UESPWiki:Style Guide/Place Layout

This page describes UESP's guidelines for the layout/organization of articles that describe places.

There are a variety of different types of place pages each with slightly different layouts: cities, towns, stores, inns, forts, mines, campsites, mountain ranges, lakes, etc. This article attempts to first provide some general information that is relevant to any place page, and then go into details about some specific types of place pages. Although it cannot cover every possible type of place, the provided information should be sufficient to provide some guidance even for new page types. Note that some of the layout guidelines have varied from game to game. This article focuses on the guidelines relevant to recent games, e.g. Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online.

General
Minimal and full place layouts are as follows. See the descriptions below for guidelines as to what belongs in each section.


Place Summary
One layout component common to nearly every type of place page is the Place Summary template. It creates the infobox that appears on the right of every place page, and also handles the categories and other navigational details for the page. The template page provides specific details about the parameters that it accepts, including various parameters that are specific to one game, or specific to one type of location.

Required parameters for the template are:
 : the description should be a single phrase describing the location. It should not contain the place name or contain a verb, because that information will be automatically added to the description when necessary.
The typical format of a description phrase is:
:: A       containing  
:For example:
:: 
    is "small" for dungeons containing 1 zone; "medium" for dungeons with 2-3 zones; "large" for those with 4 or more zones.
    should be as short as possible, and should provide the place's location relative to the main cities. The purpose is to give readers a general idea of where on the map to look. It should only reference places that all game players can be expected to immediately recognize, i.e. cities or some other landmark that is prominently displayed on all maps.
The  containing    part is obviously only applicable to locations that contain enemies. For other locations, other key information about the place can be substituted.
  or   should be added to the end of the description as appropriate.   is used for places that are visited during a quest, but can also visited if the quest is not active.   is used for places that can only be entered when a quest is active.
If the description as displayed on the place page needs to be tweaked,   and   can be used to add text before or after the description. One common use is to add "The" before the place name, done using: .

 : The general type of place. This type is used to create a category for the page, and also is used to create a breadcrumb trail. To see existing types, see the main places page (e.g., ) or the relevant places category (e.g., :Category:Skyrim-Places).

Other key parameters are:
 : More detailed location information than that provided in the place description (although in some cases, this may essentially repeat the description's location). As with the description, it is important to describe the location relative to well-known landmarks -- rather than just relative to the nearest dungeons, which may be unknown to readers trying to find the location. Points displayed on the printed map are generally good reference points -- rivers, roads, cities, towns, etc. Directions should always use compass directions (e.g., north, east-southeast) and should never use relative directions (e.g., left, right, ahead).
 : The region (or hold) where the location is found. This is used to put the page into a category listing all of the places found within a given region, so it must be a single region name. For places within cities, this parameter should not be used;   should be used instead.
If a place is found in more than one region, the parameters   and   can be used to list the additional region names.
 : The internal name of this location's cell, as used within the game's Console for commands such as moveto. Multiple names can all be listed, if the place includes multiple cells. If there is no locationcode, enter  .
 : Number of interior zones in this dungeon. Zones (aka levels) are identified by the fact that each zone is on a separate map (in the game mechanics, each one is defined as a separate CELL record). Also, zones are normally separated by doors that trigger loading screens. Exterior regions are not included in this count.

City Summary
As an exception to the above, Oblivion Cities and Skyrim Cities do not use the Place Summary template but use the   template instead.

Image
As part of the place/city summary, every place page should have an image of the location. See  for more information.

The preferred aspect ratio for the image is 4:3, (e.g., 1024×768 or 1600×1200).

The primary image for any place should be in the place summary. However, additional images can be included elsewhere on the page, if the page is large enough or interesting enough to warrant additional images.

Residents
The section on "Residents" should list all of the people who live in this location. If nobody lives here (or only monsters or generic enemies live here) this section should be omitted.

For any city or town, the occupants should be listed on a separate People page. For example, the inhabitants of  are listed on a page called . Riverwood then displays the contents of the People Page using a transclusion, e.g.,    . This is done so that the same list of people can also be displayed on other pages, most notably .

The occupant list should just be a basic list of people names, each provided as a link to that person's specific page. Descriptions of the people are not included in the table. However, symbols next to each person's name are used to indicate any services provided by that person. The list of standard symbols is provided on  (eventually a Skyrim-specific list will be provided on ).

Related Quests
The "Related Quests" section lists all quests that start in this location, or which may or do require a visit to the location. If there are no quests, the section should be omitted. On city pages, this section is typically split into two separate sections, "Quests Starting Here" and "Related Quests". These sections may be further sub-divided according to the type of quest (Main Quest, Thieves Guild, etc.) if there are enough quests to justify it.

Each quest should be listed using the  template, in a bulleted list. For example:
   

Dungeon Sections and Walkthroughs
 
The most common type of place page describes some type of dungeon — mines, caves, ruins, etc. Generally, any location inhabited by enemies probably falls into the dungeon category.

A dungeon page should have separate sections for:
Exterior: the region immediately surrounding the dungeon entrance.
Each individual interior zone of the dungeon.

When the place page is finished, each of the zone-specific sections should include:
Map. Maps can be generated from in-game screenshots or via the Creation Kit/Construction Set. Final versions of maps should include overlays showing the locations of key items in the dungeon.

Walkthrough. The walkthrough of each section of the dungeon should focus on place-specific information (enemies, chests/loot, traps, puzzles, etc.) Even if the dungeon is uniquely related to a single quest, the majority of the quest-specific walkthrough (such as the quest objectives and how to complete them) belongs on the article about the quest. 
The walkthrough should provide details on where to find items of interest. If a map has been created for the section, the walkthrough should rely on the map as much as possible to provide concise directions. Without a map, the directions will need to be lengthier — with the understanding that once maps are added to the page, the walkthrough will be revised accordingly.

List of Contents. Following the walkthrough, there should be lists summarizing all items of interest found in that section.

Some other considerations:
Strategies: Any strategy-type tips that are not specific to this one place probably do not belong on the place page. Tips about a given type of trap belong on the Traps page; tips about defeating enemies belong on the page about that enemy (e.g., Draugr-specific tips belong on the Draugr page). If the place contains a unique boss enemy, then that boss has a page that should be the primary place for details about the boss.

Notes
The "Notes" section is for miscellaneous information about the place. Only information that does not belong anywhere else on the page should be included here.

Bugs
When appropriate, add any bugs to the page using individual   templates for each. The template should be used strictly for a description of the bug; solutions can be placed below, each as a separate second-level bullet (**).

Maps/Gallery
Whenever possible, maps and images should be integrated into the place description. During early stages of place development, or if there are more images than will fit comfortably into the text body, separate sections can be used.

Naming Priority
The order of precedence for what to set as the article name for a location in the Elder Scrolls Online is as follows: Map Marker > Loading Screen > Top-Right Pop-Up > Local Map > Name on the Door > Quest Journal > Quest Dialogue

See Also
Help Contents: A listing of all the available help articles.
Editing Pages: General information on how to edit wiki pages.
Quick Editing Guide: A table of the most commonly used formatting commands.
Common Mistakes: Some mistakes that are commonly made by new editors.
Style Guide: General guidelines for how to write, format, and present pages.
Book Page Layout: The standard UESP layout for book articles.
NPC Page Layout: The standard UESP layout for NPC articles.
Quest Page Layout: The standard UESP layout for quest articles.
Formatting: More detailed information on wiki formatting.
Spelling: Spelling rules for commonly misspelled words on UESPWiki.
Links: Creating and using links between wiki pages.
Lore: Guidelines for articles in the Lore: namespace
Manual of Style (wikipedia)