Editing Guidelines

*This Editing Guideline is written by User:Pimez, last updated on 2021 July 6th.*

Whether you are new to wiki-editing or have been doing it for a while, I still strongly recommend giving this page a quick read to see if you have missed any tips or tricks that might allow for higher quality edits and/or make your life so much easier.

## My Recommended DO's

### DO learn the syntax (Source Editor)

The formats that are most commonly used are
*italics*,
**bold**,
referencing to pages within the Wiki, and
referencing to any site.

```
The formats that are most commonly used are
''italics'',
'''bold''',
[[Phoenotopia Wikia|referencing to pages within the Wiki]], and
[https://phoenotopia.com/ referencing to any site].

```

Others:

```
== Heading ==
=== Sub-heading ===
[[Category:Phoenotopia: Awakening]]

```

Applying templates, e.g. Template:stub:

```
{{stub}}

```

Here is another tip:

You can put 's' or 'es' right after a reference, e.g. both

```
[[Moonstones]]
[[Moonstone]]s

```

would result in Moonstones. This saves the trouble of redirecting [[Moonstones]] to [[Moonstone]].

### DO keep edits as local backups frequently

This is among the first advices I give to anyone who types a lot - it is better to rely on a local txt file than to rely on Google Chrome for keeping your long edits. Just imagine their differences in the worst case scenarios:

* Accidentally exiting the app
* Internet or WiFi outage
* Taking so long to edit, that you need to refresh the browser
* Crashing of your app
* Crashing of your computer
* Having a heart attack (never mind, you need a medic instead)

### DO look for pages that need help with

Check out the Special:WantedPages that the Wiki keeps track of, and the Wiki Status that I maintain.

### DO look up things that you need

As always, the PHOA Compendium is a convenient place for looking up most of what you might need. Besides the spreadsheet itself, various other pages are linked from this Compendium page. You may ask around the main Discord Community as well.

As for images, we already have access to most in-game assets excluding the location screenshots. Make sure to ask around in my Discord server where we standardise the image size and format before uploading. (Trust me, they look much better together afterwards)

### DO utilise Sample Pages

Sample Pages are what I consider good examples of pages that you may reference, whether you are a novice or veteran in editing:

* Template:(Sample Page) PHOA Food
* Template:(Sample Page) PHOA Character
* Template:(Sample Page) PHOA Location

Basically,

1. Go to the Sample Page
2. Give the page a quick read
3. Copy the snippet at the bottom
4. Paste it directly onto a blank page (Source Editor)
5. Fill in the appropriate details and remove unneeded sections

Voilà! Anyone can make a small food page in under 10 minutes, without missing anything informative!

(To steal from non-Sample Pages, browse with Source Editor and then copy-paste the relevant section onto your page, switch back to Visual Editor if needed)

### DO utilise Source Editor

Source Editor is essentially a pre-formatted "basic" version of the pages. While the Visual Editor has a more accessible interface and easy previewing, trying to copy-paste from VE often brings over unneeded text (from templates) AND not certain needed widgets (small tables). On the other hand, SE preserves exactly everything from your edits, so it is recommended to switch to SE (temporarily or not) whenever you are:

* Saving a local copy of your edit
* Stealing the entirety of other pages
* Applying Sample Page formats to a new page
* Applying what you stole onto your own page
* Editing pages that include big templates

In SE, you also have more control over what-goes-where, and can do delicate changes (e.g. adjusting column width to exactly 240 px) even without coding knowledge prior. In addition, it is less likely to leave behind unneeded redirects (Koi page's "Morning Star") when using SE over VE.

## My Recommended DON'Ts

### DON'T make exceptionally small or large pages

When people visit our Wiki pages, I want them to learn something new regardless of how trivial that something might be. Even for individual Consumable Item pages, which I consider to be the barest of all, normally take up at least 800 bytes. It's reasonable to consider pages taking under 1000 bytes to be "too short".

Having too much redundant informations would also not be ideal. I personally prefer my pages to include guidance or hints for players potentially getting stuck at locations like E.D.E.N, as opposed to directly rephrasing the in-game events in large portions like in Main Story.

In addition, for pages that are information-heavy, notably Side Quests (PHOA) and Moonstone, separating the data to different templates would allow future edits to be more streamlined. I believe pages taking over 8000 bytes are too long.

### DON'T speculate or make up informations not seen in-game

Did you know that the Morning Star is called Space-Age Morningstar and Cosmic Morningstar in the original game? **Actually, it never was**.

* Avoid giving pages a different name than shown in-game (Blacksmith as "Mastersmith")
* Avoid giving unnecessary titles (Adar as "Adar the Bombmaker")
* Avoid making page names "plural" (Asteroid Rock as "Space Rocks")

Another prime example is misinformations on Ruby having three different appearances in-game, when in fact her character sprite remains the same throughout. This confusion was caused by a user mislabelling a beta design as well as an irrelevant Spear Knight design as part of Ruby's finalised appearance. This misinformation had stayed on the Wiki since November 2017, up until June 2021 (10 months after the game's release).

It is acceptable to list speculations as such, but please avoid stating them matter-of-factly.

### DON'T use templates you aren't familiar with

Particularly, do NOT include following templates:

* {{Phoenotopia}}
* {{Phoenotopia2}}
* {{Phoenotopia 2}}
* {{Phoenotopia Awakening}}

For example

```
{{Phoenotopia}}

```

does the exact same thing as

```
''[[Phoenotopia]]''

```

The difference is that you use Curly Braces for the template, as opposed to using Square Brackets in Italics normally. I personally see "using templates that unnecessarily complicates things" as an undesirable habit.

### DON'T apply Infobox with Visual Editor

It pains me a lot whenever I see people butcher my babies like that. The cost of applying my Infobox with VE is that everything will be squeezed to a single line and with all the line-breaks and spacing removed. Despite the difference is not visible to normal users and VE editors, I die a little inside whenever I try picking up what they left the page with.

Please don't make the life of us SE editors harder than it already is.

### DON'T burn yourself out!

Unless you want to make over a dozen long edits on a daily basis and be super stressed like I do, you might want to pace yourself and make a habit of doing only a few short edits each day, which I talked a bit about in my Discord server.

## Good luck!

Maintaining a wiki is a community effort, and we appreciate all the help we can get from fans such as you. Hope you can stick around to contribute! :D

Thanks!