Style Guide

This article aims to provide a comprehensive **style guide** for all PocketAnts Wiki articles to follow. There are often disputes over which style rule or formatting to use. So an official style guide helps resolve these disputes and reach a consensus.

## Article titles

### Capitalization

All titles should use the **proper tittle case**, which means that every word should be capitalized, "except for minor words (typically articles, short prepositions, and some conjunctions) unless they are the first or last word of the title." Examples: "Fire Ant Nest" instead of "Fire ants nest"; "Daily Quests" instead of "Daily quests", etc.

The exception to this rule is articles whose name has been disambiguated by using parenthesis. In this case, the word between the parenthesis should be lowercase rather than uppercase, **unless** this word is a proper noun (like a book title) that must always be capitalized.

### Singular form titles

Articles should use singular form titles if they are about:

* entities that are seen alone/individually (E.g. bosses like "Termite King", or individual creatures)
* things/features whose name is in singular form (E.g. some Menus like "Gem Shop")

### Plural form titles

Articles should use singular form titles if they are about:

* entities that are seen in groups (E.g. "Aphids")
* things/features that are usually repetitive or that are many of them (E.g. "Clans", "Battles")
* a group of multiple related things in the game (E.g. "Creatures" or "Colony Chambers")
* things/features whose title is in plural form (E.g. "Ant Skins")

### Title formats

Articles about **events** should be titled as follows:

* For **Seasonal Events** such as the Halloween or the Easter Event that occur in two or more different years, the title should include the **year** of the event (e.g. Halloween Event 2020 and Halloween Event 2021).
* For the **Anniversary Event** in particular, the title should contain the **ordinal number** of the anniversary (e.g. 1st Anniversary Event, 2nd Anniversary Event, etc.).
* For **Creature Event** articles, the title should include the **name of the Creature** of the event, as seen in the Discord announcement post of these Events (e.g. Creature Event: Ghost Mantis).
	+ If a Creature Event of the same creature occurs in two or more different years, more pages shouldn't be created. Instead, the dates of each event's edition will be listed in the page (see Events article layout below in this page).

### Other notes

Articles about **people** should contain the first and last names **IF** that's how that person is more widely known by the community. Otherwise, it's better to use their Pocket Ants username, or their Discord username or server nickname. The tittle of the article should be easy to relate to the person, some people are more known inside the Discord community by a different name than the one in the game and almost always it's impossible to know the full name of those players. Still, articles about people are rare to be seen.

If a feature does not have an in-game name, it should follow the same format as other articles of the same type.

### Disambiguation

When two or more pages have the same name, they must be disambiguated to avoid confusions when linking to one page or another.

For reference on how to disambiguate pages, visit this article about Disambiguation in the Simple English Wikipedia (for better understanding).

* Note: if there are only two pages with a same name that couldn't be disambiguated through alternate names, they can be disambiguated through parenthesis and the disambiguation page is not needed.

## Writing

The language of this Wiki is **American English**, the same as the "English" option in the game. British English words (such as "colour" for "color", "defence" for "defense", etc.) should not be used unless they are used in the game.

**Do not use first-person nor second-person words** in articles, like "I", "My", "Me", "You", "Your", "We", "Our", "Us", etc. Instead, it's recommended to:

* **Use third person**. E.g. Instead of "termites will attack your ants", rather use "termites will attack their ants".
	+ "**The player**" or "**Players**" can replace second-person forms. E.g. Instead of "you can upgrade the chamber using leaves", rather use "Players can upgrade the chamber using leaves."
	+ Use **singular "They/Them"** to refer to **The Player**. Visit this page to learn more about the singular They usage. E.g. Instead of "The player can deploy his creatures in Battles", use "The player can deploy their creatures in Battles"
	+ Use "He/Him" or "She/Her" to refer people whose gender is known, by example, ArielGames.
* **Use passive voice**. E.g. Instead of "you will have to protect aphids", rather use "aphids will have to be protected".

**Use complete sentences with correct spelling and grammar**.

If an article has too little information, mark it with the {{Stub}} template.

Please make sure to write only what is necessary, do not over complicate your writing.

