UESPWiki:Style Guide/Place Layout

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This page describes UESP's guidelines for the layout/organization of articles that describe places.

There are a variety of different types of place pages each with slightly different layouts: cities, towns, stores, inns, forts, mines, campsites, mountain ranges, lakes, etc. This article attempts to first provide some general information that is relevant to any place page, and then go into details about some specific types of place pages. Although it cannot cover every possible type of place, the provided information should be sufficient to provide some guidance even for new page types. Note that some of the layout guidelines have varied from game to game. This article focuses on the guidelines relevant to recent games, e.g. Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online.

General[edit]

Minimal and full place layouts are as follows. See the descriptions below for guidelines as to what belongs in each section.

Minimal Full 
{{Place Summary
|description=An example place
|type=Example
|image=image.jpg
}}

(paragraph providing general description of place)

==Residents==

==Related Quests==

{{Place Summary
|description=An example place
|type=Example
|image=image.jpg
}}

(paragraph providing general description of place)

==Residents==

==Related Quests==

(Dungeon Zones and Walkthroughs)

==Notes==
* (bulleted notes)

==Bugs==
{{Bug|description}}

==Maps==

==Gallery==

Place Summary[edit]

One layout component common to nearly every type of place page is the Place Summary template. It creates the infobox that appears on the right of every place page, and also handles the categories and other navigational details for the page. The template page provides specific details about the parameters that it accepts, including various parameters that are specific to one game, or specific to one type of location.

Required parameters for the template are:

  • description: the description should be a single phrase describing the location. It should not contain the place name or contain a verb, because that information will be automatically added to the description when necessary.
    • The typical format of a description phrase is:
    A <size> <type> <location> containing <enemies>.
    For example:
    A large Ayleid ruin northeast of the Imperial City containing bandits and undead.
    • <size> is "small" for dungeons containing 1 zone; "medium" for dungeons with 2-3 zones; "large" for those with 4 or more zones.
    • <location> should be as short as possible, and should provide the place's location relative to the main cities. The purpose is to give readers a general idea of where on the map to look. It should only reference places that all game players can be expected to immediately recognize, i.e. cities or some other landmark that is prominently displayed on all maps.
    • The containing <enemies> part is obviously only applicable to locations that contain enemies. For other locations, other key information about the place can be substituted.
    • (quest-related) or (quest-specific) should be added to the end of the description as appropriate. (quest-related) is used for places that are visited during a quest, but can also visited if the quest is not active. (quest-specific) is used for places that can only be entered when a quest is active.
    • If the description as displayed on the place page needs to be tweaked, addabove and addbelow can be used to add text before or after the description. One common use is to add "The" before the place name, done using:addabove=The .
  • type: The general type of place. This type is used to create a category for the page, and also is used to create a breadcrumb trail. To see existing types, see the main places page (e.g., Skyrim:Places) or the relevant places category (e.g., Category:Skyrim-Places).

Other key parameters are:

  • location: More detailed location information than that provided in the place description (although in some cases, this may essentially repeat the description's location). As with the description, it is important to describe the location relative to well-known landmarks -- rather than just relative to the nearest dungeons, which may be unknown to readers trying to find the location. Points displayed on the printed map are generally good reference points -- rivers, roads, cities, towns, etc. Directions should always use compass directions (e.g., north, east-southeast) and should never use relative directions (e.g., left, right, ahead).
  • region: The region (or hold) where the location is found. This is used to put the page into a category listing all of the places found within a given region, so it must be a single region name. For places within cities, this parameter should not be used; city should be used instead.
    • If a place is found in more than one region, the parameters region2 and region3 can be used to list the additional region names.
  • locationcode: The internal name of this location's cell, as used within the game's Console for commands such as moveto. Multiple names can all be listed, if the place includes multiple cells. If there is no locationcode, enter none.
  • zones: Number of interior zones in this dungeon. Zones (aka levels) are identified by the fact that each zone is on a separate map (in the game mechanics, each one is defined as a separate CELL record). Also, zones are normally separated by doors that trigger loading screens. Exterior regions are not included in this count.

City Summary[edit]

As an exception to the above, Oblivion Cities and Skyrim Cities do not use the Place Summary template but use the {{City Summary}} template instead.

