No Mans Sky Wiki:Explained - Best Practices

This is a general Best Practices guide for the NMS wiki.

Summary

There are a number of Best Practices that can be used when creating and editing pages in the No Man's Sky wiki. Please review the following list. If you have suggestions or comments, add them to the Discussion tab for this page.

You may also wish to review the General Rules page for this wiki.

Etiquette

• Modifying general wiki content is one thing, modifying civspace information of another player is discouraged.
• If you have six changes to make on a page, make them all at once instead of as single edits and saves. It reduces the amount of review the admins must do.
• If one of the admins makes a change to your page, it is best to check with them first before modifying or backing out the change (unless it's an obvious typo of some kind). Admins rarely make changes just for the fun of it.

General Tips

• Editors are requested to fill out the personal info that is shown on the user profile page.
• If you add a link that you expected to work and it shows as a "red link", determine why. Capitalization and spelling are important.
• If you add an entry to the infobox and it shows with a yellow triangle, correct the value to one of the accepted choices
• If doing a copy-and-paste to create a new page, be sure to change any page references from the "old" page to make sure they match the "new" page
• External links are accepted, but not preferred. Adding the information from the external page TO the wiki makes it available for searching and linking within the wiki itself.
• If creating a page that references a Racetrack or a base, it is recommended that a specific page for that base or racetrack be created, and then a link added to the proper Catalogue page for that item.

Pictures

• Normal pics are defined as thumbs and right-justified with captions. Specifying pic sizes or using left-justification is generally discouraged, and will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
  • Exception: pictures used in the Navigation section should be left-justified, using a size of 400px.
• Gallery pics use the standard gallery without changing sizes, borders, etc. Captions are highly encouraged.
• Pictures should not be used on the same page more than once
• Don't upload the same picture more than once
• When using a thumbnail in a table, 200px is the maximum size, although 125px is preferred. The frameless option should be avoided.
• Don't include multiple pictures of the same basic subject matter, even in a gallery. Six pictures of floating rocks or a river basin are probably not needed.
• When using a picture in the infobox, only use the picture name; no additional links, sizes, or comments.

Formatting

• When a player name is mentioned on a page, it should be in italics
• When creating lists, bullet points are preferred over numbered lists
• When creating a new page, use the preload page templates if possible. This provides stability in page design. If you do use these templates, be sure to remove the commentary lines that are included in the templates at the top and bottom of the page
• When creating a new page with a preload page template, do not remove the section headers. You do not have to enter data in them if you don't have anything relevant, but the headers should be retained for consistency with other pages.
• Do not use the Categories section header, as it has been deprecated. Only use the Video header if there is an actual video.
• If a page contains lore and/or fan fiction, it is best to include this in a section on the lower half of the page along with the Fan Fiction banner. Exceptions may be granted depending on the situation.
• Main sections use == in the header instead of =
• When creating pages for starships or Multi-tools, only put the basic model info into the infobox. For example, the Class of a ship is not necessary in the infobox as you are describing a "model" of a ship, not a specific instance. Once the infobox is filled out, add commentary on the page itself indicating that "this model was discovered on (location) as an A-class ship with bonuses of etc etc etc."

Exception: If the discovered item is a high-class model with excellent stats, then this information can be entered if desired.

Star system Sections

Pages for star systems should contain the following sections in the order listed:

{{Version|xxx} macro
{{Stub}} if necessary
System infobox
Intro sentence
Summary
Alias names
Planets and Moons
Starships
Location
Gallery
Videos (if there is one)
Navigator (if there is one)

Tables

• If tables are used on a page, the use of colored backgrounds is discouraged; exceptions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
• When using a thumbnail in a table, 200px should be the maximum size, although 125px is preferred
• When creating a table, don't include columns where the information is going to be same for most of the entries in that column (for example, discoverer's name). Instead, add a disclaimer above the table similar to "Unless otherwise specified, all items are XYZ"
• While tables can be set to a certain % of the screen size, it is usually better to let them float freely, allowing the wiki CSS to choose the proper width automatically.

Links and References

• If a page contains multiple references to the same page elsewhere in the wiki, only the first should be marked as a link.
  • Exception: If a reference is linked in the infobox, it may also be linked in the actual article.
• If a page describes a star, planet, region, etc, define a relevant category page. This page should contain minimal text; enough to give any reader an idea of why the page is there (often the first sentence of the summary section is a good choice). Use the preload template for the proper category type.
• If a page can use the actual title of a link without it looking odd in the sentence, use it instead of an alias.
• Region pages should contain a hard-coded link list of systems that do not have their own dedicated page in the wiki. If desired, they may also display a navigator for all noted systems in that region. If a navigator is used, the phrase (moon) should be listed after the links that are indeed moons
• If you wish to use the plural of a link, add an "s" after the final double-bracket instead of making an alias with the "s"
• Links should not be formatted, i.e. as bold or italicized. Allow the wiki style guide to format them consistently.