Guidance for Scribes

This article is an evolving style sheet to help guide contributions to the wiki. While we're developing it, please join the conversation on the talk page. For suggestions on what to work on and wiki tutorials, check out the Wiki Portal and the Wizards of the Wiki guild chat. Please consider joining the Wizards of the Wiki guild.

Mission
Our goal is to create and maintain an accurate, up-to-date, complete and easy-to-use guide for players of Habitica.

The quick reference card to the right is a printable version of the critical parts of these guidelines, but you should read through this Wiki page for full details.

Quick-Tips

 * The tone should be semi-professional and informative; use complete sentences and 3rd person unless 2nd person is helpful.
 * The length of the page or section should be as long as needed but no longer: informative and concise.
 * Use text formatting sparingly (e.g., bold, italicize, color).
 * Use Standard American English with two exceptions: use they, not he/she and capitalize Habitica terms which have a special meaning to Habitica (XP, Dailies, Tavern).
 * Be sure to link to relevant pages but only the first time the reference is made (e.g., when Dailies are first mentioned but not every time they are mentioned).
 * Avoid spoiling information about upcoming changes, additions, or events; if spoiling a feature already implemented, use the spoiler template.
 * Add images if they are helpful to the article; search for the image you need in Special:NewFiles before adding it to the wiki.
 * Add categories to articles if an obvious category is missing; do not create new categories without checking with the keeper of Categories, Purplatypus.
 * If you made major edits to a page, be detailed in your edit summary.  This helps other editors check your work.
 * Only rename a page if absolutely necessary; if you do, use WhatLinksHere to fix links to the page.
 * If you believe a page needs to be deleted, go to Classic Editor->Source and enter    at the top of the page; include the reason for deletion.

How to Start
You can begin contributing to the Habitica Wiki by signing up for a Wikia account. Your username does not have to be the same as your Habitica username in order for you to earn credit for your work when requesting a contributor tier. Be sure to sign in to Wikia every time you edit so you can get credit for your edits and so that we can recognize your contributions.

After signing up, if you feel like testing the waters of the Habitica Wiki community and the Wikia editor, feel free to fill out your profile page with some information about yourself, and create a Blog Post about how you use your Habits and Dailies. Let us get to know you!

If you are new to wikis, you may want to read the tutorial and view the list of help pages for guidance.

What to Write
Writing for the wiki isn't just about creating brand new pages; it's also about managing the quality of what currently exists.

Starting scribes with little to no previous Wikia experience may want to begin by helping clean up existing articles. All of the Wiki Scribes are volunteer writers of various writing and national backgrounds who make changes at multiple points during the day; we will never quite be rid of typos and grammatical errors, so fixing the little things (even missing periods) has value. Consider making minor edits as a way to learn how to navigate the site and use the editor instead of trying to jump in immediately by making large additions to pages or creating full articles. Habitica is an ever-evolving product; new features are added regularly, and some things supersede previous facts about features. Scribes are encouraged to make changes to related pages as they find them.

Before making major changes, use each article's talk page to discuss article contents, resolve any conflicts, and talk about anything specific to the article. Respect is key. Remember to sign edits to talk pages. For more general discussions, use the Wizards of the Wiki guild.

One good source of editing ideas is the list of pages with suggested changes.

Reviewing and (when appropriate) editing or deleting speculative content helps to keep the wiki accurate.

You can find a list of useful templates at Category:Templates, some of which are documented on Habitica Wiki:Templates.

If you need help editing, you could start with Help:Editing or the tutorial.

Subscribing to Changes
If you want to follow changes to this wiki, or look out for new users and edits, use recent changes.

Tone
Informative and semi-professional. In practice, this means opening all articles with clear-cut and concise definitions of the topic in question, followed by a well-organized and thorough rundown of the topic in detail. Stick with the third person only in the openings, using words like "player" and "user" rather than "you." Once you get into the meat of an article, it should be fine to use the second person, as most articles will have instructions for users of the site to follow. Never use the first person under any circumstances.

Article Length
Keeping the tone in mind, the article should be informative. The article should be straight to the point and should be as long as need be (especially for broader topics). However, do not go on a tangent and add fluff. Shorter articles are generally more accessible and usable than really long ones. Referencing related pages, however, is recommended and helpful for users in general. Always write the best that you can on all of your contributions.

