Minecraft Wiki talk:Style guide/Features

Packed galleries?
The style guide for features articles specifies (or at least implies) using the plain gallery tag. Are there any objections to allowing (or even changing to) "packed" galleries? Compare these:


 * Plain gallery:

&mdash;munin &middot;  &middot; 18:11, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . I like the fact that the packed galleries make it easier to view the images, but they do appear a little bit messier due to the inconsistent widths. I would agree to testing it on a few articles and seeing how people like it from there. – KnightMiner  · (t) 21:48, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . The inconsistent widths look very unprofessional to me, and I don't see any improvement to viewing the images. —Fenhl 12:16, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Video notes
I propose stating in the guide that video note should be above the video itself. As far as I can tell, this is how it is currently done in most articles, and it should be specified here for consistency. —Fenhl 12:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . – KnightMiner  · (t) 14:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . —Fenhl 15:47, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Double space
What is the intended meaning of “After references (double space) wil be […]”? Does it mean that there should be two newlines in the wikitext after the References section, generating a regular paragraph break? Or three newlines, generating a double paragraph break? In any case, I think this should be clarified, because this is currently very inconsistent among different articles. —Fenhl 12:23, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, you use two empty lines after the references (or three newlines, double paragraph break), as to generate a visible line before the navbox, basically like used at the end this page. I am not sure if that was the original intention, but I do believe it looks better having that empty space before the navboxes start – KnightMiner  · (t) 14:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Personally I find it unusual and have “corrected” it in the past because most other wikis I read tend to use a single paragraph break here. —Fenhl 14:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * As did I. — Agent NickTheRed37 (talk) 16:08, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Can we change the style guide to remove the double space guideline? It is confusing, and if intended as you describe creates an arbitrary layout rule that I personally always forget, has no precedence that I know of in other wikis, is often mistaken by editors as a typo, and only helps readability in minor ways. If we don't remove it, it should definitely be reworded. —Fenhl 19:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Remove the double-space guideline. I think this was originally intended to separate article content from meta-content (language links, categories, etc.). &mdash;munin &middot; Grid_Book_and_Quill.png Grid_Stone_Pickaxe.png &middot; 15:01, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I like the double spaces as I mentioned above (assuming that is what it means) but I really don't see the point of enforcing something so minor as this, especially since so many editors here seem to find it as an error in articles (especially those who first started on another wiki). – KnightMiner  · (t) 16:52, 23 December 2015 (UTC)


 * . —Fenhl 18:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

History section
The history section in this page does not mention what belongs in the section. – LauraFi -  talk  01:08, 24 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I had the same idea... Have you been borrowing things from my to do list?
 * In any case, since I had that idea the only thing I thought of is stating that bugs are not history, though with exceptions if it lasts more than a couple versions and causes something on the wiki to otherwise be wrong (such as the wolves orange collar or a mob failing to attack the player properly). Also stating that changes reverted after a single version are subject to be removed unless a source is provided that it was an intended change. – KnightMiner  · (t) 20:07, 24 December 2015 (UTC)


 * . – LauraFi -  talk  05:35, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
 * . – LauraFi -  talk  05:35, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Update for advancements
Should we add the section "Advancements" or have information about advancements combined with the "Achievements" section and rename that section to "Achievements/Advancements"? Currently, this page mentions nothing about advancements on articles. I know that they function similar to achievements, but I still think the page should at least mention them.--Madminecrafter12 (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2018 (UTC)


 * – DelboyDylan (talk 17:19, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Rule proposal on quotes in Feature articles
Recently, I've seen some articles such as Name Tag and Beacon with two quotes at the top of the article. I feel like having two quotes is a little cumbersome for the article, hence why I'm proposing something on this to be added to the Introduction section. An example is provided below, with my additions in bold italic.

“The very top of the article should start with applicable flags and templates, such as snapshot for anything not yet in the full release, Block for blocks, and so on.

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.

'In addition, quotes pertaining to the article subject should be added above the introduction section, provided that the quote has general information about the subject matter and the quote is sourced from a Minecraft.net article or a Mojang employee. Up to two quotes are acceptable, though highly discouraged.'”

