Dreamlight Valley Wiki:Style guide

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This is a guide to help format articles and information on the Dreamlight Valley Wiki with an easy to read and consistent style. It describes accepted and established practices at the Dreamlight Valley Wiki, which are governed by precedent. Editors are advised to follow these guidelines closely in order to prevent their edits from potentially being reverted.

This style guide was created to ensure cross-page consistency. Modifications may be suggested in the discussion page, but bear in mind that the style guide merely lists practices that are widely in use. It is not a means to impose extensive policies or even personal preferences.

Regardless, not all pages may follow the style guide entirely. While that may be due to good reason (which should then, in non-obvious cases, be marked, e.g. with a comment), it is often caused by the sheer number of pages, some of which have not been touched in a long time. All editors are encouraged to rectify such deviations.

Article Formatting

Intro

This section is located at the very top of the page, above everything else, generally including the table of contents. This section has no heading. At the beginning of most articles the {{infobox}} template is placed, followed by {{stub}} if necessary. Below that should be any article specific disclaimers - i.e. if the article name does not match an item's in-game name - which should be in italic and preceded by a colon (:''disclaimer'').

The first paragraph should begin with the articles name in bold, followed by a link to the associated universe (either as a section link for larger item categories which have universes in the collection - like furniture and clothing - or a link to the universe page), and then describe the type and category of the content.

The second and/or third paragraphs should briefly outline how to use the content and how the content is unlocked. For clothing and furniture, the inventory subtab should be named in bold. For content which requires more detailed unlock information (like Characters), this should include a short description to unlock and a separate section should be used to expand detail. At the end of this section it should state if this item is collection tracked or not and list the collection top level type in Bold. For clothing, furniture, and crafted items the article should always state if it is collection tracked or not.

References

This section should be omitted if <references/> does not produce an output because there are no <ref> tags in article.

This section of the page lists the references and footnotes used in the article text. Its only content should be <references/>. For details about appropriate external sourcing see the wiki's attribution policy.

History

This section should always be included, and should consist only of {{history}} instances.

This section of the page should list changes to the article topic from various game updates in chronological order (most recent update at the bottom), with each entry using the {{history}} template. A history section should always be included, with at least one entry stating which update introduced the game element. It should furthermore be the only location acknowledging game updates that have caused introductions or modifications of page content.

This section should generally follow the official changelog (though it is not required to copy the exact wording used there), but sometimes there are undocumented changes introduced in updates. In those cases, the information should be based on testing.

It should not include duplicate history entries which apply to an entire category (for example - when crafted furniture was removed from Scrooge's Catalog only the crafting page history was updated to include this change (because it is a top level change) - not each individual crafted item article). For history entries where there is not a top level article to hold the information (for example a change made to all "storage" functionality furniture) it is appropriate to list the change on each items article history section.

If the item is included (or should be included) in a Navbox template that template should be placed at the bottom of the article, under all other text. The Navbox does not have a section, it's nested under the 'History' header.

The very bottom of the page should include any extra categories - such as [[Category:Site maintenance|'Missing' information categories]]. Make sure to space categories directly under the navbox template to avoid any extra whitespace.

Article Writing

  • In all cases, all information must be game verified. When creating or updating a new item page, if some item attributes have not been verified, do NOT estimate them based on existing known items. Instead, add placeholder empty parameters in the infobox, and add the appropriate Missing categories to the bottom of the page.
  • Match in-game ordering. If there is any ordered listing - either inside the article body or inside template parameters, it should match sorting order inside the game if available, otherwise, alphabetical order should be used. This removes any need for decision-making or subjectivity in item ordering by editors. For example, game-provided order would be used in the following cases: tags, colors, items included in a Premium Bundle, ingredients in a Meal Recipe, materials in a Crafting Recipe, Collections, etc. Alphabetical order would be used in the following cases: related items, alternate colors, environment items. There may be some inconsistency across the wiki where this was not initially applied.
  • Limit details to in-game information - this wiki is about Dreamlight Valley. Content that is about the Characters or Universes that cannot be found inside the game or is exceedingly detailed does not belong on the wiki. A brief synopsis (1-2 sentences) on each Universe page is acceptable to provide context, as well as a similar level of detail about a Character House. Examples of extraneous information include “full” character names or backstories.
  • Use spoilers sparingly. In cases where content is brand new, or it may be specifically appropriate to hide information spoilers may be used - but in most cases the wiki is assumed to be 'full of spoilers' and users seeking a page are typically seeking out the spoilered information, so hiding it is unnecessary.
  • Avoid in-line icon overuse. In most cases, in written body text, only text should used, rather than inserting an inline icon. For example, in article text only the linked text of a quest name should be used, not the quest template. There are a few exceptions;
  • Prices should be wrapped in the {{price}} template linked to their appropriate currency
  • Icons can be shown in-line that help in identification of a UI component
  • The {{name}} template can be used in bulleted lists in articles and quest steps. It should not be used in the quest text, where highlighted items in-game text should be in bold.
  • Individual Motifs do not have articles. Because Motifs are not labeled with names in-game the filenames are arbitrarily created for the wiki, and creating pages would draw attention to these names which are not sourced “from the game”.

Wiki Linking

  • It is not necessary to link every mention of page within an article. For example, in an article where apple may be mentioned three times - it only needs to link to apple once. There can be more links if the page is very long, and separate sections link to the article again.
  • Piped link formats for simple plurals are generally unnecessary. For example, use [[apple]]s instead of [[apple|apples]].
  • On the other hand, use [[Black Passion Lily|Black Passion Lilies]] instead of [[Black Passion Lily]]s when appropriate. Do not be afraid to use a piped link when necessary, particularly if avoiding them contorts the language unnecessarily or introduces spelling or grammatical errors into the article. Piped links have legitimate uses in an article.
  • Do not place the last letters of a plural outside of a link that already has alternate text. For example, [[Coffee Sapling (2)|Coffee Saplings]] should be used instead of [[Coffee Sapling (2)|Coffee Sapling]]s.

Files

For more information see the site media policies.

  • For wiki maintenance reasons, all files should be categorized in at least one category. Most commonly files are images - and should be either in the parent category Category:Images or an appropriate subcategory.
  • Game images should be as clear as possible, and not overly compressed - but not unnecessarily exceed their display dimensions (a screenshot displayed in an article 200px wide does not need to be uploaded at 1920x1080). This is to help alleviate server resources and keep page load time fast.
  • Any files which are sourced from the game - either assets or screenshots - must always contain {{License GL}} on the file page to display appropriate copyright disclaimers.

Naming

  • File names should contain the primary article name whenever possible. Primary infobox/game images should match the article name exactly (for ease of linking using the {{name}} template), and other article images should have the article name followed by the type of image.
  • Image names should follow the capitalization rules of their respective article. For example, the basic depiction of White Couch is at White Couch.png.
  • Motif images have no in-game naming - they should have an appropriate descriptive name followed by _Motif at the end of the file name for consistency.
  • Male type clothing variant image names should match the primary clothing file name followed by _m

Templates

  • Before updating or adding parameters to a template, check the template page for documentation about proper use, information ordering and formatting.
  • This especially applies to complicated and high-use templates like {{infobox}}
  • Filter values of items should always be provided “as-is” directly from the game, even if they seem “wrong” - for instance, if an item has color filters that clearly do not match its appearance.
  • Template documentation usually consists of a short intro, a Usage section, and an Examples section.
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