Game Description Guidelines

The Description section for each game is actually a wiki page for information about that game. In addition to the main description section, there is a second More Information section. This area is meant to include further information about the same game. Also see Wiki Formatting for a general description of Wiki text formatting rules and Wiki Content Guidelines for broader guidelines on what belongs on the wiki and what does not.




General Guidelines

•While this is not Wikipedia, use of a neutral point of view is encouraged.

•When linking to games, link to the game page using [gameid=NUMBER].

•For descriptive terms that apply to many games, link to an appropriate wiki page, even if that page does not yet exist. For example, "This game is language neutral" or this game was illustrated by Doris Matthäus.

Skelebone These two examples no longer work, as there are BGG modules for both of these now (Artist credits, and polls for language neutrality), but the concept of this item is still relevant.



The wiki Game Descriptions are meant to effectively enable a number of features that have been available in the past or discussed, including game relationships, series groupings, theme groupings, award listings and similar capabilities. It is not meant to be a place to implement other new features such as ratings by number-of-players, personal categorizations (use Tags), or the like.

Skelebone: Some of this has changed, as further tools have been implemented into the system to integrate further information into the game page. Expansions are now covered under the Linked Items module on the game page, and some thematic grouping is addressed with the Family systems.



Things to include on a game wiki page

•A brief description of the game. This should always appear as the first part of the page.

•A list of awards, linked the the appropriate wiki award page (eg, Spiel des Jahres)

•Information on the game's current publication status (eg, This game is out of print, a new edition scheduled to come out in 2009, etc).

Skelebone: This is problematic, while it works for prospective printing information (e.g. this game will be released in Q4 2009, Out of Print status is a gray area, as a game may not be currently shipping, but may have copies in stock at a variety of locales. Use the former, but mostly avoid the latter unless hard data is available





•Notable information about availability (eg, This game is hard to find but frequently is available on eBay) in addition to publication status.



Skelebone: See previous item for issues with this





•Links to other related games such as expansions, other games in the same series, or older versions, along with a description of the relationship between these games.



Skelebone As discussed above, Expansions now have a linking module.

glsonn Yet it can be useful at times to include such links. See Dominion, for example.





•Groupings of games that are not their own category (eg, Carcassonne series, Knizia auction trilogy)

•Information on substantial differences between editions of the game.

•Links to wiki pages with extended details about a game, for example if a game has a large number of different editions with a great deal of information about each, you may create a wiki page dedicated to the various editions of a game and simply link to it in the main Game Wiki page

•For children's games, the age range suggested by the publisher.



Things to NOT include on a game wiki page

•Links to designers/publishers/categories that are already included in the game entry, unless the name already is a natural part of the text.

•Rules questions, reviews, discussion, opinions, announcements, or other content that belongs in the Forums

•Images

•Links to external web sites (these belong in the game links)

•Rules suggestions or other things that belong in files or forums

•Recommendations, which currently are best discussed in the forums

•Categories the game is in except as noted above

Note that a separate wiki page for a game FAQ can be very useful, e.g. Hive FAQ, Hellas FAQ, King of Siam FAQ, Tomb FAQ. It is appropriate and helpful for the game's special description wiki page to link to this separate FAQ wiki page.