Contributing to the Wiki

## General

When adding new information or correcting existing information, fill in a brief description of what you changed before hitting "Save." This helps keep things organized and is a great help to editors in case anything needs to be recovered.

### Time-Relevant Information

When writing content for the wiki, please reference specific dates/seasons (e.g. "In late 2323, at the start of season 3...") where at all possible instead of using relative terms like "recently" or "five years ago." The latter creates content that quickly goes out of date, while the former can be read at any time and still be correct, which makes it easier on our editors who need to keep the wiki up to date.

In general, History pages should be able to be written with zero references to "present," while Setting pages may have a few references that are either unavoidable or would be more confusing than anything if they were changed.

### "See Also" Section

A page might have a "See Also" section at the end. This section is intended to refer to closely related articles that haven't otherwise been linked in the article. Refer to Wikipedia's guide on such sections for further guidance.

## Correcting Misinformation

If you notice something on a page that seems wrong, use the comment function or the relevant talk page to make a note of this. The main wiki editors will follow up with you and figure out what the issue seems to be.

## Adding New Information to an Existing Page

If you have new information that you'd like to add to an existing page, comment or leave a note on the relevant talk page with a brief summary of the new content. Once it's approved, you're welcome to add to the page. Please keep the tone of additions consistent with what already exists.

## Creating a New Page

First, check that a page doesn't already exist for what you want to write about.

Your topic might currently be included as a section of another page; if so, it's likely because it was judged not to have enough information to justify its own page. If you think it should have its own page, add a comment or leave a note on the relevant talk page with the topic and your reasoning for giving it a separate page.

If it's setting information that doesn't currently exist on the wiki, ping @abibliophobix on the Discord with what you'd like to add.

Once the content is approved, you're welcome to create the page. Please keep the tone of additions consistent with what already exists.

### Categorizing Pages

The primary categories are Setting, Religion, History, and Mechanics. A page should belong only to one of these categories, though it may belong to multiple subcategories. In fact, most pages will belong to multiple subcategories. This is intentional as it creates multiple ways for the page to be found. On rare occasions, a page may belong to more than one primary category, such as the archipelago page, which has to do with in-character setting details and also mentions out-of-character mechanical information.

## Out-of-Character Content

There's an attempt made to keep out-of-character (OOC) information (mechanics or notes about playing the game) separate from in-character (IC) information (information about the setting, etc.). Where sensible, OOC information is kept on entirely separate pages from IC information (for example, the page on House Rules), but sometimes it seems relevant to include OOC information on a page that's otherwise dealing with IC topics. When such is the case, OOC information is typically put in its own section (for example, the note on Character Creation on the Warforged page).

There is, however, one piece of OOC information which is consistently included alongside IC information, and that's the season in which events took place (for example, the page for the Great Storm begins "In early 2324, at the conclusion of season 3..."). The IC calendar can be confusing, since the year doesn't match the real-world year (and can't, given the multi-year timeskips between seasons), so the season is included alongside it. It's still important to note the IC year, and not just the OOC season, because it helps to give better context to the events, particularly because of said timeskips.

If you're uncertain what IC (or OOC) year certain events took place, there's a handy timeline you can check out!

## Further Questions

If you're uncertain about anything, ping @abibliophobix on the Discord with your questions.