Wowpedia talk:Item articles policy

Vote archived at Policy/Writing/ItemArticles/Archivevote -- 06:27, 15 February 2007 (EST)

I believe that it is time to address a growing issue on the WoWWiki, that of item article standards. Item pages are one of the most prolific on the Wiki, and as such have been addressed in a number of different ways by different authors.

The Policy
This proposed policy is twofold.

Firstly, to ratify that a standard should be set set in place for all item pages and what elements they need to contain. This standard would be enforced on all item articles and a standard template or series of templates will be selected for use.

Secondly, to decide what that standard should be in constructing them. There seems to be a degree of differing opinions on how we should go about doing so, so two solutions will be proposed, with room for additional ones.

See Below for Proposed Details

Reasoning
I believe something as important as these types of articles should be brought to an official standard, especially with the surplus of items coming in from the Burning Crusade. An official policy would both help bring some level of continuity to the Wiki, as well as make it easy as possible on authors writing item pages.

In my opinion, the Wiki isn't meant to be a straightforward item database, rather, one that organizes items and allows for comparison and discussion above and beyond what is available on Thottbot or Allakhazam.

Overall Standards
Item articles should have the following elements regardless of how the page is ultimately constructed:
 * Full and complete Item Name
 * Icon
 * Correct and Complete Tooltip (with extended information, if needed, ie: Vendor Price, Item Level, etc)
 * Categorization (ie: Cloth Armor, [:Category:World of Warcraft mining crafted items, etc.)
 * Where the item is obtained (detail can vary)
 * What the item is used for (if not obvious like armor or weapon)
 * External Links to Item Databases

These elements must all be in place for an item to properly be un-stubbed.

Options
This proposal will have four outcomes. Three in favour of different solutions and one disagreeing with standardization all together.

The outcome of the vote is to use Option 2

Option 1 - No Standardization
You do not believe a standard is neccessary and would prefer each author use their own methods to address item articles.

Option 2 - Standardizing, One Article
The outcome of the vote is to use this option

We should standardize item pages, but have all of the information (most importantly, the tooltip/attribute data) entered into the original article with no inclusions. (Example: Redemption Tunic)

Option 3 - Standardizing, Sub-Article(s)
We should standardize item pages, and have at least one sub-article (at the very least, a /Tooltip sub-article) that can be transcluded in other articles for various uses. Sub-articles should be used sparingly as not to affect server performance. (Example: Design: Pendant of Shadow%27s End) which uses /Tooltip and /Icon)

Option 4 - Standardizing, Something Else
We should standardize item pages, but none of the above two options quite feels right to me. Please detail your suggestion in the comments. Or if you see another user's suggestion that feels right, make a comment for that as well.

Tooltips
How the tooltips are formatted exactly should be something that is decided afterwards (if there is a standardization ratified), however there are a few templates already in place that are certainly up to the task.

I like options 2 and 3. 2 would be easier on the authors to implement in their articles, but 3 offers more flexibility. The question I have to ask is "How often are the tooltip, icon, and other items used in a realistic sense?". --Jellisii 01:15, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

=Implementation= It's quite clear that the Boilerplate:Item article is used most often and polished the most by lots of users. I think it should be selected as the official WoWWiki Policy on Item Article Standardization: See: Help:Item articles. --14:31, 14 May 2007 (EDT)