-BDJP (t 15:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Bump. -BDJP (t 18:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)


 * , this page currently doesn't mention anything about quotes and I agree that having multiple large quotes gets cumbersome. – Sonicwave talk  20:02, 5 April 2019 (UTC)


 * . Usually just one quote is enough. – Nixinova Nixinova sig1.png Nixinova sig2.png 20:50, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Structure of natural generation sections in block articles
Timeline of the edit war:
 * 1) November 19, 10:49, Gold Ore, edit #1460501: User-12316399 modifies the "Natural generation" section by enclosing it into a newly-added "Occurence" [ sic] section.
 * 2) November 19, 10:49, Diamond Ore, edit #1460502: User-12316399 performs an almost identical edit on another ore article, this time with a major mistake that prevented the section from working properly.
 * 3) November 20, 23:06, Diamond Ore, edit #1461193: Nixinova effectively reverts edit #1460502 (point #2) with the comment: "?¿?".
 * 4) November 20, 23:12, Diamond Ore, edit #1461199: User-12316399 reverts edit #1461193 (point #3) with no explanation, but this time inserting correct formatting.
 * 5) November 20, 23:20, Minecraft Wiki:Style guide/Features, edit #1461216: Nixinova replaces the "Natural generation" header with "Occurance" [sic], with the comment: "user:user-12316399 can you layout your headings on here then".
 * 6) November 20, 23:40, Minecraft Wiki:Style guide/Features, edit #1461257: User-12316399 makes substantial changes to the style guide page; there was no prior discussion. The edit comment was "really need to look into this page and fix it".
 * 7) November 21, 05:40, Diamond Ore, edit #1461391: PancakeIdentity reverts edit #1461199 (point #4) with the comment: "Just leave it".
 * 8) November 21, 05:41, Diamond Ore, edit #1461393: User-12316399 effectively reverts edit #1461391 (point #7) with the comment: "no, i won't".
 * 9) November 21, 14:31, Diamond Ore, edit #1461797: BDJP007301 effectively reverts edit #1461393 (point #8) with no explanation.
 * 10) November 21, 14:33, Minecraft Wiki:Style guide/Features, edit #1461799: BDJP007301 removes the changed "Occurrence" section entirely with the comment: "Rmv "Occurrence" section; has not been previously discussed AFAIK".
 * 11) November 21, 15:08, Gold Ore, edit #1461822: BDJP007301 effectively reverts edit #1460501 (point #1) with no explanation.
 * 12) November 21, 15:10, Gold Ore, edit #1461824: User-12316399 reverts edit #1461822 (point #11) with the comment: "why is everyone removing these with little to no explanation?".
 * 13) November 21, 15:12, Minecraft Wiki:Style guide/Features, edit #1461826: User-12316399 reverts edit #1461799 (point #10) with the comment: "I was instructed to put it here, as can be seen in the previous edit summary".
 * 14) November 21, 15:12, Diamond Ore, edit #1461828: User-12316399 reverts edit #1461797 (point #9) with no explanation.
 * 15) November 21, 15:14, Diamond Ore, edit #1461829: PancakeIdentity reverts edit #1461828 (point #14) with no explanation.
 * 16) November 21, 15:15, Minecraft Wiki:Style guide/Features, edit #1461830: BDJP007301 reverts edit #1461826 (point #13) with the comment: "that someone clearly does not care about discussion; please discuss on the talk page first prior to adding it again".
 * 17) November 21, 15:16, Gold Ore, edit #1461831: BDJP007301 reverts edit #1461824 (point #12) with the comment: "see my previous edit summary".

I have no stance on these changes yet, but I think both sides of the disagreement should present their views here before any changes to the style guide or block articles could be made. --AttemptToCallNil (report bug, view backtrace) 16:22, 21 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Both and  are at fault for changing the style guide page without any prior discussion. I  any change to the “Natural generation” section of the style guide. It is perfectly fine as is. -BDJP (t 16:55, 21 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Personally I wouldn't mind an improvement to these sections, but I don't like the "Occurence" style. It creates a set of three needless levels of headers in a sequence without an actual body in between. This section is called "Natural generation" for a reason, and that is because the blocks that have this section need to describe where in the world (and sometimes how) this block gets formed by the world generator, under natural circumstances. While in contrast, the block can also exist elsewhere by player placement, or by world map builders when playing an existing map, or even as loot in chests. This section differentiates between all of that, and focusses only on what is natural for this block, and specifically, during the generation phase of the game. "Occurence" (or its correct spelling occurrence), does not make this distinction, and is in this case in my opinion too generic. Because any other uses of the block beyond natural generation belong in the "Usage" section instead anyway. However, as I said, this does not mean I oppose to change, just, to this particular change in this case. I would be glad to see better solutions, if so something were wrong to begin with. – Jack McKalling [ Grid Book and Quill.png Grid Diamond Pickaxe.png ] 17:30, 21 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Ditto to what said. Maybe there is a better solution, but 3 needless headers isn't it. -PancakeIdentity (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Well this quickly got out of hand. I thought this had been discussed somewhere on the massive CP, apparently not. I do think "Occurrence" isn't a very good name for the heading, but "Natural generation" as an h2 seems fine (was that discussed anywhere?)., please start actually discussing things instead of spamming everywhere.  Nixinova  T  C  23:41, 21 November 2019 (UTC)


