View source for Ukikipedia:Article Guidelines

Here are some basic guidelines which should ''always'' be followed when creating or editing a page.

* '''Do not include wrong information!''' This should go without saying, but '''always confirm with other users that everything in your article is correct.''' Be very careful about this! Even the slightest misconception is unhealthy to the site. [[Special:Permalink/1587|The Timestop article]] is a very good example of this. It stood (and still does stand) filled with complete misinformation at every point in the article for an entire ''month''.
* Use proper grammar, spelling, and English writing conventions. '''This is very important!''' Bad writing gives a bad impression on users. Ukikipedia is a collection of expert knowledge, and it should reflect that. If you do not know how to use proper grammar, you should either learn it (it's an extremely useful skill!) or join the Discord server and put out suggestions for articles there.
* Use conventional Wiki/Wikipedia style conventions. You can find these on Wikipedia, but I've listed the most important ones below.

==Wikipedia style conventions==

===General conventions===

* Make the title of the article, the title of the current subsection, and any synonyms bold the first time they are mentioned only. This should only be in the opening paragraph.
* Only link to other articles once. If the subject is mentioned again, '''don't link it''' unless the article you're writing is very long and it has been a while since the last link.
* Be as concise as possible! However, don't sacrifice information for concision.

For example:

    '''Vertical Speed Conservation''' or '''VSC''' is a glitch where Mario can store vertical speed (VS) and re-activate it later. '''VSC''' is mostly used for Challenges such as the [[A Button Challenge]]. In the [[A Button Challenge]] (or [[A Button Challenge|ABC]] for short), it is most commonly used with a dive recover. The VS is then activated by punching to an edge, completing the '''VSC'''.

Is a very bad opening paragraph. It should look like this:

    '''Vertical Speed Conservation''' or '''VSC''' is a glitch where Mario can store vertical speed (VS) and re-activate it later. It is mostly used for Challenges such as the [[A Button Challenge]], where it is most commonly used with a dive recover. The VS is then activated by punching to an edge, completing the VSC.

(In a real article, all the info on the ABC should be relegated to its own subsection.)

===Everything else===

'''Please read the style guide in its entirety:''' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style Wikipedia Manual of Style]

Try to follow it in main articles. You might loosen up a bit of the tighter grammar restrictions due to this not being as formal of a site.

==Common Mistakes==

* Do not put words alongside reference links, you can instead put the title and author within a link to make citations easier to read. (i.e. <code>&lt;ref&gt;[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lt "BitFS 0x A presses on N64" by Pannenkoek2012];/ref&gt;</code>, not <code>&lt;ref&gt;BitFS 0x A presses on N64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&lt;/ref&gt;</code>).
* Use parentheses properly! Examples:
    DO:
    A sentence (parenthetical). Another sentence.
    A sentence. (note on previous sentence without a following sentence.)
    
    DON'T:
    A sentence (parenthetical.) Another sentence.
    A sentence. (parenthetical.) Another sentence.
    A sentence (parenthetical.). Another sentence.
    A sentence. (parenthetical.). Another sentence.
    A sentence. (Parenthetical). Another sentence.
    A sentence. (Parenthetical) another sentence.
    A sentence (Parenthetical) another sentence.
* Its vs. it's. The correct method is to (usually) expand the contraction "it's" to "it is." Be formal when possible.
* Their vs. there vs. they're. The correct method is to expand the contraction "they're" to "they are." Their is the possessive of they. There is as in "Look over there."
* Periods and quotes. Put the period ''inside'' the quotation marks unless it's a direct quote from a person mid-sentence. For example: He said "I still have a dream." He said "It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream." He said "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up". (This clause was followed by a comma in the speech, so I put the period outside of the quotation marks.)
* Proper capitalization in title names. '''This is very important since messing this up once will require many many edits across the whole site!''' Follow the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Titles#Capital_letters Wikipedia guidelines]. Note that article titles, as well as section headers, should be in sentence case. As of 2021, article titles should all be in sentence case, but there are still many section headers in title case. Please change them if you see them.
* It is not necessary to specify that something is a part of Super Mario 64 since everything on this wiki is centered around Super Mario 64.
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