Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Meta/Standards

From my experience, I have found it essential that any collaborative effort maintain standards. It doesn't really matter what they are, providing everyone agrees to them. If you want to make a major change to these standards, it might be advisable to raise the issue in the main talk page first.

Discussion

• To minimize the amount of page traversal required, all discussion about any part of the book should happen in the main talk page.

Page Naming

• The main page for the book shall be "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas".

• All sub-pages which are conceptually a part of this book, should, at the very least, be prepended with the string "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/".

e.g. A page entitled "Frequently Asked Questions" might be created as "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Frequently Asked Questions".

• To minimise the number of direct child pages of the main page, and to prevent the structure from changing dramatically, all new pages should additionally be preprended with one of the following:
  • All pages about the basics of the game should be prepended with the string "Basics/". These should contain no spoilers.
  • All pages about specific missions should be prepended with the string "Missions/". These will obviously have spoilers.
  • All pages about specific vehicles should be prepended with the string "Vehicles/". These may contain spoilers, but should be marked as such.
  • All pages about specific items (including weapons) should be prepended with the string "Items/". These may contain spoilers, but should be marked as such.
  • All other pages should be prepended with the string "Appendices/". These may contain spoilers, but should be marked as such.

• All page names should use title caps, unless you're using canonical typography.

e.g. "This Title Uses Title Caps", "This title doesn't use title caps".

• When choosing a name for a new sub-page, try to avoid unnecessary acronyms.

e.g. "Frequently Asked Questions" is a more informative name than "FAQ".

• Also, don't be too verbose.

e.g. "Big Smoke" is just as informative as "Melvin 'Big Smoke' Harris"

Page Creation

• If you create a new page, then you should add it to the Active Pages list, and link it in to the appropriate root-page. No more pages should be added to the Orphaned Pages list.

• If you create a new template, then you should add it to the Active Templates list.

Page Renaming

• If you rename an existing page, then you are responsible for updating all other pages that link to that page, and then either deleting the original page (if you have the privilege), or adding it to the Orphaned Redirects list. No more pages should be added to the Active Redirects list.

Page Content

• All pages in the book should use the following header at the top of the page:

{{Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Header|title=Page Title Here}}

Assuming there is text directly below the header, it will appear like this:

(Text starts here)

• Try to use subheadings effectively to generate a sensible auto-contents box for each page.

Special pages

Main Page

This is perhaps analagous to the cover of a book. Being the first thing a user is likely to see upon visiting the site, it should be kept brief, so as not to overwhelm them. This should not be included in the contents or index page.

Contents

Currently, this is the only complete index of all active sub-pages. This should not be included in the contents or index page.

Index

I have made a (very pathetic) start on an alphabetical index, but it could be annoying to maintain. This should not be included in the contents or index page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Since the FAQ page may contain information which overlaps the main content, it should be considered a separate part of the book. This should not be included in the contents or index page.

Image Naming

• It's advisable to give an image a descriptive name due to certain technical considerations.

For example "GTASA_tag_10.jpg" is going to be a lot more useful than "ashsg0al.jpg". Remember, this is not mandatory, and won't matter as far as end users are concerned, but if you can give an image a good name then you might as well. It will also help avoid uploaded images having similar or conflicting names.

• After uploading an image, add the tag Category:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas images to it, so we can keep track of them.