Editing Fallen London Wiki:Editing Guidelines

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| This page contains '''rules and structural information''' about the wiki. Once you've read it thoroughly  you can continue  to '''[[Project:How to edit the wiki|How to edit the wiki]]''', for the '''practical explanation of editing'''!
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Hello and welcome to the Fallen London Wiki, Delicious friend! We are touched that you would want to share your knowledge with your fellow Londoners!

==Editing rules==

For this wiki, there are a few rules:
#'''Always use gender neutral pronouns when writing user-created content, such as guides, and change them if you find any non-neutral pronouns.''' The wiki is used by all genders and not all Fallen London characters follow traditional gender roles anyway, and we are all welcome.
# '''Follow the editing etiquette listed below'''
# '''There is a [[FLW:Content Policy|Content policy]]''' which outlines the situations in which no/only partial info might be posted.
:* If you see any pages that violate this policy, mark it for deletion via [[Template:Delete]], preferably with a comment that explains why you have marked it for deletion.
:* As a rule of thumb, you can only contribute content that Fallen London gives for free (i.e. doesn't cost {{FontFate}}; if a free user can't see it, it's probably not allowed here).
::* You may still make item descriptions of Fate-locked items. Just don't mention how to get them unless it's mentioned in the description.
::* Do not include storylets even if they only cost 1 Fate; the cost is mainly a hint from FBG that they want these actions to remain hidden.
::* You may include content that was intentionally made available for free, even for a minority of players.
:* For more on this, please read: [[Blog:ZDee/Important: New Wiki Policy|New Wiki Policy]] and [[Blog:Alan/Updates_to_the_Fate_policy|Updates to the Fate policy]]
:*Additionally, access code text and item descriptions are exempt from the 250 character rule.
# <li value="4"> '''You can only quote up to 250 characters of narrative content at a time.''' This applies to ''all'' in-game content (that isn't covered by rule 3). When you use templates this is worked out for you: the page will warn you when a <code>description</code> field is too long. Either cut it shorter or write a summary in the matching <code>summary</code> field.
:* Please don't just take the first 250 characters and cut the rest. Pick out interesting or crucial sentences. You can always hit 'Preview' to get an up-to-date character count.
:* Please add […] or (…) to denote trimmed passages (aka, when you cut a sentence, put […] in its place. Example: [[A decidedly incautious approach]]). Otherwise the readers might not know that the article was trimmed, and that would be unfair to FL writers.
:* Note that this does not apply to access codes and item descriptions – see [[Blog:Alan/Exceptions to Truncation Policy|this blog post]] for details.
:* For more information, see [[Project:Trimming Guidelines|Trimming Guidelines]].
# <li value="5"> '''You may not post images which link directly back to Fallen London. Upload them to the wiki first.'''  See [[#Images|the relevant section below]].

'''If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask any of the active admins or contributors!'''

==Editing etiquette==
*Don't make personal attacks on other people.
*Avoid bigoted language, such as slurs based on gender, sexual orientation, race or similar.
*Stay civil and assume good faith. Use common sense when editing.
*Don't harass other users, and don't bait or troll the comment sections etc.
*Please contact an active admin on the wiki or on Discord if you find any breaches to the rules above.

==Wiki structure==
The Fallen London Wiki uses [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext WikiText] for formatting.

===Pages===
On Fallen London Wiki pages can be separated by their content. Most pages take information directly from the game and these have their own strict designs. The rest of the pages are custom made for other purposes, like to provide a Guide to an activity, or store templates to be used around the wiki. There are also semi-automatically generated pages like Categories.
====Game content====
One of the main purposes of the wiki is to serve as an archive for the content in Fallen London. To this end pages are titled to match their in-game counterparts, and generally have uniform structures using templates. Content taken directly from the game which has its own page (with a random example provided):
*Storylets - [[Escape from New Newgate Prison!]]
*Actions - [[Go as far out as you can]]
*Cards - [[An unusual wager]]
*Items - [[Exceptional Hat]]
*Qualities - [[Watchful]]
*Locations - [[Bazaar Side-streets]]
*Shops - [[Nassos Zoologicals]]
*Exceptional and otherwise {{FontFate}}-locked self-contained stories - [[HOJOTOHO! (Story)]]
*Living stories (that appear in a player's message feed) - [[A Rat no Longer]]

Game content pages are always stored in the mainspace.

