Feed The Beast Wiki:Manual of Style

This guideline outlines the style of pages and articles. If any conflict exists in other guidelines, this guideline has precedence over the conflicting guideline. Change made to this guide should reflect consensus.

Use common sense when following this guideline, certain rules in this guideline may be ignored in certain cases.

Rule of thumb

 * Use common sense.
 * Ask the Staff members for help on their talk pages. They are always welcome to help.
 * Please do not copy content from external sources. Originality is encouraged on this wiki.
 * Advertising, vandalism and spamming is strictly prohibited on this wiki.
 * Technical articles, no fantasy or fiction novels. Simple easy facts.
 * Verify claims made on a wiki, citing to sources will further increase the credibility of an article.
 * Please maintain a neutral point of view when creating articles. Use encyclopedic tone.
 * Use Templates; read the documentation and fill out the info. A lot of the crafting grids have custom templates, if it doesn't exist, contact the staff on the Staff's Noticeboard.
 * When creating an article for an in game item do not list its usage, however a short description of it major uses is accepted.
 * When referencing modpacks, please spell it as modpacks, not mod packs or mod-packs etc. This is based on what the generally accepted form of the word is.
 * When creating categories use the following map. Everything should fit in at least a category. Articles may be in more than one categories, use common sense when selecting what categories an article belongs to.
 * Do not randomly create categories, use common sense when creating a new category. Use the ones in place or contact the staff on the Staff's Noticeboard if a new one is added.

Plagiarizing
Creating original content on this wiki is encouraged. Plagiarizing is strictly prohibited, you will be warned then blocked for repeated offenses.

Copied content that falls under fair use must be properly cited. You can generate citations for content on the wiki with Special:Cite.

Vandalism
Creating empty pages, making changes that disrupt editing or viewing, edit warring, flooding the recent changes page, and creating misleading edit summaries are all considered vandalism. You will be warned and temp-blocked if you engage in vandalism.

Spam and advertisement
Spamming and advertising will not be tolerated, you will be perm-blocked if you do such things.

Unofficial wikis
Any hostility towards the unofficial wikis is not tolerated, if you are part of the wiki staff, you may be suspended and blocked; if you have an account on the wiki, your account may be blocked. Either way, you may get a warning.

Linking to the unofficial wikis is not prohibited, it is even encouraged to do so if such links contribute greatly to the quality to the content. You may request an interwiki link to be created on the Project:Administrators' Noticeboard.

It is recommended to contribute to only one wiki at a time as you might inadvertently violate the copyright policy on one of the wikis.

Article titles, headings and sections
Titles and section headings should reflect the content it represents. Titles and section headings should be concise and precise. Titles should be consistent with the titles of related content.

Article titles

 * Please capitalize letters in a title as they would be capitalized in a sentence.
 * The first letter of a title will always be transformed to a capital letter by the wiki software.
 * Articles on items should appear exactly as they appear in game. If multiple mods add the same item, please append the full mod name in parentheses to the title. (Example: Wrench (BuildCraft))
 * Do not use A, An, The as the start of a title, unless it is an inseparable part of a name.
 * Titles should not normally end in punctuation marks.
 * Titles should not normally contain Unicode characters, they must be avoided if possible.

Section organization
An article must always start with a introductory lead section, the lead section must provide an overview of the entire article. A table of content will be inserted automatically before the first section and after the lead section if enough sections exist in the article.

An article that expands upon a section may be linked with Main and related articles may be linked with See also.

More information regarding the layout and order of sections can be found in the Project:Article creation guideline.

Section headers

 * Please always capitalize letters in headings as they would be capitalized in a sentence.
 * Please do not make heading and sections titles links. Please use Main or See also to link to related content.
 * Level 1 headings must never be used.
 * Section headers should be unique to avoid ambiguity in automatically generated edit summaries.
 * Headings should not start with numbers or contain images. If absolutely required, numbers may be used.

Linking to sections
Links can be created to link to specific sections by using. To link to a section within the same page, use: ; to link to a section on another page, use:. Should a section name be repeated within an article, _2, _3 and so on will be appended to the anchor name to each subsequent appearances in the article.