Text
Formatting of text can include bold or italic text. These should be used sparingly. Text with too much formatting is distracting and decreases readability. Do not use text-decoration (overline, underline, etc.). Usual formatting of text does not need strikethrough, and underlined text can easily be confused with hyperlinks.

Margins and Padding
Margins and Padding are names for space around an element, be it text, image, table, etc. As a wiki editor, you usually do not have to worry about this. When you get further into it, this can be handled via CSS and the style attribute. You can read up on the use here: margins and padding.

Grammar and Spelling
On this wiki, we follow standard English grammar rules.

This includes (but is not limited to) spacing and punctuation. Use one space between sentences. Abbreviations should be followed by periods (for example, e.g. and i.e.). Entries should be made in sentences, not note form, unless entering data in a list or table. If you see improper grammar in a wiki page, feel free to edit it! In addition, make sure you double-check (and maybe even triple-check) your edits after writing them to make sure you don't have any grammar bugs lurking on the page.

Use singular "they" when you need a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. This is more inclusive and less awkward than alternatives like "he/she", and is accepted in many English style guides.

American English is the standard for spelling rules on this wiki. This means that color, personalize, and center are the correct spelling, while colour, personalise, and centre are not. The one exception to this rule is the spelling of grey. While American English generally uses gray as the standard spelling, this wiki, as well as Habitica, do not. In order to remain consistent with the rest of the wiki and between the wiki and Habitica, the standard spelling shall be grey (read more). Don't make an edit solely to change British English to American English unless it interferes with the functioning of a link or it is the incorrect spelling of a name. It is acceptable to change it while other substantial edits are being done, though.

Capitalization
Standard English rules of capitalization are almost always followed. This has two main cases: Proper nouns are capitalized (e.g., America, Habitica). (One exception is when a player has chosen to write their display name in lower case; please respect the player's choice and use the same capitalization they do, e.g., the moderator deilann should not have his name written as "Deilann".)
 * 1) At the beginning of sentences.
 * 2) With certain nouns (usually proper nouns, or Habitica terms such as "Market") and some adjectives.

Terms that have a special meaning in the context of Habitica should be capitalized. For example, Strength is a character attribute; strength is something else (as in "I want to increase my physical strength so I have created several tasks with the Strength attribute"). Words that refer to more general concepts in the game do not need to be capitalized. For example, "sword" in Habitica has the same meaning as it has in the real world and so is lower case.

The tables below give some examples of those guidelines.

For capitalization of headers and subheadings, please see the chapter on Headers below.

If you need more information, please see Wikipedia.

Writing in all caps is considered yelling, and as such it is an improper tone for this Wiki.

Tables
Tables should be styled as they appear when the add table feature is used in the visual editing mode of the classic editor. This does not apply to sorting tables, or excessively large tables (see Mounts). Parameters in source mode for this are: border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="article-table" style="width: 500px; If you'd like to create tables using a graphical interface, TablesGenerator.com allows you easily create MediaWiki tables that then be copy-pasted into the wiki.

Colors
Use colors sparingly so as not to disrupt the global style. Colors should not be used for any text as they can be confused with broken links or links to other pages.

Links
Relevant internal links to articles help readers browse the wiki and help avoid dead-end pages. External links to GitHub issues and Trello cards can provide useful behind the scenes or historical information.

When creating links on a page, make sure that you link to the current page for the topic in question, and that the target link in the source code (or edit link box) is appropriately capitalized. Because the wiki is a work in progress, pages are occasionally consolidated, removed, or renamed. For example, the Gold Points page has previously been named Gold Points (GP) and Gold Coins. To prevent issues when other sites have linked to the pages on the wiki that no longer exist, the admins leave redirect links to deleted pages. This means that when new internal links are created, the auto-fill suggestion box includes these old link names. When wiki users click these old links, they are redirected to the new page. The new page alerts the user to the old link redirect with a message below the page title, "Redirected from [old page name]", as can be seen using the links in the above example. Link targets that are not capitalized in the source code also give this message. This issue does not affect functionality of the wiki, but using the correct link and preventing these messages improves the wiki's sense of professionalism.

Informative Link Text
The text for links should be informative. Avoid generic link text such as "link" or "page"; instead, use text that provides more information about the page being linked to. For example, "created a page outlining how to adapt Habitica to ADHD" is uninformative, whereas "created a page outlining how to adapt Habitica to ADHD" demonstrates good practice.