 * This comes as a result of the redefinition of the Obtaining section, as was proposed in the standardisation of loot table representation and the like on the community portal. Previously, the natural generation section was part of the obtaining section, which is clearly not accurate - you don't obtain blocks by having them generate in the world, you obtain them by breaking them and then picking them up. The section therefore needed moving, which is why it's now at the tops of pages. Of course, natural generation isn't the sole way a block can come to exist within the world, as there's also interactions between other blocks and items after world generation that causes them to come into existence, which also would be fitting for being under an Obtaining section.


 * Looking at the above comments, it seems as though all of the opposition to the addition of the section is rooted either in a perspective having not considered post-generational occurence of blocks, or solely due to the fact that its addition hadn't been discussed beforehand, neither of which are valid oppositions. Therefore, this section should be kept. - User-12316399 (talk) 16:03, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Nobody agreed to this, yet you keep doing it. I already undo it whenever I encounter it, simply because I'm annoyed by it, but I don't want to go through every single block page just to fix this, someone else can do that. For now, please immediately STOP your edit spree until this is actually properly discussed. And silence it NOT agreement.
 * Now actual arguments against your not-actually-suggested format:
 * 1. The articles are about blocks. Obtaining a block doesn't need to mean "getting a drop of that block into your inventory", which you seem to think. Sure, the articles are also about the drops, but not exclusively. And you can totally store all your minerals as blocks in your basement, quite a few people do that. Would you say they don't have those blocks anymore?
 * 2. It's a needless distinction. Everybody would say that you can get/obtain coral from wandering traders and from coral reefs. Nobody would say that you get clay from traders or from mining the block in the world, making how you get that block a completely separate question. If you want to be that needlessly precise, you would need to say that you get it from picking up the drop, preferably then linking to a subsection of a gigantic, completely overhauled Drop article that tells you how to produce drops of every single possible variant. That might be more precise, but it's definitely not how the wiki should be structured. There's a style guide somewhere that says that things should be written from the gameplay perspective, not from the code/program/technical perspective, whenever possible.
 * 3. What people look for in an article about a block in Minecraft is first what it is, that is done in the summary, then how to get it, that is the "obtaining" section, then everything else. I have spent hours planning my map "SkyChest" and going through wiki articles to see how different game elements are linked and produce or interact with each other. I certainly did not care about whether it can be a block (like string or redstone) or only an item and I always immediately skipped to the "obtaining" section, because that was what I was interested in. I cared about how to get that thing. And natural generation or cobblestone generators are definitely a part of that!
 * 4. It's simply inconsistent with item articles. It's pretty random to structure the article for redstone or string so differently just because you can also place it. Fabian42 (talk) 01:00, 10 April 2020 (UTC)


 * "Nobody agreed to this" - already that's completely incorrect, as there's been somewhat positive feedback towards the Occurrence section on Discord. And ever since the layout has been applied to all block pages, pretty much nobody has tried reverting the article layout to what it was previously, nor have they voiced any further opposition anywhere from my memory after its inclusion, so it's clear that you're probably the only one actually taking issue with it anymore. I also don't see why you're demanding I stop adding the section when it had clearly already been applied to every single block article prior to you requesting this.


 * Given that Occurrence is literally the first section in almost every block article, the information on how it generates naturally is already right at the top of the page in clear view, so I don't see how you think this structuring is going to make finding out how to get the block any more difficult. It'll be among the first sections people read when scrolling down, and for stuff like obsidian and cobblestone already lists the common ways you get them to appear in the world, so I'm not seeing the issue here.


 * Simply the fact that I haven't got round to reworking the layout of item pages yet doesn't mean that the way block tables are being laid out makes them inconsistent with items. This new layout is intentionally designed so that the sections become more consistent - Obtaining will apply to both blocks and items equally, whereas Occurrence is a purely block-exclusive section which could never possibly apply to items outside of seeds, tripwire and the like, and the act of splitting those from their block equivalent is daft in retrospect. So no, the layout does not make blocks inconsistent from items, nor is it a pointless distinction, since blocks can be in the world whereas items cannot. Your extrapolation to some reworked Drop page is also completely absurd and far from the original intention from this section.