To avoid links being invalidated when a linked section's name is changed, it is recommended to add a comment in the section heading. For example:

Heading
But not:

Heading
== Heading ==

Title of works

 * A title of a work should normally be italicized, but if the surrounding text is in italics, the title should be in a normal font.
 * Titles of works should retain their case regardless of other rules mentioned in this guide.

Quotations

 * Quotes should not be in italics.
 * Quotes should retain any errors, marked with Sic when appropriate, case and formatting.
 * Quotes may be put in QuoteBox if long enough, or when appropriate.

Capital letters

 * Do not use capital letters for emphasis, please use italics.
 * Incorrect: DO NOT put your cat in the microwave.
 * Correct: Do not put your cat in the microwave.


 * Do not capitalize the unless it is part or a proper noun or item name, in which case you must keep the original capitalization.
 * Incorrect: Going into The Nether without proper gear may result in death.
 * Correct: Going into the Nether without proper gear may result in death.

Boldface

 * If the article title appears in the lead section, it may be highlighted with bold text.
 * Correct: The Wool is a product you get from killing or shearing sheep with shears.

Italic

 * Italics can be used to indicate emphasis.
 * Titles of works should be in italics, but if the surrounding text is in italics, the title should not be in italics.
 * Italics can be used to introduce new terms.
 * Foreign words should be in italics. However foreign proper nouns should not be in italics.
 * Incorrect: ... München ...
 * Correct: ... in absentia ...


 * Scientific names should be in italics.

Spacing

 * A non-breaking space (&amp;nbsp;) prevents the line to break at that line.
 * A number and its unit should not be on a separate line, using &amp;nbsp; can avoid them being separated.
 * Correct: 10&amp;nbsp;blocks of Sand.

Numbers and dates

 * If a number takes many words to type out, use figures instead.
 * Incorrect: ten thousand and fifty six;
 * Correct: 10,056; 1/12 one twelfth;


 * Delimit numbers over 4~5 digits with commas.
 * Correct: 1,234; 1234; 12,345


 * Retain in game formatting when possible.

Abbreviations

 * Please do not make up your own abbreviations.
 * Please type out both the full name and abbreviation at the first occurrence in an article if the abbreviation will be used in the article.
 * Correct: ... Minecraft (MC) ...


 * Mods commonly have abbreviations to ease editing on this wiki, the mod article should mention the abbreviation.
 * Correct: ... BuildCraft (referred on this wiki in templates as: BC) ...
 * Correct: ... BuildCraft (commonly referred as BC) ...
 * Correct: ... BuildCraft (BC) ...


 * Plurals can be created by appending -s or -es and possessive forms can be created by appending -'s or -'.
 * To indicate approximately, c. is preferred over approx., ca. or circa.
 * Avoid using ampersands to replace and.
 * Incorrect: ... Sand & Gunpowder makes TNT ...
 * Correct: ... Sand and Gunpowder makes TNT ...

Grammar and punctuation
Please do not contribute to the wiki without proper knowledge of English grammar. To find more information on English grammar, search "English grammar" on Google.

If you wish to contribute to the wiki but English is not your native language and you are not confident with using it, consider translating the wiki.

Wording and tone

 * Avoid double negatives.
 * Avoid using passive voice.
 * Use gender-neutral language when appropriate.
 * Avoid using an instructive or presumptuous tone. A tone that addresses the reader or author directly is considered unencyclopedic.
 * Guides may have an exception to this.
 * Incorrect: Note that an icon appears at the bottom right of your screen showing...
 * Correct: An icon at the bottom right of your screen shows...


 * Informal text should be avoided.
 * Long paragraphs and sentences should be shortened or split for clarity when appropriate.
 * Remain in a neutral point of view.
 * Use American English, such as armor rather than armour. Use British English by translating it.
 * All item names should remain in their exact spelling, even if it is incorrectly spelled, or uses non-American English.
 * Incorrect for American English: The ArmourPieceItem is an armour piece from that one mod.
 * Correct for American English: The ArmourPieceItem is an armor piece from that one mod.

Vocabulary
Never correct grammar, spelling, or capitalization of in-game text. That should always be exactly as it is in-game. This is stated several times in this manual. Instead of correcting grammar, use Sic, and consider letting the author of the content (that particular mod, game, etc.) know that they have some misspellings, incorrect grammar, or capitalization issues.
 * Use modpack instead of mod pack or mod-pack.
 * Use multiblock instead of multi-block or multi block
 * When referencing the FTB Wiki Staff, use staff rather than team. This is mostly directed towards staff members.
 * Use addon instead of add-on.

