User:Ha3/Style

Style is a personal research for a possible style guideline.

The aim of the research is to:


 * Make the Wiki easier to read for newcomers.
 * Getting rid of superfluous history information scattered within an article, to be reassembled to a standard History section. The information about the current version should be prominent throughout the article.

Block
The following articles should comply with the Block layout style.
 * Air
 * Wood

Why a style guide?
Here's an example of an official article called Wood. This is the full introduction. I've highlighted in yellow 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: A dedicated section of the article.

This is my simplified version of the introduction. Some information is moved away from the introduction and are described in sections. For instance, the flammable property of the Wood is moved into the Properties section, because it is implied that Wood can burn. The only case where putting such information in the introduction would be when it sounds contradictory (wood can't burn). For instance, Wooden Slabs can't burn, so it makes more sense to state the non-obvious in the introduction.

Wood, previously known as Log, represents a material forming the trunk of trees. They have a skin resembling bark on the four side faces, and a crosscut face on top and bottom. There are several varieties of Wood such as oak, pine and birch. Wood can be chopped by hand, but using an Axe is faster. Wood is abundant and renewable since they form natural trees that can also be grown from Saplings. It is an important resource as it can be crafted into 4 Wooden Planks and can be smelt into Charcoal.

The research will focus on finding an optimized and standard article layout suitable for most articles, that will both highlight history and information in a clear way.

Item and block names
Item names and block names should begin with a uppercase letter.