=====Disambiguation=====
In cases where titles would overlap (e. g. two storylets share the same name), the pages in question are differentiated either by number or by a short marker text in parenthesis, placed after the title. The original title then becomes a disambiguation page. An example: [[Take your leave]]

====Custom content====
The other purpose of the wiki is to house custom pages like guides and templates to help the players of Fallen London and make using the wiki easier.

[[Guides]] provide player-written explanation for certain in-game activities. Other pages collect otherwise scattered information for convenience, like [[Sidebar Snippets]] or [[Narrow difficulty]]. Certain categories are also manually extended to showcase elements in a more organized manner, like [[:Category:Items]].

===Templates===
The Template system is a feature of MediaWiki. Find a complete explanation at [[mw:Help:Templates]]. For info about editing them on this wiki, see [[Project:How to edit the wiki#Templates|How to edit the wiki - Templates]]

Fallen London Wiki heavily relies on templates to keep recorded game-content both organized as easy to edit for anyone. The above discussed game-content pages each have a specific template. Edit the provided example pages above to see them in action.

*Storylets - {{t|Storylet}}
*Actions - {{t|Action}}, with {{FontFate}}-locked actions using {{t|Fate}}
**Actions generally use a plethora of other templates for full functionality. For these please see the [[Fallen_London_Wiki:Editing_Guidelines#Action results|Action results]] section below.
*Cards - {{t|Card}}
*Items - {{t|Item}}
*Qualities - {{t|Quality}}
*Locations - {{t|Places}}
*Shops - {{t|Shop}}
*Exceptional and otherwise Fate-locked self-contained stories - {{t|Fatestory}}
*Living stories (that appear in a player's message feed) - {{t|LivingStory}}

There are also many other templates for various purposes. See [[:Category:Templates]].

Templates are stored in the [[Special:AllPages/Template:|Template namespace]].

====Action results====
Inside the {{t|Action}} template, only the Success title and text can be recorded from the result. Anything else must be recorded using other templates.
*Use the correct template to indicate what exactly happened. Put an asterisk (*) before each line:
**{{t|Gain}} if you gained any items or qualities (and indicate how many)
**{{t|Item Loss}} if you lost any items (and indicate how many)
**{{t|Drop}} if a quality dropped (indicate by how many CP if you know)
**{{t|Gone}} if a quality or item got completely removed with the message "Your [Quality Name] Quality has gone!"
**{{t|Progress Reset}} if a quality or item got completely removed with the message "[Quality Name] has been reset: a conclusion, or a new beginning?"
**{{t|Move}} if you were moved to a new location as a result of taking that action
*Finally, use {{t|Redirect}} if the action forwarded you to another storylet instead of the location where you currently are.

Using these templates will automatically add the correct icon, a link to the item or quality as well as the standard text formatting of the game, and the appropriate Wiki categories. For additional parameters available for each of the templates mentioned, please refer to the template documentation pages.

The [[Quicklist]] page has a list of many different item and quality gain/loss statements, including the thumbnail images, so it's easy to copy.

If you can fail the action, {{t|Failure}} can be used to record the text, then once again use the templates above to describe the effects.

Similarly, it's possible that any action has either multiply successes or a rare success. These can be added much like the failure using {{t|Success}} and {{t|Rare Success}}. Before adding such results, it's advised to leave a comment stating the different result, and wait for another editor to confirm it. 

===Categories===
The Category system is a feature of MediaWiki. Find a complete explanation at [[mw:Help:Categories]].

For game-content pages, categories are automatically added by templates. For custom content (like guides), categories are usually manually set. Some category pages are manually extended to provide explanations and helpful collections of the most useful elements.

Categories are visible at the bottom of the right sidebar, or at the very bottom of the central section when previewing an edit in the Source editor.

Of note are the many "X Gain" and "X Loss" categories. These are generated by every [[Fallen_London_Wiki:Editing_Guidelines#Action results|action result]]. They take up the majority of categories, as they are generated for every single item and quality that has at least one gain or loss.

For qualities and items, the main category page contains the pages which somehow require/use the quality.

As an example for the [[Watchful]] quality (same for items):
*[[:Category:Watchful_Gain]] - Pages that raise this quality
*[[:Category:Watchful_Loss]] - Pages that lower this quality
*[[:Category:Watchful]] - Pages which require this quality (or specific levels of it)

===Namespaces===
The Namespace system is a feature of MediaWiki. Find a complete explanation at [[mw:Help:Namespaces]].

You can use [[Special:AllPages]] to find all existing namespaces on Fallen London Wiki and list all the pages in a specific one. (Use the namespace dropdown menu.) If you're not afraid of the MediaWiki API, [https://fallenlondon.wiki/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=namespaces&format=json click here] for a list of all the namespaces.

