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. Follow the FANDOM Terms of Use.
2. Be respectful towards each other, from the most active admin to the newest newbie.
3. Do not make use of strong language, racial slurs, or sexist jokes on the Wiki, censored or otherwise.
4. Mark all spoilers with {{Spoiler}} (not for comments) or {{Spoilersection}}.
5. Keep drama (from other wikis, real life, etc) off of this wiki. It has no place here and will likely only stir up more fights and drama. This especially includes political discussions.
6. Help other users out, if you can, as opposed to degrading them for their lack of ability.
7. Ban evasion is against the rules. This includes sockpuppeting.
8. Trolls will be banned.
9. Roleplaying is generally played poorly and so is banned. This includes talking about the subject of your username if it is derived from the game and responding to any roleplaying.
10. Do not delete or falsify vital information or files.
11. Advertising is not allowed.
12. If you want to add a new feature across the Wiki, put it up for discussion first.
13. 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.
14. Before asking a question, please make sure it has not already been asked or answered either in the comments or in the article itself.
15. Do not edit other users' private pages, such as a profile or sub page.
16. 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.
17. Do not comment on blog posts which are several months or years old (often referred to as necrobumping) unless you are bringing something meaningful and/or relevant to the discussion.
18. Do not make edits to simply earn badges/achievements on the wiki (also known as "badge-hunting" or "edit milking").
19. Admins and mods 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. All spoilers (i.e. information related to the Storyline should be marked with {{Spoiler}} (for whole articles) or {{Spoilersection}} (for individual sections).
5. Make use of headings so as to avoid long text walls.
6. 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 - Achievements - Trivia - References
7. 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.
8. Please use the appropriate templates.
9. If an article is in a sub-category, it does not need to be placed in a more general category. For example, articles in Category:Placeable Item or Category:Raw Material should not be in Category:Item or Category:Materials.
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 (such as previous names, model changes, etc). Anything outside of the game must be cited. Otherwise it will be removed.
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 in the first paragraph.
14. Write in the third person (e.g., use "the player" or "Ryley" instead of "you").
15. When referencing outside sources, add the date in MLA format at the end of the reference. If the date is unknown, write Date unknown.
16. All information from Subnautica: Below Zero sources like its PDA entries must stay on the Below Zero Wiki rather than here. This wiki is only for information acquirable in Subnautica.
17. Databank entries should stay accurate to their appearance ingame. This means that if an entry has spelling errors in-game, it should have those errors on the wiki.

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. Pictures should be taken on maximum graphics settings. Lower quality images will be removed.
3. Images should be as large as possible. Therefore, think about the image composition before you hit the screenshot button.
4. 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.
5. Dithering, Lens dirt, and Color grading must be turned off for all photos. These create inconsistencies between gallery images as well as alter the image unnecessarily. Any photos using these settings will be removed.
6. Depth of field should be off for photos of environments and biome terrain. Depth of field can be used for close up images with a singular direct focus on fauna or flora. In which the focus of the image has it's details preserved, while distractions are blurred.
7. Photoshopped pictures are only rarely useful and should be avoided. Fan art or drawings are not allowed except on profile pages.
8. 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.
9. The pictures in a gallery should not be repetitive.
10. The goal of Biome and environmental photos are to show the best of the biome and it's beauty, like a postcard. Instead of a bland, bleak, and murky look.
11. When taking pictures of fauna, take it in the Crater Edge for a clear picture. To do so, use this set of console commands: 'speed 0', 'warp -4000 -4000 -4000', 'fog', 'fog', 'freecam', 'spawn [creature]'. For optimal lighting, use the "DAY"/"NIGHT".
12. .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.
13. All photos that are posted on a page need to be named. The photo name follows the name of the page followed by the image number in the gallery, which is usually in an ascending order starting from 1 (e.g., Knife (3).jpg).
14. 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.