D&D Homebrewery - Article Quality Policy

Here on the D&D Homebrewery Wiki, we strive to maintain a high level of both professionalism and quality of our articles. Some articles unfortunately won't make the cut. This is usually due to the failure of a contributor to meet the bare minimum requirements as set forth in this policy. These pages will be removed by administrative fiat after being identified as being in non-compliance of established wiki guidelines or quality standards by an Administrator or other editor.

Articles that are identified by a Quality Issue Template is usually due to not meeting at least one of the following critical items listed below. Once an article has been identified as being non-compliant, the contributor will have one month to correct the identified deficiencies in order to bring the article back up to quality standards.

## Minimum Requirements

The following are the absolute bare minimum requirements that must appear on an article in order for it to be compliant with the Article Quality Policy.

### Templates

There are a large selection of templates for page development. They make articles more uniform in structure and are not difficult to use. When creating an article, please ensure to follow the bare minimum requirements, in regards to templates, below:

* All articles must make use of a Property, Free Use, or Community template.
* All (Property, Free Use, Community, Construction, ect.) must be placed at the very top of an article, preferably in the order listed above.
* Incomplete articles must have a Construction template.
* No image placeholders on articles are to be published.
* Any type of music players (youtube, soundcloud, ect.) are to be placed at the top of the article and and must be clearly visible. Hidden players through the use of coding tricks will be removed.
* All quotes must utilise a Quote Template.

### Infoboxes

* Ensure that articles utilise appropriate infoboxes when warranted.
* Only use one infobox per article.
* No infoboxes within infoboxes.

### Naming

* When naming an article the title should be concise.
* No article titles should begin with the word "the" or end with full stops.
	+ *For example:* A page entitled "The Astral Paladin Order" should be entitled, "Astral Paladin Order". Only in certain situations will an exceptional naming circumstance be allowed, e.g. an article named "The Twelve", where the lack of the word "the" would appear curiously absent.

### Content

* Ensure that all articles make use of proper punctuation, spelling, grammar and diction.
* Articles should not contain internet slang (ex. "How r u?" or "c u 2nite"). Please spell out an entire word. If you are unsure how a word is spelled, please refer to either the Google search engine or Dictionary.com.
* Please do not abbreviate the names of characters, places or anything. Wherever possible, use the full name of a character the first time they are mentioned. After this first mention, you may refer to them by an appropriate name such as their first name, their last name, or their rank/title then last name.

### Headings

* Please ensure that you utilise the appropriate heading sizes. To do so, ensure that the largest heading should be header 2 (Ex. ==Item Description==)
* Headings should not be capitalised.
* Please do not insert a heading, such as == Summary ==, if there is only a single heading within the article. Just don't put a heading until you feel the need to insert two, and then you may create two.

### HTML

* Please ensure that all articles have been formatted correctly and that there is no stray or unecessary html tags. Failure to do so will result in a Quality Issue tag.

### Adding Links

Adding links to terms in an article adds depth and easy navigation to related content. There is one problem though. If you do not point to the correct file name, you will get a link to a non-existent page. It gets worse when someone clicks the link and creates a stub duplicate page when a perfectly good article exists. The best way to link is by searching for the phrase you want to make a link by going to the Special:Search page.

* A given page should only contain one link to any other page. If a page links to the Templars of Iron in one place, then that should be the *only* link to the Templars of Iron on that page. Typically this link should be the first instance of the term in the article.

### Proofreading

Too many times people never look for errors before posting an article, and this wiki aims to hold its editors to the highest possible standards of grammar, spelling and syntax. As such, all new articles will be proofread, edited and in certain cases rewritten by administrator fiat to meet the wiki's formatting and quality standards.

### Images

* Images should be displayed at 250px (should not exceed 300px wide).
* Images should have concise captions describing the content of the image.
* No usage of officially copyrighted images.
* Ensure that all images are credited and appropriately licensed. Images altered from official copyrighted sources and made into something completely unique are considered "derivative works" and should not be claimed that anyone other than Games Workshop owns exclusive copyright over Games Workshop-owned derivatives of it. These images must be classified under the legal "Disclaimer" license after being uploaded. When applicable all works must be accredited to their respective artists (if known).

### Categories

Categories are important and represent one of the main advantages of organising information in a wiki format, as they allow our users to find all the pages that may accord with their areas of interest. Please ensure to do the following when adding categories:

* Please ensure that you always categorise your new article. It saves time when the Administrators have to go through page by page to add categories later. There is a list of categories at Special:Categories to help you find the proper categories for your articles.
* All articles must be categorized in all relevant categories. Categories should, however, be kept to a reasonable minimum. Additionally, user-based categories, excluding "Articles by NAME" and "Fan fiction by NAME," are not allowed.
* Please **DO NOT CREATE NEW CATEGORIES** without prior authorisation from one of the wiki's Administrators. If you are unsure of what category to utilise, it would be best to ask one of the Moderators or Administrators to help you decide which categories would best suit your article, as they are more familiar with the system.
* Only utilise the already well-established categories that are commonly used on most articles.

## Other Things to Consider

* The writing style of an article on this wiki should be concise, descriptive and expressive.
* **DO NOT** create articles just for the sake of adding the topic to the wiki. Only begin an article if you intend to finish it and will include a level of detail and sourcing about the topic that is commensurate with that found in our featured articles.
* Please do not edit pages simply for taste; i.e., altering sentences that are already grammatically correct and factually accurate; instead, act to fix typos, replace faulty grammar and correct errors of fact. Failure to consult with the article owner when making major alterations to an already extant page may lead to the rollback of all your work and/or a permanent ban depending on the amount of unauthorised changes that have been made and that require repair. Please avoid this potential problem by simply outlining your proposed changes to an article's original author. Otherwise, bring up such issues as spelling and grammatical errors on the article's Talk Page.
* Ensure that you pay attention to detail such as realistic lifespans of characters.
* When describing realistic scenarios that involve battle, try to ensure accuracy and realistic battle strategies, logistics, strength of the enemy and even terrain and weather.
* When writing about a character, endeavour to make them realistic as possible (list strengths, weaknesses, personality traits, etc.) to make them more relatable and believable.
* Please ensure that you check over your work after you complete it and are ready to publish. So many problems of poorly created articles appear here on the wiki only because the editor did not bother to check their work after completing an edit or a new article.
* Ensure that any image you add to the wiki has the appropriate license and categories, and has been inserted on the page where you wish to place the picture. Do not place a picture in the middle of a line of text, as this causes formatting problems for the page and creates more unnecessary work for our Administrators and other editors.