Feed The Beast Wiki:Using the FTB Wiki as an official resource

Several mod authors (and a few modpack authors) use the Feed The Beast Wiki as an official resource (as their official wiki). Mod authors can document their own mod(s) or appoint someone else to do it (that someone usually being referred to as a "developer-appointed mod curator" or "dev-appointed editor" for short). Mods that have used the FTB Wiki as their official wiki include GregTech, IC2 Nuclear Control, Flaxbeard's Steam Power, Defiled Lands, ArmorPlus, NuclearCraft, among others. Using the FTB Wiki as an official resource has various advantages.

It should be noted there are also mod authors who have either contributed to the FTB Wiki in their mods' sections or have linked to the FTB Wiki on CurseForge or their website or forum post, despite not declaring the FTB Wiki's documentation as "official." This is cool too.

Why host your documentation here?
Why should you host your documentation here, rather than in a forum post, website, or an independent wiki? There are a few reasons:
 * Forum post: forum posts should have at least some documentation in them, but overall they are nasty as the be-all and end-all form of documentation for medium-sized or large-sized mods. Most forums have size restriction for posts, and using a series of posts generally makes a mess. Forum posts usually have restrictions in the forum markup, and are very difficult to navigate.
 * Website: websites aren't easily editable by users/fans. Same with a forum post. Although a GitHub.io website can be by forking the repository, this is not something that the average contributor would know how to do, or even want to get into the trouble to learn how to do. Having your documentation editable by anyone, essentially being a wiki, is about always the best route. Wikis allow anyone to contribute to your documentation, sometimes letting the documentation write itself, and allowing for mistakes to be easily fixed, and for communities to be built. Also, wikitext (wiki markdown) is much simpler than HTML, and allows for more with less.
 * Independent wikis: independent wikis start from the ground-up. Although it may be fun to craft templates and guidelines, the Feed The Beast Wiki already has a very successful system going; you don't need to worry about making new templates, or about a manual of style, you can just jump in and start editing! There's a ton of other reasons to choose the FTB Wiki over an independent wiki:
 * Independent wikis, particularly those of less-popular mods, often have issues being maintained; vandalism is not always reverted quickly, if reverted at all. The FTB Wiki is made of many users that are quick to respond to situations (if you want to test us without vandalizing, throw us a message on our centralized discussion board).
 * Contributing to a small self-created wiki can be lonely. It might sound rather silly, but contributing to a wiki with other editors is a much different experience than contributing to a wiki with no other editors (anyone who's done both can confirm this). It also helps one focus on their documentation goals with the added encouragement.
 * Contributing to the Feed The Beast Wiki is absolutely free; many independent wikis are self-hosted to avoid the Wikia-hell, often costing the owner a few bucks. Although there are many free wiki-hosting platforms, many are slow, have too many ads, or are too inflexible. Gamepedia does have ads, but they're much better than most wikis and they're quick to take down bad ads if contacted.
 * Self-hosted wikis have often disappeared (went down) after their mod authors abandoned their mod (such as Universal Electricity, Ars Magica, any mod that was on Wikispaces, Ender IO, the Official Technic Wiki). If you're no longer involved in the project, you might not care so much, but it's a large loss of work that you made and it means a loss of information to those who still use your project, whether that number is in the tens or the thousands. We can't claim the FTB Wiki will be around forever, but since it has millions of views and is hosted on a popular and ever expanding website it probably won't go down any time soon. FTB in particular might die before modded Minecraft does, but this wiki serves more as a modded Minecraft wiki than an FTB Wiki. We don't really rely on FTB for very much; if FTB dies, we'll still be here.
 * A "universal" wiki, which the Feed The Beast Wiki strives to be, allows for easier documentation of addons and crossmod features; rather than linking to other wikis or other sources of information, you can simply point to a page in this wiki and it's all uniform and in one place. This style is preferred by thousands of viewers who use this wiki over in-game books and independent wikis.

Moving wikis
If desired, you can move your documentation from an independent wiki, website, forum post, etc, to the FTB Wiki. However, this is not as simple as just copy/pasting information over (or at least when done right). There are a few things needed:
 * You need to have permission to do so. This is the most important part. If it's not written by you, you'll definitely need to ask the writer before moving it over. If it's your own wiki and you own it, you're probably fine.
 * You need convert the pages' templates (or lack of templates) to the FTB Wiki's templates (Infobox, Cg/Crafting Table, etc.).
 * You need to make the articles/pages' tone appropriate for the FTB Wiki. This doesn't really apply as much for guides, but regular articles are required to be encyclopedic. The most common example of an article being unencyclopedic is using the word "you"— this can usually just be replaced with "the player" or "a player".

If you need help moving things over, we're happy to help if you ask. If you previously used MediaWiki for your wiki, we can "import" your articles to make the article history contain the proper credits.

How to get started
As said earlier, you or someone appointed can document your mod (well, really anyone can, this is a wiki). If you appoint someone to document your mod, please make sure this person is someone that will document and maintain the mod documentation. Having experience with your mod and possibly some experience with wikis and/or documentation is good. And of course, make sure they actually want to do their assigned task.

It will be easier to document your mod if you/the appointed editor request the "editor" right (see Special:ListGroupRights). You do not need the editor right in order to edit; however, it gives basic rights such as deletion. This can be requested on the administrators' noticeboard. Once requested, a three day vote will commence. Generally these votes are uncontroversial so the appointed editor will most likely be approved. You can start documenting stuff without the right.

As for the actual documentation part, this guide will giving you information on that. Good luck and have fun! Remember, other wiki editors are often around to help you out.

Disclaimer
If you use the FTB Wiki as an official resource and appoint someone to document your mod and they become inactive, other editors on the wiki won't be tasked in replacing them and doing their duties. Community editors consider the documentation of your mod to be important, but they usually have other priorities regarding time spent on the wiki.

Although community editors may try to assist with your documentation in any way they can, it is ultimately the responsibility of you (the creator) and your appointed editor(s) to document your mod. If the appointed editor(s) aren't doing their job, it is ultimately up to you to replace them or to discuss it with them.

It is important to note editors besides from your appointed editor may edit your section of the wiki. This may include editors adjusting articles to make them fit better with the conventions of the wiki, but this may also include the additions of incorrect information and malicious edits. Although community editors will try their best to undo any edits seen as malicious, and will try to double-check and notify you or the appointed editor(s) about other edits, this cannot be guaranteed; it is ultimately the responsibility of you or the appointed editor(s) to "patrol" your own section.

On the FTB Wiki, there are a number of policies, guidelines and conventions (see the Manual of Style and other pages in Navbox portals). All editors are expected to follow these. Not all of these are concrete, but documentation should generally be created in a way that matches other pages on the wiki and helps the user the most. If you have any issues with the guidelines, discuss it with the other community editors.

Lastly, all content published on this wiki is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. If you decide to no longer use the FTB Wiki as an official resource, you (and/or others) have a right to reuse any content under the terms of that license. However, you do not have the right to permanently (as in prevent others from undoing your deletion) remove any content that you, your appointed editor(s) or anyone else created on this wiki.