 * If anyone else has some actual opposition to state regarding the Occurrence section then please go ahead; until then, it definitely appears that you're in the minority here, and outright advocating for the blocking of a user simply because you yourself don't like the changes being made to pages (and because they don't immediately reply to you) is completely out of order. - User-12316399 (talk) 18:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have not been involved in this discussion much, but I want to emphasize a point you both made. Fabian stated that no one agreed to this change, while you said it had a lot of support on Discord. Major wiki changes should not be made on Discord, that's one of the reasons a few of the admins were originally against making a Discord. The reason we have discussions about rule changes on wiki is so we have a proper documentation of that discussion and can see who supported the change and why. As for your argument that no one reverted your changes, I actually nearly reverted you on several occasions for undiscussed changes, but simply choose not to because I have not been active enough on the wiki to know if I missed the discussion. Based on your comment, I will make sure to revert your undiscussed changes to the style guide in the future, as no one should be changing the style guide without an on wiki discussion. The style guide does not document current practice, its a standard for consistency, and I would rather not require the page to be protected to prevent undiscussed changes.
 * So basically, if you want to change the layout of feature articles, discuss it here first, then update the style guide once you have consensus, then you may update the pages. You are free to make a private copy of the page as a mockup for the changes, but the main articles should reflect the current style guide. I understand that some changes to the style guide have already been made without on wiki discussion as a few have pointed out, its probably a bit late to revert them without discussion now (also that whole "this section is currently being discussed" note means someone already bypassed convention to add it, style guide should not suddenly become work in progress after being complete for years). Get a proper consensus before taking any more action, like Nil said, and I don't mean no one disagreeing, I mean people agreeing to the change in a on wiki discussion (feel free to link people to a discussion from Discord if you have support there). – KnightMiner  · (t) 18:37, 13 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have not had a ton of time to look into the history of this issue, but I can say the current structure of Gold Ore is super verbose and it makes it hard to navigate. I agree with several other users in this discussion that the excessive extra sections is really poor style, good style for documentation says you never have a section whose content is only a subsection, and on Gold Ore we have "Occurrence" containing nothing more than "Natural Generation" which contains nothing more than "Mineral veins", then again the same problem in "obtaining". I think the distinction between "Occurrence" and "Obtaining" is arbitrary, we even used "Occurrence" on structure pages as their "Obtaining" section. I am fine with choosing a better word to represent both mining blocks and them generating in the world, but unless a better word can be chosen, I think it makes the most sense to have both under the "Obtaining" header like we had before. – KnightMiner  · (t) 18:37, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Restructured Proposal
I think it's time we listed out the details of this proposed change and what the current issues with the forcibly enacted new system are. As has been discussed elsewhere, many users have issues with this new system. Here's what I think can be done to fix these issues while maintaining the idea of these changes
 * Headers are needlessly nested with bad wording
 * Pages are too verbose and hard to navigate
 * Distinction between sections is arbitary and unhelpful
 * Too much duplicate info/info is too spread out
 * Re-combine "Occurrence" and "Obtaining" and move the breaking row back to this section.
 * Yes, they do have their differences, but I never heard a single complaint or confused user in the many years we used this system.
 * Move block loot back to the "Obtaining" section
 * Remove loot table tables, add tables in the style of Lapis Lazuli Ore or weeping vines on Fortune or other styles only when needed. A case-by-case system basically.
 * Move loot table IDs (along with any other datapack IDs we may add in the future) to the "Data Values" section
 * Remove subheaders unless the distinction needs to be made
 * For example, Gold Ore could have a "Natural Generation" and "Mining" subsection, with neither of those having any subsections.

We need to have a real, extensive, on-wiki discussion about this. We've argued a lot on discord, and there's been very little on-wiki discussion. Just some users implementing changes we haven't agreed upon.

Also, from the CP, it seems and  generally feel that the previous layout (before the undiscussed changes) was adequate. -PancakeIdentity (talk) 21:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Reverting back to the old style: Natural generation/Occurrence back into Obtaining, loot tables only for complex loot, all IDs in Data values, less h4s as most subheadings should be of the same level (à la Villager), no propositions in headings.  Nixinova  T</b> </b> C</b> </b> 03:37, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * – KnightMiner  · (t) 14:29, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Add a textures tab
I feel like it'd be helpful to include a textures tab on each feature page including things such as item, block texture, and historical textures that pertain to the page. I can help access texture jars if nessecary, email me at tjnewbry@gmail.com (admins and mods only please) Shareyourhead (talk) 19:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Textures, both current and historical, are contained in the History section of each page. (And posting your email on a public discussion page is probably an easy way to get everyone except admins and mods contacting you.)  Nixinova</b> </b> T</b> </b> C</b> </b> 03:40, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Reworking the trivia section
The result of the discussion was the change was implemented.

