Minecraft Wiki:Style guide

This article aims to provide a comprehensive style guide for all Minecraft Wiki articles to follow. There are often disputes over which style rule or formatting to use and hopefully the inclusion of an official style guide will help resolve these disputes as well as in helping to reach a consensus.

Although Wikipedia already provides a more general style guide, a more specific one is necessary for Minecraft specific guidelines. As such, only guidelines pertaining to the Minecraft Wiki and its basic formatting rules should be included here.

Writing
As this wiki's purpose is to document facts, you should always avoid speculative and unsourced information. Generally speaking, information does not require sources if they can directly be seen in-game or are otherwise obvious. Other information however, such as quotes from Mojang employees and information that is not widely known, must be sourced with a proper reference. The template should be placed after any information that requires a source. Do not add content to an article if you cannot find a proper source.

Articles in the main namespace should always be written in the third-person perspective and without terms referential to the reader. Try not to use abbreviations of words either. For instance, sentences like "You shouldn't come close to Creepers because they'll explode and kill you." should be written as "The player should not come close to Creepers as they will explode, potentially killing the player.".

To emphasis points, italics should be used, not bold or ALL CAPS.

Keeping articles concise and up to date
In short, articles should only contain information that is up to date, i.e., implemented in the latest full version of the game. Anything that is outdated should be moved to the History section of the article. When something changes, note the change in the History section and remove the outdated information from other sections of the article. It is unnecessary to mention when a particular feature was implemented; this is once again reserved for the History section of the article. Sentences such as "Trading, which was implemented in 1.3.1, is a feature that allows players to exchange emeralds (previously rubies) for other items." should be written as "Trading is a feature that allows players to exchange emeralds for other items."".

Here's an example of how to not write a good article. It uses a previous version of the Wood article. This is the full introduction. Highlighted in yellow is the redundant information, and in pink the history information.

Wood (previously known as log) is a type of block first seen in Minecraft Creative mode 0.0.14a They have a skin resembling bark on the four side faces, and a crosscut face on top and bottom. Only the normal oak logs are available in chunks generated before the Beta 1.2 update and all previous versions, whilst pine and birch will generate in newer chunks Wood is greatly abundant in naturally-generated maps, as it is used as the foundation for trees. Wood can be chopped by hand, but using an axe is faster. Wood is also flammable.

Of the current wood types, birch is the rarest type. They are often used to make plants, trees and wooden cabins. In Survival Test, wood blocks drop 3 - 5 wooden planks when mined. In Indev, Infdev, Alpha, and Beta, mining a wood block will drop a wood block instead. This allows the use of wood as a building material and is craftable into planks.

Wood's only crafting use is to be made into four wooden planks. In addition, wood can be burnt in a furnace to make charcoal as a substitute for Coal.

As of the Minecraft Beta 1.2 update on January 13, 2011, there are now four kinds of wood. One is the normal wood (Oak), another resembles the wood of silver birch trees, yet another type resembles the normal wood, but it is darker and appears in pine/conifer trees that grow in colder biomes, the fourth type is similar to the oak wood, however there are some color differences and it is tilted to one side. These wood blocks still produce 4 Wooden Planks when crafted. Wood from different types of trees will not stack in the inventory, but their planks will. Planks made from different kinds of trees are completely identical. Birch trees have slightly duller colored leaves than regular trees, pine trees have pine needles, and jungle leaves are leafy with fruit looking shapes on them.

The fourth type of wood was introduced in Snapshot 12w03a, solely occurring in Jungle Biomes, and comprising trees exclusive to them. The tallest trees have this type of wood in 2x2 dimensions instead of the normal 1x1.

The issue with this is that old information is scatted with new information. The introduction should state the current description of the block with the current release. History information is good, but for clarity, it should be described in the chronological order in a single place: the History section of the article.

These guidelines also apply for new snapshot releases. Snapshot changes should not be included into the main sections until the full update is released. These new changes should be in a Future section to prevent current users of the full release from confusing new features with the current ones. After the full update is released, then the previous info can be deleted and previous differences moved into the History section. The snapshot features/changes can then be incorporated into the main sections.

Grammar
Pages on the wiki should use American English unless the in-game name is British English. For instance, “colour” should be “color”, and “centre” should be “center”.

