There are often disputes over which style rule or formatting to use and hopefully the inclusion of an official style guide will help resolve these disputes as well as in helping to reach a consensus.

Although Wikipedia already provides a more general style guide, a more specific one is necessary for Heroes and Generals specific guidelines. As such, only guidelines pertaining to the Heroes and Generals Wiki and its basic formatting rules should be included here.

Notability
Articles are only allowed in the main namespace if they fit the following criteria. Articles which do not fit the criteria may be deleted without notice.


 * General
 * 1) Articles must contain enough information to warrant a full page. If they do not have enough content, they should be merged with other similar articles.
 * 2) Articles must pertain directly to Heroes and Generals in some way.
 * 3) Articles about people are only allowed if the person in question is part of, or closely related to Reto-Moto
 * 4) Features that are not currently in the game are not allowed.
 * 5) This excludes features which have been removed or features from development versions, which may be noted on articles affected by the feature and the relevant version article(s).
 * 6) Articles about versions of Heroes and Generals clients or aps may be created, of which separate articles should be created for each development version.
 * 7) Unreleased version articles may be created, provided there is a significant source of the unreleased version's existence. Sources include development versions or multiple sources of features for the next update. Unreleased development version articles may not be created.
 * Community
 * 1) Gameplay strategies, guides, how-tos, etc., should be subarticles of tutorials.
 * Wiki Rules
 * 1) Parody, comedic, nonsense, hoax, and speculation articles, or any other article that could mislead players are not allowed to be created.
 * 2) Articles created for the purpose of advertising clans or other organisations are not allowed.
 * 3) Articles about fan communities are not allowed due to advertising issues and stuff like that.

Articles in the "User:" namespace are exempt from the notability guidelines. They can be used for anything, provided they follow the other Wiki Rules.

Redirects
Redirects are exempt from the normal notability, but must redirect to an article that fits the notability guidelines.
 * 1) Alternate spelling of the title, such as "Armour" for "Armor".
 * 2) Incorrect spelling, typos, and irregular formatting are not allowed.
 * 3) Alternate or shortened name, provided the name is common usage, such as "jeep" for "Truck, 1/4 Ton, 4x4". Previous in game names are also allowed.
 * 4) This includes first names or handles for Reto-Moto employees.
 * 5) Previous article title, including if the article was moved to another wiki
 * 6) An exception is if the previous title was not commonly used
 * 7) Alternate capitalization or form, including changing the title to plural case
 * 8) A part of a merged or multi-topic article.

Redirects in the user namespace may lead anywhere, except to an article that does not exist or another redirect.

Article titles
Article titles should be in the singular form to maintain consistency.

Articles should follow a general naming format based on the type.
 * Articles about weapons, vehicles, and other entities in game should use the in game name capitalized as it appears in game.
 * If the feature does not have an in game name, it should follow the same format as other articles of the same type.
 * If the article is about multiple things in the game, the title should equally represent all the titles. For example, an article about different types of machineguns would be called Machineguns.
 * Articles about people should contain the first and last names.
 * Disambiguation articles should only contain "(disambiguation)" if the title without the word is used by an article.
 * If the article's type is unlisted, it should use the most relevant title in sentence case, not title case, unless it is a proper noun.

Writing
As this wiki's purpose is to document facts, you should always avoid speculative and un-sourced information. Generally speaking, information does not require sources if they can directly be seen in-game or are otherwise obvious. Other information however, such as quotes from Reto-Moto employees and information that is not widely known, must be sourced with a proper reference. The citation needed template should be placed after any information that requires a source. Do not add content to an article if you cannot find a proper source.

Articles in the main namespace should always be written in the third-person perspective and without terms referential to the reader. Try not to use abbreviations of words either. For instance, sentences like "You shouldn't drive over mines because they'll explode and kill you." should be written as "The player should not drive over mines as they will explode, potentially killing the player.".

To emphasis points, italics should be used, not bold or ALL CAPS.

Tutorial information should only be within tutorial articles, which includes navigational features of blocks or textures. Tutorials may be linked from other articles if relevant though.

Keeping articles concise and up to date
In short, articles should only contain information that is up to date, i.e., implemented in the latest full version of the game. Anything that is outdated should be moved to the History section of the article. When something changes, note the change in the History section and remove the outdated information from other sections of the article. It is unnecessary to mention when a particular feature was implemented; this is once again reserved for the History section of the article. These should be written as "... was a feature that allowed players to ...."".

The issue with out-dated pages is that old information is scatted with new information. The introduction should state the current description of the block with the current release. History information is good, but for clarity, it should be described in the chronological order in a single place: the History section of the article.

