Wowpedia:Item articles policy

Wowpedia:Policies
Policy status and phases
Category Copyright Deletion – Speedy deletion Disallowed content – NDA Editing – Disruptive editing External links Fan fiction Images		Item articles Lore Naming Neutrality Personal articles Player character pages Projects Stubs Three revert rule User naming Vandalism Voting
See also: guidelines, administrators

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This page is an official policy on Wowpedia. This policy has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. Feel free to propose any changes to this policy, but please make sure that changes you make follow the official process and reflect consensus on the discussion page before you put them into practice. Any big changes need to be Adopted or Decreed to be enforced as policy. See Wowpedia:Policies for an overview of Wowpedia policies. See Category:Policies for a list of proposed and adopted policy articles.

Item articles are one of the most populous types of articles in the Wiki, and as such, are prone to the most variation. This policy outlines what consistencies must be used when creating or editing an item article.

It is not the intent of this policy to construct a platform for a strict database for items, rather, one that organizes them in a consistent manner and allows for comparison and discussion above and beyond what is available on database sites while still offering the capabilities of broad edits and updates.

Naming

The article name must match the item name exactly, complete with any punctuations. If there are multiple items with the same name, a disambig redirect article or variations in the namespace may be used to differentiate them.

Content

Item articles are required to follow the base formatting of Boilerplate:Item.

Required

The following elements from the boilerplate are required as documented in the Boilerplate:

• Tooltip (created with Template:Tooltip which is included in the Boilerplate)
• Source
• External links
• Categories (as detailed in Boilerplate:Item)

Optional

These elements are optional, but should be included when it relates to the item:

• Screenshot of item in-use
• As an ingredient
• As a quest objective
• Patches and Hotfixes
• Notes

The Boilerplate and Tooltip template are very well documented and together will provide almost all of the functionality that will need to be used for both required and optional elements.

Images

Images of items that have models in-game should be limited to one or two at the most. They should depict the item being equipped/used by a character in-game and cropped accordingly. (Example: Image:DawnsEdge.jpg).

Inclusions

The article must have <onlyinclude> tags around the tooltip, allowing the tooltip data to be included on other articles on the Wiki. (Boilerplate:Item has this functionality by default.)

There are to be no sub-articles for any element of the item article, all of the information must originate from the base item article.

Additional Content

As long as the previous required elements are included, any additional information in relation to the item is encouraged to be added to the article. This can include lore, previous versions, bugs, connections to the TCG, undocumented effects, etc. Normally the Notes section of the article is ideal for this, though others may apply as well.

Exceptions

Rarely, some item articles may require a different or modified format depending on the type of item and the related content. If an author feels an exception should be made when stepping outside of the required format, they must document this in the item's Talk page and be aware any changes may be reverted at the discretion of admins.

Pages which have extremely short sections (for example, only an intro and a one-sentence source section) can have their section titles removed. If all the relevant information is presented in a few sentences this is preferred, as it reduces unnecessary whitespace. For an example, see [Ring of Arathi Warlords]

Policy Enforcement

• Any item articles that do not yet have all of the required information or are using outdated tooltip formatting should be marked with Template:Tlink.
• Any sub-articles should be marked with Template:Tlink as long as the information is also present in the article (if relevant).

Related Links

• Boilerplate:Item - Standard for formatting all item articles
• {{Tooltip}} - Template used to generate item tooltips
• WoWWiki:WoW Icons - Resource for browsing and finding item icons