Image[edit]

As part of the place/city summary, every place page should have an image of the location. See Help:Images for more information.

The preferred aspect ratio for the image is 4:3, (e.g., 1024×768 or 1600×1200).

The primary image for any place should be in the place summary. However, additional images can be included elsewhere on the page, if the page is large enough or interesting enough to warrant additional images.

Residents[edit]

The section on "Residents" should list all of the people who live in this location. If nobody lives here (or only monsters or generic enemies live here) this section should be omitted.

For any city or town, the occupants should be listed on a separate People page. For example, the inhabitants of Skyrim:Riverwood are listed on a page called Skyrim:Riverwood People. Riverwood then displays the contents of the People Page using a transclusion, e.g., {{Skyrim:Riverwood People}}. This is done so that the same list of people can also be displayed on other pages, most notably Skyrim:People.

The occupant list should just be a basic list of people names, each provided as a link to that person's specific page. Descriptions of the people are not included in the table. However, symbols next to each person's name are used to indicate any services provided by that person. The list of standard symbols is provided on Oblivion:People (eventually a Skyrim-specific list will be provided on Skyrim:People).

Related Quests[edit]

The "Related Quests" section lists all quests that start in this location, or which may or do require a visit to the location. If there are no quests, the section should be omitted. On city pages, this section is typically split into two separate sections, "Quests Starting Here" and "Related Quests". These sections may be further sub-divided according to the type of quest (Main Quest, Thieves Guild, etc.) if there are enough quests to justify it.

Each quest should be listed using the Template:Quest Link template, in a bulleted list. For example:

* {{Quest Link|Find the Heir}}

Dungeon Sections and Walkthroughs[edit]

This is a preliminary proposal
It has been derived from various discussions (1, 2) on the Community Portal. Note that there is a lack of consensus the naming and section levels, but in general, you should copy one of the existing formats from a similar type of page. Do not create a new style from scratch. If you have any comments, please contribute to the talk page discussion.

The most common type of place page describes some type of dungeon — mines, caves, ruins, etc. Generally, any location inhabited by enemies probably falls into the dungeon category.

A dungeon page should have separate sections for:

  • Exterior: the region immediately surrounding the dungeon entrance.
  • Each individual interior zone of the dungeon.

When the place page is finished, each of the zone-specific sections should include:

  • Map. Maps can be generated from in-game screenshots or via the Creation Kit/Construction Set. Final versions of maps should include overlays showing the locations of key items in the dungeon.
  • Walkthrough. The walkthrough of each section of the dungeon should focus on place-specific information (enemies, chests/loot, traps, puzzles, etc.) Even if the dungeon is uniquely related to a single quest, the majority of the quest-specific walkthrough (such as the quest objectives and how to complete them) belongs on the article about the quest.
    • The walkthrough should provide details on where to find items of interest. If a map has been created for the section, the walkthrough should rely on the map as much as possible to provide concise directions. Without a map, the directions will need to be lengthier — with the understanding that once maps are added to the page, the walkthrough will be revised accordingly.
  • List of Contents. Following the walkthrough, there should be lists summarizing all items of interest found in that section.

Some other considerations:

  • Strategies: Any strategy-type tips that are not specific to this one place probably do not belong on the place page. Tips about a given type of trap belong on the Traps page; tips about defeating enemies belong on the page about that enemy (e.g., Draugr-specific tips belong on the Draugr page). If the place contains a unique boss enemy, then that boss has a page that should be the primary place for details about the boss.

Notes[edit]

The "Notes" section is for miscellaneous information about the place. Only information that does not belong anywhere else on the page should be included here.

Bugs[edit]

When appropriate, add any bugs to the page using individual {{Bug}} templates for each. The template should be used strictly for a description of the bug; solutions can be placed below, each as a separate second-level bullet (**).

Maps/Gallery[edit]

Whenever possible, maps and images should be integrated into the place description. During early stages of place development, or if there are more images than will fit comfortably into the text body, separate sections can be used.

Naming Priority[edit]

The order of precedence for what to set as the article name for a location in the Elder Scrolls Online is as follows: Map Marker > Loading Screen > Top-Right Pop-Up > Local Map > Name on the Door > Quest Journal > Quest Dialogue

See Also[edit]

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