Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26496887-20150625030154

First of all, thank you for reading this and being interested in the Wikia. I hope it will help future contributers to make the page a clear and useful resource for players.

This Wikia is designed to provide information to players about the facebook game Element. https://apps.facebook.com/elementverge

In order to keep the wikia as helpful as possible please try to stick to the following:

1. The Home Page

- First and foremost: Keep the Home Page Simple! It is meant to allow people to seek information deeper in the wikia. Links and pictures to current articles is fine but this should be simple and easy to navigate. Ideally it should be a bit like the cover of a catalogue, telling you what is inside, but easy enough to move to a chapter or category. The less clicking the better. Avoid scaring the visitor with too much information.

2. The Wikia Navigation Menu

- Categories: Use categories that help people find a rough area of interest but don't make too many. These are index pages that hold links to all articles in a wide field of interest. It should be designed to help people look for a certain area of interest and then see what is available inside. For example, currently there are two categories 'How to Play' and 'Troops' (which will most likely expand to include more). 'How to Play' is a catch all category, should include pages that help a player learn how the game works. 'Troops' is a category to help a player get information about enemy troops and their own, seperated from how to play because it bypasses the wider 'How to Play' and mostly just provides stats. It allows direct navigation to a specific topic, which has related subsections. Note though that troop info also sits inside 'How to Play'. More categories could include, 'Economy' or 'Attack and Defense' etc, when there are more related fields.

- Articles: This is a list of pages that hold a decent amount of information about a specific topic. Avoid adding too much here. Instead think of a subsection inside a category and use that to guide your choice as to what should be here. e.g. it purposely does not include all the individual troop infobox pages because that would confuse a visitor when looking for a particular article or topic. Visitors can find them once they visit the article instead.

3. Articles & Pages

- Pages: Keep the pages concise, articulate and helpful. Before you decide if the Wikia needs a new page, check if the information will be better placed inside a pre-exisiting page or article. Information is meant to illuminate how something works and it should be simple and easy to read. Give a little information that is useful about the game topic and use bullet points to help make systematic/incremental/statistical information look clearer, instead of using sentences. Often pictures can explain something better than words, so use them when helpful - They also make the page look less boring. And lastly, don't waffle; visitors are here to seek answers to questions quickly, not to read a life story!

Thanks for reading! :) 