As this wiki's purpose is to document facts, **you should always avoid speculative and unsourced information**. Generally speaking, information does not require sources if they can directly be seen in-game or are otherwise obvious. Other information however, such as quotes from PocketAnts Discord and information that is not widely known, must be sourced with a proper reference. **Do not** **add content to an article if you cannot find a proper source.**

To stress points, **bold** should be used. Use *italics* for doubtful/questionable things. ALL CAPS must not be used anytime.

### Updates

New Articles should only be created to group versions that share the unit and the first two decimals (e.g. "Update 0.06" contains all versions from **0.06**01 to **0.06**99).

Inside these articles, updates must be grouped in tables with two main columns.

* The first, called "Version Group Number" would contain groups of the versions that share the first three decimals (e.g. "Update 0.061" contains versions **0.061**0, **0.061**3, **0.061**4, **0.061**5, **0.061**8, **0.061**9).
* The second column, called "Sub-Versions", would contain all the versions from each group.
* There will be as many rows as groups of version that share the first three decimals in their numbers.

The **order** of updates and versions in these tables is **descending** (older versions first), **vertically and horizontally**.

Sub-articles on the "Update X.XX" article will be created for each update and will contain three sections: **Additions**, **Changes**, **Bug fixes** and **Trivia**. The date of the update must be referenced at the beginning of the article.

See the already existing pages in Update History for a more clear reference.

### Quotes

All quotes should be copied verbatim.

Any additional content added within the quotation marks must be enclosed in **[**square brackets**]**.

Terminal punctuation must only go inside the quote if it is in the original; otherwise, it must go outside.

### Section headings (subtitles)

Article main sections should start with level 2 headings (`==Heading==`) and increase by one for subsections e.g. `===Heading===`. **Never** use level 1 headings (`=Heading=`), which are used for the article title.

Subtitles must use **sentence case**: "A mixed-case style in which the first word of the sentence is capitalized, as well as proper nouns and other words as required by a more specific rule."

Headings should not have links or templates in them; links should be placed underneath, such as in a `{{`Main}} template.

* The exception are **compilatory articles**, this is, articles that are used to link to other content articles and that would otherwise repeatedly use the {{Main}} template.

Although not required, having one space between sections and one space between the equal signs and the section name makes for ease of editing.

For information on which sections should be in which order, see the Article layout section of this style guide.

### Dates

While most countries abbreviate dates as day/month/year, some Asian countries use year/month/day, and the US uses month/day/year. So dates like "12-10-11" could represent any of three different dates.

To avoid this problem, **most dates should be written in "Day-Month-Year" format, *e.g.* "10-Dec-2011"**.

Do not use superscripts or suffixes such as "April 23rd" or "4th of May", slashes such as "12/3/2014", or numbers such as "10-12-2011".

If a numeric or terse date is needed (such as in a table), then use YYYY-MM-DD, always with 2 digits for month and day (*e.g.*, 2011-12-10 or 2012-05-04). Besides being the ISO standard, **dates in this format will naturally sort properly, say if the table column is later made sortable**.

Try to avoid seasons for dates such as "Summer 2021" or "Fall 2022". On Earth, the seasons are switched depending on which hemisphere you live in (e.g. summer in the Northern Hemisphere is winter in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa). Instead **use phrases like "Mid-2021" or "Late 2022"**.

## Images

Images can be instrumental in helping to explain a topic.

It is important that they be **good quality** and **relevant**.

Only images that are relevant or add to the information on the article should be included. **Avoid repetitive images** unless necessary to explain a concept.

### Distribution and placement

There should be **one picture** to cover the **main topic** and **other images** should elaborate on a **specific section**.

* Images that work as a complement of the text in articles should be put in **Thumbnail** mode to the **right side** of the text with a **relevant caption**.
* Images that are explained and referenced to in the text of the article should be put **under** or **to the right** of the text in **Basic** mode with **no caption**.
* If the image is an infographic or has meaning by its own, or if it has small typography, it should interrupt the text by being put **in the middle** with a **bigger size**, and may include a caption or not.