Capitalization
In-game items should be treated as common nouns and as such should not be capitalized. This includes fictional items, such as prismarine. The only exception to this are items that include a proper noun in the item's name, for instance: Ender chest or Nether wart. Proper nouns however, such the Nether or the Overworld should always be capitalized.

In-game structures should be lower case unless it contains a proper noun. Biome names should also be capitalized. Examples:
 * Underground, there are randomly generated abandoned mine shafts.
 * A desert temple contains precious loot.
 * Blazes spawn in Nether fortresses.
 * In Deep Ocean biomes, ocean monuments can generate.
 * A stronghold is home to an End portal.

Species of mobs that are fictional and only exist within the Minecraft world such as Creeper should be capitalized. Any other instance of a mob should be treated normally. If the word "the" is used before the mob name, it should not be capitalized unless it is at the beginning of the sentence.

Examples:
 * One of the most feared mobs is the Ghast.
 * A spider can poison its prey.

Do not capitalize "snapshot" or "pre-release". Also, "pre-release" should be in this form, not as "prerelease" or "Pre-Release". Development phases should be capitalized.

Editions should only be capitalized when used as nouns.

Examples:
 * Minecraft officially came out of Beta on November 18th, 2011''
 * The cyan flower was introduced in Pocket Edition Alpha 0.1.
 * ''Of all the editions of Minecraft only the Pocket and Pi Editions have cyan flowers.

The name of game mode types should also be capitalized.

Examples:
 * In Hardcore mode the game acts similar to Survival mode except the difficulty is permanently set to Hard.

Article titles and section headings
Article titles should be in sentence case, not title case, unless the phrases are proper nouns. They should also be in the singular form to maintain consistency. For section headings, follow sentence style capitalization, not title style, so only the first letter of the heading is capitalized.

Article main sections should start with level 2 headers (two equal signs) and increase by one for subsections. Never use level 1 headers (one equal sign). There should be one space between sections as well as one space between the equal signs and the section name for ease of editing. If any "main article" links or thumb images are used, place them immediately under the section header, and then a space after those before the section content. For information on which sections should be in which order, see the Article layout section of this style guide.

Italics
Any instance of "Minecraft" should be in italics. Any emphasis (in talk pages, etc.) should be in italics instead of being in bold or uppercase letters. Any instance of the name of a videogame should also be in italics. For instance: Team Fortress 3.

Image captions
Image captions should not have periods at the end, unless the phrase is a full sentence.

Overlinking and underlinking

 * For a complete guide to linking, please refer to Wikipedia's Manual of Style for links.

The use of links is a difficult balance between providing the reader enough useful links to allow them to "wander through" articles and excessive linking which can distract them from their reading flow.

Underlinking can cause the reader to become frustrated because questions may arise about the article's contents which can only be resolved by using the search option or other sources for clarification, interrupting and distracting the reader.

Overlinking may distract the reader because links are usually colored differently causing the eye to shift focus constantly. Additionally, if the same word is linked multiple times in the same paragraph it can cause the reader to question if the links are directing them to different articles or not.

The guidelines for linking are:


 * No more than 10 percent of the words in an article are contained in links.


 * Unless it affects the sentence's wording and readability in a negative way, two links should not be next to each other in the text so that it looks like one link.


 * Links for any single term should not be excessively repeated in the same article. Excessive linking is defined as multiple use of the same term, in a line or a paragraph, which will almost certainly appear needlessly on the viewer's screen. Remember, the purpose of links is to direct the reader to a new spot at the point(s) where the reader is most likely to take a temporary detour due to needing more information.


 * Duplicating an important link distant from a previous occurrence in an article may well be appropriate. If an important term appears many times in a long article, but is only linked once at the very beginning of the article, it may actually be underlinked. Indeed, readers who jump directly to a subsection of interest must still be able to find a link. But take care in fixing such problems, the distance between duplicate links is an editor's preference, however if in doubt duplicate the term further down the article.

Date formatting
The Minecraft Wiki is an international community. That is a good thing in general, but it makes a problem for numeric abbreviations of dates, such as "12/10/11": while most countries abbreviate dates as day/month/year, some Asian countries use year/month/day, and the US uses month/day/year. So the above date could represent any of three different dates. To avoid this problem, most dates should be written in "Month, DD, YYYY" format, e.g. "December 10, 2011". Do not use superscripts or suffixes such as "April 23rd" or "4th of May". If a numeric or terse date is needed (such as in a table), then use YYYY-MM-DD, always with 2 digits for month and day (e.g., 2011-12-10 or 2012-05-04). Besides being the ISO standard, dates in this format will naturally sort properly, say if the table column is later made sortable.

