Holocron:Guide
Overview
This should guide you through the basic do's and don't's of using the Holocron Wiki.
Disclaimer
By contributing to the wiki you acknowledge that this is a collaborative work and that all members of the Star Wars Combine have the same right to create, modify, move, reuse and edit pages or parts of them within this wiki. Disputes between members on the content of articles should be solved by discussing the matter on the respective talk pages. No contributor has the right to exclusively control the content of a page, including articles on his own character, faction, ship etc.
Sign up
Account Creation
You must use your Combine Handle for your Holocron user account. This helps tie edits to an active member in the Combine. If your handle changes, you must create a new Holocron account with the new name.
Account Activation
In order to deter spambots, new registrants currently must have their wiki accounts activated by a member of the Holocron staff in order to create or edit articles. After you have registered a new account, please send an in-game Darkness Message to several of the following individuals and request that your account be given editing privileges:
- Prard`aga Rono (Bureaucrat)
- Raith Starlight (Bureaucrat)
- Pamir Bidou (Bureaucrat)
- Xesh Randell (Bureaucrat)
- Syn (Administrator, Bureaucrat)
Policies and Guidelines
SWC and Official Canon
The Holocron is the in character (IC) Wiki of the SWCombine. All articles should be written from an IC, yet neutral perspective. They have to describe the SWCombine universe exclusively. This is important for topics or entities that also exist in the canon Star Wars universe. You can put a link to appropriate external sources (e.g. Wookipedia) to make standard canon information more easily accessible, but make sure to not contaminate the SWCombine universe with canon universe material.
IC and OOC
All wiki articles should be in character (IC). Discussion pages and user pages can be out of character (OOC). For players and their characters all OOC content should either be taken to the respective user page or the Wiki Guide, whatever is more suitable.
Please write content as if you are writing an encyclopedic article for the benefit of inhabitants living in the SWC galaxy. Do not use OOC terminology such as "faction," "character," "NPC," "webpage," "avatar," "NFG," "IRC," etc., in your articles. Look at the Glossary for ideas and terms. Also, please use Combine Galactic Time instead of actual dates such as "February 8, 2003." Similarly, if you're using categories or templates, use categories or templates appropriate for an IC, rather than OOC, audience.
OOC content should be restricted to talk (Talk:), user (User:) and meta (Holocron:) pages. There is also limited scope to add OOC content if you provide an external link in an 'external links' section (e.g. linking to a rules page for a particular entity).
OOC content that we keep because of its special importance to SWC and because it does not fit in the guide wiki, use the OOC namespace, e.g. OOC:Fizzban.
OOC Metapages
Use the prefix "Holocron:" for OOC metapages, e.g. Holocron:ToDo. These count as pages for internal documentation/procedure/guides.
Neutral Point of View (NPOV)
The Holocron is the neutral, in-character (IC) encyclopaedia for the Star Wars Combine (e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica). The Holocron is for actual facts that document what is occurring and what has occurred in the galaxy. It is not a place for advertising, ego-stroking, blowing up your character, or rewriting history in massive favour of your faction.
Aim to follow the real life Wikipedia's standards for a neutral point of view (NPOV). Some rules need to be used with a grain of salt, e.g. what an "authoritative source" is. In this case SWCombine rules should augment the Wikipedia guildelines, in this case GNS rules should be applied, namely:
- "Topics detailing major events can be either based on database-affecting actions taken in the game (ie: if you actually took over a planet) or actions said to occur outside the limited abilities of the game-client.
- Topics that are not relevant to any database-affecting actions require the permission of any faction leader/owner whose faction's actions you choose to godmode. ie: You cannot claim to have recently destroyed a dozen Star Destroyers without first getting permissions to assume such a claim from."
Copying from other pages
Other sources of information are not always reliable.
Please respect copyright. This being said, copying from other pages, where this is not an issue - namely the SWC website - it is acceptable, as long as the text respects the IC and NPOV gudelines.
The Holocron is not a Guide
SWC has a guide wiki already. We also have a rules section. If you're writing about e.g. a ship, don't simply regurgitate what's already on the rules page, or write a guide on how you fly ships on the sublight level (though provide a link to it if you feel it appropriate). Rather, write information about the ship, maybe prominent factions that use it, particularly famous individual ships of that type, and content of that sort.
Language and Style
The preferred language for the Holocron is UK, or International, English. For content, it doesn't really matter so long as it's consistent across the page, but categories, templates, etc. should be in UK English (e.g. Category: Organisations not Category: Organizations).
However, adhering to strict norms of spelling or grammar is not essential for the Holocron. Many members of the SWCombine are not native speakers of English and should not be discouraged from contributing by putting too much emphasis on flawless language. Still, correct mistakes that you find. If you are looking for guidance, please refer to the Wikipedia manual of style. This should also be consulted in case of a dispute.
Images
You are encouraged to add life to your article and add images to it. When you upload images to this wiki, be sure to keep in mind the following:
- Name your image file in a unique way that could later be recognisable (such as "ryan_roche-image.png" not "my_image.png").
- Avoid very large images and try to resize them through an image editing program before uploading.
- After you uploaded your image you found out it was the wrong one, or would like to replace it - do not upload it again! Use the function in the current image's page "Upload a new version of this file". This will allow you to edit the image and keep the file name. If you'd like to change the file name altogether, upload a new image and put the old one in the "Images to be deleted" category.
- Categorise your images and put small info on them. Faction Banners & Logos should be categorised to Category: Organisation Images and people's images should go to Category: People Images. If no category matches your image, simply put it in the Category:Images.
Alerts and Notices
If you find an article or section that is clearly written from an OOC perspective, or heavily biased, or lacking in content, you may want to tag it so that others are aware of it and can find and remedy the issue(s). We have three tags for this purpose:
- {{CopyPaste}} indicates that the page or section was copy pasted from elsewhere, and should be rewritten to follow a style suitable for an encyclopedia.
- {{Fiction}} indicates that the page or section is written like a work of fiction, and should be rewritten to be original SWC specific content.
- {{stub}} indicates that the page or section is a stub, i.e. it lacks content.
- {{NPOV}} indicates that the page or section is biased and should be rewritten so it uses neutral language.
- {{OOC}} indicates that the page or section is written from an OOC point of view, and should be rewritten to be in-character.
To use these tags, simply add the appropriate text (in bold, above) to the top of the page, or section, that you feel needs work.
Categories and Templates
Before creating a whole lot of categories for your page, check what categories already exist by clicking Special pages, then clicking Categories. This will give you a list of all the categories already in use. Alternatively, find a page similar to the one you want to create, and see what categories it uses. For example, a page for an Imperial officer might have Category:People, Category: Males, Category: Humans and Category: Imperials. A page for a vehicle faction might have Category:Organisations, Category:Production Companies, Category: Vehicle Manufacturers and Category: Organisations founded in Year 5.
Similarly, before creating a new template, check what templates already exist.
As above, remember to keep things IC, unless you're creating a template or category for administration/meta purposes, not for use in pages in general. Examples would be the Stub, NPOV and OOC notices above - these are for administrative purposes only. Also follow existing naming standards. For example, if you're creating a new template which is in effect a box containing information, it should be called something like 'Template: Infobox (Your Content)' e.g. Template: Infobox Battle.
Also note that categories / templates should be in UK / International English.
Holocron articles
Creating/Editing
Editing a page
As we are using the same wiki software as Wikipedia, you can use the tutorials and help pages at Wikipedia to learn how to edit pages. Here are the most essential ones:
Use templates whenever possible: Category:Templates.
