ACR Wiki:Cleanup

This Wiki needs some serious work before it's ship-shape. You guys have some awesome stuff going on on your forum- more than 10,000 posts of it, in fact!- and when I first joined I thought it would be great to get to know the board's history, so I hopped on here and was disappointed to see there were only thirty or so pages. It looks like someone started this up a few years ago and never came back to it.

To reiterate: you all have years of undocumented awesome sitting around.

And that's not awesome.

As much as I'd love to add everything for you all(not really) I have no idea what needs to be done, so I am unofficially enlisting your aid. To arms, people I just barely met! Once more unto the breach!

What you can do to help

 * 1) Read this entire thing. I wrote it all, so reading it all is the least you can do!
 * Sign up. There are things you can't really do without an account, so please register if you're interested in working on the Wiki.
 * 1) Edit, edit, edit! Wikis are for everybody to edit, and without everybody's help this one won't get off the ground. If you see a mistake, correct it! If you know of something to add, add it! If you see something to link, link it! Begin with pages relating to your own things and branch out.
 * 2) Look through the article stubs category and flesh out anything you see that needs some work. You might also check articles that have very few revisions and articles that are very short to see if there's anything you can improve upon.
 * 3) Similarly, pore through the broken file links category and upload anything that's missing if you have it.
 * 4) Always preview before publishing changes. It's better to catch a mistake right away than it is to have to go back and fix it after the fact.
 * 5) Always include a summary of your edits so that other people can figure out what you changed at a glance.

A few style tips:
 * 1) Avoid the "Overview" header still floating around on a few articles. The first few paragraphs in a Wiki article are implicitly supposed to be an overview of the rest of the article anyway, so the extra markup and vertical whitespace is just wasted.
 * 2) Wikis are supposed to be encyclopedic. With regards to articles about characters, please don't just re-post character profiles for the articles- especially since the character infobox template links to character profiles on the forum. Put up a brief overview(remember point one!) and then write about what the character's done. It's a bit more work than copying and pasting, but it looks much better and provides guests more incentive to browse the forums.
 * 3) Only link the first instance of a thing to its corresponding Wiki page. If we were talking about Nararia, we don't need to keep linking to Nararia every time we come across Nararia's name. "Clutter is the enemy! Enemies must be eradicated!"


 * 1) Use lists when they're appropriate. To make a list, use an asterisk( * ) or an octothorpe( # ) at the beginning of each line in bulleted lists and numbered lists, respectively. If you have a list of names under, say, a relationships header on a character's article... use a list!

Article Archetypes
In a role-playing forum like yours there are typically three(possibly four, if you count objects like the Meiriella Engagement Ring) overarching groups we can sort things into, and they each need to be handled a little differently.

Characters
When making an article about a character, use their full name as the article title and provide a redirect for their nickname or first name if applicable. Use the character infobox template to outline the basic information.

Guidelines:
 * 1) If it's on this list, it needs an article.
 * 2) If it's not in this category, it either needs an article or it needs to be categorized. Search for the character in question and categorize it if it already exists. If not, make the page yourself!

Locations
When making an article about a location, use the name of the location as the article title. Redirects typically won't be needed on location articles(although there may be exceptions). In the article text, cross-link the first instance of the location name to its corresponding location on the forum.

Guidelines:
 * 1) If it's on this list, it needs an article.
 * 2) If it's not in this category, it either needs an article or it needs to be categorized. Search for the location in question and categorize it if it already exists. If not, make the page yourself!

Events
Publicly discuss the name of any event article before creating it. Moving an article around too much can cause confusion and many broken links.

Guidelines:
 * 1) If it's on this list, it needs an article.
 * 2) If it's not in this category, it either needs an article or it needs to be categorized. Search for the event in question and categorize it if it already exists. If not, make the page yourself!

Conclusion
I've stepped on so many toes by now a few more won't hurt me. This wiki ain't gonna write itself. Chop chop!