The Outer Worlds Wiki:Content policy

This page contains the Outer Worlds Wiki's article guidelines. It describes criteria and general rules for all the content on the wiki.

• Any registered editor is free to edit this page to improve its readability as long as the essence of the article remains unchanged.
• If you would like to suggest content changes or propose a new policy or guideline, please contact a staff member.

Editing

You are free to edit pages on the wiki but understand that others can also edit your work. Please do not abuse this right by starting an 'edit war', simply discuss any problems on the discussion page or report abuse to an admin.

Content criteria

• All content should relate to The Outer Worlds series of games, its setting or game mechanics.
• All content needs to be accurate. The Outer Worlds Wiki aims to provide reliable information. In particular, adding speculation and own inventions (fan fiction, fan art etc.) to articles should be avoided. However, feel free to write to include this content in your user pages or blogs
• All content needs to be verifiable. Other editors need to be able to check and verify it.
• All content needs to be informative. Information which is only of interest to the writer or to other editors (as opposed to readers) should not be included in articles.
• All content needs to be objective. Opinions, game-play strategy, and "my favorite"-style passages should not be added to articles. Accordingly, guides may only be posted as sub-pages of one's user page or as a blog.
• All content needs to relate to the games as delivered by the developers; user modifications are not covered by this wiki.
  • Mentions of modifications which may fix game bugs are the exception and links to these can be provided.
• All content needs to abide by copyright regulations. Generally, content from other sites should not be copied unless permission has been granted. For example, do not upload magazine scans or add illegally obtained information, so as to avoid potential legal problems.

Video

Wikis are predominantly text-based with supplemental images. Video may be added to articles, however it must meeting the following criteria:

• Cover a subject that is difficult to demonstrate in text
• Take a direct route
• Only show content relevant to the subject
• Only includes sound and content from The Outer Worlds and other official sources

Spoiler policy

In general, the whole wiki is considered a spoiler and specific spoilers should not be marked as such in articles. The only exception to this rule is information relating to upcoming games or add-ons, i.e. games or add-ons which have not been released yet but are to be released in the future.

Plagiarism policy

A wiki doesn't just live and die on the information it contains; it also survives on the reputation it builds as an information source.

Plagiarism hurts the wiki's reputation and reduces our ability to be seen as an authoritative information source - it also could be a breach of copyright.

It could also put the wiki at risk - unauthorized copyrighted content could see parts of, or even the whole wiki made unavailable.

What is, and what is not, plagiarism?

“

The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own

„

—http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plagiarism

As a trusted source of information, we want as much of our pages as possible to be made up of original content that cannot be found anywhere else. To this end, we would prefer editors, whenever possible, to create original works that do not directly copy anyone else's work.

This is not to say content cannot be inspired by it - maybe you saw something somewhere else that you thought might improve a page. By all means, feel free to bring that to the wiki - but make sure its your own work and written in your own words - and if you can improve and develop the idea further.

Sometimes you may have to use other peoples words and work, here are some situations where this is acceptable (this isn't inclusive):

• Licensed Content. If you have prior permission from the content owner, you can reuse their content - We've asked permission to present to you many of our sound files for example. You should still cite who the owner of the work is though.
• Copyleft/Creative Commons/Public Domain - this is a specific form of licensed content, the owner of the work has made it available for anyone to use without prior permission, but in the case of the first two this is subject to some rules. You should ensure that you follow any requirements set by the content owner (such as following the license conditions, or attributing in the way that they request); if no attribution standard is given by the owner, then you should ensure that they are identified and if at all possible the original linked in the references (for non-displayed content, the comments may also be acceptable).
• Quotes - Its perfectly permissible to quote a person, or even a copyrighted work. Your quote should be limited to the amount you need to make your point - for example, you can't quote an entire magazine article, but a paragraph or two may be acceptable. You should use the Quote template, and link to the source of the quote wherever possible, giving credit to the author/speaker/publication.
• Fair Use - There are also times where it is possible to reuse content within the US's "Fair Use" exemption. Much of the source files and screenshots fall into this category, as does images used in news reporting. The origin should be credited and linked wherever possible.

General Grammar Rules

Article Titles and Subtitles

When creating articles, they should be in upper case with the exception of conjunctions (e.g. of, the, in). In most cases a lower case redirect should also be made for use in articles to simplify editing.

Article Content

Although item names are always capitalized in-game, the wiki follows general writing rules. In both page titles and content, carrot should only be Carrot if it's a trademark, proper noun, or the start of a sentence. Taxnomical (or scientific) nomenclature always capitalizes only the first name, and is always written in italics.