This is for the benefit of partially sighted and blind people using screen readers. Screen readers allow users to navigate from link to link while having the text for each link read aloud, so it is beneficial for link text to be informative about the subject matter of the link. This allows users to more easily determine when they want to follow the link or to direct the screen reader to read the surrounding text.

Titles
When creating a new page, do not use parentheses in the title. Wiki pages with parentheses in the title will glitch due to a conflict with the formatting in the Tavern.

Headers
Liberal use of headers breaks up articles, enables easier reading, and allows the automatic generation of tables of contents. Conversely, too many subheadings makes the text harder to read.

Headers and subheadings should not be changed unnecessarily. They can be linked to from other pages and from locations outside the wiki (e.g., Habitica itself, GitHub, and blog posts) so any change to a heading will make these links nonfunctional. If it is essential to change a header, correct all links leading there from elsewhere in the Habitica wiki. Also, search likely locations in the Habitica website (habitica.com) for links to the heading. If you find any, create a new issue in GitHub to ask that the link be changed.

Headers and subheadings are capitalized according to the rules described in Composition titles (a form of title case). However, if you see an existing header that does not have correct capitalization, please do not change it unless you are certain that there are no links to it.

Infoboxes
Individual item pages should have an infobox with an image, the tooltip description, and buy/sell prices - instead of listing this info in paragraph form. Example code for the template is as follows.

Table of Contents (TOC)
The table of contents (TOC) will automatically generate after the fourth main sub-heading. The TOC can be forced to appear with less than four sub-headings by including the following code in the source view of the editor at the start of the wiki document: To shift the TOC to the right of the page, enter the following code into the source view of the editor at the top of the wiki document:

Avoiding Spoilers
When looking for new information to add to the main namespace, stick to features that are already implemented, visible, and accessible to all players on Habitica. Information about planned or upcoming features available on GitHub and the various Trello boards may contain spoilers that the staff wish to keep as surprises for players. This is particularly important for world events, particularly those with multiple event-based reveals like the battles with world bosses. It is, of course, okay to discuss quest lines in designated areas like the Camp.

For spoilers of already implemented content, such as resolution text for boss or collection quests, you can use the templates for spoilers, Template:Spoiler start and Template:Spoiler end. The spoiler warning template, Template:Spoiler should be used on pages such as the Camp, where most or all content are spoilers.

Images
Images should be added if they are useful in the context of the article, for example, if they help make a concept more clear.

Before uploading a new image, search for it in Special:NewFiles and in the various Images categories. The image you want might already be uploaded and if so, you should not upload a duplicate (see Replacing v. Deleting below for more information). If it has not already been uploaded, you can find most of the original Habitica images used on the website (including items, food, pets, and mounts) in GitHub under the common/img/sprites/spritesmith directory in the "habitrpg" repository.

File Types
Images should be uploaded as PNG with the highest resolution available. Under special circumstances, different image formats are allowed (e.g., if an animated GIF is essential).

Images should have transparent backgrounds unless the background is essential to understanding the information that the image is trying to present.

File Names
Images being uploaded should be named with generic but descriptive titles. The name should accurately reflect the content of the image, distinguishing it from other images, without describing elements of the image that may be changed as Habitica evolves.

Try to avoid using words in the name that would be inaccurate should the image need to be updated in the future to represent changes to Habitica. For example, the image on the right was uploaded to show what the buff icon looks like on an avatar. It was correctly named Avatar_Buff.png.

Avoid including any words in the image's name that are likely to become irrelevant when the image changes: An exception can be made if it is absolutely necessary and not likely to change (e.g., July_2014_Mystery_Item.png).
 * Dates (e.g., Avatar_Buff_August_2014.png)
 * Version numbers (e.g., Avatar_Buff_version_1.png) or words indicating a new version (e.g., Avatar_Buff_updated.png or Avatar_Buff_modified.png)
 * Avatar names (e.g., Deborah_Buff.png)
 * Elements in the image that might change when the site is updated, such as colors or shapes (e.g., Buff_White_Arrow.png)

For equipment pieces, use the same file names that are used in Habitica itself. For example, the Winter 2015 Healer armor is. File names can be found in GitHub under common/img/sprites/spritesmith/gear. Don't use the "shop_..." file names even if the shop version of the image is uploaded; instead, use the file name for the normal version of the image (e.g., use weapon_healer_1.png rather than shop_weapon_healer_1.png).



