Club Penguin Wiki:Policy/Manual of Style

This is a manual of style and a guide for the general layout of articles in the Club Penguin Wiki.

Article subject guidelines

• Do not make articles about unconfirmed topics.
• Do not make an article about something trivial. It should be somewhat notable. For example, you aren't allowed to make an article about a small aspect in Club Penguin (e.g the sound a puffle makes, or the list of different trees in Club Penguin).
• Do not make articles about your penguin. You should use your user page to add information about your penguin (we encourage you to do so!).

Use the following places for content that doesn't belong in articles:

• For made-up or fictional things, use our sister wiki, the [[fanon:Club Penguin Fanon Wiki|Club Penguin Fanon Wiki|].
• For suggestions or ideas for CP, see the Club Penguin Ideas section.
• For your penguin, use your user page.
• For everything else, use your user page.

Editing style

This is a list of editing tips that can aid to complete coherent and well-written, informative articles. An article that doesn't follow these guidelines should be changed to do so, or should be left with a cleanup template:

• Always title a page by its actual name in Club Penguin. This also includes the use of capitalization in titles. For example, Gary should not be titled G. It is also means that regional spellings do not apply in titles. If a page about color was made, then it would be spelled color, not color/colour or colour, because it is spelled color in Club Penguin.
• Words must always be correctly capitalized. Words cannot be capitalized in mid-sentence, unless they are proper nouns (such as names of people, places or species).
• Either British English (BrE) or American English (AmE) can be used in articles. The Club Penguin Wiki allows both spellings, and has no preference over one another. However, regional names cannot be used for nouns, only the original word shall be used. For example: soccer should be used instead of football or association football because it is spelled this way in Club Penguin.
• If a user types up something in BrE, then the "first come, first serve" policy will come in hand. An allowed spelling that is either BrE or AmE cannot be changed further.
• Please refrain from using all-capital letters or (CAPS) in mainspace articles. It can be considered gibberish, and may put off the reader. It could also lessen the feeling of neutrality.
• Please refrain from using wikicode that alters the appearance of text in mainspace articles when it's not necessary. Such examples would be placing colored or large text. This is informal and may also make it seem as though the article has a point of view.

Article layout guidelines

The sub-headings below are the typical sections that should be used in an article, to maximize its quality. The sub-headings are in order, so please place infoboxes above templates, and so on. Please make sure the majority of these are used, otherwise they will be considered as stub articles:

Infoboxes

• An item article without an infobox should be tagged as a stub.

Infoboxes should be used where possible. They provide easy navigation for users, and can recreate a whole article in a nutshell. Always put the infoboxes above any other text or template in the page, for layout reasons. If you are unable to find an image for the infobox, please use: "File:No Image.png", as a placeholder image in the infobox. Please attempt to fill in all of the fields in the infobox. If you are unable to, just leave the field out, as it automatically fills it in as "?". If they are inapplicable to the article, put "N/A".

Templates

Templates such as cleanup should be placed at the top of the page (unless there is an infobox in the page, in which they should be placed below the infobox), because they are relevant to the whole of the article. If another article box (sometimes abbreviated to ambox) is in the article, but only relevant to one section of the article, they should be moved to the top of their corresponding section.

Article text

• An article without the article text should be tagged as a stub.

The article text is usually one paragraph that is the first piece of text information in the article. Within the paragraph is the article's name, it's function and description. Usually other aspects such as its location are placed here. Firstly, the name of the article is included (the article name is always bolded, an example being at the top of this page). To make a page more structured and easier to read through, try keeping the article text to one paragraph, and other information in their corresponding sections.

Description

Try to the describe the article's subject in more detail in this section. Appearance is also an alternative section name. Try to go beyond describing it's appearance though.

History

If you're making an article about a room or an item, please make sure to create a history section. Not only does it make the article become professional, it also provides a lot more information. In History sections, you can make Level 3 sections to underpin different events and parts of an item's or room's history.

Biography

The Biography section is essentially a character's equivalent of the History section. Sub-headings and Level 3 sections are also welcome for the biography section.

Other information

Other information that is relevant to the article is always needed. Please make a separate section for each different piece of information. For a character this could be sightings and for a room it could special events and parties.

Gallery

A gallery should be included in articles with multiple pictures. Pages with large galleries should display the first 20-30 images, then collapse the rest so it can be expanded if the reader wants to see it.

Trivia

• An article without this section must be tagged as a stub.

Trivia is always a popular section in articles. In this section, you can list down interesting pieces of information. Please try to refrain from making this the largest section in the article however, and please refrain from placing information that isn't considered trivia. Info that isn't trivia can go in any of the above section.

See also

• An article without this section must be tagged as a stub.

In the see also, you can list down internal links that link to other related articles.

External links

In this section, you can list down external links that link to other websites. Please use the coding instructions explained above.

Category

• Every article should have at least one category. If it doesn't, leave a CatNeeded template at the top of the page.
• Use our wikicode tips to help you with adding categories.
• Category pages themselves act like mainspace articles. You can categorize categories! This is helpful, an example would be that the category "Head Items" would be categorized under "Items".

