Help:Editing guide
This editing guide, commonly called the Guide, is meant to serve two main purposes: to help new editors get started with improving the Wiki, as well as to provide a comprehensive resource for all editors, regardless of experience, to find answers and resolve editing issues. The Guide should always get the last say whenever there is a dispute between editors to avoid needless conflicts.
If you are a new editor, welcome! You should read the entire Guide to help you become a better editor for this Wiki. If you are a more experienced editor with any questions or confusion, see if the Guide can help. If it can't, discuss your issue on the talk page.
How to contribute
Contributing to this Wiki requires editing privileges. To receive editing privileges, first create an account on this Wiki. You must then ask for editor privileges from an administrator on either (a) the OWOT Discord server or (b) the developer's personal Developer's OWOT page (preferably in chat). Once you have editing privileges, congratulations! Your mission now is to maintain and improve an extremely helpful resource. To carry out this mission, you must enhance the articles on this Wiki by editing them. Don't worry if you have very little to add. Small edits add up on a wiki, and every editor can be proud to have made this Wiki better for all.
Editing is easy; to edit, simply click on either the Edit tab for the Visual Editor or the Edit source tab for the Source Editor. Using the Visual Editor allows you to edit articles without the need to learn wikitext markup, using a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor. The Source Editor, on the other hand, allows you to edit an article's wikitext, although this requires knowledge of wikitext markup. See Wikipedia's cheatsheet for the most commonly used wiki markup.
You should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit box when you have finished editing. To see how the page looks with your edits, press the "Show preview" button. To see the differences between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page, press the "Show changes" button. If you're satisfied with what you see, press the "Publish changes" button. Your changes will immediately be visible to everyone on this Wiki.
A recommended method of improving the Wiki is to go to a random page. Edit the article as much as you can, even if you have very little to add. Once the article has been improved to a satisfying degree, repeat with another random article. Other ways to improve the Wiki include fixing red links, which are quite common due to many internal articles being imported from Wikipedia and de-orphaning orphaned articles (see Our World of Text:State of the Wiki § Orphaned articles for more on orphaned articles).
No firm rules
The Guide is meant to ensure the quality of articles on this Wiki, as well as avoid needless disputes, so it is usually best to follow the Guide. It is not, however, carved in stone; its content and interpretation can evolve. If the Guide truly prevents you from improving this Wiki, just ignore it. Be bold, but not reckless, in updating articles. Remember, of course, others may and likely will edit what you write; don't take it personally! Keep in mind also that vandalism will be quickly reverted and may result in loss of editing privileges. Finally, do not worry about making mistakes: they can be corrected easily because almost every past version of each article is saved.
Guidelines
This Wiki aims to be neutral, understandable, and informative. Every article should be written unbiasedly, factually, and formally. The Wiki should leave no questions unanswered for anyone reading the Wiki. Never assume prior knowledge. Someone completely new to OWOT should be able to understand everything. For example, do not write:
fg is a retarded activity by textwallers
In addition to being a grammatically invalid and non-neutral sentence, this very brief article raises many questions that someone unfamiliar with OWOT might not know the answers to. What is fg? Why do people hate it? Who are textwallers? A better article about this topic would start something like this:
Fictional googlology (FG or fg) is the niche hobby of assigning Unicode characters as names for fictional numbers. Fictional googology is common, as well as widely accepted, on TextWall, but it faces near-universal stigmatization among OWOT's users. While fictional googology is meant to be an offshoot of standard googology, it is typically regarded by OWOT's users as more of an art project that primarily serves as entertainment for children than a mathematical pursuit. People who engage in fictional googology are known as fictional googologists, FGers, or FGists.
If you create an article like the one above—with only one paragraph—always remember to use {{stub}} to mark it as a stub. Again, articles should be unbiased and neutral, regardless of how the OWOT community feels about the topic.
