Subnautica Wiki:Guidelines

This page contains Guidelines for the development of the Wiki.

The Guidelines are meant to support contributors in the creation and expanding of articles, to ensure a certain degree of uniformity, and to have a set of common rules for admin decisions.

If you need to get in contact with the admins, leave a message on their Message Wall or ask on the Subnautica Discord.

Rules of Conduct

1. Be respectful towards each other, from the most active admin to the newest newbie.
2. Do not make use of strong language, racial slurs, or sexist jokes on the Wiki, censored or otherwise.
3. Help the users out, if you can.
4. Help other contributors by polishing e.g. spelling and grammar, if applicable.
5. Do not delete or falsify vital information or files.
6. If you want to add a new feature across the Wiki, put it up for discussion first.
7. Nonsense posts and Caps lock posts will be removed. Spam posts such as, but not limited to, "XD" or "lol" will be removed, this includes overusing gifs. Limit one gif per comment.
8. Trolls will be banned.
9. Advertising is not allowed.
10. Before asking a question, please make sure it has not already been asked or answered either in the comments or in the article itself.
11. Do not edit users' private pages, such as a profile or profile sub page.
12. If you wish to post art, feel free. If it is from another artist, however, ask them first if it's okay to post, and make sure to credit them.
13. Do not comment on blog posts which are several months or years old, unless you are bringing something meaningful and/or relevant to the discussion.
14. Admins get the final say, respect their decisions.

Editing Articles

1. Always verify any information you add. Don't take the word from other people for granted. If you are not sure about a thing, put it up for discussion, so that other contributors can verify the information or prove it false.
2. Structure all information logically. Using e.g. alphabetic order in lists is encouraged.
3. Make articles short and concise. Do not clutter pages. Less information is sometimes better.
4. Make use of headings so as to avoid long text walls.
5. Use the same headings for the same type of information and use the same order across articles. There are many exceptions, but also some recurring headings, as seen below. The suggested order is: Appearance - Behavior - Uses - Recipe - Upgrades / Uses in Crafting - Data Bank Entry - Gallery - Future Plans - Trivia - References
6. For infoboxes, use the item symbol picture / icon, not an in-game render of the item. This applies to all items players can naturally hold in their inventory, as well as seabase modules and other placeable items.
7. Please use the appropriate templates.
8. /Gallery pages should only have the gallery category, /Gallery pages for biome pages are an exception to this rule, as they can have the gallery category as well as the relevant biome category.
9. Don't place items in both the Placeable Items and Item category, in order to keep them cleaner.
10. Don't create pages on subjects we know next to nothing about.
11. Always include a source when creating a trivia bullet point unless the trivia is about something that used to be in the game.
12. Avoid linking the same thing more than once on a page (Fauna, Flora and Resource lists do not count)
13. Highlight the term a page is about by marking it as bold throughout the whole text.
14. Do not make use of words like "you"; use "the player" instead.
15. Do not include information about bugs, as they will be fixed in the future.
16. When referencing outside sources, add the date in MLA format at the end of the reference. If the date is unknown, write Date unknown.

Pictures and Galleries

Code example:

<gallery widths="200" spacing="small">
image.png
</gallery>

1. Images should be as clean as possible with no HUD displaying. You can do this by pressing F6 twice in-game. However, some things you might want to capture vanish when pressing F6. Therefore, it is not always best to use F6. However, some pages will have an exception to this, bear that in mind.
2. Images should be as large as possible. Therefore, think about the image composition before you hit the screenshot button.
3. If an image needs to be cropped, please keep the same aspect ratio so as to ensure that we don't end up with five different aspect ratios in one gallery. Of course, there are exceptions to this, such as item symbols.
4. Photoshopped pictures are only rarely useful and should be avoided. Fan art or drawings are not allowed except on profile pages.
5. Galleries should always be standard-sized (1920x1080) so as to ensure that we do not end up with five different picture display sizes across pages. If this makes a page look weird, try adding or removing a picture.
6. The pictures in a gallery should not be repetitive.
7. For optimal lighting, use the "DAY"/"NIGHT" console commands.
8. Only have up to 12 quality pictures on each gallery. Other pictures can be moved to (mainpage)/Gallery pages.
9. .GIF's have to be scaled so it matches the other pictures in the gallery. Gif's in gallery have to be marked "GIF - (text)", for warning to the mobile users.
10. /Gallery subpages have neither a quality nor quantity limit, however keep the pictures relevant, non-repetitive and appropriate.
11. All photos that is posted in the page or /Gallery need to be named. The photo name follows the name of the page followed by the image number in the gallery, this is usually in an ascending order from one and upwards (e.g Knife (3).jpg).
12. When taking pictures of fauna, take it in the Dead Zone for a clear picture. To do so, use this set of commands: 'speed 0', 'warp -4000 -4000 -4000', 'fog', 'fog', 'freecam' 'spawn [creature]'.
13. Before posting a picture of Concept Art, even in a comment, verify that it is not present on the wiki yet, specifically on the Concept Art page. If it is not present, contact the admins for permission to post it first, as the developers of Subnautica sometimes do not want us to post certain Concept Art on the wiki.