This policy article is made from a desire to standardize articles and their format as well as possible. Until it gets some recognition and concensus, feel free to change it.
Preference for internal links
I recommend that we abide by Wikipedia's policy, with regards to preferring internal links. By this I mean instead of using the very templates I've created — namely, [[template:tzone|tzone]], item, npc, and template:spell — we should link all items to an article, and that article should contain even nothing but a stub marker and perhaps an appropriate link to thottbot or Allakhazam or something. Someone could come behind and fill out that article if they have more time and experience. This, I think, would be better than consistent external linking. It would improve the look and feel of the wiki, too. We would then need also a prominent and consistent naming convention. -- D. F. Schmidt talk 01:31, 29 Aug 2005 (EDT)
Setting up Namespace
BaldMonkey suggested extending this idea to setting up namespaces. See Wowpedia talk:Namespace for the full discussion.
Aggregation of many similar links
In articles with many links — such as those covering [[:category:professions|professions]] and all those that in like manner have several mentions of each item or NPC or zone or such — should have all of the links appropriately categorized either near the top or near the bottom of the article, so as to consolidate them. -- D. F. Schmidt talk 02:28, 29 Aug 2005 (EDT)
Naming conventions
I recommend also adopting Wikipedia's naming conventions, but this might be seen to some as problematic. The convention there is to keep everything lowercase (except, of course, the first letter) unless the term is almost always seen as capitalized, such as Magna Carta and United Nations. This would make it so One-Handed would become one-handed and 
[Linen Cloth] would become linen cloth. (When, in any text, do we capitalize one-handed or linen cloth?) This would make it easier to write text, and you'd need fewer pipes to format. (And capital letters bother me — imagine if I spoke German! Haha.) -- D. F. Schmidt talk 03:14, 31 Aug 2005 (EDT)
- I am all for this. I think the only reall exeption in my mind is using the captical for things like category names simply because it them becomes more of a title. I will keep this in mind for any articles I write in the future. Articles. --BaldMonkey 19:37, 30 Sep 2005 (EDT)
- I understand about making it more like a title, but remember: It's a title anyways, whether or not it's capitalized. In French, for one, they don't capitalize titles at all traditionally. (Maybe more recently they've started, but I don't think so.) At least, in citations (works cited, bibliographies, etc.) capitalization is identical to how we would write those same words in a sentence (capitalizing the first word and any proper nouns, leaving everything else lowercase). Enough about French.
- The point of fact is, what should always be asked when naming an article is, "How will the typical person write it, when using proper grammar, in an article?" If the answer is "with lowercase letters", that's how it should be named. So for items not specially named, they should be all lowercase letters. For items specially named, they should be capitalized according to logic. For other things, using the same logic should cover it pretty well. So for city names, naturally capitalize them.
- But categories? Which categories would you be inclined to leave capitalized? Remember that we want to make it so it's easiest to link to these articles to reduce the pain of piping the links. In the case of categories, since they're in the category namespace, you can just add a pipe and not have to type the name over again, so if you're linking to [[:category:Blacksmithing Supplies]], [[:category:blacksmithing supplies]] doesn't work ([[:category:blacksmithing supplies]]), so to get the same effect, you'd have to type [[:category:blacksmithing Supplies]] ([[:category:blacksmithing Supplies]]), so if you were to pipe that to reduce the name of the link to drop off the namespace, it'd look like [[:category:blacksmithing Supplies|blacksmithing Supplies]], which looks ridiculous, IMNSHO. (My opinion is quite often humble, but I don't usually express it unless I feel pretty strongly about it.) Schmidt talk 20:20, 30 Sep 2005 (EDT)
- Yeah for articles I like what you are saying for not using the caplital. I come from a programing background and I like to have an easy way to tell things apart. So my main reason for using the capital (only for categories) is that it allows a quick way of telling that [[:Category:Balcksmithing Supplies|Balcksmithing Supplies]] ([[:Category:Balcksmithing Supplies|]]) is a category while [[blacksmithing supplies]] ([[blacksmithing supplies]])is an article. I think the example you listed of [[blacksmithing Supplies]] is wrong but mostly because it mixes case for no real reason.
I did mix cases on purpose; another category's name would have served my purpose better, but no big deal. As for categories, I don't feel so strongly about the categories, because they shouldn't (but probably will anyways) be linked as much except at the bottom of an article. But I do feel strongly about the article names, which I see that we do agree with. And I think you see my point, and I'll leave it at that. Schmidt talk 21:52, 30 Sep 2005 (EDT)
Category usage
I suggest that zones, classes, races, professions, and other such things should perhaps have their categories, but the main article of each item should be a proper article; the category should be only a container.
The zone's article, for example, Elwynn Forest would have in it [[Category:Zone:Elwynn Forest| Elwynn Forest]] to keep it up at the top of the list, but Stormwind would have in it [[Category:Zone:Elwynn Forest]] with no sort key.
Instead of such a heavy use of categories, we should use templates. These templates need not have a category associated, either.
- Good examples are
- On this wiki, equipment | herbs | metals
- On Wikipedia, template:ConstellationsListedByPtolemy | template:Sailing vessels and rigs | template:jew
None of these templates listed above have categories associated with them. The goal of this is to uniformalize article names. With a setup like this, there can be better categorization: Instead of all potions going under [[:category:potions]], for instance, they'd be (as example) listed in template:potions. The advantage? They could be ordered under "Health Potions", "Mana Potions", etc., instead of "Lesser", "Minor", etc. (which are the first words in each potion name). Although, now, it'd be best to simply link to potion, since that list is nearly if not completely comprehensive.
Also, instead of category:patches, have template:patches that links each patch review, and have the template itself linked from each of those patch reviews.
Categories should be left to very long lists of separate articles having a similar context, such as category:lore, which I have no problem with. Schmidt talk 03:22, 27 Sep 2005 (EDT)