Wowpedia:Policies

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, tzone, item, npc, and 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

I would like to take this a step further and suggest we create a few custom namespaces (will need admins to do this) to help store the game information. One such namespace would logically be "Items". This will allow for the creation of a page like [[Item:Ironfeather]] that contains no info on how the item is used in game and only the statistics for said item. For something as small is "Ironfeather" it might not seem like much till you think about the fact that we can include how much it sells to a vendor for as well as people can use the Special:Whatlinkshere to quickly find articles that talk about "Ironfeather".

I have thought about maybe having a "Quest" name space but I cannot think of why something like really would be anything other than something like Category:Quests with each quest walkthrough listed as an article maybe broken down into subcategories based on Faction (Horde, Alliance, or Both) and maybe then Class and Profession quests as well.

Another area however that would likely benefit greatly from it's own name space would the API section! They have it organized very nice and I'm really worried about even suggesting that it be moved to a new name space as the work it would generate would be huge! However just for the sheer size of the API area it would probably do well to act as a "sister" to WoWWiki maybe WoWDevWiki or something. The only problem with having the API area as seperat project is that it removed the ability to link to pages here on WoWWiki. Unless the admins want to set up Interwiki linking.

--BaldMonkey 15:55, 30 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Aggregation of many similar links

In articles with many links — such as those covering 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)

Conglomerating smaller similar articles together

I recommend eliminating small articles by gobbling them all up. One example of articles we don't need is all the different metal articles: such as Copper,  [Copper Ore],  [Copper Bar], and Copper Vein. We could easily enough combine them all into simply Copper, and it would be nicer for everyone involved, because there would be fewer links flying around. Would anyone mind if I do so? (Assuming I have the time to do so.) There are also many other articles that could be combined likewise. -- D. F. Schmidt talk 03:14, 31 Aug 2005 (EDT)

As for the metals, I did combine them all into copper, tin, bronze, etc. See template:metals for the whole list. There are probably others that should be combined too. -- D. F. Schmidt talk 13:02, 6 Sep 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)

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)