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:
 * 1) Lead section (Article introduction)
 * 2) Main content
 * 3) A Langbar
 * 4) 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. Various article components, like infoboxes, should be also included in this section and will be listed later in this article.

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:. Articles with missing infoboxes 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. Creating articles without infoboxes when needed 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.

Standard appendices and footers
When an optional appendix section is used, they should appear at the bottom of the article in level 2 headings.

Order of section

 * 1) See also
 * 2) External links
 * 3) Navigation templates (footer navboxes)

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.

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.

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).".

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

Navigation templates
This section should contain all footer navigation boxes, no section heading should be created and the only two things that can be after this section is the langbar and the category links. Navigation boxes shouldn't be present in other places of the article.

Elements of the lead section
As explained in more detail below, the lead section may contain optional elements presented in the following order:
 * 1) Disambiguation links
 * 2) Maintenance tags
 * 3) Infoboxes
 * 4) Introductory text
 * 5) Table of Contents

An example of a well-formed lead section:

The wrench from BuildCraft... [table of contents]

First section

 * Disambiguation links should be the first elements of the page, before any maintenance tags, infobox or image; if a reader has reached the wrong page, they will want to know that first. A "for topics of the same name ..." disambiguation link is sometimes put at the beginning of an article to link to another article discussing another meaning of the article title. In such cases, the line should be italicized and indented using the About template. Do not make this initial link a section.
 * Maintenance tags should be below the disambiguation links. These tags inform the reader about the general quality of the article, and should be presented to the user before the article itself.
 * Infoboxes contain summary information or an overview relating to the subject of the article, and therefore should be put before any text (though in actuality they will generally appear to the right side of the text of the lead).
 * The content of the introductory text will be explained in more detail below.
 * The table of contents will automatically appear after the introductory text if the article has more than three sections, the table of contents should not be floated or positioned in other places of the article.

Article types
Below is a list of common article types that will appear on the wiki. The standard structure of such pages listed above will be explained in detail below.
 * Crafting component pages
 * Item pages
 * Block pages
 * Metal pages
 * Mod/Modpack pages
 * Guides

Section definitions
Sections mentioned below should be displayed as level 2 sections when used in an article.

Recipe
This section should contain recipes that result in the item that the article is about. A brief description of what the recipe is made up of and other notes and stuff can be placed before the crafting recipe. Recipes support animation and multiple crafting grids should be merged if possible.

Articles with multiple crafting grids that could be merged can be tagged with the maintenance template:.

Please do not include GregTech changes to crafting recipes, a separate page will be created for that. [Verification needed]

Usage
This section should contain how the item is used in the game. In this section instructions to operate items, tools and machines should also be included in this section and be split in to level 3+ sections when needed.

However, you should not put a full list of recipes that the item is used in [Verification needed] :
 * The wrench is mainly used to rotate and dismantle IndustrialCraft 2 machines, it can also be upgraded to the Electric Wrench.
 * The wrench is used in the following recipes: ...List of recipes...

Characteristics
This section should describe the look, properties and possible applications in a build of a block.

Crafting component pages
Crafting components are items that only acts as an ingredient of another crafting recipe, these items commonly does not have any purpose, aside from crafting, in game. Articles like this will obviously contain not much content, but should still follow the standard layout of articles.

Articles like this should contain the following sections:
 * Recipes
 * Usage

In this kind of articles, the amount of items that have the item the article is about as a crafting component maybe too much to be included in the usage section, in this case, please only include items that is the most significant to players in-game. As of what items is considered as significant should be up to the editor's judgement.

Item pages
This kind of article is about items like tools and other stuff that doesn't fall into other categories of pages.

Articles like this should contain the following sections:
 * Recipes
 * Usage

Some types of items have different infoboxes designed for them, below is a list of such items:
 * Engines: Infobox engine

Block pages
Blocks generally do not serve any purposes beside aesthetic purposes.

Articles like this should contain the following sections:
 * Recipes
 * Characteristics
 * Usage (Optional, include this section if the block has other uses like in multi-block structures.)

Metal pages
All raw forms of metals should be combined into one single page, the Infobox ore template should be used in place of the normal infobox on these pages.

Articles like this should contain the following optional sections:
 * Recipes
 * Characteristics

Mod/Modpack pages
Mod and modpack pages should use the Infobox mod and Infobox pack respectively. These pages should contain a brief description of what the mod or modpack does and its purpose. A brief description of the role of mods in a modpack can also be included.