Captions
Use the caption to explain what the picture shows, and to clarify why it is included in the page.

Wide Captions
When paired with smaller images, some captions may wrap undesirably as seen to the right. You can use the infobox item template as follows to render the image without undesired wrapping:

Replacing v. Deleting
Outdated images should be replaced rather than deleted if at all possible. Go to the image's page, then select the drop-down menu on the edit button next to the title. You will see the following options: History and Replace. Click on replace, then use the form displayed to upload the updated image. You can write a brief description of what has changed in the image, or why a new version is needed. Once the form is submitted, the old version of the image will be replaced by the new one, but the old version will still be available in the file's history tab.

Note: There is an ongoing issue with the Wikia caching so that for a little while after a replacement image is uploaded, the old image still shows. Wikia seems to occasionally have very aggressive caching that can hold on to the old version of an image for hours. It should rectify itself within a day, but if it doesn't, the issue can be reported to wiki staff and they'll manually clear out their cache. See also the Wikia Community Central's Help:Purge page.

Using this method to replace an old image has a lot of advantages over uploading a completely new image. It means that you can see all versions of an image in one place, and it's very easy to revert to an old version if needed. It means that all links on the wiki and elsewhere will keep on working. It reduces clutter in the wiki's "Photo" section because there's only one entry for each image.

Most importantly, it makes it impossible for anyone to accidentally use an old version of an image. Someone who's editing a page and needs to choose an image will find it hard to pick the right one, and if more than one similar image is used across the site, then all of them have to be updated when Habitica changes. But if new versions of images are uploaded to "replace" old images rather than uploaded as new images, this issue disappears.

Check out this thread for more explanation of why it's generally better to replace rather than delete.

Copyright
Please include the origin of images, the author, and the copyright information when uploading images. Adding copyright information at the same time that you upload an image is easier than adding it later and is strongly recommended.

Images from Habitica (artwork, screenshots, etc) are licensed under the CC-by-NC-SA 3.0 license and can easily be identified as such through the drop-down menu in the upload section when uploading a new image. To add the appropriate image licensing information to an existing image, go to the image's own page, click the edit button to modify the image's description, and paste in this text: Set the edit summary to "adding copyright information" or similar.

Adding Spacing and Preventing Awkward Overlaps
If the image is creating issues with the layout, you can add the following code to create a clear space to fix it.

Wiki Promotional Art
Some pages have decorative promotional art, depicting Habiticans engaging in activities relevant to the material on the page. These images can add flavor and help break up large areas of text. If you find a page that could benefit from this type of art and have an idea for it, submit your idea to the appropriate card on the Pixel Art Trello. Once your idea is approved, it will be added to a list of scenes needed. Artisans will then be able to claim and create the scene.

As wiki promotional art is decorative, it does not require captions.

Videos
Videos from Youtube and Vimeo can be included, but should only be used if they improve the article significantly.

Categories
Categories can be added to articles to group them according to a certain topic. However, having too many categories, especially when they contain very few pages, have vague topics, or are similar to other categories, can add unnecessary clutter to the wiki and make it more difficult for users to find the most helpful categories. Please refrain from adding categories that are not already in use.

Category pages (for example, Category:Contributing) can optionally contain one to two sentences to explain what the category is for. This is not necessary when the intention is obvious. Category pages should never contain more content than that because their primary purpose is to be a list of related articles.

More specific guidance on categories is coming soon.

Edit Summaries
When making edits, write a short summary of the changes that have been made in the 'Edit Summary' box before publishing. Depending on the edit, a few words may suffice, but major edits may need longer summaries or the inclusion of rationales. Providing these summaries allows other scribes to quickly get a sense of what has changed. It is also extremely helpful when filling out contributor tier applications, as these summaries are shown as part of the edit histories on user profiles in the 'Contributions' tab. In addition, it makes finding specific changes in a series of edits much easier.

Renaming Pages
On rare occasions, pages may need to be renamed. When pages are renamed, Wikia will automatically create a redirect page that will take old links to the new site. However, links on the wiki will not be updated automatically. The wiki will still function, but users will be alerted to the fact that the link is old with a message below the page title, "Redirected from [old page name]". To eliminate this message and maintain the sense of professionalism that the wiki strives for, you can use the special page WhatLinksHere to find those out of date links that renaming has created, and fix them. Simply type the old page title into the appropriate box, and they will be displayed.

