Feed The Beast Wiki:Article creation guideline

This guideline outlines what a basic article should contain and the basic layout of articles, please always follow this guideline when creating articles. Not following this guideline may result in a temp-block or even a perma-block. You have been warned.

Basic Article Layout
An article should always have the following sections and components in the order specified:
 * Lead section (Article introduction)
 * Main content
 * A Langbar
 * Categories

Lead section
The section of an article is the section before the first heading and before the table of contents. The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important aspects.

Wikipedia states that "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points—including any prominent controversies. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources, and the notability of the article's subject is usually established in the first few sentences. Apart from trivial basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article.

The lead is the first part of the article most people read, and many read only the lead. Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading more of the article, but the lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at content that follows. Instead, the lead should be written in a clear, accessible style with a neutral point of view; it should ideally contain no more than four paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate."

Articles with bad lead sections can be tagged with the maintenance template:.

Creating articles without lead sections will always result in a warning. Repeated violations will result in a block.

Main content
The structure of this section may vary by the type of the article and will be discussed in more detail later.

Langbar
A langbar should always be present at the bottom of an article to allow for linking to translated versions of an article. You will be warned for not adding langbars but please do not edit an article for the sole purpose of adding in the langbar, by doing so especially editing articles en masse is considered disruptive editing and will be temp-blocked, in certain severe cases, you may be perma-blocked.

Categories
The categories should always be the last thing in the page source, categorizing pages allows for users to quickly find related content, an article is not limited to one category and should be added to as much relevant categories as possible. A full list of categories can be found below:

If an article fits in a category, then the article should not be in any parent categories. Please also do not add any new categories, by adding random categories that aren't listed above, you will be warned and repeated violations will result in a block.

Uncategorized articles can be tagged with the maintenance template:.

Not adding categories to articles will result in a warning and repeated violations will result in a block.

Other article sections
The following sections may be omitted in an article but including it may enhance it quality, please common sense when adding them to an article.

See also section
An article recommended to have a see also section, the links in the see also section cannot be replaced by a navbox, a navbox can be provided, but only after the list of links. The see also section should list related articles and topics to allow for readers to quickly find related content, if a navbox is present, then a see also section with a list of links should be also present.

The see also section should contain an unordered list, preferably in alphabetical order, of links to related articles, a brief annotation when a link's relevance is not immediately apparent, when the meaning of the term may not be generally known, or when the term is ambiguous. Navboxes can be added after the list.

Wikipedia considers that "Whether a link belongs in the 'See also' section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense. The links in the 'See also' section should be relevant, should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic, and should be limited to a reasonable number. As a general rule, the 'See also' section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes. Thus, many high-quality and comprehensive articles do not have a 'See also' section, although some featured articles like 1740 Batavia massacre and Mary, Queen of Scots include this section.

The links in the 'See also' section do not have to be directly related to the topic of the article, because one purpose of 'See also' links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics. The 'See also' section should not link to pages that do not exist (red links) nor to disambiguation pages (unless used for further disambiguation in a disambiguation page).".

Removing existing see also sections with navboxes will result in a warning.