Guidelines:

type	examples	rule
location name	Monarch Wilderness The Lost Hope	capitalize (proper noun)
quest name	Comes Now the Power	capitalize (title)
item name (unique)	The Hammer of Olympus	capitalize (proper noun)
item name (generic)	pocket watch Dead-Eye assault rifle	lowercase (except trademarks within the name)
taxonomical naming	Salmonidae salinis Beta lupus familiari	capitalize the first name, lowercase for the rest. Always in italics.

Written Numbers

Written numbers should be used in writing where the number is between zero and one hundred. Numbers exceeding one hundred should be in numeric form. The only exceptions to this are skill and bit values, which should always be in numeric form.

References

Not all information is "obvious" as to where the wiki has obtained it, maybe it was in an obscure piece of dialogue that could be acquired under specific circumstances or in an overlooked, highly protected terminal. Content such as this should be referenced on the article. For the purpose of this policy, reference components in italics are only required, where relevant.

References should come after the punctuation, to avoid the punctuation markings themselves becoming detached sentence (or fragment). If source material is on the wiki (e.g. terminal entries), it should be linked in the reference.

Dialogue references

All dialogue references should be in the following format:

Character, topic, event, location.

Examples

• Bradford, on Iconoclast Leadership, Amber Heights.
• Parvati, discussion with Max on OSI.

Terminals, books and datapads (written sources)

Written sources should referenced in the following format:

Source name, subsection, (sub)location (location).

Examples

• Robert Holcombe's terminal, message from Idumati, mechanical bay (Edgewater).
• Banned book, Groundbreaker.

External sources

External sources can be both digital or physical and when used the source, article/chapter/etc. title and date accessed should be given. Where there is an author and/or date on the source itself this should also be used:

Author, Source name, date, article/chapter title (link if online), date accessed (if online).

Game data

	Section needed

Font styles

• Only the first mention of the articles subject should be in bold, all further instances would be plain text.
• Quotes should be in italics
• Any other use of font styling should be minimal.

Vehicle names

Vehicle names, with the exception of nautical craft, should be written in plain text. Nautical craft names should be italicised in line with nautical industry standards.

Organisation

Anyone can add a page or image, which can ultimately lead to confusion if no order is followed. Please name things to a standard.

Files

Filenames should be descriptive to the content:

• Ellie portrait.jpg
• The Hope airlock.jpg

Titles such as 123.jpg are unhelpful in content searches as Special:Search does not show the image itself.

Be mindful to keep filenames as short as possible. "Ellie doing a dance around a fire on the bodies of her captives wielding a shotgun and a six pack of beer.jpg" is descriptive, but unwieldy; reducing it to "Ellie campfire dance.jpg" would be a more suitable title.

Titles

Overall, article titles should be in the singular, rather than the plural. The only exception to this is overview articles, which cover multiple subjects in a topic (e.g. Weapons).

Article titles should also follow Capitalization policy.

Redirects

Redirects should only be created in the following situations:

• Where a user is likely to search with words included or omitted (e.g. Phineas Vernon Welles, Phineas Welles or Captain Alex Hawthorne, Alex Hawthorne.
• Where a subject is bundled into another article only, for example Botantical lab key may be bundled into an article for Keys.
• Common misspellings - these would be done by the administrators based on the wiki search data or commonly recreated misspelled articles.
• Ease of maintenance - where the text to a page link often will not match the article title (e.g using first name only, pluralism which differs from the singular) a redirect may be beneficial to editors and readers.
  • Plurals that do not change the spelling of the singular (e.g. carrots) should not be created.
  • The inverse (plural to singular) can be created, however they should only be created only if the singular is frequently used in articles.

Categorization

All images and all pages must be added to a Category by adding this code to the bottom of the page or in the image summary:

[[Category:Name of category here]]

In general, where there is a relevant, more specific category, this should be used in place of the general category. A companion would have the Companions category and forgo the Characters category. Weapons would be categorized by their sub-type (e.g. Handguns) as opposed to the general Weapons category.

In the case of a topic fitting into more than one category, multiple categories can be used, listed in alphabetical order.

Category creation

Creating new categories should only be done in the following conditions:

• Where there is no category that the article would suitably fit into.
• Where multiple articles could be better linked together.
• They should not be of 'special interest', unless justified through community consensus.

New categories should be descriptive and useful to readers. Weapons with Glowy blue bits Is descriptive, but not very useful; readers looking for this information are likely to be in the minority, padding articles needlessly and making it a special interest category.

'Special interest' categories

Special interest categories can be considered, but only with a majority consensus from the community. They are often too niche, or too broad to be of benefit from a maintenance or search perspective. Categorization by gender for example is very broad, although some may be interested in the character ratios, or want to play through by only interacting with one gender, this removes the overview of characters, or in the case of being categorized by employer, may make some sub categories exceptionally small. Some special interest categories may be of use based on game design; however, there are better ways to extrapolate this such as through DPL.

Template:Policies