Wings of Fire Wiki:Contribution

Wings of Fire Wiki Contribution Guide

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Wings of Fire Wiki! This wiki is built by community members like you, and it wouldn't be possible without the collaboration of many people.

The article serves the following purposes:

• To ensure the content on Wings of Fire Wiki is consistent, accurate, quality, and complete.
• To teach you how to use this MediaWiki software so that you can contribute.

Getting started

To begin, you'll need to create an account. To mitigate spam and vandalism, you can only edit this wiki if you are a registered user with a verified email address. Don't fret! It's very easy to create an account, and the only information you must provide is a username, password, and email address. You can create an account at Special:CreateAccount.

Congratulations! You can now create and modify articles!

Using the MediaWiki interface

This wiki runs on the popular MediaWiki software. MediaWiki is open-source software that powers hundreds of websites, including Wikipedia. If you're looking for help on a specific wiki function, you should view the MediaWiki help pages.

Editing pages

You can edit a page by clicking the Edit button at the top. This will open the Visual Editor. Using the Visual Editor, you can edit wiki pages like a word processing application. Easy!

Saving changes

Once you have made changes and are satisfied with them, click the blue Save page... button. A pop-up modal will appear asking for a summary of your changes. This summary is very important, as it lets other users quickly know what changes have been made. Here are some tips for good summaries:

• Don't make it too long. This is a summary, not a detailed log. The computer can generate that for you. Keeping your summaries short ensures that they are readable, and forces the author to think for a moment about the most concise way to explain what’s going on.
• Use the imperative mood. Imperative mood just means “spoken or written as if giving a command or instruction”. It sounds like "clean your room", "close the door", and "take out the trash". Here are some examples of what your summary should NOT look like:
  • "Removed speculatory content"
  • "Fixed grammar"
  • "More description"
• Explain why. If necessary, explain why you made the changes.

Minor edits

Checking the minor edit box indicates minor changes such as fixing typos, adjusting formatting, or rearranging text without altering content. A minor edit doesn't require review and shouldn't lead to disputes. It's denoted by a lowercase, m in the edit history.

A major edit requires review to ensure consensus among all editors involved. Thus, any change impacting the article's meaning, even if it's a single word alteration such as adding or removing "not," is not considered minor. This change can significantly alter the sentence, paragraph, section, or entire article.

Creating pages

There are a few ways to create pages. A page may be created by clicking a red link. A red link a link to a page that does not exist. When you open a red link, the Visual Editor will open and when you save the page, it will be created. A page may also be created by searching for it using the search bar. If the page does not exist, the red link will appear at the top of the results.

Content conventions

Wings of Fire Wiki closely follows Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, so if you're familiar with them, you're most of the way there! If not, don't worry. You don't need to perfectly remember all the guidelines because a wiki is a collaborative project and it's very easy for anyone to make changes if something isn't quite right.

When editing, be bold! Most edits make the wiki better, and mistakes can always be reverted or corrected. If you see something that can be improved, improve it, and do not be overly concerned with breaking anything. If the change is in the spirit of improvement and makes sense to others, the odds are good that everything will turn out all right and the change will be kept. If not, it's easy for someone to change it back.

Being civil entails remaining polite and assuming good faith when interacting with others, and focusing on the content of edits rather than on personal issues. It requires participating in a respectful and considerate way, without ignoring the positions and conclusions of others. Assuming good faith means that we assume by default that other people's intentions are to improve the project. If criticism or moderation is needed, we discuss editors' actions but do not accuse them of harmful motives without clear evidence.

Links

Links (particularly wikilinks) are one of the key components of a wiki. A wikilink connects to another page on the wiki and ties the whole thing together.

In general, wikilinks should be added for the first occurrence of important concepts for the topic. Links can be added through the menu, or by using the shortcut Ctrl+K.

Style

Writing style should follow Wikipedia's Manual of Style, which details exactly how articles should be formatted. Don't worry too much about it. As mentioned previously, mistakes can be corrected by someone who is more familiar. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind:

• Use straightforward, succinct, and easily understood language. Editors should structure articles with consistent, reader-friendly layouts and formatting.
• Article titles should be a recognizable name or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.
• An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections.
• Section headings should generally follow the guidance for article titles, and should be presented in sentence case (Funding of UNESCO projects in developing countries), not title case (Funding of UNESCO Projects in Developing Countries).
• Italics are used for emphasis, rather than boldface or capitals. But overuse diminishes its effect; consider rewriting instead.
• Use italics for the titles of works (such as books, films, television series, named exhibitions, computer games, music albums, and artworks). The titles of articles, chapters, songs, episodes, storylines, research papers and other short works instead take double quotation marks.
• Avoid contractions, which have little place in formal writing. For example, write do not instead of don't.
• Make links only where they are relevant and helpful in the context: Excessive use of hyperlinks can be distracting and may slow the reader down.

Wings of Fire guidelines

There are a few extra things to note that are specific to the Wings of Fire Wiki:

• Tribe names should always be capitalized as they are in Wings of Fire. You should use MudWing, not Mudwing or mudwing.
• Character pages should be titles with just the name of the character. A page should be titled Coral, not Queen Coral.