UO's Wiki Sandbox:Manual of Style

This guide was created to help those new users who might be unfamiliar with how to utilise the wiki in creating articles. We here at the Warhammer 40,000 Fanon Wiki endeavour to make this wiki a comprehensive source of information about the Warhammer 40K universe, and source of high quality, well-written articles that show off our users' creativity and unique take on existing canon. The following guide is provided to help new users with how to construct an article in a coherent and easy-to-understand format. If you are new to wikis, please check out the Wiki tutorial before returning here.

Methods
Here are some of the basics you need to be aware of to create credible and useful articles.

Structure
A solid and consistent structure aids in providing users a good experience and saves time in development. It is better to use headers than presentational markup. The reason for this is the wiki will automatically create a table of contents including each header label used.

This is an example of how structural information hierarchy works.

Biography
This (Header 2) is an overview of the biography (This is the highest level of the document hierarchy.)

Youth
This (Header 3) is a section dealing with part of the person's life This is the middle level of the document hierarchy

Schooling
This (Header 4) is a subsection dealing with a part of the person's youth. This is a low level of the document hierarchy

Friends
This (Header 4) is another subsection dealing with a part of the person's youth. This is the lowest level of the document hierarchy

The table of contents will look like this:


 * 1. Biography


 * 2 Youth


 * 2.1 Schooling


 * 2.2 Friends

Templates
There are a large selection of templates for page development. They make articles more uniform in structure and are not difficult to use.

Image Uploads
There may come a time when you need to add an image to an article.

Here is a list of special pages that you will need:


 * Special:Upload Use this page to upload a single image.
 * Special:MultipleUpload This page allows you to upload up to five images at a time.
 * Special:ImportFreeImages Use this page to search Flicker for images.
 * Special:NewImages This will let you preview the images uploaded on the wiki server.

Adding Images
Learn how to format images to fit into your page layout. A thumbnail is better than a full-sized image in an article. You can control the width, positioning and the wiki will format the image and provide the markup for enlarging the image.

Anatomy of an Image Tag

 * This is the structure of a thumbnail image tag:




 * Here is a real life thumbnail tag:




 * Here is the structure of a basic image tag



You can use any of the values except for thumb to add an image without the bordering. It works well when adding an image to an infobox.

Adding Links
Adding links to terms in an article adds depth and easy navigation to related content. There is one problem though. If you do not point to the correct file name, you will get a link to a non-existent page. It gets worse when someone clicks the link and creates a stubby duplicate page when a perfectly good article exists. I have found that the best way to link is by searching for the phrase I want to make a link at Special:Search page.

Spell Checking
This is a sticky point to some. The United States and Great Britain are two great nations separated by a common language. The native spell checker on this wiki is keyed to the spelling used by American English. When in doubt refer to it. It is better to spell check using it than not spell checking at all. However, in keeping with its source material which is proudly British in language and sensibilities, the Warhammer 40k Wiki uses British English spelling as its default in most articles. American English spelling is an acceptable alternative, but British English is the preferred format. Too many times people never look for errors before posting an article, and this wiki aims to hold its editors to the highest possible standards of grammar, spelling and syntax. As such, all new articles will be proofread, edited and in certain cases rewritten by administrator fiat to meet the wiki's formatting and quality standards.

Categorization
Always categorize your new article. It saves time when we have to go through page by page to add categories later. There is a list of categories at Special:Categories to help you find the proper categories for your articles.

Formatting Quirks
The wiki has a peculiarity in how it displays indented text. It renders it as a single line in a scrollable box. For most purposes it is not what you want for an article. If you see this when previewing your article, look for a leading space in your text.

Things to Avoid
There are several practices that are cause for concern.

Copyright Issues
Get permission if you are using copyrighted material, particularly for images, which MUST be licensed.