if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } [edit] Who should create or revise a Game Mechanics page
If you feel that you understand an underlying game mechanic well enough to explain it to others, then you should create new Mechanics: pages or revise existing ones. Remember that MMO game developers rarely disclose exactly how something works or exact formulas, so underlying game mechanics are typically reverse-engineered by players through testing and sharing observations and theories on forums, etc.
Therefore, the burden is on you to have performed enough testing of your own to be fairly certain of assertions or revisions that you are making.
[edit] When to revise a page versus posting your concerns on the associated Discussion tab
Feel free to correct simple typos, link errors, formatting, category tags, and so on that you might find on an existing Mechanics: page.
If you are tempted to substantively revise the page content because you feel that some of its content is incorrect, you should always consider the possibility that the original author(s) might be correct and you might be wrong. For this reason, you might want to pursue several avenues of discussion before (or instead of) directly making such revisions:
- You can post your concerns and counter-assertions/theories on the page's associated Discussion tab and wait a while to see what kind of discussion ensues. Keeping Discussion pages readable requires certain etiquette and formatting conventions. A good source for information on this subject is the Wikipedia article Help:Talk page.
- You can directly contact the original author(s) to solicit their feedback by looking at the History for the page. All Lorebook authors must log on with the same name they use on the official LOTRO forums, so you can send them a Private Message through the official LOTRO forums.
- You can try to stimulate discussion about the article and your suggested revision on the official LOTRO forums. Be sure to include a link to the Lorebook page in your forum post to make it easy for forum users to find.
[edit] Creating a new Game Mechanics page
When creating new Mechanics: pages, it is very important to name it correctly to ensure that it belongs to the proper namespace in the Lorebook.
- In the Search field, enter Mechanics:, followed immediately by a descriptive name of your article with no space between the colon and the name of your article. Use title case, not sentence case. Correct - Mechanics:My Article Name. Incorrect - Mechanics: My article name
- Click Search. The search results will tell you that there is no such page.
- Click the create this page link.
- Enter your page content using WikiMedia markup code, aka "Wikitext" (more on this below).
- (important) Be sure to include a Category: tag at the very end of your article (more on this below).
- In the Summary field, enter a descriptive comment such as "initial draft". If you are revising an already existing article, even to correct simple typos, enter a more descriptive comment of the nature of your change. This is important to make the page History readable.
- Preview your page content by clicking Show Preview and correct any errors. Note that broken/incorrect links to other articles are colored red instead of blue.
- When your preview looks good, click Save page.
- Go to the Lorebook's Home page and edit the big table to include a link to your newly-created page. Look at the surrounding links to determine how to create the appropriate link. Don't forget to explain that you added a new link to your article in the Summary field before saving your changes to the Home page.
- Check that you properly categorized the page by clicking the Game Mechanics link on the Lorebook Home page. Your article should be automatically shown on the resulting page.
[edit] Editing with WikiMedia markup code (aka "Wikitext")
Although you can use some limited HTML within articles (mostly for tables), it's preferrable to use the MediaWiki markup syntax, perhaps more commonly known as "wikitext".
You can find more information on editing MediaWiki pages and the MediaWiki markup in the main MediaWiki help section.
Here are some specific articles that may be useful if you're just starting with the MediaWiki syntax:
- text formatting (Also see the Wikipedia article Help:Wikitext examples for more detailed examples.)
- hyperlinks
- using images in articles
- tables
- categorizing pages
[edit] Linking to other Lorebook pages or external sites
[edit] Linking to other Lorebook pages
Linking to any page other than a Category: page
Enclose the exact page name in double brackets. Capitalization is important; if even one letter is mis-capitalized, the link will not work. For example, [[Mechanics:Dual-Wielding]] will look like this: Mechanics:Dual-Wielding. If you want to hide the namespace portion of the page name, put the actual anchor text you want to display after a pipe character (|). For example, [[Mechanics:Dual-Wielding|dual-wielding]] will look like this: dual-wielding.
Linking to a Category: page
If you link to a page that belongs to the Category: namespace, you must precede the word "Category" with a colon. (If you forget to do this, you will accidentally categorize your page instead of creating a link to the other page.) For example, [[:Category:Game Mechanics]] will look like this: Category:Game Mechanics.
[edit] Linking to external sites
Links that show the full URL
If you paste the full URL into your text with no surrounding markup, the Lorebook will present this as a standard link. For example: http://forums.lotro.com/.
Links that show custom anchor text
To make the link display your custom anchor text instead of the full URL, add a pipe followed by your anchor text, and enclose the entire thing in single brackets. For example: [http://forums.lotro.com/|the official LOTRO forums] will look like this: official LOTRO forums
[edit] Categorizing your page
All Game Mechanics articles should be categorized as such by adding the line [[Category:Game Mechanics|Your Article Name, Mechanics:]] to the end of your article. This causes the following automatic things to happen:
- Your article appears on the page, in proper alphabetical order.
- Your article automatically displays a multi-part link at the bottom of the page that enables readers to quickly link to other articles in the Game Mechanics category, or to see a page that lists all categories in the entire Lorebook. (Look at the bottom of this page for an example.)
