Help:Articles

This guide is to assist users in the writing of articles.

• An "article" is a content page on the wiki, usually containing information about a GTA game or feature etc. Examples of articles include Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Dan Houser, Taxi, Carcer City, Phil Cassidy.
• Pages that are not articles include images, templates, redirect pages, user pages, discussion pages, the Main Page and many sub-pages.

Whilst other pages around the wiki just have to be functional, the primary purpose of articles is to convey information effectively. This is why it is important that articles adhere to certain standards and guidelines, to ensure consistency and relevancy, and to avoid disputes.

Article Titles

Most articles should be called by what they are most commonly known as, rather than a little-known "technical" or "correct" name. This is so people can easily find an article.

• Phil Cassidy is not called "Phillip"
• Big Smoke is not known as "Melvin Harris"
• The United Kingdom is never called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"

Articles directly about games should use the full title (eg Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), but other articles surrounding the subject need only use a shortened version (eg Missions in GTA Vice City). See Grand Theft Wiki:Consistency for details on this.

Article Titles Should Always be in Title Case, Like This Sentence. See Grand Theft Wiki:Consistency for details.

Article Layout

Sections & Contents

You should break long articles into sections by using section headings. These should be of a logical and consistent nature.

For example, mission pages tend to follow a standard format of: Overview, Walkthrough, Transcript, External Links

There should always be an introductory paragraph at the start of an article, before the first section header, which explains what the article is about. The article name should be in bold here, and links to the important related pages should also be given - particularly the games/eras to which this article applies. For example:

Jury Fury is a mission in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City given to protagonist Tommy Vercetti by lawyer Ken Rosenberg from his office in Washington Beach, Vice City.

If there are more than 3 section headings in the page, a table of contents (TOC) should be used, and one will be automatically generated. Use {{toc}} to float a TOC to the right (like this page), or {{tocleft}} to float one to the left.

Infoboxes

Large quantities of information can be expressed quickly in an infobox table. For example Grand Theft Auto IV uses Grand Theft Auto IV/infobox. These should only be used where they are easier to read than text or bullet points would be; and they should only be used for basic information and statistics.

Complex infoboxes (using more than around 20 lines of code) should be placed on a sub-page. This removes clutter, allowing users to edit the content of the page without being put-off by lots of meaningless code; and also removes the chance that someone will break the page by accidentally editing (or removing) the infobox code.

Images

An article should have a relevant image displayed in the top-right corner. Many infoboxes have a provision to show an image inside the infobox.

If you can't find a relevant image directly of the subject, then try and use a related image. This could be a map showing its location, or (for example) a photo of multiple vehicles/characters, one of which is the one in question.

If no image is available, the {{images}} tag could be used to draw attention to this problem, which will place the article in Category:Images Needed.

Make sure all images adhere to Copyright Policy. Any {{screenshot}} of a GTA game is fine to be used on this wiki, because screenshots are property of Rockstar Games. But any images made by individuals, such as modified maps or artwork, should only be used with permission (or where the license allows it).

Article Content

Mission appearances

If an article is about an in-game character, the "Mission Appearances" section of the article lists all of the missions that the character appears in. Certain guildlines should be followed:

• Cameo appearances and voice appearances (e.g. somebody is talking on the phone to the protagonist) are included as mission appearances. However, in-game secrets (such as a portrait on a wall depicting an in-game character) are not counted as mission appearances.

• Voice appearances should be labeled as such when included in a "Mission Appearances" section like such:

Autocide (Voice)

• If a character is the mission boss for the mission they appear in, they should be labeled as such:

Phnom Penh '86 (Boss)

• If a character is killed in a mission, it should be listed as such next to the mission appearance

End of the Line (killed)

• Sometimes, a character can have multiple roles in a mission. They should be labeled as such:

Waste The Wife (Voice/Boss)

Locations

If the article is about a vehicle, this section details where these vehicles will permanently spawn and be avaliable to the player.

Trivia

If there is any hidden content, secrets, strange or interesting information about a character, a mission, a vehicle, an in-game feature, or a particular location, it is placed in the Trivia section of the article for other users to read.

References

If there is any information that is little-known, newly-released or otherwise difficult to believe, you should list a source. This should usually be done by an inline external link, such as this [1]. You should also do this whenever you quote a press release or statistics.

Sometimes an image or video is the simplest way to 'prove' something. You could upload an image, embed a youtube video, or link to a video elsewhere on the web.

See also

This section of the article is used to list similar articles to the one being read.

External Links

This section of an article contains links related to the article, but not used as a references.