Fantendo:Help/Standards

This is the one-stop page for #FFC200

Grammar
Your pages must be written in Standard English (pages in other languages are allowed if they are of good quality) and should have mostly good grammar and spelling for the most part. Sloppy grammar and/or poorly worded sentences will make the page look bad and as a consequence will be a higher candidate for deletion.

If English is not your first language and you'd like help on correcting your grammar and spelling, add to your page for assistance.

Examples
Bad Example - sper mario 128 iz a gam. for wii

Good Example - Super Mario 128 is a game for the Nintendo Wii.

Content
When making a page, plan it out first, be it either on a written draft or in your head. Creating a page with little to nothing on it is a big mistake, even if you plan on expanding it. Pages with little content are called either spam or stubs, and both have a higher chance of being deleted over other articles. Articles such as New Super Mario Bros Chess, for example, would not be acceptable. Even if you say "I will work on it later", stubs are usually deleted if not expanded over a long period of time. As a standard rule, it is recommended to have at least five hundred bytes of content when publishing a page.

So, always remember to add some content and the "construction" template when you create a page (see the Fantendo Help tutorials section for info on templates)

Categories
Remember to always categorize your pages. If you made a page on a villain, for instance, it belongs under categories such as "Characters" and "Villains". If you want, you can also create your own user category to index all of the articles you make. Adding the wrong categories to a page, or none at all, will result in other users having to do it and wasting their time! We don't want that, do we?

Use templates!
Templates are graphical enhancers to your page that not only make your page look professional, they post important notices about the page and organize it! The most common ones used are, for organizing game info, and , for showing that the page is still being worked on and should not be treated as final work. For more info on adding templates, see the Fantendo Help tutorials section.

Try not to have an article that's a list!
Try not to make list pages. List pages are pages where there are only lists, nothing else. This includes character rosters, worlds, etc. Sure, you can put this stuff, just remember to add non-list things, like a story, gallery, and more!


 * NOTE: There is an exception if you are making a directory pages. When making a directory for a game, most people follow this format for the page title: Title/List name. The slash is important, since that would make the page a subpage to that one game. For more info on subpages, hit up the Fantendo Help tutorials section.

Be Creative!
The last thing we need is more bad articles such as "SUPER HARRY POTTER VS MARIO X!!!!". Think about it before you create a page. Is this a game you would actually want to play? Would this game sell over two copies at your local game store? We here at Fantendo focus on quality content that interests viewers, and uninteresting, low-effort pages certainly doesn't help.

So please, it's okay to borrow concepts for use in your game (we are a fanon wiki, after all), but don't copy! Make something more original to yourself! Pages with original concepts are more likely to become Featured than pages that are still well written, but add nothing new to the franchise.

Dress for success!
Remember to make your pages look nice. Use tables. Have pictures. Use galleries. A big turn-off, despite being okay, is to have a game page that has all the right things (Story, Characters, Gameplay, etc.) but it's ALL TEXT. Adding little motifs, images and organization will make your page stand out from the rest.

Apply warnings where they need to be!
We have some very young kids on Fantendo. Eventually they will see the world for what it is, but please, put warnings on mature content (content with excessive swearing, inappropriate themes, etc.); the recommended template to use. We accept this kind of creativity, but it must be properly labeled, and handled with care and subtlety. Any explicitly suggestive content seen or reported that may be offensive will be put under judgement to see if it is suitable or not.

Joke Articles
Another thing that pops up somewhat commonly is the "joke article". If an article is completely for joking purposes, then it still must follow the wiki's page standards. For example, Zario would be okay as it follows the wiki's standards, but something such as Super smash bros : pineaple would not be acceptable.

Reasons for Deletion
You may find that your article or image may have been deleted some time ago when you weren't looking. Usually, standard reasons have been provided to note why it was destroyed from Fantendo in the first place. Explanations for these reasons can be found right here.

