Warcraft Wiki:Guidelines
| See also: policies, administrators | |
A Warcraft Wiki guideline refers to the etiquette and common practice observed involving the creation, editing, and management of articles on Warcraft Wiki to make management and presentation more consistent and streamlined. Guidelines are not generally enforced by other users or admins, unlike policies.
Guidelines include ways of organizing information and creating and using shared resources such as categories and templates. Many articles in the Warcraft Wiki category are guidelines.
Shortcut to this page: WCW:G
Miscellaneous guidelines
Guidelines too small to have their own pages.
Undead is a race, not a status
There was formerly some controversy on whether being Undead is considered an aspect of race or just a "status" for the purposes of {{Npcbox}}. Blizzard basically settled this by listing Sylvanas Windrunner's race as "unique undead"[1] in an official bio released for the Icecrown Citadel patch. These guidelines are based on that decision:
- "Undead" is part of race information, not status, even if completely unassociated with the playable Undead faction, or indeed any humanoid race
- Various undead races:
- "<specific undead type>" (e.g. "Ghost" or "Abomination"), optionally followed by "(Undead)",
- "Undead (<specific type>)",
- "<origin species> (Undead)" (e.g. "Horse (Undead)" or "Orc (Undead)"),
- or just "Undead".
- Various statuses: "Alive", "Active" (when referring to gods, demigods and related beings), "Imprisoned", "Deceased", "Killable" or "Unknown".
External vs. Internal Links
External links should usually be used for content that cannot be put on Warcraft Wiki. If the information already exists within Warcraft Wiki an internal link should always be used. If the content doesn't exist in Warcraft Wiki, but can exist then there are many factors to consider. For example, if you are linking offsite to mob, quest, or item information that doesn't exist within Warcraft Wiki then that information has less of a chance of getting created. By using an internal link the page has a much higher chance of being created.
- Everyone who sees that page will see that the article needs to be created
- The page will be added to the wanted pages list.
Many people use the wanted pages list to find out which articles need to be created or browse their favorite pages looking for dead internal links. Using internal links is a great way to help the wiki expand, but not the best solution for the users of Warcraft Wiki. Instead of being able to click on a link and access off site information they now have a dead link with nothing and are forced to go offsite and search for the information.
You can create the article and add the required stub tag. In addition to the stub create a section called External Links and add links to external resources for the page. Users will now have more choices than before, instead of being forced to use whatever external link the article writer chooses they can now select from a list of external links to go to their preferred site. The page will also be added to the appropriate stub category and anyone expanding it will already have links to the resources to get the information from, this way it can be seen by contributors as needing expanding on and won't go ignored.
"World of Warcraft" novel tags
- Main article: Forum:Dropping World of Warcraft tag
For novels, comics, and mangas that include the "World of Warcraft" tag in the name should be omitted from the article name on Warcraft Wiki. A redirect can be created with the tag. A disambig can be used where appropriate: [[Name (novel)]] or [[Name (manga)]] or [[Name (comic)]].
If the tag is part of the name, e.g. World of Warcraft: The Comic and World of Warcraft: The Magazine, it should remain.