MapleWiki:How to write a guide

Guides are the wiki's how-to articles: leveling routes, money-making methods, boss strategies, quest walkthroughs, class builds. This page explains how to write one that fits the wiki. For general editing mechanics (accounts, the editors, previewing, edit summaries), see How to edit. For sitewide rules on titles, tone, and content, see the style guide. The single most important rule: the wiki keeps one guide per topic. Guides are collaborative documents, not signed columns. Before starting a new page, check the Guides hub and search for your topic. If a guide already exists, improve it. That is not rude; it is how a wiki works. If you disagree with what a guide recommends, raise it on the guide's talk page, or add your approach as a clearly labeled section. Two pages competing to answer the same question is a bug, not a feature. Contents 1 Where guides live 2 Starting a page 3 The infobox 4 Writing the body 5 After saving Where guides live Standalone guides get a main-namespace page with a sentence-case title that says what the guide delivers, like Magician leveling guide or Money making guide. Boss strategies live as a /Strategies subpage of the boss's article. Add {{Strategy guide}} to the boss article itself so readers can find the subpage. Single-quest walkthroughs live as a /Quick guide subpage of the quest article, following the quest quick guide page model. Starting a page The easiest way is the create-a-guide box on the Guides hub: type the title and click Create guide. The edit window opens pre-filled with the standard skeleton, an empty guide infobox plus starter sections. Fill in what applies, delete what does not, and remove the instruction comments before saving. You can also create the page any other way and copy the skeleton from Template:Guide preload yourself. The infobox Every guide opens with {{Infobox guide}}. The full parameter reference lives on the template's documentation page. Three fields deserve emphasis: type= is one of Leveling, Money making, Progression, Party quest, Boss, Crafting, Quest, Class build, Event, or Other. It drives automatic categorization and the tables on the Guides hub. game_version= is the game version you verified the guide against. Treat it as required. When the game updates, editors look for guides verified against older versions and re-check them; a guide without a version can never be trusted or efficiently re-verified. author= should stay blank. Attribution lives in the page history, the same as every other page on the wiki. A byline invites readers to treat the guide as one person's property, and it stops being accurate the moment someone else improves the page. Writing the body Open with a one-sentence definition of what the guide helps the player do. A reader landing from a search engine should know within seconds whether this is the page they wanted. Link entities through the link templates: {{m|Orange Mushroom}} for monsters, {{i|Red Potion}} for items, {{map|Henesys}} for maps, {{q|...}} for quests, {{j|...}} for jobs, {{s|...}} for skills, and {{NPC|...}} for NPCs. They keep links working for readers in every language. Don't restate stats the wiki already stores. Write "hunt Orange Mushrooms until level 15" and let the monster's page carry its HP and EXP numbers; copied numbers go stale silently when the data changes. When a number is the point of the sentence, keep it, and make sure it matches the entity page. Confirmed information only. If you have not verified something in the current version of Classic World, leave it out or mark it explicitly as unconfirmed. No estimated drop rates, no numbers remembered from other MapleStory versions: Classic World deviates from old GMS in real ways, and a familiar look is not a source. Use the callout templates instead of bolded warnings in prose: {{Guide tip|...}} for advice, {{Guide warning|...}} for mistakes that cost the player something, {{Guide note|...}} for side information. Leveling guides can render each training stop as a card with {{Guide route|map=|levels=|monsters=|notes=}}. Write to the player. Second person is fine in guides ("sell your Etc drops before leaving"). Keep steps short and concrete; a guide is read mid-game, often on a second monitor. After saving Categories are automatic. The infobox files the guide under its type and class categories; you don't need to add any by hand. The Guides hub picks the guide up automatically through its infobox. Don't add translation markup yourself. Translation admins mark pages for translation once the content has settled. When a patch changes something the guide relies on, update the body and bump game_version=. If you spot an outdated guide you can't fix yourself, flag it on the talk page.