Style Guide

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The Minecraft Mods Wiki **Style Guide** is a point of reference for how to properly structure a page. It should help in the creation of a consistent, standardized wiki. This style guide will show you how to properly format articles.

Please use the Talk page for further discussion of this page and the guidelines.

## General Writing Style

* Articles should always use *proper spelling, grammar and punctuation*.
* Language should be kept *formal*. Colloquial, emotional or biased language, such as words like "extreme" or "horrific", should not be used.
* Longer articles should be structured in *paragraphs* to ease reading.
* New articles should contain at least basic information. Creating articles with unrelated or no content is considered vandalism.
* Numbers should be formatted American style, i. e. a dot (".") is used to denote decimals, and a comma (",") is used to denote thousands.

**Example**: 10,000.01 = ten thousand and one hundredth
### Accuracy of Facts

* As this wiki's intention is to document facts as thoroughly as possible, articles should not be vague or secretive on purpose.

**Example**: *The Maze holds many secrets!*
**Better**: *The Minotaur can be found in the maze.*
* Words of approximation, e. g. "much", "many", "a lot of", should be avoided. Exact figures should be given instead, if available. Using approximations is not completely wrong, however more exact information should be given elsewhere.

**Example**: *The MFE has a lot of storage.*
**Better**: *The MFE has a storage capacity of 600,000 EU.*
* Articles should not contain speculation. Most importantly, speculation should not be stated as a fact.

### Point of View

* Articles should always be written from a *neutral point of view*. Most importantly this means to never state opinions as facts. For more information, see the corresponding Wikipedia guideline.
* First person ("I", "me") or second person ("you") should not be used. The reader should not be addressed directly; third person should be used instead.

**Example**: *This explosion could kill you.*
**Better**: *The explosion may kill the player.*
### Capitalization

* Regular English capitalization should be used in any text that is not a heading or page title.
* Item names should always reflect their in-game name and be capitalized in the same way. In most cases this means they are treated as proper nouns and most words should be capitalized.

**Example**: *Ender Chest* and *Steam Engine* are capitalized to reflect their in-game name.
**Example**: *Normal chest to Iron Chest Upgrade* also reflects the in-game name, despite "chest" not being capitalized.
### Linking

* Wikilinks should be used to link to articles on this wiki. Wikipedia articles may also be linked using wikilinks by adding the prefix `wikipedia:` before the Wikipedia page name.
* If a term appears many times in a single article, it should only be linked the first time. In the case of a long article, it may be appropriate to have a second link further down, or even one link per level 2 heading.
* External links should not be used instead of wikilinks unless absolutely necessary.

## Page Titles and Headings

* Page titles should always be in singular form, even when a group of items is addressed.
* If an item has a plural name in-game, the page title should be in plural as well.
* Titles and headings should be in *Title Case*: All words are capitalized, except for words like "in", "or", "the".

**Example**: *Energy Sources in GregTech mod*
### Items with the Same Name

* If items from different mods share the same name and are not exchangable, the mod name should be appended in parentheses.

**Example**: *Ruby (RedPower 2)* and *Ruby (GregTech)*
* Sometimes an item, block and/or mob may share the same name. In this case, page titles should differentiate between them.

**Example**: *Uranium Ore (Item) and Uranium Ore (Block)*
* The {{youmay}} template should be added to the top of all pages with similar names. It should include links to other similarly named articles, or to a disambiguation page (see below) if there are more than two other names.

## Disambiguation

* If there are multiple items with the same name, a disambiguation page should be created on the name without parentheses. The word "(disambiguation)" should not be appended, unlike on Wikipedia.

**Example:** Rubber is the disambiguation page for Rubber (IndustrialCraft 2) and Rubber (MineFactory Reloaded).
* {{disambig}} should be placed at the very top of a disambig page to mark it as such.
* A disambiguation page should be introduced as follows:

**Example:** ***ITEMNAME** may refer to:*
* Bullet points should be used to list different meanings. For items, {{itemref}} should also be used to display an image of each listed item.

