Oddworld Wiki:Content organization guidelines

This page contains the Oddworld Wiki's content organization guidelines. It describes the way in which content on this wiki should be named, organized and categorized.

Content organization Edit
The purpose of a wiki is, ultimately, to be an easy to find source of credible information. Therefor it helps to make information as easy to find as possible, and organize them in a logical way.

Categorization and overview pages help readers find content in case they do not know the exact name of what they are looking for. Although categorization helps and is necessary, it should not be relied upon too heavily for navigating the wiki. Generally, readers should be able to reach pages by following links in articles or navigational aids rather than having to search through categories. Of course, some people prefer the direct method of using categories; others are put off by having to use them. For this reason, it should always be possible to find a given article through both methods.

In addition, content organization helps improve the overall quality of a wiki. If the content is not properly organized, repetition and redundancy will occur. While that may not seem bad at first glance, it inevitably leads to conflicting and/or incomplete information found in the various articles instead of complete and correct information in one place. In turn, this is detrimental to the wiki's reliability and its reputation.

Redundancy and repetition Edit

 * Redundancy and repetition should be avoided. There should only be a single article (or section of an article) where a given topic is presented in full detail. Other pages should link to the page with the details instead of repeating them.
 * Only information that is directly relevant to the subject of a given article should be included in that article.

Naming Edit

 * Article and category names should be as precise and at the same time as short as possible.
 * Article, section and category names should not be overcapitalized, unless established in-universe spelling dictates otherwise. An example would be "Oddworld series" instead of "Oddworld Series".
 * If the spelling used on the wiki is different from the in-universe spelling, a redirect from the in-universe spelling should be created.
 * Article names should be singular (i.e. "Glukkon", not" Glukkons"). Overview pages may use plurals where needed.
 * Category names should be plural unless this impossible or awkward to do.

Disambiguation Edit

 * If two articles share a name one of them should contain a clarification in the article's title. (i.e. RuptureFarms vs RuptureFarms (Abe's Oddysee), the latter one being a level guide for a level of the same name). If you are unsure which article should contain the clarification, raise the issue with fellow editors. In addition a navigation notice should be used on such pages.
 * If more than two articles share a name (i.e. Zulag 1 can refer to multiple different articles) a clarification should be added to all pages with the same name, and a disambiguation page should be created that links to all possible articles the name may refer to.

Categorization Edit

 * All content pages (articles and files) should belong to at least one category which is not a maintenance category. Maintenance categories are all subcategories of Category:Attention required. Disambiguation pages and redirects are not considered articles in the sense of this rule.
 * A content page should be placed in only the most specific category (or categories) out of a given branch of the category tree. The question you should ask yourself is: Is category A a (more) specific version of category B? If that is the case, the page should only be in category A. For example RuptureFarms should only be in Category: Industrial Locations as this is more specific than just Category: Locations. Similarly, Abe should only be in Category: Mudokons characters as this is more specific than just Category: Characters. Of course it is possible that an article can logically belong into two or more categories, as long as each category is the most specific one available in all categorie branches.
 * An article should always be categorized by characteristics of the topic, not characteristics of the article. For example, a character that is strongly linked to a location should not be categorized under any location category, as the topic of the article is about the character itself.
 * An article should never be left with a non-existent (red link) category on it. Either the category should be created (most easily by clicking on the red link), or else the link should be removed or changed to a category that does exist.
 * User pages should not be placed in content categories. They may be placed in certain categories which explicitly allow to do so, otherwise they should remain uncategorized.

Articles with multiple appearances Edit
If the subject of an article appears in multiple games or books in the Oddworld series, there should only be a single article that covers all appearances, divided into distinct sections. Each section may go into as much detail as necessary.