Deleting
If there are occasions for pages to be renamed, there will also be occasions for pages to be deleted. Only wiki admins can delete pages. If you think a page should be deleted, enter the classic editor and open the source tab. At the top of the page, add the following code with your reason for suggesting deletion:

Keep in mind that at this time, redirect pages are a permanent fixture for the wiki. The wiki is here to provide information to the users in a way that's convenient for them to use. Broken external links, whether from an outside site, the Habitica forums, or a page that a user bookmarked, make it less convenient for the readers to use the wiki. Therefore, redirect pages are kept in place so that these links will not give a "404 Page Not Found" error. This ensures that wiki users have a better experience when trying to locate information, and increases the wiki's efficiency in providing consistent, up-to-date information. Remember, our goal is to create and maintain an accurate, up-to-date and easy-to-use guide for players of Habitica, so if there is a redirect page that you firmly feel needs to be deleted, at the top of the page add the deletion code with the reason that the page should be deleted. From there, the wiki admins will discuss the reason and make a decision, and the page will either be deleted, or the deletion code can be removed.

Creating a User Sandbox
A Sandbox is a page that can be used to practice editing, to learn the formatting, and to put together drafts without necessarily publishing it to the main page. If you are someone who learns by doing, having a sandbox where you can try out code, formatting, and design can be very useful. Below are the steps to create your sandbox.

1. '''Go to your user page. '''You can do this by clicking on your user icon at the top right of any wiki page. You may have to click twice if the first click opens up the menu.

2. Add /Sandbox to the end of your URL. Click on the URL box in your browser, deselect the text, and type in /Sandbox at the very end of. Go to this page.

3. Since you have not yet created your sandbox, you will have the option to do so here. Right next to the page title, click the Create button.

4. If it opens up in the visual editor, select the option to open the source editor. You can find this option by clicking on the drop-down menu next to the Cancel and Publish buttons, and selecting Source Editor.

5. Paste the following code into the text box: 6. Below this pasted text, you can begin to practice editing. One idea to begin with is to add a table of contents and links to useful templates and code that you often need to look up.

7. Whenever you are finished editing in the source editor, click Apply Changes on the bottom right of the frame.

8. Click on Publish to save your page.

9. To find your Sandbox easily, add a link to it on your profile page. You can do so by pasting the following code into the source editor of your user page (found by clicking on your user icon, selecting Edit Profile under the Profile tab, and selecting the Source Editor option), replacing "Username" with your own username: My Sandbox 10. Voila! You now have a Sandbox of your own! Experiment with it as you please!

Toolbar
If you have a wiki account, you can utilize the toolbar that is at the bottom of your screen to use shortcuts and other tools to do various functions. You can find more info on the toolbar here.

For a list of available toolbar tools, see this page.



Disabling Ads
If you have a Wiki account and wish to disable ads, you may go to your preference page, scroll down to the ads setting, select "Don't Show all Ads" and then save your preferences.

Purging Pages
Sometimes pages may be behaving oddly like not showing changes. If this is happening try adding ?action=purge to the end of the URL and going to that address. This causes the page to be reloaded and fixes many problems.

Contributor Tier Process
Please read The Keep:The Knights Chambers to understand the process for requesting a contributor tier and the kinds of wiki changes that are preferred.

If you already have a tier from some other kind of contribution, then apply for the next tier (but if you apply for the wrong tier, you will end up with the right tier, so it doesn't matter if you don't get it right). For example, if you're a tier 3 (from Socialite, Storyteller, and Artisan), then apply for tier 4.

Don't worry too much about the wiki points you've earned. The points are only a rough guide; the entries in the application are checked manually to see how much they count towards tiers (which is why assigning wiki tiers is so slow).

When tiers are assigned, it's usually for a body of work in a single field (e.g., a pure Scribe tier or a pure Blacksmith tier). Occasionally there are case-by-case exceptions.

The higher tiers are always harder to get than the lower tiers.

One overriding rule that can change everything else: The staff (and occasionally moderators for the low tiers) have final say over tiers and can make decisions that might conflict with the other guidelines. However, this would only be done for a good reason that seems fair to the staff and moderators. One recent example is the first tier given to WikiFAQ_bot - it was given long before a Socialite would usually get a tier, but it was clear that WikiFAQ_bot was being useful and the tier was awarded to allow the bot's name to stand out.