SuperMarioGlitchy4 Wiki:Guide

This page lists guidelines and rules for users here at SuperMarioGlitchy4 Wiki. It's a user guide of sorts. If you're new here, we highly recommend that you read through this!

Editing the Wiki Articles, categories, templates, and other such pages comprise the "wiki". Other pages, such as profiles, threads, and blogs, do not. We aim to make this wiki as professional and comprehensive a data source as a wiki about SMG4 can possibly be. Unfortunately, many contributors tend to impede progress towards this goal. If you want to edit the wiki, here are some things to keep in mind.
 * Have good grammar. Few things detract from a page's semblance of officialness more than bad grammar. Write in Standard English with good spelling, grammar, diction, and structure. If English is not your first language, let us know! We can fix your edits as long as it's clear what you're trying to say.
 * Make neat pages. Good pages rarely have stuff strewn about at random. Images could, for example, be placed sparingly at the sides of an article; any others should be put into a gallery. Articles should not have random formatting changes added in; those are mainly used in templates to make them stand out. All-caps, bold text, and italics should be used for abbreviations, article titles, and emphasis where needed.
 * Stay serious. Encyclopedias are for information, not jokes. If you hold humor at a higher value than content, you can derail whole articles rather quickly, and we'll start assuming the worst of you right off the bat. We're slightly more lenient with photo captions; if a quip is brief, formal-looking, and helps people understand what a picture depicts, throw it in. Otherwise, keep it to a forum thread or something.
 * Stay focused. Discuss a subject throughout its article; don't go off on barely-related tangents. Focus on essential facts, putting details that were only mentioned in one episode in the trivia section. Remember to talk about things as SMG4 depicts them—this is a wiki about SMG4, not one about canon info for things that appeared in an SMG4 blooper. It's important that you tell us the gist: readers want basic knowledge more often than they want minor details.
 * Create content with purpose. This is a point that people seem to miss. Content that has no reason to exist is usually deleted. Something has to be notable and relevant to warrant an article, unless it is reoccurring and purposefully so. As for categories, we have far too many of those, and relatively few are needed at all. Categories are meant to group articles based on defining traits. Even categories that aren't obviously jokes or spam can be totally unnecessary, so judge categories based on whether they aren't unnecessary. Finally, much of the same applies to images. Pictures on the wiki should be clear in what they illustrate, and should depict important facts or events.
 * Use official material only. For this wiki, "officially sourced material" boils down to "stuff SMG4 made or acknowledged". There shouldn't be any articles about fan material, unless SMG4 has shown it in a video. Fan theories are also a no-go unless you put them in a trivia section and admit it's a theory. Fanon is out of the question.
 * Don't go meta. This overlaps with the previous point a bit, but it is a somewhat separate issue. In the canon of the bloopers, the videos themselves are meta, yet we still document each one as it is uploaded. Any more meta than that, and things get problematic. It makes sense to have an article about a character in the bloopers. It does not make sense to have an article about someone who voiced an audio clip that was used in the bloopers, especially not if that person has never physically appeared in them.
 * Do not spam or vandalize. Most unwelcome edits can be reverted in just a few clicks. Even so, people who spam and vandalize the wiki still make very bad names for themselves. Don't troll for the sake of trolling. After all, reversions aren't the only things we can do quickly—admins can easily block your account or IP range if you start causing trouble.