The Elder Scrolls Wiki:How to help

This page is a TESWiki guideline It illustrates standards of conduct that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

There are many ways that you can help the The Elder Scrolls Wiki community! This page tries to help new users understand what needs to be done and how they can help improve the wiki.

If you need high level help, consider contacting one of the TES:Administrators (by leaving a comment on their talk page).

Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Wiki!

Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Wiki. The goal of this site is to comprehensively document everything in the Elder Scrolls games, both the details of playing the game and the contents and inhabitants of Nirn itself. Not only this but we want to do so in a professional manner, providing standardized formats for each type of page.

Get credit

Before you start making changes to the site, consider Creating an account. This will add you to the user list and will mean you get credit for any contributions that you make. If you don't create an account then you can still edit and create new pages, but you will be identified by your IP address. (There will also be pages that cannot be edited without being signed in on an account.)

New articles

Main article: Special:NewPages

Something important is missing from the wiki? Create a new article about it. Don't be shy about putting new stuff up, even if it is not perfect, others will see and further improve the article. If you want to learn more about the standards we're defining for formatting, have a look at style sheet. See articles that are wanted here.

Filling out stubs

Main article: Stubs

A good way to get started at The Elder Scrolls Wiki is filling out some stubs. Stubs are articles that don't yet have enough information. Most stubs are grouped into a subcategory, such as Category:Location Stubs or Category:Quest Stubs. To view the complete list have a look at the stubs master category.

The task list

See the Things to do for a list of current The Elder Scrolls Wiki tasks to help with (or add to).

Quality control

One of the strengths of wikis are their iterative design process. A stub will be written, and someone will come and add a paragraph, and someone else will add something more, and so on. A side effect of this can be somewhat inconsistent article quality.

Pages that are way "below the bar" are listed in Category:Articles Needing Attention. These pages have useful information, but are grammatically incorrect, written from the first or second-person perspective, or violate the Style and Formatting guide in some other way. Acting as a copyeditor and fixing these articles is a great way to meaningfully contribute to The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

Watching the Wiki

The Recent Changes page shows a list of all the changes that have been made to the site. Have a look at the list to see if anything interesting is going on. Alternatively, if you have an account and are logged in you can add pages to your Watchlist by clicking the 'Watch' link at the top of an article. The Watchlist is like your own Recent Changes page, showing only those pages that interest you. This is useful for keeping up with certain sections of the wiki that you are interested in.

Get involved

There are discussions going on all the time about the Wiki, and your input is always of value. Clicking on the discussion link at the top of an article will take you to a discussion page for that article. For a lot of parts of the site there are already discussions taking place that you can contribute to, or you can start your own discussion on the relevant page and someone will hopefully notice it in the Recent Changes list.

Spread the word

Spread the word! This Wiki grows as a resource due to the contributions of users like you, and they have to find the site somehow. Post on the message boards you frequent (But please, no spamming of our URL. That doesn't just annoy people, it makes us all look bad), add our URL to your signature, or link to us from your website.

The Elder Scrolls Wiki policies

To help all contributors get along well with each other, The Elder Scrolls Wiki has introduced certain policies (for example, to assume good faith). Find all The Elder Scrolls Wiki policies here.

More?

For more information, visit the helping out page. It has a list of useful pages for new contributors to this wiki.