A final word on orphaned articles: orphaned articles are articles that no other articles link to, making them nearly unreachable and, as such, effectively useless. To ensure all articles are accessible, cross-reference articles and combine smaller articles into larger, more comprehensive ones whenever possible. See Our World of Text:State of the Wiki § De-orphaning orphaned articles for more ways to de-orphan articles.
What this Wiki is not
Hopefully, by now, you know this Wiki should be a neutral, understandable, and informative resource containing articles written unbiasedly, factually, and formally. With that in mind, here is what this Wiki is not.
This Wiki is not a chat
Do not use this Wiki for the sole purpose of messaging other users. Please try to stay on the task of creating a Wiki. You can chat with people about Wiki-related topics on their user talk page, and should resolve problems with articles on the relevant talk pages, but please do not take the discussion into articles. In addition, bear in mind that article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article, nor are they a help desk for obtaining instructions or technical assistance. Material unsuitable for talk pages may be subject to removal per the talk page guidelines. OWOT has both a built-in chat and a Discord server; both are better places to chat than this Wiki.
This Wiki is not a forum
Do not use this Wiki to comment on the subject of an article; you can do that literally anywhere else on OWOT! You may discuss the contents of an article on its talk page, but only if necessary and relevant to improving the article in question; use a different platform if you wish to convince people of the merits of your opinions.
Content guidelines
While suitable guidelines remain roughly the same with minor variations from article to article, the following are specific guidelines associated with, but not necessarily limited to, certain articles in the mainspace.
Worlds
All Wiki articles documenting OWOT worlds should have the following standardized sections (if applicable) in this order:
- Beginning
- Description
- History
- Users
Use {{subst:World}}, save the article, and then start editing again to quickly get a template you can fill in.
All Wiki articles about OWOT worlds should be named the partial world URL (slash included), with capitalization matching the official world URL (which can be seen by warping to the world). The article on /fp, for example, should be named /fp, not /FP, Fp, or Fp's world.
Users
All Wiki articles documenting users of OWOT should have the following standardized sections (if applicable) in this order:
- Beginning
- Description
- History
- Aliases
- Achievements
- Art
- Scripts
- Worlds
- Relationships
Use {{subst:User}}, save the article, and then start editing again to quickly get a template you can fill in.
Only the article with the complete username of a user's current main account should contain the article about the user. Articles with nicknames or aliases should redirect to the article on the complete username. Articles must be kept separate from user pages; use Template:About user if necessary.
Be particularly careful to remain completely unbiased and neutral when editing articles about OWOT users. You can describe users while avoiding being biased or offensive by writing factually.
Remember that you do not possess exclusive rights to the Wiki article about yourself. You may be the primary or even the only contributor to the article, but do not get offended if another editor edits it in a way they see fit. You do, however, have wide latitude to dictate what goes in your user space.
Functionality
All Wiki articles documenting aspects of OWOT's functionality should be in the category Documentation.
Style
In general, all articles should be grammatical, with the style consistent throughout the entire article. Articles on this Wiki should not read like chat logs; at the very least, they should have proper sentence structure and spelling. If you ever have any doubts about how something should be styled, refer to the Manual of Style (MoS). If the MoS doesn't resolve your issue, visit the MoS talk page to discuss adding to the MoS.
For quick reference, see the following table, which contains acceptable styles for some of the most common areas of usage.
| Area of usage | Acceptable styles |
|---|---|
| Referring to Our World of Text | OWOT, Our World of Text |
| Referring to this Wiki | (This) Wiki, (the) OWOT Wiki, (the) Our World of Text Wiki |
| Linking an OWOT world | An external link displaying the partial world URL (slash included) and linking to full URL of the world, which can be created using either using normal wiki markup or {{owoturl}} (for example, [https://ourworldoftext.com/main /main] → /main or {{owoturl|main}} → /main)
|
| Referring to OWOT users | Complete username of user's current main account or most commonly used nickname |
See also
- Our World of Text:State of the Wiki – A brief description of the current state of articles on this Wiki
- Help:Manual of Style – An overview of all style guidelines of this Wiki