How To Contribute To The Wiki

Greetings, New Editor

So you want to help us improve the ToME Wiki! Excellent! We need all the help we can get.

Before you get started, please familiarize yourself with the basic standards and conventions which are being used for the ToME Wiki. This will ensure a more organized, more consistent, and easier to read Wiki. It will also save you time, and let you get back to playing more ToME.

Before You Get Started

In order to be able to add or edit anything on the wiki, you will need to get a wiki account. This is not hard; it is the same as your ToME online profile. Go to the ToME website registration and create yourself an account. You also need to do this to keep an online profile for your games when playing ToME - and will be asked for it when you start the game - so there isn't any reason not to do this.

Once you have an account, you should be able to login to the wiki with the same credentials you used above. If you log out of the ToME website, you will also be logged out of the wiki, so make sure to stay logged in!

Basic Editing

The ToME wiki uses MediaWiki. This is the same software used by Wikipedia, and users familar with editing on Wikipedia will feel right at home. Please note, however, that the ToME wiki does not support all features, templates or special extensions used by wikipedia; only the most basic, common WikiMedia syntax is supported.

For users new to editing a wiki, and MediaWiki in particular, please read these pages to learn "the basics":

• Editing Pages
• Formatting really important!
• Starting a new page
• Tracking Changes

Standards, Norms, and Guidelines

The ToME wiki is (currently) maintained by a small number of ToME enthusiasts. It's important for everyone to follow a rough set of standards, so we don't keep redoing or overdoing work. These standards can change with time, but it's best to ask first.

Here are some of the current standards and norms in place:

Names and Plurals

With a very few special exceptions, names of pages and new pages should be in the singular form. Page about Orcs? The page name should be 'Orc'. Page about longswords? The page name should be 'Longsword'.

Why do we use singular forms? Because we will be linking these pages from other pages. The wiki software is clever enough to turn singular into plural but not backwards. For example:

You create your 'Orc' page. You link it from another page:

The most common enemy in the Far East are [[orcs]]. Each [[orc]] is weak, but in groups are terribly strong.

Wikimedia is smart enough to take the plural 'orcs' and direct you to the singular 'orc' page. The reverse is not true. If you name your page 'orcs', this is what you have to do:

The most common enemy in the Far East are [[orcs]]. Each [[orcs|orc]] is weak, but in groups are terribly strong.

Having to write the form [[orcs|orc]] is annoying for both writer and editor. Stick to singulars. If you find a page that already exists as a plural, you may wish to set up a redirect from the singular to the plural form. This has a few quirks, so don't do it unless you must.

Talents

Talent pages all contain the name of the talent and "(talent)". Therefore a talent page, like Gloom (talent) will have a full name of "Gloom (talent)". All talent pages should keep this format. If you need or wish a shorter link, you can either setup a redirect page, or set up the name in-line in the link, like so: [[Gloom (talent)|Gloom]] which will produce: Gloom

Pages for a talent category (also called a 'tree') always have "(Category)" in the page name. Pages for a category type, which contain an entire set of categories (or trees), will include the text "(category type)" in the name. Examples are category Cursed form (category), and category type Cursed (category type). You can use the redirect or name in-line techniques above to make these "pretty" as needed.

Quests

Quests have two names: One that is visible to the player inside the game, and another which is visible to the developers who are writing the code. If you're one of these, you already know about it; either way, the consistent rule when talking about quests is to use the name of the quest seen inside the game. For example, the final quest of the game should be called Falling Toward Apotheosis. The name inside the code is "high peak", but we do not use that, as mostly players read the Wiki, not developers.

Templates

Wikimedia allows use of powerful time saving tools called templates. If you're not familiar with these, go read that page I just linked. You can also try A quick guide to templates.

The ToME wiki uses templates for consistency with a number of things that all share similar features. A short list included:

1. Bosses (Guardians) - template Template:Guardian
2. Zones - template Template:Zone
3. Artifacts - template Template:Artifact
4. Talents - template Template:Ability_box (also works for abilities not strictly talents)
5. Classes - template Template:Class
6. Race - template Template:Race

If you are editing or adding any of the above, you should become familiar with how the template works, and use it! A full list of templates can be found on the page Category:Templates.

Formatting Helpers

There are a few (and growing) templates designed to help do things like color font text without having to write ugly HTML code.

• {{fontcolor}} - used to provide Foreground and background color

• {{color}} - used for just basic foreground color
• {{break}} - add a forced newline
  
• {{Arc}}, {{Am}}, {{Nat}}, {{Unk}}, {{Psi}} - these templates are used to include words that should be colored the same way all the time. They indicate the source of power from an object in the game. For example, an arcane powered artifact would use the {{Arc}} template in the artifact's page, producing Arcane

Use these!

Things To Do

Here are a list of things that you can start doing right away and are super-helpful:

• Look at the special page Special:WantedPages. This page shows a list of pages that don't exist yet, but DO have a link to them. The higher on the list, the more links; these are pages that we really need because there are links from all over to the page! Go ahead and create a page with the best information you have.

• Keep an eye on Special:RecentChanges, also found on the sidebar of the wiki under "Recent changes". This will show you who has been working on the wiki, and what they've done; it's a good to know who else is working on the wiki and what they might have taken on as a project.

• If you find typos, go ahead and correct them. This is easy and helpful all around.

• Add new content! We could really use help filling out the details for Artifacts, and for details about some Zones. We also need help filling out details for Talents! Look at individual talents to see which ones need added info.

Things Not To Do

Try not to - or think REALLY CAREFULLY ABOUT:

• Making changes to a template, particularly one used in many places (like Template:Artifact).

• Moving a page to another name. This should only be done to correct a bad name for the article, and you can't over-write a page name that already has content.

• Making a table or a chart that could be used in more than one place, or more than once. Make a template instead!

Asking For Help

If you need help, your best resources are:

1. The Mediwiki pages
2. Other editors - post on their Talk pages
3. The ToME forums - http://forums.te4.org
4. The chat in the game itself!