View source for Gswiki:Style guide/Player guides

Guides are articles featuring out-of-character advice or how-to instructions utilized to explain various aspects of gameplay or game systems.  There are two types of guides: [[#Official Guides|official]] and [[#Unofficial Guides|unofficial]].

==Official Guides==
Official guides are guides that were written by GemStone staff to cover topics pertinent to the world of Elanthia.  As such, they are treated in the same manner as [[official documentation]], and when imported to the GSWiki, are protected from edits by regular users.  Because of this, the information contained within may be out-of-date and are presented strictly for document preservation, unless updated by a member of GemStone staff.

==Unofficial Guides==
Unofficial guides are guides written primarily by players who may regard themselves as subject matter experts on certain topics.  There may be a singular or multiple contributors to a guide.  However, it is generally recommended that if a single contributor has published a guide to the wiki, that other contributors respect that article and refrain from additional edits without the prior express consent from the original contributor.  Additionally, if it is preferred that editing the guide is limited, it is strongly recommended to publish the guide as a subpage to the editor's user page.

Due to the freeform nature of these articles, minor formatting requirements are in place, but are far more relaxed than other areas of the GSWiki.  Much like [[Gswiki:Style guide/Creative works|creative works]] and [[Gswiki:Style guide/Character pages|character pages]], unofficial guides will have minimal moderation outside of policy enforcement and the following guidelines.  When published as a subpage to a user page, these guidelines are considered optional.

Third-party guides, such as those pertaining to Lich software, are not included in the following guidelines as they have specific policy standards they fall under.

===Form===
A semantic form has been created to make it easier for contributors to submit their guides to the wiki and can be found here: [[Form:Guide]].  This form automatically populates the fields for the [[#Guides Template|Guides banner template]].

===Article Title===
Article titles for creative works follow the same expectation as standard article naming convention.

===Guides Template===
The guides banner template is a required template for all unofficial guides published to the wiki published as standalone articles.  Using this template will automatically update the list of guides (with a brief delay), and allow them to be sorted using semantic properties in order locate easier for those seeking a specific topic.

'''Please note:''' This template is not required for guides published to user pages as a subpage.  However, if the contributor opts to utilize this template on those pages, the required fields are expected to be completed in full.

====Copy/Paste Code====
<pre><nowiki>
{{player-guide
|title = <!-- Name of work -->
|topic = <!-- Free-form entry -->
|author =  <!-- Name of author in plain text.  If multiple, please enter "Various" -->
|author-displayed = <!-- Name of author(s) with links to character/user pages as applicable (optional) -->
|date = <!-- Date guide published to the wiki. Format: yyyy-mm-dd -->
|updateby = <!-- If updated, name of last person to update (if different from original author) -->
|updated = <!-- Date guide last updated.  Format: yyyy-mm-dd -->
}}</nowiki>
</pre>

===Categories===
Due to the wide array of topics that may be covered, the guides template does not automatically populate the categories on the article page.  It is advised that authors add the applicable categories to the article themselves.

===Form & Template===
Form for guide page creation of editing:
* [[Form:Guide]]
Primary templates used with guides are:
* [[Template:Player-guide]]