Narutopedia:Standards

These are standards on how articles on the Narutopedia should be made.

Use the Edit Summary
When editing pages, try to fill in the "Summary" box above the Save/Preview buttons before saving, and make sure that you fill it in with something useful describing the edit you made and, if it's not obvious, why. For example, "fixed spelling error" or "added fun fact" or "reverted edits by 127.0.0.1" are all acceptable. Saying "made some changes" or just filling in the name of the page is not helpful, because it's information that we already have. Making your Summaries accurate and useful makes it vastly easier for the rest of us to keep track of Recent Changes and keeps everybody happy and helps prevent misunderstandings.

Use the Minor Edit Button
A check to the minor edit box, above the summary box is intended to signify that only superficial differences exist between the current and previous version: typo fixes, formatting, or otherwise rearranging text without changing content. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute.

By contrast, a major edit is a version that should be reviewed by other editors to ensure that everyone agrees on the change. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is not minor, even if the edit is a single word.

The distinction between major and minor edits is significant because editors may choose to ignore minor edits when reviewing recent changes; logged-in users might even set their preferences to not display them. If you think there is any chance that another editor might dispute your change, please do not mark it as minor.

An edit marked as minor is signified with a bolded "m" character (m) in the page history. Minor edits will also appear with the same bolded "m" in Special:RecentChanges.

Link Once
A given page should only contain one link to any other page. If a page links to Naruto Uzumaki in one place, then that should be the only link to Naruto Uzumaki on that page. Typically this link should be the first instance of the term in the article. But in the case of large articles, it's also ok to instead make one link in each major section instead of just once. Going with normal english, it's also a good idea to use a full name the first time you mention a character then use a shortened name such as Naruto to refer to Naruto Uzumaki.

Don't use conversational style
This is an online encyclopedia. It should read like an encyclopedia, not like your diary.
 * Check your spelling and grammar. Don't use internet slang (ex. "How r u?" or "c u 2nite"). If you're not 100% sure about the way a word is spelled, type it into Google or Dictionary.com. If you know that you're not the strongest speller, compose your edits in a word processor or web browser which has spell-checking (Firefox 2 and derivatives such as Lolifox, and Opera when ASpell is installed all work).
 * Set the Spell-Check language to British English.
 * Don't use "smileys" or "emoticons" in articles.
 * Don't "reply" to content others have posted. If you think a particular point warrants discussion, post on the article's Discussion page. If you're 100% sure that something should be changed and don't think a discussion is necessary, just change it. Dialogue goes only on articles' Discussion pages.

Stubs
If you don't know enough information on a topic, an article is way too small, or you know there's more, then add a stub to it. To do so, just add this to the bottom of the content (A clear line above the tags):

And people will know that it's a stub by looking at the stub category.

Don't sign your article edits
All contributions are appreciated, but if every user left their mark on every contribution they made, the wiki would be filled with nothing but signatures. If you've made an edit to an article that you're particularly proud of, the correct place to take credit is on your own user page.

Do sign your Talk posts
If you make a post on a discussion page, article talk page or in a forum page, please sign it. This is as easy as typing ~ at the end of your post. If you don't have a user account, you could also sign it with your name or nickname so everybody can tell who's who when reading long conversations. Even better, create an account anyway and use the signature method described. There really is no reason not to if you're going to stick around. And getting an account gives you benifits such as being able to upload images to contribute, move pages that need moving, and the community will let you make use of your own userspace. Anon users generaly don't get that because their userspace may be shared among a number of people.