Kirby Wiki:Editor's Manual

Welcome to the Editor's Manual! Whether you are new to editing Wikis in general or Kirby Wiki, or you are a veteran in the Wiki scene, this manual is the starting point to familiarize yourself with the techniques of editing articles in Kirby Wiki, as well as the styles and formatting used locally. We do realize it is a long article - it is not meant to be read as an article; it serves as a reference manual for stylistic approaches to editing.

Please note that this manual is written as a set of instructions, and uses the words "you", "your" etc. These words should not be used in articles, and should be replaced with "Kirby", "the player" or other words befitting the context.

Introduction
This manual is based off of Wikipedia's own manual of style, with adaptations for Kirby Wiki's content. Guidelines concerning user pages, behavior, signatures, or other content otherwise not related to writing articles are covered in Kirby Wiki's policy page.

Both Wikipedia and Kirby Wiki stress the keyword consistency. Style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, if not across the whole Wiki. Editors should not change an article which follows the guidelines of style outlined in this manual to another without substantial and justifiable reason, unrelated to mere personal choice of style.

Sandbox
The Sandbox is a useful tool for editors to test out their edits without risking changing an article or page in a way that was not intended. At any time, if you are not sure about what a particular edit would do to a page, perform the edit in the sandbox to see if it gives the intended effect before applying it to the page.

Editing articles
Articles are at the heart of every wiki, and they are the reason for the majority of readers visiting one. As such, Kirby Wiki has certain measures of quality control of what should be included in an article and what should not; they are along the lines of Wikipedia's own.

This section covers how to edit articles in Kirby Wiki. For the actual (technical) methods of editing i.e. how to add links, tables, etc, please see Help:Editing, which is a copy of the help from Help Wiki transcluded into Kirby Wiki by default.

Writing
Kirby Wiki is a wiki that aims to document every aspect of the Kirby series as well as certain subjects related to Kirby professionally. Therefore, while most information added to articles are taken to have been added in good faith, in almost all cases, they are checked against sources for factual reliability, and any incorrect information is removed. It is oftentimes very helpful if the editor puts where the information came from within a reference (see the section ), or at least within the edit summary box before publishing it, since it would clear up any form of conflicting information from sources, and they can be checked against each other.

Articles should be written in clear and plain English, without unnecessary jargon, vagueness, or complex wording (for more information, see Wikipedia's guide on vagueness). Ideally, it should document the subject as clearly as possible without causing possible ambiguous interpretations. One particular thing to note is to avoid using the word "you". E.g. "You must press the B button to make Sword Kirby perform his basic attack". The word "you" should be replaced by "The player", or in certain cases, "Kirby", or the name of the playable character.

Guidelines on professional writing style:
 * Perception, inference, and cohesion - why your writing means different things to different people

What does not belong
Most of the time, information is removed because they fall into one of the following categories. These are things which do not belong in Kirby Wiki:


 * Fan art (See section )
 * Commentaries
 * Expletives, language suggesting unnecessary violence
 * Personal signatures in articles (see section )
 * Fanon
 * Information without a reliable source


 * Words to watch, from Wikipedia's Manual of Style

Articles in Kirby Wiki document a particular subject, and aims for neutrality in point-of-view, presenting the facts as they are. Personal commentaries are subject to opinion, detract from, and are unrelated to the actual subject of the article, and so do not belong within the article. Kirby Wiki covers real subjects about Kirby, and therefore fanon does not fall within this category.

Sometimes when new information is added, it is of a nature which contests the information already within the article, or is otherwise at least slightly controversial. These are always cross-checked against existing sources before being passed as a valid edit, as otherwise the information can either be personal opinion or theory, or just being plain false. To give patrollers an easier time, and to make sure the information stays, cite the source where you got it from (see section ), since patrollers may not have checked it against a legitimate source where the information might have come from.

