Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Formatting

Beginning

I think we have been using the wiki long enough to make a few notes on this article, based on things we have been doing so far, and on a few things we should be doing. In other words:

Grammar

• Professions and races to always be lowercased except when used in a title, per Arena Net's idea.
• Item descriptions to be kept in lowercase, such as "long sword of epeen mastery", also per Arena Net's statement. Of course, items which have names, such as Sohothin, would still have those in uppercase.
• Skill names to follow whatever is decided here (IMO, skills and attunements and alikes should be uppercase, everything including armor lowcase, but anyway).

Images

• Per the discussion here and the discussion about capitalization somewhere else, screenshots taken from before release would be named under the convention "Year Month description", such as File:2010 April Static Field.jpg.
  • Month has to be capitalized, since that's a rule in English grammar.
  • The name of the image itself should not be capitalized, though, unless it's a name. So "File: 2010 June Rytlok.jpg" would be allowed, while File:2010 May Man Holding Bucket.jpg would be replaced by "File:2010 May man holding bucket.jpg".
  • Right now there are three screenshot categories: one for each trailer and one from the official website and linked sites (such as blogs, gaming news sites and etc). Since those are the only source of screenshots for the moment, all screenshots should be within one of those categories. That would make it easier to separate screenshots from before release and screenshots from after release.
• Per the discussion here, renders are to be named "File: Description render", such as File:Human female render.jpg. We don't really have to copy the exact filename, since those often are not nearly descriptive enough (such as 2515.jpg). Again, proper capitalization would apply, and thus files like File:Charr House render.jpg would have to be renamed.
• Skill icons are to be categorized under the Arena Net icons category and to be named "Skill name". We already have some templates which relly on that convention (used here, for example) and IMO it works better than to name all the icons "Skill name skill icon".
• As discussed here, concept art images would be named either "Name concept art" for those pieces with known names (names, not filenames; File:1233.jpgisn't a name) or "Description concept art", with short descriptions for those images with unknown names. Proper capitalization applies here as well. All those images are to be categorized under Arena Net concept art.
• Guild Wars 1 images, no matter what they are, would be categorized under Guild Wars 1 images and no other category, so people don't confuse GW1 images with GW2 images.

Thoughts? Erasculio 01:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Profession cap, good - keep it with Anet, (it's going to take me a while to get used to that, as they've always been capitalized in GW). I don't really see a need to put screenshots that were pre-release on a month basis, but then again - I see no reason not to, and it makes it neater. Screenshot cats can be made when the game is released. Pre-release screenshots should be in a separate category, methinks.

I think we should take care not to call Guild Wars GW1, Call it Guild Wars or GW, as it has never been officially called Guild Wars 1 (as there was no GW2 when realeased). Therefore, I propose [[:Category:Guild Wars images|Guild Wars images]] as a category instead of Guild Wars 1 images. Perhaps Guild Wars images should be prefixed with GW- (Thus File:GW-Foo.extention) for easy differentiation. RandomTime 11:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Those are a lot of rules for images. The only one I disagree with (mostly because I don't think it is important enough to actually move images for) is the capitalisation of the bit after the month. I think Randomtime's point on using Guild Wars instead of Guild Wars 1 is a fair one.

I don't have a strong opinion on the skill and ability names. I'm somewhat inclined to follow whatever the game does here.

Either way, I think we should just start the pages, I prefer to edit and discuss a draft than talk about it. :) -- Aspectacle  00:09, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

See Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Formatting/General for a start at some of the general rules we seem to already be using. -- Aspectacle  23:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I prefer "Guild Wars 1", as "Guild Wars" implies the series. More importantly, ArenaNet uses "Guild Wars 1" here, so it has been officially called that.-- Shew ♠♠♠ 17:04, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) One more thing regarding images: I would like to propose two new rules.

1. Images submitted for use under the userspace would be uploaded with a "File:User Username blabla.whatever" format. For example, "File: User Erasculio mycharacter.jpg". This isn't a big deal since it's what most people do anyway, we would just leave it written for new people to figure it out.
2. All ArenaNet images uploaded exclusively for the userspace (in other words, the ones I'm talking about at the previous point) would be kept within the "ArenaNet images" main category, not within one of its subcategories. Of course, if an image originally uploaded for userspace became used at the main space we would change its category (and likely its name anyway). This would make it easier to find user images (since they would be mostly grouped together) and would make browsing through the ArenaNet images subcategories easier (since they would have less irrelevant images).

I don't want to make any of those into policies, which is why I'm mentioning those issues at the formatting article instead. Erasculio 15:14, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Adding back things

Reason I'd like to add this back:

Standardized formatting makes many tasks on a wiki easier, especially long lists of repetitive documentation. The guides listed below give instructions how to format the articles for different subjects.

Please note that these guides are meant to be a help, and shall be seen as a recommendation rather than strict law restricting creativity. If in any case the standardized formatting doesn't fit the purpose, you are free to modify it. Also, if you think that a formatting is generally lacking in any respect, question it! You are always invited and encouraged to suggest improvements on the respective talk page.

Formatting guides

Legend: Guide is under basic construction. Once consensus has been reached on talk page, icon shall be removed.

• General formatting
• Image formatting - image naming, categorization and tagging
• References - formatting citations

I like the way the other was written. While it may seem too much. It's enough to not warrant too much problems. one lines with very little would give more problems in formatting. Especially for those that are new, etc. Ariyen 16:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

This is redundant. GW2W:PP already describes how the pages are to be seen and improved. There's also no need to have the "under construction" images as they're not under construction (though things can obviously be added or removed as necessary), and again PP describes this. The nav isn't needed because GW2W:Formatting is just a part of GW2W:PP, which already has the nav. pling 17:33, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Having the nav, people can click on the links up top, including pp to get back to other sections and areas. This would be needed for such. Ariyen 17:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need this article at all. Linking to each formatting article from GW2W:PP would be enough, IMO. Erasculio 17:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

That's probably true, it's only a list of links. pling 18:12, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion - Link references on pp. I don't see it linked there and it is a good article to use. Ariyen 18:30, 12 September 2010 (UTC)