Future
Content added in future updates may be added to the article in the main content, provided the features are clearly labelled as "up-coming" and have appeared in development versions. If the update contains major changes to the article, then the content may be noted as a subsection of a main section, or as its own section called Upcoming. Upcoming features must be noted as well in the history section using the proper upcoming header.

Upon the release of the update, all content that is now outdated must either be moved to the history section or removed, and any usage of "upcoming" may be removed.

Grammar
Pages on the wiki should use British English unless the in-game name is American English. For instance, “color” should be “colour”, and “center” should be “centre”.

Numeracy
Prices should be displayed as a comma after every third number left of the decimal point (eg: 14,783).

Capitalization
In-game items should be treated as common nouns and as such should not be capitalized.


 * Editions

Do not capitalize "snapshot" or "pre-release". Also, "pre-release" should be in this form, not as "prerelease" or "Pre-Release". Development phases should be capitalized.

Editions should only be capitalized when used as nouns.

Examples:
 * Heroes and Generals officially came out of Alpha a few years ago''
 * The Cabbage plant was introduced in Utz build.


 * Game modes

The name of game mode types should also be capitalized.

Section headings
Article main sections should start with level 2 headers (two equal signs) and increase by one for subsections. Never use level 1 headers (one equal sign). Follow sentence style capitalization, not title style, so only the first letter of the heading and proper nouns are capitalized.

There should be one space between sections as well as one space between the equal signs and the section name for ease of editing. If any "main article" links or thumb images are used, place them immediately under the section header, and then a space after those before the section content.

For information on which sections should be in which order, see the article layout section of this style guide.

Italics
Any instance of "Heroes and Generals" should be in italics. Any emphasis (in talk pages, etc.) should be in italics instead of being in bold or uppercase letters.

Images
You are free to upload any in-game screenshot with or without UI at any time so long as they are linked and used in an article.

Image captions should not have periods at the end, unless the phrase is a full sentence.

Images added to articles should fit the following guidelines:
 * Images should showcase an attribute of the articles topic.
 * Images should not show unintended strange or humorous behavior.
 * Images should not have the sole purpose of showcasing a bug, instead report the bug on the official forum.
 * Articles should only have one image showcasing an individual attribute of the articles content. For example, a Recon wearing camo.
 * Images should showcase the most up to date version of Heroes and Generals available for the content.
 * Images that are outdated are subject to be removed.

Linking
The use of links is a difficult balance between providing the reader enough useful links to allow them to "wander through" articles and excessive linking which can distract them from their reading flow.

Underlinking can cause the reader to become frustrated because questions may arise about the article's contents which can only be resolved by using the search option or other sources for clarification, interrupting and distracting the reader.

Overlinking may distract the reader because links are usually colored differently causing the eye to shift focus constantly. Additionally, if the same word is linked multiple times in the same paragraph it can cause the reader to question if the links are directing them to different articles or not.

The guidelines for linking are:


 * No more than 10 percent of the words in an article are contained in links.


 * Unless it affects the sentence's wording and readability in a negative way, two links should not be next to each other in the text so that it looks like one link.


 * Links for any single term should not be excessively repeated in the same article. Excessive linking is defined as multiple use of the same term, in a line or a paragraph, which will almost certainly appear needlessly on the viewer's screen. Remember, the purpose of links is to direct the reader to a new spot at the point(s) where the reader is most likely to take a temporary detour due to needing more information.


 * Duplicating an important link distant from a previous occurrence in an article may well be appropriate. If an important term appears many times in a long article, but is only linked once at the very beginning of the article, it may actually be underlinked. Indeed, readers who jump directly to a subsection of interest must still be able to find a link. But take care in fixing such problems, the distance between duplicate links is an editor's preference, however if in doubt duplicate the term further down the article.

Linking to a redirect is preferred over using a piped link except in templates and other pages that will be transcluded. When a piped link is unavoidable, it should not point to a redirect.

Date formatting
The Heroes and Generals Wiki is an international community. That is a good thing in general, but it makes a problem for numeric abbreviations of dates, such as "12/10/11": while most countries abbreviate dates as day/month/year, some Asian countries use year/month/day, and the US uses month/day/year. So the above date could represent any of three different dates. To avoid this problem, most dates should be written in "Day, Month, Year" format, e.g. "10 December, 2014".

Article layout
For the sake of consistency, all articles of a specific type should follow a general layout.
 * At the very top, applicable info-boxes, images and templates,
 * Templates at the top should go in the order of info boxes, then message boxes, and then links.
 * Introduction with a general description.
 * Article body, starting with first header.

If an article does not contain a layout currently, one can be proposed on the articles talk/discussion page; otherwise, attempt to use a layout that follows a similar style to an existing layout. Current article layouts for weapons, vehicles, assault team etc are fairly standardised.