Plagiarism
The licence used for Kirby Wiki on Wikia is the CC-by-SA 3.0 licence (for details, see Licensing on Wikia Central). What it means, without jargon, is that articles have no ownership, and it belongs to the Wiki and community as a whole. It allows anyone to edit the article, with good or bad reason, and it goes against the licence to prevent people from doing so, unless their point of intent is clearly not in the best interests of the Wiki. This licence also allows anyone to take the article in its entirety and post it anywhere they like. While this counts as plagiarism in most cases, and Kirby Wiki does have policies against plagiarism from Kirby Wiki (to a degree) and articles plagiarized from elsewhere, it is allowed under the licence for the Wiki.

Therefore, if you do not wish for your work to be allowed for countless duplications over the internet, then please do not put it inside the Wiki.

Regarding plagiarized content from other places, copying and pasting content directly as-is from Wikpedia is not allowed due to incompatible licences. However, this does not mean you cannot read and distill the information, and compose the article about the same subject on Kirby Wiki. Likewise, concerning sources from other wikis and Kirby's Rainbow Resort, blatant plagiarism and copy-pasting is not tolerated, and will be removed.

Formatting
Kirby Wiki has relatively simple formatting guidelines compared to certain other wikis. For help on the actual formatting of text, see Help:Editing

Italicizing titles
In Kirby Wiki, all titles i.e. the names of games and the anime are italicized. This means when using the name "Kirby's Dream Land", you should put it as Kirby's Dream Land. Please note that this does not apply to sub-games, anime episodes, or any other subjects which may be taken as "titles".

e.g. The Great Cave Offensive is stylistically incorrect, as it is a sub-game in Kirby Super Star Ultra. It should be referred to as simply The Great Cave Offensive. Along the same lines, titles for the episodes of the anime, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, should not be italicized as well. e.g. Kirby Comes to Cappy Town is correct, while Kirby Comes to Cappy Town is not.

The italicizing is for highlighting small sections of text which refer to titles in a long paragraph, or in one with many links, as well as differentiating between what is being referred to by certain phrases. Although not encouraged, Dream Land is sometimes used as short notation for the 1992 game Kirby's Dream Land, while Dream Land refers to Kirby's home land. Squeak Squad refers to Kirby: Squeak Squad, while Squeak Squad refers to the band of mice thieves in the game, and the list goes on.

Emphasis formatting
Bolded and underlined text is very, very rarely used in Kirby Wiki, primarily because they can be very distracting, and they are unnecessary. The one case bold is used is on the first length of text in an article which matches the article name. For example, on the article Kirby, the first word "Kirby" in the article is bolded.

Bolded, underlined, or italicized text, when used for emphasis, is to be used extremely sparingly. This is on grounds that not has the same meaning as the plain word "not", and it applies for every other word. The exception would be when quoting characters, since formatting would convey the stressed or more important words that the character is actually speaking. When it is used, it is preferably italics over any other type of formatting.

CAPITAL LETTERS are frowned upon in Wikipedia and likewise in Kirby Wiki. It is not the proper literal way to emphasize a point in English, and it is simply a lazy way to put emphasis on a length of text without formatting. One case where capitals should be used is when reproducing actual text which is capitalized in the game; Capitals are sometimes used in-game for emphasis because game engines do not always support font styling.

Internal links
Links to other articles should be added within each article, so related subjects to the article can be navigated to. If you're not clear on what kind of linking can be used, please see Help: Editing. It covers internal links, piped links, and external links, the uses of which are discussed here.

Internal links should be used as often as possible. These are sections of words enclosed within double brackets   and   . Articles within Kirby Wiki should always be linked to using internal links. If the name of the link itself is not what is meant to be displayed, use piped links, which displays the link differently.

e.g. episode

gives episode - note it still links to the article "Kirby Comes to Cappy Town", but is seen as the word "episode"

Internal links with prefix
Links to Wikipedia and likewise other wikis can be performed using internal links, and this is greatly preferred over the external link format, as it displays the link via a tooltip.

To link to wikipedia, use the wikipedia: prefix

e.g.

Kirby

gives Kirby - a link to Kirby's page on the English wikipedia. Note that if we had used the external link format instead, which gives Kirby, the tooltip is absent, and the reader has no indication of where the link leads to unless he/she glances at the status bar on the browser.

Images
For seasoned Wiki editors, one thing to note is that Kirby Wiki does not have rules as strict as certain other wikis for image licensing. We also have contrasting policies with Wikipedia in particular, in the case of image resolution.

