Poptropica Wiki:Style guide

This style guide has the simple purpose of making the Poptropica Wiki easy to read by establishing a certain format. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does things the same way, the articles will be easier to read and use, along with being easier to write and edit. Reading the style guide is important to ensure that each user's edits will be consistent with those of other users.

Samples

 * Sample character
 * Sample item
 * Sample scene

Article titles
Pages must have appropriate titles. Names, locations, and titles (like a island) should all be capitalized, though not the whole title. Block capitals should not be used in titles (e.g. 'Article titles' instead of 'ARTICLE TITLES'). Try to make the article's topic the subject of the first sentence in the article. For example, write "This style manual is a style guide" instead of "This style guide is known as..." Use boldface (in the edit tool bar) for the first (and only the first) appearance of the title.

Articles about islands, items, and characters, should be titled exactly as the subject's name appears in-game. A rule of thumb for article titles is that items only have the first letter of the first word in their name capitalized. There is no capitalization convention for islands or characters. Unless the island or character's name has more than one capital in-game, do not put a capital at the beginning of every word. This is a common mistake which often causes broken links and time being diverted to moving these pages. If you are in doubt about a name, please check it in-game. If you come across a page with an incorrect title, please move it to the correct title and edit it to make the correct title consistent. If a page's title conflicts with its content, make the content consistent with the title before checking in-game to ensure accuracy. If there is no official name for the subject you're writing about, in the case you're writing about a character, read below for Unnamed Character pages. For anything else, a page shouldn't be created (Islands and items that don't have official names yet).

Words such as articles and short prepositions in titles should be left un-capitalized, unless they are intended to be capitalized in Poptropica. These include words such as 'a', 'the', and 'of'.

Headers and sub-headings
Headers are used in articles to make sections (like the one above). What sections to make is decided by what kind of page you're making.

Sub-headings
Sub-headings are used to make sections inside sections (for example, roles on different islands).

Font colours
Coloured font can be used sparingly, though not in very bright colours. For example, you can use a dark colour for a warning. Note that light colours will not show up well against the article's white background.

Invisible comments
Invisible comments are used to communicate with other editors in the article body. To do so, enclose the text which you intend to be read only by editors within. For example, using  will be hidden in the article.

Bulleted lists
Bulleted lists can be used in quest walkthroughs and lists. For example, you can use bullets if you're listing what levels to train a certain skill or locations of an item. Do not forget proper punctuation. To add bullets, put an asterisk (*) before the name. For example: would come out as:
 * List name 1
 * List name 2
 * Sub-list
 * List name 1
 * List name 2
 * Sub-list

Numbered lists
All the rules for bulleted lists apply also to numbered lists. Numbered lists can be used for listing steps in a process. To add a numbered list, put a number sign (#) before the list name. For example: would come out as:
 * 1) List name 1
 * 2) List name 2
 * 3) List name 3
 * 1) List name 1
 * 2) List name 2
 * 3) List name 3

Bold and italics
Place two apostrophes ( Italicised text, or in the edit tool bar) on either side of a selection of text to italicise the selection. Italics are mainly used to emphasise certain words, though they should be used sparingly.

Place three apostrophes ( Boldfaced text ) on either side of a selection of text to boldface the selection. Bold is used as a stronger emphasis than italics, although it should be used sparingly as well. The first appearance of an article's title in the article should always be boldfaced.

Place five apostrophes ( Boldfaced and italicised text ) on either side of a selection to use bold and italics in combination on the selection. Bold and italics combined emphasise selections well, but should be used extremely rarely. There are no common cases in which bold and italics are used together.

As you can see, bold works well to emphasise sentences as well as short phrases and single words, while italics are a much weaker emphasis for sentences, but work well on short phrases or single words. Bold and italics are used in combination very rarely. Excessive use of any of these text elements will make the entire article difficult to read, so please use them in appropriate situations.

References and citations
References or footnotes are notes which appear after a section of text and are linked with a specific part of the text. They are used for long explanations which cannot be worked into the paragraph naturally and for citations. Non-citation references should only be used sparingly, however references used as citations can be used as often as necessary. Detailed usage and syntax instructions can be found on the main article.

Images
Some general guidelines which should be followed are listed below.


 * Right-alignment is preferred to left- or centre-alignment. However, centre-alignment can be used for some images in the island pages, such as the reward picture.
 * If there are too many images in a given article, consider making a gallery with a level two heading.
 * If there are more than four to five cutscene images for a quest article, create a Cutscenes subpage.
 * Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
 * Make large images a thumbnail.
 * Specifying the size of a thumbnail image is not recommended.
 * Skill or icon clickpics may be used in lists and tables, but not in paragraph form.

Uploading images

 * The preferred formats for images are PNG.
 * Images of items should have a transparent background.
 * Personal images which are only used on a User page should not be uploaded. Images should be able to be used on main space articles, else they will be deleted.
 * Don't upload images we already have. We have many users doing this and it is not good to have multiple images of the same item! Before you upload an image, search the wiki if someone has already uploaded a version of it. We don't need  or   if someone has already uploaded.

Captions
Complete sentences in captions should always end in a full stop (period). If the caption is not a complete sentence, it generally should not have a full stop at the end. Captions should also not be italicised.

Wiki-linking

 * Every time an article is mentioned on the page, you don't have to link to every single one. For example, poptropican may be mentioned five times. You only have to link to poptropican once. You can link to articles more than once if the page is very long.
 * When including wiki-links in an article, there is no need to use capitalisation or underscores, since the software produces them automatically.

Writing articles
Everyone is encouraged to contribute meaningfully to the wiki.

Ownership and bias

 * Keep personal bias out of articles. Even if "Poptropica is for noobs" or "Poptropica is awesome," we do not need to hear it in the articles.
 * Do not include specific usernames of players or groups of players in articles, unless they highlight specific historical events or achievements, such as naming the first player to earn the island medallion. These should be kept relevant, and should be supported well, with an external link.
 * Do not try and claim "facts" such as "player x was the first to complete this island" without any verifiable proof.

Facts and trivia
If you have a piece of information or trivia that you would like to add to an article, yet are unsure of its accuracy, leave a note on the talk page of the article so that all editors can discuss it. Do not engage in edit wars on the article page.


 * See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) as well as Calendar date.

Time zones
The time zone used to indicate event start and end times in game should be UTC, as this is a constant time that does not need to be adjusted for daylight saving time, as well as the one that this wiki uses.