VNDev Wiki:Manual of Style/Community Guidance

Community Guidance, or Guides are a type of page on VNDev Wiki that focuses on advice, instructions, and other non-objective information with the goal of aiding the learning of new developers. Guides are distinct from articles, and different Manual of Style guidelines apply to them.

Purpose and Overview

Community Guidance is not a statement of fact, but is a non-neutral statement that is otherwise approved by the community. Community Guidance provides direction and assistance to developers on subject matters with numerous or complex options.

The ultimate goal of Community Guidance is to provide useful information to developers to aid in the objective of making visual novels at the cost of neutrality on the subject. While VNDev Wiki values objectivity, it also respects the time, energy, and other resources of its users and may opt to include community guidance, or links to community guidance, when a subject matter proves confusing, complex, or intimidating to new developers.

Community Guidance is an exception to our Contribution Policy, which otherwise states that articles should remain neutral.

Ownership

Guides are typically written and "owned" by a single user or a small group of users. Although anyone can edit any guide, the owner of the guide generally has the final say in the content (aside from moderators). It is generally good etiquette to check with the owner of a guide before making any significant changes other than grammar and spelling.

The owner of a guide should be specified in the required guide template (see below).

Topics & Titles

The topic of a guide must be:

• A skill, process, or technique useful to visual novel developers
• Distinct enough from other guides to be useful. Multiple guides on the same topic may exist, but each should provide a different strategy, method, or way of thinking, such that the guides are not duplicative of each other.

The titles of all guides must be prefixed with "Guide:" with no space following (as in "Guide:Finding a team on DevTalk"). Guides in a language other than English must have titles which end with the language in parentheses, such as "Guide:Designing sprite expressions (Spanish)".

Additionally, guide titles must follow overall page title requirements.

Layout & Writing Style

Every Guide is required to begin with {{Template:Guide}}. See the documentation for that template for more details.

Within the first paragraph or two, guides should state their purpose, as well as what features make this guide distinct from any others on similar topics. After that point, guides may by broken up into sections (or not) as the guide author deems appropriate. If sections are used, their titles should follow the guidelines for article section titles above.

Guides are often more narrative than articles, and can use more creative and casual phrasing if the author chooses.

Guides may be written in the preferred dialect or language of the author, but should use one language & dialect throughout. For languages other than English, see the requirements in Topics & Titles.