Image policies
While Wikipedia generally shrinks images posted on articles down to about 200 pixels wide to satisfy their fair-use license, Kirby Wiki encourages the use images of as high a resolution as possible. Wikipedia shrinks it down because the images are used for the purposes of illustration. Kirby Wiki's images are not only used as illustration supporting an article, but they are also a subject and a document in themselves, since the only images on the wiki only come from official sources on Kirby. Therefore it is logical that if Kirby Wiki chooses to cover Kirby material, and in this case, images, they should be of as high quality as possible, while heeding the fact that all of them are to be treated as being copyrighted material mostly owned by Nintendo as well as HAL Laboratory Inc.

One particular case where a higher resolution image is not desired is when uploading sprites used in-game. Sprites at their original size are the best - scaled ones e.g. one pixel becomes four - are less desirable, since it only blows up the image and the actual true resolution (the actual detail of the sprite) remains the same.

Personal images are allowed on user pages, but please bear in mind that Kirby Wiki is not a repository for personal images or a place to showcase them like DeviantArt, so if that's what you are looking for, please find alternative sites to host personal images. Otherwise, a small number of them (usually 3-5) are allowed per user to express themselves on their user page, but if they are not being used, they run the risk if deletion, as unused images are cleaned out every once in a while.

Image criteria
Images can come from anywhere, but it must satisfy the following conditions before it is considered suitable for an article:
 * Not ripped from another Kirby Wiki or Kirby's Rainbow Resort - unless you can find the actual source where they got it from and get it from there, or ask permission from them nicely and get their approval to use their image
 * Official art - Kirby Wiki's articles only uses images relevant to Kirby, drawn by artists in Nintendo or its development studios. If an unofficial one is found to be in use, it should be removed, while saying which source hosted the unofficial image or otherwise prove it as a non-first party piece of work.
 * Illustrative - The image serves its intended effect. If it is a map, for example, if the resolution is too low to make out the details, then it has no practical use

Uploading images
Before you upload an image, first check to see whether the relevant articles already have a version of the image you have in mind that can be used. If it is of lower quality, head to the image page, and replace it (as long as both of them have the same file extension). Otherwise, use an existing image or upload one if the Wiki doesn't have one.

Including images
Wikipedia has a really in-depth article on how to include pictures within an article. See Picture Tutorial

File extension / MIME type
Images are most commonly formatted under .jpg, .png, .bmp, .gif, .tiff, and several other extensions. Ideally, Kirby Wiki prefers images formatted under the extension .png (in lower-case), although .jpg and .gif images are commonly found and used on the Wiki. This is because .png images support transparency, and .gif images are limited to 256 colors. It goes without saying that .jpg or .jpeg images are subject to compression, jpeg artifacts and loss of quality.

Likewise, .bmp and .tiff images have unnecessarily large file sizes for the purposes of images in this wiki, and should be avoided.

Image extraction
Images can be saved into the PC right from HTML-based pages. However, certain website's contents are contained within a flash document, usually .swf (Small Web Format) files. These files are usually protected.

To find this document's source from within the HTML page, inspect the page (using Firefox / Chrome / otherwise) and browse the resources for .swf files. Certain pages load multiple .swf files using JavaScript only when they are triggered. Save the .swf files onto your computer.

Now, even if you own a copy of Adobe/Macromedia Flash, you cannot open these files to access their assets and scripts directly because they are protected. In order to bypass this protection, get a flash decompiler program (see here) and extract the assets through the decompiler. Just bear in mind that all contents from the protected file are almost always copyrighted material - that's why the file was protected in the first place. If being used on this wiki, please make sure it qualifies under fair use.

Referencing
All information comes from a certain source. There is a highly subjective line of what can generally be accepted as a fact when taken as-is, and what should have its source cited. Kirby Wiki does not have strict guidelines on the citation of facts, but generally information under the likes of release dates and those of controversial nature should have a link to their source, so readers can check for themselves whether the information is good or it is of dubious nature.