**Example**: `* {{itemref|Advanced Monitor}}`
* Short one-line descriptions may be added, but are not necessarry.

## Content

### Vanilla

Although pages on vanilla Minecraft items are also part of the wiki, a basic knowledge of standard Minecraft features must be assumed.

If an article on a vanilla block, item, or feature is written, it must focus on the *aspects added by modded Minecraft*. The article should center on the differences from vanilla gameplay and the changes made through FTB and ATL mods, possible differences in crafting, etc. Basic "non-mod-related" facts should be kept short and concise.

If an item or block is completely unchanged by mods, it should say so in the article.

There must be an {{Interwiki}} template with the correct link at the top of the page.

### Copying Content

Direct copy-pasting is strongly discouraged, as external texts usually don't match the wiki's style or standards. Most website content is also copyrighted, so copying it would be considered copyright infringement.

To avoid copyright infringement, it must be made sure that copied content is available under a free license, such as Creative Commons BY-SA, or falls under fair use. Most wikis, including FTBWiki.org, release content under the CC BY-SA license.

Copied content must be edited to comply to the Style Guide, like any other article.

## Media

### Images

* Try to limit the file size of images you upload, smaller files reduce the load time of pages. You can use a tool such as PngOptimizer to perform a lossless compression of PNG files, which removes trivial metadata from the files without losing any image quality. Similar tools are also available for other formats. Make sure you use lossless compression, lossy compression will affect the image quality.

#### Screenshots

* All screenshots added to articles must be made using the **Default Textures** (no texture pack enabled) to avoid confusion.
* Screenshots should be taken under good lighting (e.g. during daytime, torches), unless it is to demonstrate a certain lighting effect.
* Screenshots should *never* show the user interface, unless it is to demonstrate a point. The user interface can be hidden using the F1 key.
* Screenshots should *never* show the player in third-person ("F5 mode"), unless it is to demonstrate a point.
* Screenshots should be cropped to not show any unrelated builds or constructions.

#### Template Images

* Template images for items should be 64px × 64px item slot pictures with transparent background. Files should be in PNG format and named `File:Item_<ITEMNAME>.png`.
* Template images for blocks should be 256px × 256px isometric item slot pictures with transparent background. Files should be in PNG format and named `File:Block_<BLOCKNAME>.png`.
* Crafting grid icons should be 32px × 32px item slot pictures with transparent background. Files should be in PNG format and named `File:Grid_<ITEMNAME>.png`.

### Videos

Videos on this wiki act as an additional visual explanation or tutorial for specific items, blocks, in-game mechanics and concepts and must follow these rules:

* Videos must be uploaded on YouTube. Other video hosting sites or uploading videos directly to the wiki are not supported.
* Default block and item textures must be used to prevent confusion and help maintain consistency.
* A maximum of *two videos per page* is allowed. Any additional videos will be removed without further notice.
* Videos are added chronologically, this means that new videos are added *after* existing ones. Incorrectly added videos may be removed without further notice.
* This wiki is *not* the place for advertisement. Videos should not excessively or only promote a channel, series, etc. or ask for likes, favorites and/or subscribers in an excessive way. Users are free to add their own videos to articles, but if this is done excessively or continuously without contributing any other content, the changes will be reverted.
* Videos must have *clear visuals and audio*. They must be recorded at a good framerate, without muffled sounds and with minimal or no background noise.
* Videos must be as short and concise as possible. They should only cover the article's topic and possibly give basic information on related topics, but not include content that is unrelated to the article.

This wiki uses the EmbedVideo extension. The following template code should be used to embed videos: `{{youtube|*<VIDEO\_ID>*}}`. To embed 2 videos: `{{youtube|*<VIDEO\_ID\_1>*|*<VIDEO\_ID\_2>*}}`. Direct URL links to videos, playlists or channels are not allowed and will be removed without further notice.

If you want to share videos with the community that do not fit a specific wiki article, or if there are already two videos there, feel free to register an account and make a post in the Videos section of the forums. In this section you may post any of your videos, series or channels as long as they are FTB-related.

## Sample Articles

The following are sample articles explaining how to write each type of article.

* Block and Item articles
* Mob articles
* Modpack articles