GKWiki Content Contribution Guide
Gaining Edit Access
The first thing you might ask is "how do I create and edit pages?" Isn't disallowing edits to a public wiki immoral, unconstitutional, and Against the Laws of Nature? You're being pre-censored before you've even said anything!
Relax, my friend. The walls of our garden are not so high.
This place isn't meant to be a Walesian evolution of truth. It's run more like a college newspaper. Read through the contribution guide below. You might decide the style and constraints of this project would make it not-fun for you. That's a respectable reaction.
But if you're not scared off, shoot an email to info@seespacelabs.com expressing you have an interest in working on the wiki with us.
Writing Style
The entire wiki site is itself an example of the preferred style.
Cleverness and humor are encouraged. (Or at least attempts at them are. The extent to which we achieve these goals is debatable.)
Obscure references and tangents are almost alway appropriate. The limit of this is merely that it should not be (much) of an impediment to a reader getting at information.
We recognize and recognise American and British dialects of English as valid. There is no need to conform to either, and no reason to "correct" spelling of existing content to your preferred dialect. A good try at spelling and grammar is all that is wanted, e.g. you should write in full sentences. But ending a sentence with a preposition is not going to piss anybody off.
Esoterica
Don't worry about following this too closely but in general we try to stick to:
- Emm, blocks, and other NPCs are "reborn" or "rebirthed" when they reapear on their blockpads or eggs.
- Everyone is genderless in The Godkiller's world, but Emm still uses female pronouns for now.
- We try to refer to levels as the things you can choose from the level-select menu, and floors as the platforms of different heights you can explore within a level.
Politics and Religion
We don't advocate for or against specific political (e.g. socialism, libertarianism) or religious (e.g. Christianity, atheism) views. The latter might seem somewhat contradictory as The Godkiller series spends so much time exploring religion. But the key thing is advocacy. We don't do it on the wiki. You can probably make a "how many atheists does it take to change a light bulb" joke. But a "Why God Doesn't Exist" page is probably going to cross the line. (And yet... if it was really funny...)
Media
You can post anything from the game on the wiki site. We might ask you to take something down if it conflicts with a purpose. Consider potential spoilers with things like screenshots. (More below.)
Non-Seespace media posted on the wiki needs to be public domain, Creative Commons-licensed, or have a similar grant of permission.
Seespace Labs and the hosting provider are based in the US. And this means that in theory we could use the allowances of United States Fair Use Law. But if somebody doesn't want their copyrighted media on our site, we can be taken down with DMCA. And this initiates a large hassle that probably wasn't worth a wiki page looking 23% cooler. Note that meme graphics generated by other people that include images of unknown origin and licensing fall into the same risky category.
Spoilers
The general rule is that a viewer must have clear information that allows them to avoid spoilers. You can describe the spoiler potential next to a link.
Or you can put the spoiler content inside an expandable block like...
| Spoiler: How do I kill the songbird? |
|---|
| What did the songbird do to you? |
That "hidden spoiler" effect is accomplished with this source...
{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"
! Spoiler: How do I kill the songbird?
|-
| What did the songbird do to you?
|}If you don't like editing source, you can also stay in the visual editor and use "Insert" -> "Table" with quite a few clicks to set options.
Content Structure
The basic content structure is laid out on the Main Page and you can follow the pattern there. You can add new branches under it, but for anything major, discuss with the team a bit first.
Page names should be unique to the scope that they are under. This will help us keep all the pages well-organized as new titles are released. Say you write an "Overview" page for The Godkiller - Chapter 1, and then Chapter 2 is released later. When someone goes to make an "Overview" page for Chapter 2, it maybe creates confusion about which title the first "Overview" page belongs with.
With that rationale in mind, use the following prefixes when creating links:
| Scope | Prefix | Page Name Example |
|---|---|---|
| The Godkiller - Chapter 1 | GK1 | GK1 Overview |
| The Godkiller - Chapter 2 | GK2 | GK2 Overview |
| The Godkiller Series | GK | GK Overview |
| The Godkiller Wiki | GKWiki | GKWiki Overview |
An easy way to do this is to create the link with the shorter, display-friendly name you'd like to use, e.g. "Overview", and then edit the link to change the page name to the scope-prefixed name, e.g. "GK1 Overview". The page with the link will continue to show the short name after you edit the page name.
Canon Creep
We're continuing a well-considered Caravel Games policy of canon coming solely from released titles. By "canon", we mean established, official facts within the Godkiller story.
It can be downright joyful to invent the world in advance. But early canon creates a kind of overhead that multiplies against future additions.
For example, say you invent a fictional currency system and write up on a wiki page. Your invented currency is based on collecting bits of broken blocks and crafting them into wooden coins. Nobody needed these details specified, but it added fun content to the wiki, and maybe it's useful to include in a future title. A year later, somebody is writing story for the next chapter of The Godkiller, and they want to specify that all forms of currency were abolished by God and any attempt to create some transactional token will be physically impossible. This would be a contradiction of the canon you wrote earlier. So the story writer would need to choose between following your canon or abandoning it, and there's ill effects for any choice made.
The default expectation is that any content you add to the wiki is canonical. But you can mark exceptions with an "Off-Canon" description if you really want to get playful. We'll make an off-canon section below as an example.
What Billy Thinks About Giant Birds (Off-Canon)
Billy lives in fear that giant birds will eat him. This is an unrealistic phobia as birds in this world do not have digestive systems.
The Tyranny of "We"
It can be tiresome to always write as a disembodied spirit, floating detached from the content you create. Occasionally, you might want to strike out from the group, and say something as an independent voice. You can use blockquote formatting for that (it's in the dropdown box that says "Paragraph").
Erik: I say "I" when I've done something impressive. Otherwise I stick with "we". We're very sorry for wetting the bed so thoroughly last night.