To make a reference, insert ref tags behind the statement, and put the external link within the tags. Finally, create a section called References at the end of the article, and put the   references tag under it like this:

For example, if you wants to prove where the name for the item Pep Brew came from, you would do this: Pep Brew

and then create the References section at the end of the article with:

Title abbreviations
The Kirby series library of games and other media is extensive. While abbreviations of titles to their initials should not be used within articles, they are highly useful internally in template calls and parameters, since it bypasses the need to key in the entire title. Where applicable, these abbreviations tag images as well, so the most relevant ones to a particular title can be searched for by searching for the abbreviation. Please note that the abbreviations are case-sensitive.

The template where abbreviations are particularly relevant is Template:PortalLogo, where it transforms whichever title or abbreviation that is input into the title's logo. Check the template's documentation to see which titles are supported with logos, as well as abbreviation suffixes.

New Articles
Wikipedia has a short article on the creation of new pages titled "Editors are not mindreaders". It is highly recommended for anyone looking to create a new article.

It is recommended that before you create the article that you familiarize yourself with the guidelines above about editing articles first, since creating an article from scratch requires at least some degree of knowledge about all aspects. Then, ask yourself whether you have enough to say about the subject of the article, and whether you can make the article at least presentable when finished, with links, proper formatting, sectioning, images, and if need be, references. It never is good practice to leave an article half-finished in writing or formatting or otherwise for someone else to clean up - to the readers, such articles are poorly written when compared to the rest of the Wiki, does not present itself well, and more often than not, ends up being deleted.

A good idea of what a new but short article should look like if it is created is this link to the first edit of the article on the Cats-Eye Lighthouse.

Along the lines of that example, a new article should aim to provide a comprehensive, if not detailed overview of the subject when created. If that is not possible, you probably doesn't have enough to say about the subject to create the article.

Tags
Of course, sometimes certain articles are presentable, but require something specific. If that's the case, they should be tagged with templates which automatically categorize them into maintenance categories, so other editors know what to do about it. The list of tags available at Kirby Wiki is here. Usage instructions are within the tags' pages themselves.

Categorization
New articles should be categorized at the start (however, all too often, they are not). Before categorizing it, check similar articles for their categorization and see if the new article fits. If it does, categorize it under the same category, checking for correct capitalization, since categories are case-sensitive.

Templates
Templates are a feature of the PHP code powering Mediawiki. They enable the creation of pages which are meant to be used within other pages, and can feature some form of scripting in the form of parser functions. They are highly useful to include something multiple times in a page, conditional display of certain items, and features along those lines, but are generally not needed in a typical article (besides the infobox, which is a good example of a template)

Using templates requires somewhat more advanced understanding of the wikicode syntax than what is covered so far, and they are best edited using source mode. Since they are essentially scripts, a single syntax error in the form of a misplaced punctuation mark can make the whole template break down, so test for effect within the sandbox if you are not confident with the code before saving the change.

Using templates
Existing templates can be called within an article by enclosing the template page's name within double curly brackets  . Make sure to read the template's documentation on the template page on how to use them.

Creating templates
Template pages can only be created in source editing mode, and can be significantly more complicated than actually using the created templates. It is not recommended for beginners, and is not particularly relevant to the content covered in this manual.

Talk page
Talk pages are for discussing about an article or to contact a specific user. To access a page's talk page, click the Talk link near the Facebook button if you're using the Oasis skin, or the Talk tab if you're using the Monobook skin.

If you have ideas about how the page can be improved, or wish to contest certain content within an article, or wish to suggest a page split, merge etc., raise the issue within the talk page of that article. Personal opinions e.g. "I love this game!" are not outright rule-breaking, but they are not constructive to the article and are frowned upon and strongly discouraged.

There is something very important about talk pages that does not apply elsewhere to the wiki that you have to know before you put content inside:


 * Material cannot be removed from a talk page (any and all talk pages) unless it qualifies under spam, advertisements, off-color material, expletives, purely inflammatory / derogatory statements, personal threats etc. where that said material degrades the quality of the page by simply being there. If someone else posts such content on any talk page, please notify an an admin. This does not include the statements of other people who disagree with you or administrator messages or block notices.