In mobile devices, image position changes so it does not look like the pc version, this makes the **line placement** of the images important:

* For images that do not need any context, or server as introduction for the text that comes after it, it should be placed immediately under the corresponding subheading.
* For images that need context or are better understood after reading the text, they should be put below the text they are referenced from.

### Format preferences

In general, pictures should be good resolution and quality.

Avoid using too small images (less than 400x400). If your picture is too small, try scaling it to a higher resolution with nearest-neighbor interpolation, so the pixels of the object or entity in the picture are conserved and it's able to be scaled back to a small picture and used in another picture, etc. The recommended scaling proportion is 10 times the size of the picture. See later about uniformity.

Pictures about locations (e,g. the tree), scenes and pictures that show a certain scene (e.g. a creature performing an attack) don't have any recommendations.

Pictures about creatures, bosses, other entities, items, GUI tabs and windows, and button icons should be transparent in PNG format. For transparent pictures in general, it's better if they are cropped to remove all empty spaces around the object/entity.

* All scaled pixels should be the same size. It is recommended to use scaled pixels of 10x10 to keep consistency with the preexisting pictures. By example, look at the following picture, which is a section of a bigger picture (the acorn sprite). The pixels on the texture are **not uniform**.

* This is the same picture, edited to have all the squares or pixels on the texture to have the same size (10x10 pixels). This picture is **uniform**.

Animated GIFs are recommended to show the different stages of a process or a motion.

All pictures should have good colors. Dark screenshots and pictures taken with filters on the screen are not recommended. Usually emulators such as Bluestacks provide a nice color pallete that is very similar to the game files, which we cannot access to directly.

For anything, if a picture can't meet the aforementioned recommendations, and there is no picture at all of something for an article, the recommendations can be ignored. It's better to have a picture with not the best quality rather than nothing, but if a picture can be edited to match the style being followed on the Wiki, it should be.

## Templates

There are several templates in use on the wiki. Please see the Templates page for the available templates and how they should be used.

Templates are useful for creating consistent styling, adding design elements to the page, or infoboxes to neatly display common information. Wiki templates provide a means to insert the same content over and over in different (or the same) pages. This saves editors the hassle of duplicating the same text again and again, and also helps ensure consistency.

## Creature infoboxes

Infoboxes are for the creature articles to better organize important creature information. The one that is being used for these articles is **PACreatures**. See **Creature Stat Descriptions** below for creature numbers. Please use number/10 for these stats.

For creatures with a golden variant, both images can be used in the infobox. To do this, paste this code into the image section:

```
<gallery>
Example.jpg|Regular
Example.jpg|Golden
</gallery>

```

The exact name, including .png or .jpg, goes in the 'Example.jpg' spot. Make sure to keep the ' | ' in between the image and the description. Once the images have been completed, go to the 'source editing' option and follow the directions in this video to be able to see the images:

* 3:14 She shows how to fix the images initially so they show: https://youtu.be/0B9BfumrSQ4?t=193
* 5:12 She shows how to fix them again if you have to edit the infobox again: https://youtu.be/0B9BfumrSQ4?t=312

## Creature stat descriptions

Use these terms for the stats of creatures in tables and written descriptions. There needs to be a consistent way to explain the stats in a non-numerical way. Always use the most up to date stat information and the latest stat guide, to decide the number value for each creature stats.

## Common Articles Layout

### Creatures individual article.

**General information**: Short and general review of the Creature's aspect, abilities, strenght and other info. Includes a note on when a Creature should not be killed because it is a Rare or Special creature.

**Description**: The Description of the creature that can be found inside its card in the Collection.

**Stats**:

* Description of the stats of the Creature and their increase potential in Creature Lab.
* Can include the chart of Health Stats shown in bites from a 4\* Golden Tarantula.
* Includes the creature's card found in Collection.