Vandalism and problems
An article may have been deleted because it is in violation of the rules in one way or another.
 * Copyright violation - Copyrighted works may have been used without permission of the copyright holder.
 * Spam/vandalism - The image or article is mostly utter nonsense and/or has just been made to vandalize Fantendo.
 * Stolen content/Plagiarism - Ideas, pictures, etc. may have been use without the permission of the original creator. The difference in comparison with "copyright violation" is that the original content in question isn't copyrighted, and may be plucked right off the internet instead.
 * Offensive content - The articles or images in question may be offensive in general.
 * Overly mature content - The material in question was targeted for mature audiences, but has no warning that says so. Remember that kids may be viewing this!
 * Obscene/Sexually suggestive - The imagery used may be lewd of some kind, including sexual activity and/or nudity. Overly revealing pictures are likely to be deleted for this same reason.
 * Lots of blood/gore - The imagery used contains an unacceptable amount of blood, pus or other kinds of gore from the human body.
 * Ideologically sensitive content - The article or image in question may be offensive from the perspective of a religious, social, political or other belief that some people may have. Serious praise of Nazism or Communism may lead to this reason, as well as discrimination.

Maintenance
Articles or images may have been deleted because they didn't follow the Standards, or maybe because sysops decided to clean up the place a bit more.
 * Author request - The article or image may have been deleted because the creator of the file/image requested it to be deleted.
 * Marked for deletion - The article or image in question has been marked with a template and/or was in the To Be Deleted category.

Article-specific reasons

 * Poorly written/formatted - The article had very poor grammar, bad spelling, and/or improper wikitext formatting.
 * Empty page - The article has practically nothing in it.
 * Unedited page (making use of an unedited standard layout) - Users tend to use the standard layout for their articles and do next to nothing about it.
 * List page - List pages are articles that are practically made of (or are one big) lists. List pages tend to be very dull and not pleasant, and make the author look lazy.
 * Very short, unneeded page - The page is... very short and feels unneeded. To prevent your short article from deletion, you have to make it longer, or at least put a template at the bottom. If you're going to work on it soon, you should put  at the very top.
 * Abandoned & Extremely Short - The page has been abandoned, and is short. If you want to prevent it from deletion, you can adopt the page.

File-specific reasons

 * Duplicated/superseded file - Duplicate files, or "dupes", are files that already exist on Fantendo in some way or another, usually in higher quality. Alternatively, it is a file that will soon be replaced by a file of much higher quality. Fantendo is practically riddled with duplicate files, so it's best to first look around to see if the file you're looking for already exists, before uploading it.
 * Lazily/terribly recolored file - Recolored files can be found everywhere on the internet. Images that have been lazily recolored or terribly recolored via simple standard image programs such as MS Paint are prone of being deleted due to their lack of quality.
 * Misnamed/Unused file - The file may have been deleted because it got a mistake in the filename, and/or may have not been used in a long time, either in favor of other files or due to deletion of articles.
 * Unpleasant/Ugly - The images is just badly made in most perspectives. The creator may have been too lazy to care about quality, or may unfortunately have no artistic talent.

Redirects
While redirects may exist in any way possible, some will be deleted fore one of three reasons.
 * Broken redirect - The redirect in question links to a page that doesn't exist anymore; hence why it's broken.
 * Unused redirect - There is likely not a single page that currently even links to this redirect, rendering it useless.
 * Redirect left from pagemove - When a page has been renamed, a redirect to said page will be made. When the new name of the article has nothing to do with the old name, however, there is no need for the old redirect to exist. Admins are able to rename a page without making a redirect.

Other
When an admin hasn't found the exact reason why they delete the article or image, they are able to type in the Summary why exactly the page is deleted. "Other" can be chosen to establish this.

Admins are able to use the Summary as well to explain further why one of the above reasons is specifically why the article got deleted.

If no explanation has been given whilst the reason is "Other", it's probable that they may be a bit too lazy as well, and/or render the case as obvious. If you don't find it obvious, you can contact the admin who performed the deletion, and politely ask him/her for a reason. Don't act rude, though.