Help:Article Reorganization

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Because Zelda Wiki is a community wiki, open to anyone and everyone that registers, a reputable standard of article quality is difficult to implement across the entire site. As a result, some articles are sub-par in organization, aesthetic appearance, and layout and must be reorganized to provide the best possible presentation of the article's content and images.

Current articles in need of reorganization are listed here.

General Guidelines

Content, Images, and Redundancy

Sometimes reorganization simply requires a cut-down on redundant article content and images. Some users naturally write with verbosity and have a tendency to repeat statements in a different way. While this may work to help fit an image, or create the appearance of a large, meaty paragraph, the content itself will be long-winded for the sake of it. In these cases, the content must be trimmed for the reader's sake. Without excess redundancy, the reader will quickly be able to find what they are looking for, without having to sift through sentences of similar content.

While not the main reason for a reorganization, in many cases, the number of images placed in the content area of a page can quickly spiral out of control, causing a cluttered and busy appearance. By limiting the amount of images in the content area (and placing the excess in the gallery), the article will take on a much more professional appearance and create some "breathing room", per se, for the content to "stretch its legs".

Redundancy is also reduced in a process called merging, in which two like pages are molded into one. In this type of article reorganization, the content of the two articles must be consolidated so that all concise, pertinent information is present, and all connected content is condensed.

Direct Linking

When reorganizing an article, special consideration should be given to how the new layout will affect direct links to sections on the article. Articles are supposed to be for the benefit of the readers. Other articles can link to specific articles to save readers time and patience, which some are often short on, in finding exactly the information they wish to find after they see something that interests them in another article that they are reading.

A key thing to remember is that not all appealing layouts would be practical for direct linking. The more prominent the subject of the page is, the more critical it is to have efficient link-friendly layouts. Articles about two or more characters need to take the characters themselves at highest priority for linking. Articles about more than one item, or items with many different forms, need to take the individual items, or types of items at highest priority. Articles about multiple places are to be preferential to individual place names. Articles about singular subjects, just one item or one character or places without considerable variation, should take the appearance in games at highest priority.

Visual Appeal

Pages are supposed to draw the reader in, with eye-catching images, meaty paragraphs, and a bunch of noteworthy references and facts. However, articles that provide examples of awkwardly-placed images and image clogging (too many images), text walls, and template misuse and overuse fail in achieving the aesthetic factor. Descriptions and links below to articles past and present may help illuminate not only the aesthetic factor that comes into play during an article reorganization, but how direct linking and redundancy plays a part as well.

Current Examples

Leever

This page was originally organized "by game", which means that each section catered to the individual appearance of the Leever in each game. With this layout comes a large amount of redundancy - the Leever, as an enemy, does not change much between games, and thus each section was forced to repeat the same characteristics of previous Leevers. The subsequent reorganization took care of this issue, merging the ideas together under the heading "Characteristics", and accounted for any atypical variation under the heading of "Variations". This is the current way enemy articles are organized, to cut down on redundancy while keeping all pertinent information nicely categorized. The previous organization of the Leever page boasted image clogging as well, an issue fixed in the most recent revision.

Previous reorganization, by game

Current organization, characteristics and variations

Potion

This organization of this page was perhaps the most hotly contested on this wiki, as of yet. The ideas of organization "by game", "by color", and "by effect" all raised definite points, however, the problem occurred in the actual organization of the content. Certain potions may be a certain color, but have an unexpected effect when put to use, i.e. the Blue Potion from The Minish Cap only raises health, not health and magic. In this case, the prevailing idea was that a general organization "by color" would be the best, as gamers recognize potions by color first (as it is visual and apparent), before looking into the actual effects they provide.

Previous organization, by effect

Current organization, by color

Trivia

See also: Zelda Wiki:Quality Standards#Trivia

Zelda Wiki features Trivia sections in many of its articles. These sections contain bulleted lists of interesting, little-known facts that are relevant to the subject at hand, but also too minor or digressional to be included in the main body of the article.

Unfortunately, because of the broad nature and list format of these sections, inexperienced users are prone to lump information into them where it doesn't belong (see Category:Improper trivia sections). Editors should aim to reduce these sections to true trivia only.

Incorporate as much information as possible into the article's main body. Move "non-trivia" to other existing sections. Or, use creativity and resourcefulness to group information into new, more aptly named sections. For example, information on names origins and meanings is often placed in Trivia. It can instead be grouped into its own "Etymology" section.
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