Research Realm:Guidelines

Welcome, here is how to help

And remember, these are guidelines, not strict rules!

Getting started

Before you can edit on this wiki, you will need to create an account! Currently all accounts must be approved, so you need to request one. On the account request page, enter the username you want to be known as on this site, and an email address to connect to the account. Your account will be approved via email, so it must be a working address; you should make sure to always have your account connected to an email you can access! The biography section will be set as your initial user page; a good suggestion is to describe what subjects you are interested in that you will probably contribute to most here, such as what themes or games you like most.

Once your account has been accepted, you can begin editing right away! For a basic introduction on how to contribute to the Research Realm, continue with this page. If you need help with how to edit in MediaWiki, the software this wiki uses, see Help:Cheatsheet for some basic formatting you can refer to, such as how to make bold text or how to add an image.

Writing articles

The basics

• Stay objective. Do not put subjective sentences or opinions into articles (eg. "This game is crap"). Certain smaller jokes might be okay if they do not derail the article.
• Write articles in third-person. Do not directly refer to the reader in most cases. For video games, you should refer to the hypothetical person playing the game as "the player"; if an audience pronoun is needed, use "they", not "he or she" or any variations.
• Try to write with good spelling and grammar as best as you can, though other editors will be willing to help if you need it.
• Different regional variations of English are allowed, though an article should use the same style throughout, and the style used should match the article topic's origin if possible; an article about a British topic should be written with British English spelling, an American topic should be written in American English, etc.
• The structure of the Wiki should follow a hierarchy. For instance, you should be able to navigate from a page about 1999 as a year down to a Rock Raiders part that was released in that year.
• Create a new wiki article for a topic when there is a decent amount of information on it. If there is little information about a topic and it is closely connected to another topic, it may be best to keep the smaller topic write-up as a section on the larger one's page.
• Cite your sources and do not add unsourced material; see below for more details.

How do I grammar?

• Article titles should be in sentence case. Proper nouns and titles of works in article titles should be capitalised in their appropriate case, but not other words. Example: "List of books written by Jane Smith", not "List Of Books Written By Jane Smith".
• Titles of works (in English) should be written in title case. (For works without an English title, check the appropriate rules for each language; eg. titles in Danish generally only capitalise the first word like in sentence case.) Larger works like books, films, albums, television series, magazines, and video games should be italicised. Shorter works like individual episodes of a series, shorter songs or tracks on an album, or articles within a magazine should not be, and should be written in "quotation marks" (at least the first time mentioned).
• Generally, we currently write "Lego" and "Legoland" (when referring to the parks) stylised in all capital letters ("LEGO", "LEGOLAND"). This is however not a strict rule; we are not beholden to corporate whims. If the subject or a quoted source does not all-capitalise Lego or Legoland, do not change it in the article for that subject or in the quote.
  • Do not write other products or brands in all-caps, even if they are frequently written that way; specifying they are stylised that way within the article is good enough. Example: "Bionicle (stylised as BIONICLE) is a brand of toy LEGO figures."
• Start a new paragraph whenever the subject changes at all. Overly-long paragraphs should be broken up if it can be divided into two or more difference subjects. Short paragraphs of only one or two sentences should be merged when possible, but don't force it. The writing flowing nicely and being readable is the most important thing.

Notability

We strive to eventually cover all things related to Lego. This includes everything officially connected to the brand or company, and many notable unofficial things. Subjects that may be notable enough to be written about here include:

• An official Lego product, location, company, or historical event.
• A person who works or worked at Lego who has sufficient public information on their work.
• A person or company who has worked with the Lego Group officially, has sufficient information on their work that could not just be written in the article for what they worked on, and that does not have a massive amount of notability outside of Lego.
• An unofficial subject that has been officially mentioned by the Lego Group, that the Lego Group has officially interacted with, or that has had a notable legal altercation with the Lego Group.
• An unofficial subject with sufficient historical, cultural, or some other sort of notability.

Citing sources

Most things should be cited! It's okay to skip out a bit with story plot summaries, and if it's something like an obscure video game with no sources for its gameplay that's okay too. Otherwise, don't add anything that's not sourced.

Citations are usually done with <ref> tags. The citation is written inside the ref tags. In the article, the reference location will appear as a small supertext number in brackets, and the citation text will appear in the references list. Here is an example:

Larry Lego invented Lego.<ref>Duplo, Tom (1997). ''The History of Lego''. p. 67.</ref>
...
(the rest of the article)

== References ==
{{reflist}}

...which will appear like this:

Larry Lego invented Lego.
...
(the rest of the article)

References

Alternatively, you can store the sources within the reference section, and simply use the ref tags to point to it. You must name the reference if you do this. A reference must be named anyway if you use it more than once in the article. Example:

Larry Lego invented Lego.<ref name="Duplo 1997"/>
...
(the rest of the article)

== References ==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name="Duplo 1997">Duplo, Tom (1997). ''The History of Lego''. p. 67.</ref>
}}

Advanced citations

If you're using a single source with multiple pages, and referencing different pages in different places in the article, you may wish to use templates that let you cite using templates that specify page numbers, rather than reusing the full citation multiple times slightly modified.

Example 1:

Larry Lego invented Lego.{{R|Duplo 1997|p=67}}
...
(the rest of the article)

== References ==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name="Duplo 1997">Duplo, Tom (1997). ''The History of Lego''.</ref>
}}

Result 1:

Larry Lego invented Lego.
...
(the rest of the article)

References

Example 2:

Larry Lego invented Lego.{{sfn|Duplo|1997|p=67}} Billy Bricks is now the owner.{{sfn|Duplo|1997|p=78}}
...
(the rest of the article)

== References ==
{{reflist}}

=== Bibliography ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last=Duplo |first=Tom |date=1997 |title=The History of Lego}}
{{refend}}

Result 2:

Larry Lego invented Lego. Billy Bricks is now the owner.
...
(the rest of the article)

References

Bibliography

• Duplo, Tom (1997). The History of Lego.

no

{{cite book |title=}}

Article structure

• Any hatnotes, such as disambiguation notices, if applicable.
• An infobox, if the article has one.
• The lead section. This section should summarize the entire article in around one to four paragraphs (depending on the article's length). Generally references are not necessary as everything should ideally be found in the article body, though this does not always work out.
• The article body. This is the main text of the article. Use sources, divide into sections as necessary, add images if applicable.
• Bottom sections:
  • See also – for similar articles
  • Footnotes and references. Any notes or citations in the article body will be listed here.
  • External links – links to other websites, such as an official website, a download link, an article for the subject on Wikipedia or another notable wiki, etc.
  • Navigation templates
  • Categories: Listed at the very bottom of a page. These are written like [[Category:Category name here]]. Add any categories relevant to the article; the page will be listed on each category page.

Article body

• People:
  • Can use either a single Biography section or be divided up into multiple main sections. The bio should start with an "Early life" section about their birth and pre-career years, followed by a section or multiple section about their career or activities. A "Personal life" section may follow the career section(s) if those are long enough, unless the biography is written more chronologically. If the subject has died, the biography should end there.
  • Other sections such as lists of works should follow the main bio sections.
  • Using public and reliable sources is important for living persons.
• Film: Plot, production, release, reception
• Video games: Gameplay, Plot (if applicable), Development, Release (if long enough, otherwise merge into Development), Reception

Uploading files

For images:

• PNG: Should be used for screenshots of software and video games,

small edited images that would be damaged by saving as JPEG

• JPEG: Best for photographs and scans.
• GIF: Avoid except for animated images. Animated PNG files are allowed, though due to the non-standard nature of the format they don't always work.