**Obtaining**: How to obtain the creature.

* For pheromone-attractable creatures:
	+ **Attracting**: How to attract and best-attract the Creature.
	+ **Defeating**: Strategies to fight the Creature.
* For Special creatures:
	+ **Events**: A chart with the following columns: (Full example below, taken from Ghost Mantis)
		- Event: One row for each event in which the creature was available (e.g. for Ghost Mantis it woud be: Halloween Event 2020, 1st Anniversary Event and Creature Event: Ghost Mantis).
		- Points for attracting: The points in the activity bar required to attract the creature (generally 1000).
		- Chance of attracting: "100%" for events in which only one creature was available. "Random" for events in which there was more than one creature available.
		- Daily limit: The attraction daily limit of the event (Generally 2 for Major Events, "None" for Creature Events).
	+ **Defeating**: Strategies to fight the Creature.

 1st Anniversary Event | 1000
 Creature Event: Ghost Mantis | 1000

* Crab is an exception and does not have any subsections.

**Battles**: Strategies and usefulness in Battles, for Attack and Defense.

**Trivia**: Curious facts about the creature.

* **Origin**: Shows the real life species that the creature is based/inspired on. Sometimes the species is included in the creature's description, but in most cases it must be figured out and that requires some research. Includes a picture of the real life species related to the creature.
	+ "Based on": When the creature is exactly the same as one species (full reference), or when parts of its body come from different species but they look the same correspondingly (partial references). When many species are too similar to each other, and they all resemble the creature totally, it's also a reference (group reference).
	+ "Inspired": When there is not one species that looks exactly like part or the whole Creature but many different species, or a group, that look similar, when there are too many partial references (too many different species combined), and when partial references can't complete the creature (the origin of one part of the creature is unknown).

* **Event connection**: Talks about how the creature is related to the Event's theme. It may be a visual connection (the creature features elements that are related to those of the festivity's theme in its appearance), a nominal connection (the creature's name contains one or more words that are related to the festivity's theme), or an even more complicate connection such as season (the time of the year the species appears in the real life is close or the same as the festivity's season), climate region (the species lives in a certain climate or region in real life that is related to the festivity in some way), or even conceptual/symbolic (the creature has a behavior or ability that is related in some way with elements of that festivity), etc. It's possible that the creature has not an actual logical relation to the festivity as well.
* **Other facts**.

### Events

**Duration**: First day, Last day and how many days it lasts.

* for **Creature Events**, this section is renamed **Editions**, and contains a table with the info of each edition of the event. Example:

**Festivity**: Talk briefly about the festivity the event is about.

**Special** Creature: Talk briefly about the Special Creature that came on the event. Add the {{Main}} template.

**Activity Bar**: List the activities that give points for the activity bar and the points for each activity.

**Purchasable items**:

* **Unlimited resource**
* **Skins**

**Daily Rewards**: Make a table with the rewards for each day and the total.

**Timer reductions**: List the Reduced respawn timers for the event.

**Visual changes**: List the visual changes for the event.

**Trivia**: Curious facts.

## Redirect pages

Redirect pages only exist to link to another article that has the actual content that is being looked for. They are not immediately necessary to require active creation of redirects, but they can be a good tool for the Wiki's navigation, thus it is recommended to create this when possible.

Redirects should only be created if they fit one of the following:

* Alternative spelling, capitalization or form of the title, including changing it to plural case.
	+ Incorrect spelling, typos, and irregular formatting are not allowed.
* Alternative or shortened name, provided the name is common usage, such as "Rhino Beetle" or "Rhino" for "Rhinoceros Beetle".
	+ This also includes names from alternative English language packs, with the exception of joke languages such as "Pirate Speak" and "LOLCAT".
* Previous article title, including if the article was moved to another wiki.
	+ An exception is if the previous title was not commonly used.
* A part of a merged or multi-topic article that does not have a Main Article.

## Files

File names should be consistent so they are easier to find.

Files used in the infobox of articles should be titled with the exact name of the subject as seen in game using en-US (when possible).

## Youtubers

In Content Creators we have included various people based on defined parameters: we have requirements everyone has to meet to be included in one of the charts in that page.

 5. People with the **Youtuber role on Discord** must only meet the **first requirement**.

The Content Creators page should be updated each month, or each two months. The updating process should be done using the Youtubers spreadsheet available in the **Wiki Files** Drive folder as a tool to update, order and get everything ready before doing the changes in the actual Wiki page.