Wikilinks

 * Please create links when they are relevant to the content and helpful in context.
 * Avoid making multiple links to the same page in the same article section. Linking to the same page in another section is appropriate.
 * Avoid linking to disambiguation pages. Check the titles before linking to them.

External linking
Please avoid using shortened URLs unless unnecessary, as they can be used to cloak URLs that point to malicious websites and possibly lead users to sites they aren't expecting to enter. If shortened links are needed, please tag their use with Template:Shortened.

Category links

 * Category links should be place at the end of a page, but before the required part.
 * Please do not create new categories, if you cannot find an appropriate existing category, please post a request for a new category on the staff noticeboard, redundant categories will be deleted without notice.

Disambiguation pages

 * Use unordered lists to list different definitions.
 * Use bold text on a new line to categorize different types of definitions.
 * Please do not link directly to a disambiguation page, instead link it to the appropriate article.

Images
Images should be used to complement the article's content, such images should be right aligned; images showcasing a build related to the article should be put at the end of the page as a gallery. Step-by-step images may be included on guide articles and on articles showcasing machine builds. Images mentioned above should contain captions, a caption should be related to the image. Captions are sentence fragments and should start with a capital letter and end without a period.

Texture packs should never be used when obtaining screenshots. HUDs should be disabled when appropriate (default key is F1).

Grid icons should not be uploaded to the wiki, to add a grid icon to the wiki icon dictionary, please contact Retep998 or SatanicSanta.

Image file names
Image file names should be descriptive; files with misleading titles will be deleted or moved.

Naming conventions are avoided as much as possible, most of the conventions only apply to interface images.

Existing naming conventions:
 * Items in <> is required.
 * Items in [] is optional.


 * Crafting grid tank overlays: GUI tank [width] &lt;height>.png
 * Crafting grid tank liquid: Liquid &lt;all lowercase liquid name>.png
 * Tilesheets: Tilesheet &lt;mod abbreviation> &lt;tile size>.png

Copyrighted material
Please upload copyrighted material only if you are sure your use falls under fair use. Copyrighted content must be attributed on the file page unless the file is released to the public domain.

Videos
Linking to videos is heavily discouraged, and mostly not allowed. The reason for this, is that the choice for the video creator may be biased, and may make the wiki look biased. Additionally, videos are often not 100% accurate, and are almost never up to date. If they are up to date, they will likely soon become outdated.

Do not use the wiki to promote channels or videos.

Lists

 * Avoid listing features of items as lists, present them with plain paragraphs when possible.
 * Do not leave a blank line between list items as the wiki will interpret them as separate lists.
 * Please add a space between the list item marker and the actual text item.
 * Prefer an ordered list over an unordered list if the sequence is critical.
 * Style and format should be consistent in a list.
 * Incorrect:

*Item A *Item B *Item C
 * Correct:

* Item A * Item B * Item C

Wiki markup styling
The wiki markup is commonly referred as wikitext, a source of an article should be clear and easy to read.
 * Use HTML markup sparingly.
 * Prefer the use of Unicode characters over HTML entities. However sometimes HTML entities are better than Unicode characters.
 * Avoid using excessive spacing.
 * An empty space between different sections may help editors identify a section break.
 * Avoid changing the font, style and color of text.
 * Comment on weird wiki markup syntax.

Translation

 * Please leave out any translation tags or elements on English pages.
 * Please only translate pages that are marked for translation. If no pages are available for translation, please request a page for translation on the Project:Translators' Noticeboard.
 * Language links (L) should only be used on articles marked for translation.

Links
Links in translatable templates should be changed to use the L language link template in order for it to link correctly on translated articles.

Documentation

 * Every template should have a documentation unless that there exists a template that does similar things (in this case you could transclude the documentation for that template), or that the template is so simple that no documentation is needed.
 * Categorization of templates should be done on the documentation page using the Template:TC. Only if that template has no documentation can the template be categorized on the template page.

Navigation boxes

 * Navigation box items should be separated by a bold middot: ,.
 * Navigation boxes do not replace the "See Also" section.