Any other material cannot be removed, so pick your words wisely when talking to other people! If you wish to cancel a previous statement, enclose it within strikethrough HTML tags  ... , like this:

This statement needs a strikethrough. Gives:

This statement needs a strikethrough.

If you wish to cancel a picture or a link (blue or red links), enclose it within pre tags, like this, so it appears as its original code:

  ... 

User namespaces
A namespace is a special code given to pages of a certain type: e.g. "Template", or "User", "User_talk", or "User_blog". Any editor's user page (the page contained in your profile tab) can only be edited by him / herself or another editor with administrator privileges. Everybody's talk page is public and can be edited by anybody else - this is everyone's primary means of contact.

Your user space is your own private space to express yourself and is not subject to the majority of restrictions on the rest of the site, but there are several things to take note of:

User page

 * There should be no spam, ads or off-color material on the user page - these should not be anywhere on the site or they will be removed by administrators
 * Images not relevant to Kirby or unofficial images are limited to "a few", usually 3-5, and these can only be used on your own profile page. See . If you wish to exhibit your own art gallery or otherwise non-official material, simply upload them to an alternative site as detailed under Image policies and post the link on your profile page. This is the preferred method, as it does not flood the wiki's image library with fan art and unofficial images.
 * There is no limit to how many user sub pages you can create, but these are subject to the same rules that govern your profile page. Generally people use these to contain their signature or use them as personal sandboxes.

User talk
This is everybody's primary means of contact. The guidelines which govern this namespace is almost identical to article talk pages (See ), but since this is users' talk pages, small-talk, opinions etc. are alright.

The Help Out portal
Now that one is familiar with the general guidelines, one can help with the Wiki's pages by visiting the Portal page, or browse through articles and improve on just about anything.

Dynamic Lister
Every wiki has maintainence categories, most commonly stubs, articles requriring clean-up, images, and things like that. These are covered by the section before. On the help out portal, there is a dynamic lister that lists articles requiring such maintainence by type, so those are the places which requires the most attention. It does not list all the articles in a category, since there'd be about a hundred in each category. Rather, purge the page by clicking on the purge button and a different set of four will be displayed. Should one choose the see the whole list, click on the letter C beneath the image of the category.

Nerve Center
The Nerve Center is essentially a transcluded Special:RecentChanges, but with sorted RSS feeds of most recent changes to pages categorized by namespace. Most users wouldn't need this, but it allows for patrollers and seasoned editors to check out the latest changes to the wiki by namespace

Resources
Information helpful to editing, but not relevant to any particular article is found under this category. There's more to this section than it looks, especially if one is new to editing wikis.

Closing words
This manual explains the basic essence of editing at Kirby Wiki, and while it provides a good foundation, it is not comprehensive. The community at Kirby Wiki is largely friendly; so if there is any uncertainty, simply approach a user or an admin and ask.

The community of Kirby Wiki appreciates you for taking the time to read this. We hope that you enjoy your stay here. (return to Help Out portal)

AutoWikiBrowser
This section is recommended to experienced / advanced wiki users only.

AutoWikiBrowser is a MediaWiki editor for Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7. It is capable of semi-automating edits as well as other functions like Regex (Regular expression) typo fix.

To enable AutoWikiBrowser at Kirby Wiki, first download and extract the zip file off its page on Wikipedia and run AutowikiBrowser.exe. Under "options" on the menu bar, select preferences.

There's 2 equivalent steps next; if the first one doesn't work, try the second.


 * 1) On the window that pops up, select the "site" tab. Under the project combo box (drop-down box), select "wikia". Under the "http://" combo box, type in "kirby" without quotes. Click on the OK button to close the window. If you get an error message, it means it did not connect to the server successfully.
 * 2) Alternatively, select the "site" tab. In the project combo box, select "custom". Under the "http://" combo box, type in exactly "kirby.wikia.com" without quotes.

Now go to "file" under the menu bar, select "Log-in / Profiles". Either perform a quick login by typing in your username and password directly, or to add them for later use, click the "add" button.

Users without administrator privileges might have to be registered under a special page before AutoWikiBrowser can be used. (It remains untested). If that's the case, just contact an administrator and we will try to fix it.

Extra reading

 * Wikipedia: Essays on building Wikipedia