EVElopedia:Manual of Style (organization)

Due to the structured nature of the wikimedia system, organizing articles into discrete sections is highly encouraged. Automatic formatting and indexing allow a contributor to produce a comprehensive but accessible article with minimal effort and time. Because EVElopedia articles discuss a wide range of subjects, choosing an appropriate organization for an article is extremely important as it will often affect readability and accessibility.

Preface

When an article is organized into a large number of sub-sections, the article should include a summary or preface paragraph at the top of the page. This preface should be located at the beginning of an article without a heading entry. This will cause the preface to appear before the table of contents directly after the page title.

The paragraph should briefly summarize the article subject as well as reference this summary in a manner that prepares a reader for the overall organization of the article.

Body Organization

Common bases for organization often utilize the inherent qualities of the subject.

Structure

For articles that discuss a subject with defined composition and structure, it may make sense for the article organization to reflect this inherent quality. For example, the astronomy of the EVE Online world lends itself to such a discrete organization.

Examples

Some subjects involve topics or ideas that have many different examples within the context of EVE Online. In this case, it may make sense to organize the article as a list of examples identifying and classifying these examples.

Chronology

Other articles may be organized based on chronological units. The primary concern in a chronological organization are order and identification.

Articles may utilize a statically proportioned list of events including entries for time periods during which nothing of interest occurred. This format clearly depicts durations between events and highlights extreme periods of activity and/or inactivity. However, this format does not scale well and is inefficient when depicting inconsistent activity.

Conversely, articles may also utilize a dynamically proportioned list of events. This includes only periods of significance and produces a compact description of events regardless of consistency.

Logic

Most subjects will not have such a well defined inherent organization. Articles discussing these subjects should then reflect some underlying logical organization. Many articles provide sections that each represent different applications of the subject.

Links

Pages with large quantities of supplementary or related information should include a list of related links at the bottom of the page.

Editing

Multiple Articles

When articles are extremely in-depth or discuss a broad topic, they often can be come disorganized and/or difficult to read or navigate. In this case it may be wise to discuss the subject across multiple articles each with a different approach or focus.

For example, the subject of scams include discrete events, social activities, as well as the social construct. The breadth of the topic might best be represented across multiple articles. When discussing scams in a broad sense, an article might be created entitled "Scams" that discusses the concept of scamming and its role within the EVE Online Universe. When discussing the actual process of scamming an second article might be created entitled Scams (process). Finally, individual scams might be represented and organized under an article entitled Scams (examples). Verbose discussion of single subject might even require a article.

Discretion

Each section should discuss a specific aspect of the article topic.

Pay attention to whether a group is really discussing the intended topic.

Each section should discuss specific aspect of the article topic.