Grand Theft Wiki:Style Guide

The Style Guide provides guidelines for layout and style of articles. Using a style guide will create consistency across the wiki, making it easier for readers/editors to navigate, and therefore more attractive to new users.

These guidelines are not "set in stone." Discussion of more efficient or more effective ideas is welcomed on the talk page; however, consistency is important, so please discuss any ideas before beginning widespread use of a style not recommended here.

At all times, style is secondary to content. Do not delete content because it is not formatted properly; format it or add a "Cleanup" or similar tag.

Each "Main Article" page can have a corresponding talk page. Below, the style to use on the two very different types of pages is outlined.

Main Article

Content

An article's main page should be informative and helpful to the reader. Any information relevant only to editors should be added to the article's talk page. Any discussion of the article's content or style should take place on the article's talk page.

Attributions

Attributions (e.g. "written by GTAMAN") and dates/times (e.g. "added Apr 29, 2008") should not be included on the article's main page. The wiki keeps a record of all edits, which editor it was made by, and when it was made. (However, comments left on talk pages should be signed, see below)

Game Information

All information included relating to gameplay should be accurate and verifiable.

Each game topic within Grand Theft Wiki should have one central page (e.g. Girlfriends), with links (if necessary) to the pages detailing the topic in particular games (e.g. Girlfriends in GTA San Andreas).

Game pages should be written in third-person and not first- or second-person whenever possible (i.e. "Tommy Vercetti has..." or "The player may customize...", not "I chose to kill..." or "You can steal...".

Many types of layouts are preferred for certain game pages.

Links

Avoid cluttered links. Only use a link for the first occurrence of a topic in each section; there is no reason to link to the same article multiple times in a section. Only link to an article if the information is likely to help the reader; too many irrelevant links cause "pauses" when reading and can distract from the intention of the page.

Talk Pages

Content

A talk page (i.e. Grand Theft Wiki talk:Style Guide notice the "_talk" added on to the end of the namespace) is used to discuss the article's style and content, or lack thereof.

Attributions

On an article's talk page, attributions are made by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment. This adds the time of the post and your signature (usually a link to your user and/or talk page(s).)

Topics

Always preface a new topic with a two-tier header (i.e. ==My Topic==). A reply should be indented with a colon (:), and each additional reply should be include one additional colon. When a conversation has many replies, the fifth comment should have no colons. For example:

==My Topic==
This is my topic.
:Reply 1
::Reply 2
:::Reply 3
::::Reply 4
Reply 5
:Reply 6