User blog:Jimeee/Dragonborn - A brief guide to editing.

is out tomorrow so I decided to take this opportunity to remind people about some of the style and formatting rules we have in place to ensure all our new articles are as professional as possible.

New content for and  was dealt with fast and efficiently, so we want to repeat that in order to make this wiki a superb and (more importantly) reliable source of information.

New pages
For the bulk of our new pages we have set up several page templates that not only add the infobox, but all the relevent headers and some notes. This will make our pages somewhat consistent and easier to manage when we get around to tidying them up, so it's strongly suggested everyone use this feature.

To use these pre-made templates, after you click "add a page" you will see these boxes like so:



Click on the relevant one in the red to load up the premade template and start editing. Super easy.

If that somehow fails, the template can be added manually. Please choose the correct template when adding a new page. If you don't know how to add a template then read "How to add templates".


 * Take a second to check out the templates are listed here: Dragonborn Templates
 * For an idea of our category tree structure see this: Category:Dragonborn

Writing style
If you wish to contribute but have not read over our Policies and guidelines or our Style and formatting guide then I strongly suggest you do. I know most of you won't, so I'll outline a few of the most important points:
 * All pages must be written in a third-person view. For example:
 * "I found the item in a dungeon on the floor, but I think it can be found elsewhere."
 * "You can find the item in a dungeon on the floor."
 * Both of these examples are never to be used, rather something like "The item can be found on the floor of the dungeon" is preferred.


 * Information such as "This sword is really good" is completely pointless and will be deleted.
 * If a sentence cannot be constructed without somehow referring to the player character, then the last resort is "The Dragonborn" - but do try to avoid this. For example:
 * "The Dragonborn is later asked to defeat the necromancer, who can be found in..."
 * We never use "Description" or "Notes" as a header.
 * Only capitalize the first word in a header i.e. "Notable items".
 * Always add an "Appearances" header.
 * Only capitalize the first word in a header i.e. "Notable items".
 * Always add an "Appearances" header.

Walkthroughs
To keep our quest pages from spiraling out of control, please try to stick to the standards in the style guide. Again be extremely mindful not to use "you" or "I" when writing walkthroughs. Our quest pages for Skyrim suffer greatly from this problem, however our content for and  was much better so we need to keep it up.

Adding data
When you find a new weapon or armor piece and wish to update a page, don't add damage/armor and gold values as they are likely not going to be base values.

Base damage/armor values means what the value is when not influenced by your skills or perks. These figures will be different from person to person, so we will only accept the base figure of items. We had a huge issue with this when Skyrim came out and we don't want to repeat it.

Categories
At this point you should only add categories that already exist. Most categories are built into the templates so you do not need to add them. For example, the Dragonborn Weapons template already includes "Dragonborn: Weapons" - so there is no need to add it.

Talk pages
Talk pages are to discuss the content of the article itself or report bugs - not to chat. Any comments on talk pages that don't contribute will be deleted.

No nonsense
We ask editors to be vigilant when browsing pages. If you see something that is of no use to the article or is badly written then don't be afraid to do something about it. Spotted vandalism? - report it or messge an admin.

It is the only way the standard of our pages will improve. If something doesn't seem right on a page then post a message on its talk page.

Don't copy other wikis
I shouldn't need to say this, but I'm ashamed to say it still happens on this wiki to this day. copy and paste information from other Elder Scrolls wikis. It's completely unprofessional and makes the entire site look bad. Trust me, the chances are it will be noticed sooner or later.

In closing
If anyone has any question, then don't hesitate to ask. The following admins are very likely to be available to answer any questions...and they will be watching...
 * Jimeee
 * TombRaiser
 * Kennyannydenny