Most common namespaces:
*(main) - The mainspace stores all game-content pages as well guides and some other user-readable pages
*Template - Stores templates
*User - Contains the user-pages
*File - For uploaded files
*Fallen London Wiki (alias for the Project namespace) - Information about the wiki
*Category - Categories for sorting pages
*Property - Stores semantic properties
*Forum - Used by the site's forum

==Challenge type==
The vast majority of basic skill challenges are of '[[Broad]]' difficulty, but some challenges, particularly for the [[Raising_Attribute_Caps_(Guide)#Advanced_Stats|Advanced Stats]] are of '[[Narrow]]' difficulty.

It is quite easy to determine which difficulty you are dealing with. Narrow challenges have a range from 10% success to 100%. They will have large Probability of Success changes for small differences in Quality Level — a change of 1 in Quality Level translates to a change of 5% or more in Probability of Success. They also typically use 10% increments. In contrast, for Broad challenges the probability of success increases linearly from 0 and up, with a roof on 100%. They will have much smaller Probability of Success change — generally, a change of 1 in Quality Level translates to a change of 0–1% in Probability of Success. 

The [[Broad]] and [[Narrow]] pages have additional information and calculators which can help you determine the exact parameters of challenges you face.

==Images==
'''Please do not link images directly back to Fallen London. Upload them first to the wiki database.'''

[[Special:Upload]] is used to upload files to the wiki. It contains information about permitted file formats and other restrictions.

For the syntax of images please see [[mw:Help:Images]].

===Images from Fallen London===
When uploading images from Fallen London, the license "This is copyrighted, but use is permitted by the copyright holder" should be selected, at the bottom of the list.

===Custom images===
Custom images are permitted for use on the wiki (e.g. to be used in guides, templates or on user pages) but don't use them on official content pages. Also remember to specify a license, if needed!

==Numbers==
{{Incomplete|factually outdated, the game now uses separators}}
When dealing with large numbers, particularly in guides, it's often tempting to use thousands separators, such as in '''10,000.00''' or '''10.000,00'''.
This can be confusing in an international community where thousands separators and decimal symbols vary.
Fallen London doesn't use thousands separators, and as such we recommend not using them on the wiki either.

For particularly long numbers which are hard to read, you may consider an international system such as '''10 000.00''', but use this sparingly.

== Where do I start? ==
You can read '''[[Project:How to edit the wiki|How to edit the wiki]]''' for the '''practical explanation of editing'''.

You may also be wondering what to do on the wiki. There are always several areas where your work is welcome, such as 
* [[:Category:Missing CP|pages where we don't know the CP change from the actions]]
* [[:Category:Incomplete Pages|pages which are for some reason considered incomplete]]
* double-checking the [[Special:Newpages|new pages]]
* updating [[:Category:Outdated Guides|outdated guides]] (sometimes)
* writing [[Guides#Desired Guides|desired guides]]
* reviewing [[Guides]] in general - they have to be kept up-to-date manually
* creating new [[Fallen London Wiki:Calculators|calculators]] for particularly intricate calculations
* answering questions or editing in information from [[Special:Log/commentstreams|comments]]
* ...and [[:Category:Site maintenance|many more]]!

==Admins==
If you have any questions at all, no matter how dumb you think the question is, don't be afraid to ask. Please leave a message on the appropriate [[Special:ListUsers/sysop|admin]] message wall. All Users below are a Admin and any other titles they might have are listed after their username.
===Currently Active Admins===
* [[User:Adnoam|Adnoam]], also a Bureaucrat
* [[User:Alan|Alan]], also Bureaucrat and Sysadmin
* [[User:Asarta|Asarta]]
* [[User:Aximillio|Aximillio]], also a Bureaucrat
* [[User:CarrONoir|CarrONoir]], also Bureaucrat and Sysadmin
* [[User:Rahv7|Rahv7]], also a Bureaucrat

===Historical Admins===
Admins listed below are currently not active on this wiki
* [[User:Achris|Achris]]
* [[User:Droxlean|Droxlean]], also a Bureaucrat
* [[User:Jemann|Jemann]], also a Bureaucrat
* [[User:Neonix|Neonix]], Bureaucrat and also Founder of this wiki
* [[User:MrSuarez|MrSuarez]], also a Bureaucrat
* [[User:Vae Victis|Vae Victis]]
* [[User:ZDee|ZDee]], also a Bureaucrat 

[[Category:Welcome]]
[[Category:Editing Guides]]