Right now, the trivia section is generally very heavily restricted by the style guide, and many pages just straight up ignore what the style guide says. Most of these trivia points have been left as they are genuinely interesting, even if they break the style guide. These are usually points that break the "No comparison to other features; no saying something is the 'only' or 'first'" clause. So, I propose a rewrite of this to allow interesting points to stay but keep uninteresting or stretch points out.

Something along the lines of: "Trivia should only state how a characteristic of a block, item, mob, or other game element relates to the characteristics of others if this characteristic is surprising or unique, but not essential to the feature's function.

This includes [Things that should not be in trivia include], 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 to have a certain characteristic."

Notably, I removed the mention of "only one to have a certain characteristic". To a point, I think these can be genuinely interesting. For the cases it's not; the general idea of keeping trivia sections interesting falls into play here and will likely be removed anyway. I've also reworded it to say this type of trivia should only be listed if "this characteristic is surprising or unique, but not essential to the mob's function." By this, I mean to prevent something boring like "phantoms are the only mobs that attack players based on sleep patterns." This is obvious and sort of the point of the phantom. On the other hand, you have something like hoglins, which you could say "hoglins are the only nether-native mob that doesn't spawn in the nether wastes biome." That's actually unique, interesting, and not something you'd realize right away.

I'd also like to propose removing the line about not including trivia based on game visuals. This doesn't really make sense; we shouldn't have to cater to resource packs. In addition, more and more of the game is becoming customizable with datapacks, yet we still let datapack-driven mechanics stay in trivia.

(Text in [] was added in an edit.) -PancakeIdentity (talk) 03:45, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't really think lists of things with common characteristics are good trivia. They all need to be updated every time a new such thing is released, and they may grow without end.
 * Generally agree on the rest of your changes. --AttemptToCallNil (report bug, view backtrace) 03:52, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Oh whoops, I realized I'd left the second sentence more unmodified to accomadate the changes to the first. I've attempted to fix it. I agree common characteristics should not be listed; they should be generally unique to the feature. -PancakeIdentity (talk) 03:56, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * So basically the main changes you're suggesting are to remove the points that restrict trivia points that state a feature is the only one to have a certain quality as well as that disallowing game visuals trivia. I would definitely support removing the "only feature to have a certain quality" restriction, as I've seen many trivia points falling under this category that are genuinely interesting. As far as not including trivia based on game visuals, honestly I can't think of many scenarios where this would be useful. Important game visuals are usually shown in an obvious place, such as the infobox, so in many cases they don't necessarily need to be repeated in the trivia. I guess they could be used to clarify a certain visual aspect that may be hard to make out in the image. I'm not necessarily opposed to removing this, however, because we would still have the point about trivia having to be interesting.--Madminecrafter12 (Talk to me 13:43, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about the visual point. I can't think of specific examples of good trivia, but I don't think removing the point would do any harm, especially since its inclusion doesn't really make sense for how we run the wiki and when considering other customizable game aspects. -PancakeIdentity (talk) 18:22, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't have much to add, but I agree with those points (including removing the line disallowing visual-related trivia). – Sonicwave talk  19:28, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * If no one objects to this I'll probably implement this in a few days.--Madminecrafter12 (Talk to me 00:29, 17 April 2020 (UTC)


 * everything you suggested in this proposal I believe.--Madminecrafter12 (Talk to me 17:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Obtaining subsection standardization
As I've been editing some pages to follow the style guide, I've realized we don't really have a standard organization of obtaining subsections (nor do we for usage, but usage tends to be more unique between pages). Here's my proposal for the general format of the h3 (===) subsections.
 * Natural generation
 * Breaking (would contain block loot[*])
 * Mob loot[+]
 * Chest loot
 * [Gameplay] (not the actual name, split into h3 subsections named "Trading", "Fishing", etc as needed)
 * Crafting (also h3 subsections for "Smelting" and such)
 * Post generation

I'm not too hard set on this specific layout, but I think it works and the sections seem to logically flow well from one to the next.

[*] I was tempted to leave these two pieces of info uncombined, but I kept running into cases where there would be repetitive information between the two, leading to duplicate info very close to eachother or fragmented information. This will especially be better if we phase out the loot table template on pages that don't need it.

[+] Should this just be a h3 subsection called "Mob loot"? Should it be multiple h3 subsections for every mob that can drop it? Maybe "Mob loot" as an h3 and each mob as an h4? -PancakeIdentity (talk) 19:04, 17 April 2020 (UTC)


 * . For the mob loot, just one h3 would be fine, as each mob only takes up like 1 sentence.  Nixinova</b> </b> T</b> </b> C</b> </b> 23:07, 17 April 2020 (UTC)