Sourcing

It is essential to cite and source information when needed, all the time. To learn how to source, click here. To learn why we do this, click here.

The following are considered unreliable sources:

• Emails from Club Penguin.
• Blogs that aren't well established
• Anything determined to be unreliable by an Administrator.

Wikicode & editing tips

This is a list of different tips that can help you use wikicode efficiently in articles. Wikicode uses the MediaWiki language, and it can be used to format the page. It can be from simply bolding a word to creating a table. MediaWiki's built in text editor also has these functions, and how to use them will be explained here:

• If you want to make text italic (that means slanted), place two apostrophes on each side of the text:

• ''Italic'' will result in: italic, when published.

• If you want to make text bolded, place three apostrophes on each side of the text:

• '''Bold''' will result in: bold, when published.

• You can combine these two text styles together to make them both italic and bold. The first two buttons on your text editor's toolbar are bold and italic buttons. Click on them, and type up the text in between the apostrophes, that are highlighted.
• If you want to make an inter-wiki link (that means a link to another article in the wiki), you have to place two square brackets around the name of the article:

• [[Article]] will result in: Article, when published.

• If you want to link to an article, but you don't want the article's name to appear as the link, and instead want something else you will have to place two square brackets, then the article's name, followed by a vertical line, and then the text you want instead.

• [[Club Penguin Wiki:Policy|policy]] will result in: policy, when published.

• If you want to insert a external link (a link to a different website), you have to place one square bracket around the link's name:

• [http://clubpenguin.com] will result in: [1], when published. Note the "[1]". You can prevent this from happening by using the method for internal links above. To change the link text's name but keep the same link, you have to put a space in between the URL and the link's text. Remember that you need to include the "http://" prefix before the website name, and that you must use underscores (_) instead of spaces in URLs.

• If you want to add a category to a page, place two square brackets around the category name (like a link) on each side. Remember to include the "Category:" prefix!

• [[Category:Items]] will add a category to the article.
• On the category page will be a list of articles categorized under that category. The names of the articles are in alphabetical order. If you would like the article to have a different name in the category page, use the link method of placing a vertical line after the category name. This doesn't change the link in the article, but it will change the link to the article in the category page.

• Headings structure an article. This section has a heading as well. You can tell if a page has a heading or not, if there large text above a vertical line. You have probably heard of this before. There are 2 main types of headings. Level 2 headings and Level 3 headings. These all change the size of the heading itself, and a higher level heading will be placed underneath a lower level heading. Level 3 headings are often called "sub-headings". You can also get "sub-headings" under "sub-headings", by created a Level 4 heading and so on.

• To make a Level 2 heading, you must place two equal signs (=) around the text you want to become the heading's name.
• To make a Level 3 heading, you must place three equal signs around the text. Remember, the more equal signs - the smaller the heading.

• You can also make lists in mainspace articles.

• To make a list of bullet points, place an asterisk (*) to the left of the text that you would like to be part of the bullet point. You can make numerous bullet points underneath each other to make a list.
• To make an indent (pushes the text further to the centre), you have to place a colon to the left of the text that you would like to be indented. Multiple indents pushes the text further to the right. You can combine indents with bullet points to make indented bullet points. When doing this, remember to place the colon before the asterisk.
• To make a numbered list, place a hash key (#) to the left of the text that you would like to be numbered. Places numerous hash keys underneath each other will create a numbered list, but it can be broken if there is something in between two hash keys.

Basic grammar rules

This is a list of grammatical rules that are commonly ignored. They must be followed.

• Do not capitalize words in mid-sentence, unless they are proper nouns. Proper nouns can be the names of places (rooms), characters, or an item name. This also applies to articles with the word 'pin', 'background', and 'flag'. Important!: Unless Club Penguin includes any of those words in the article name, those words should remain uncapitalized.
• Please leave a space after any punctuation used in sentences. However, spaces cannot be placed after quotation marks and apostrophes.
• Punctuation must be placed before any quotation marks.
• All game titles, products, organizations and companies must be italicized. If for example typing in "Club Penguin" and you are referring to the game, you must always italicize it! This is because Club Penguin can refer to many things. If you are referring to things that is not a product, organizations or companies, don't italicize it. A good example of that would be the Club Penguin referring to the island.
• Apostrophes should only be used if indicating possession or filling in missing letters.

• Remember always that when making a word a plural, do not add an apostrophe before the s.

• There are many TVs in this room.
• There are many TV's in this room.

• It's and its are different!

• Remember that it's expands to it is and its expands to nothing. When you're confused, think about the expanded form of it's and see if it makes sense in that sentence.
• "It's" should only be used to abbreviate it is. Its indicates possession. This is confusing because an apostrophe would usually indicate possession, but that is false in this case. Here's an example.

• It's a penguin.
• Its a penguin.

• Another example intended to be possession.

• Its door is black.
• It's door is black.