Manual of Style

The **Manual of Style** is a set of rules and expectations that each and every user **MUST** follow. This guide helps keep the Australian Football League Wiki nice and clean, and helps out new FANDOM users. Please take the time to read and understand the MoS if you wish to edit articles. Long-time editors may use this to rejog their memory.

## Guides

This section contains links to the general guides from FANDOM on how to edit and contribute to the Australian Football League Wiki. Specifically stated, it is used to help users learn on how to contribute their work to the site such as adding articles and content. Please refer to the Help:Contributing article for more in-depth information on how to add/edit articles, images, categories, etc.

**IMPORTANT GUIDES:**

* Help: Editing
* Help: New page
* Help: Adding images
* Help: Categories
* Help: Templates
* Help: Wikitext

## Formatting Style

This section is a very inportant guide on the formatting used in the Australian Football League Wiki. By following these formatting rules, you can help contribute to the wiki.

### Wording/Grammar

* Use English (US) when editing articles. For example, color instead of colour, center instead of centre. Not that any current staff are American but because FANDOM is default English (US).
* Use proper spelling and grammar. Avoid making mistakes.
* Don't use slang. For example, aka, gonna, wanna, Cops, Crims, u, ur, atm, brb, etc. Use the full and proper phrase.
* Do not add irrelevant information to Wiki articles.
* Do not create any run-on sentences. Once you've finished a claim, end it off with a period.
* If you are adding information to an article, make sure it is a true fact and not an opinion.
	+ Do not exaggerate a fact that is unnecesary. For example, 'Football is the BEST sport in the WORLD!' or 'The AFL is the BEST league ever!'
* Do not make general facts about something in the AFL. For example, 'this team is pretty good.' That sentence doesn't actually describe the goodness of the team.
* Avoid bolding, italicizing, or capitalizing text indefinitely as a way to exaggerate or note something.
	+ You may bold the word that is the page's name located in the first part of a section. For example, bold the first "Stadium Name", "Team Name" or the main word in the Overview section of any page.
	+ You may italicize text to refer something outside of the Australian Football League, another article topic similar, or a former piece of content.

### Image Format

* .png is reccomended for images, and .mp4 for videos.
* An image cannot contain anything except for the main content. For example, people, cursors, text, etc.
* Any images that violate this code mentioned above will be removed by our Wiki Staff entirely and the user that uploaded that image will be left with a warning.
* All images and videos must have an acceptable dimension/quality for players to see. The higher the quality, the better.
* For outdoor infobox images, they should be taken in the daytime so the visibility of the content is easier to see.

An example of a low quality image. Our Wiki Staff does not accept this image.An example of a high quality image. Our Wiki Staff accepts this image.
### Heading Usage

* Every article should have a relevant *Overview, Infobox, Gallery, and Trivia* section.
	+ Some pages can include their own section such as (e.g. *History, Players*, etc.)
	+ Do not add an unnecessary section of an article unless mandatory.
	+ There should be a section-less paragraph that should introduce the page not under the Overview heading. The reason is because of the *Table of Contents* Box.

### Citing/Referencing

* Only to be used to clarify statements that are not evident enough. Don't add obvious statements, such as 'The Sydney Swans play in Sydney.'
* Information that needs to be reffered should come from these sources...
	+ Tweets from the official AFL account or any reputable staff in the AFL
	+ wikipedia.org

### Categories

* Editors should only add categories that are **very** important. Otherwise, the Wiki Staff will handle all category stuff.
	+ Avoid adding useless categories, such as *'Teams created before 1950', 'Stadiums built before 1950', and 'Top 5 Teams.'*
* Categories should be organized locally. For example, a team (take Melbourne Football Club) should have the most important category, *Teams* first.

### Other Notes

* Refrain from linking the same article too many times in a paragraph. Once per paragraph is good enough.
* Avoid copying from Wikipedia as the Wiki Staff don't want to go through plagiarism issues.