New West Indies Wiki Guidelines and Procedures

Welcome to the **New West Indies Wiki**! You're likely here because you have an interest in the New West Indies on the browser game NationStates, either as a resident, citizen, diplomat, or visitor. Feel free to check out our pages and enjoy our wiki content.

However, if you feel you have more to contribute to this wiki, then you're in luck; anyone with an account can help! If you have knowledge about the region that you want to document for historical records, this is the place to do it. Nevertheless, with great fun comes great responsibility. For the purposes of minimum professionalism, easy reads, and consistency, there are some guidelines and procedures to keep in mind.

## General Guidelines

1. Maintain a spirit of communal world-building and joint progression. Respect each other's work while seeking to uplift and inspire.
2. Do not add fraudulent information, especially information that unduly exaggerates personal achievements or defames others.
3. Keep pages tidy and easy to read.
4. Maintain good grammar and spelling.
5. Add references to sources wherever possible and relevant. You don't need an APA reference page, but a few basic links for confirming claims helps.
6. Ask questions! If you don't know what to do, ask an administrator or another editor, or read one of our guides.

## Creating a Page

You want to add a new page to our collection? Good to hear! However, you will need to make a few considerations before jumping right in.

### Does this topic deserve its own page?

The New West Indies is a diverse place with many activities, people, and concepts. However, some are more significant than others. While the High Court certainly deserves its own page, a particular Discord emoji may not need a whole page dedicated to it (unless it was really culturally significant, that is!). If you don't think you could write much about a topic, perhaps see if it can go on a current page.

### Was this topic already addressed?

Some areas of the region have already been significantly covered by other pages or headings within pages. If this is the case for your topic, then see if you can add more to the current texts. However, if you feel that a certain sub-topic has not been adequately covered, you can still consider making a new page for it (and adding a link to the main article wherever necessary).

Now that you are ready to write your first wiki page, you need to follow some general (yet critical) steps.

### 1. Organize Headings and Sub-Headings

Before you start writing, think about what kind of topic it is. An historical event? A citizen profile? A General Assembly resolution? The type of topic will determine how to organize your page. For example, a citizen profile may include some history, general accomplishments, appointments to office, and miscellaneous honors. See [later] in this guideline for more information on how to organize specific types of pages.

### 2. Create the introduction

Every wiki page starts with an introduction that describes the most important facts as well as summarizes the rest of the page. This is where you can brainstorm your topic and plan how the rest of the page will go.

### 3. Add an infobox

An infobox puts a lot of important information into a visually appeasing template on the side of the page. To add an infobox, select "insert" at the top of the editor and select "infobox." Look first to see if any current templates match your topic. However, you may need to create a new one with the infobox editor (e.g. most new citizen pages require their own template).

### 4. Add categories

Each page requires one or more categories to be accessed as easily as possible when navigating the wiki. Check the link to see what categories are available, or you can type them in to search right on the page (and add new ones as necessary).

### 5. Fill out the page

Now it’s time to write! Think about the most important aspects of your topic and describe them. You may have to do some research (in fact, it’s highly encouraged). Remember to add references where necessary and available, though you can always do this on a second or later edit.

## Other Resources

### Page Templates

* Citizen
* In-Character Nations
* Foreign Region
* Political Party
* Discord Station
* Ethnic Groups
* Treaties
* Honorary Titles