Redstone structures
Write-ups for redstone circuits and mechanisms should follow a single convention on the wiki.

Article layout
All articles (with the exception of few) should use the following layout. Ensure section titles have one return space above them, one return space below them, and a space on either side of the title inside the equal signs. main article templates or any images in that section are placed directly under the section header with the return space below these.


 * At the very top, applicable flags and templates, such as snapshot for anything not yet in the full release, Block for blocks, and so on.


 * Introduction with a general description.


 * Article body, starting with first header.

''Note: Keep in mind these are supposed to be h2 (two ='s). For the purpose of formatting on this page only, they are h3 (three ='s).

Introduction
The introduction section of an article is the section before the first heading. It should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, briefly describing its most important points.

The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the prose within the first sentence, and should appear in boldface. Only the first instance should be in boldface. For example:
 * Pickaxes are one of the most commonly used tools in the game, being required to mine all ores and many other types of blocks. Different qualities of pickaxe are required to successfully harvest certain ores and blocks.

In-game description
This section includes in-game descriptions for items as they appear in current editions of Minecraft which include them.

Each edition's description should be a level-3 subsection, and include the text in italics. If the article describes multiple different blocks or items which have different descriptions, the descriptions should be on separate paragraphs, prefixed with the block/item subtype (not in italics). Nothing else should be added to the section and the text should be exactly as in-game even if it is factually wrong, or contains spelling or grammar errors. The subsection's header should be a link to the article about the Minecraft edition.

Obtaining
For blocks and items, this section contains information on how to obtain them in Survival mode without cheats. This includes information on blocks and items that generate naturally.

If there are multiple ways to obtain the block or item, these should be listed as a bullet list or as subsections of this section.

If there is only one way to obtain the block or item, this section may be named alternatively, e.g. Smelting or Crafting.

Usage
For blocks and items, this section contains information on what can be done with them. This includes using the article subject as a crafting or smelting ingredient, as food, or for trading, or exploiting special properties of a block, like using a button to create a redstone pulse.

Like the Obtaining section, this section should be divided into subsections or named alternatively if appropriate, e.g. As a crafting ingredient if the block or item is used in a crafting recipe.

Filling this section with tips on architecture and interior design should generally be avoided.

Any other sections go here, between Usage and Data values.

Data values
This section contains a list of possible Data values for the block or item in question. The list should be on a subpage of the main article, e.g. Coal/DV, and use dvt. The subpage should then be transcluded into the Data values section with  .

If the section contains any descriptive text in addition to the list, this text should also be included in the /DV subpage.

Achievements
This section contains any achievements related to the article subject. Achievement sections should be transcluded using load achievements, then a | and the achievement name. E.g.  .

Video
The video section contains the video produced on the Minecraft Community Spotlight YouTube channel by Curse. Videos in this section should be embedded in a subpage of the main article, e.g. Block/video, and then transcluded into the Video section with  . The only thing that should be in this section is the  , with exception to notes that correct anything wrong in the video, or if the video isn't in that article's subpage, like    on the String page.

History
History sections should use History. To provide accuracy, changes made in snapshots should retain the exact version of the change even when the update is released (e.g., 12w08a in addition to 1.2). This can be done using the   parameter of    (e.g.,   ).

Issues
The Issues section should only contain Issue list. Nothing else goes in this section.

Trivia
Trivia should only be facts and contain no speculation or opinion. Trivia sections should only contain information that does not fit anywhere else in the article. Trivia should not be obvious to players and should be information that readers are not likely to know but would be interested in.

History-related trivia should be avoided if possible. E.g. “The original piston texture had an iron band running over the head. This was later removed, only leaving iron brackets around the corners and edges” should be merged into the relevant version information in the History section.

Trivia related to game visuals should be avoided as well, especially if the piece of trivia does not hold true for custom resource packs.

Trivia should not state how a characteristic of a block, item, mob, or other game element relates to the characteristics of others. This includes, but is not limited to, listing other game elements that share a certain characteristic, listing items that do not share a certain characteristic, or stating that a game element is the first or only one to have a certain characteristic.