Kitten Space Agency Wiki:Manual of Style

This is the official KSA Wiki style guide. Please follow this guide when creating or editing pages and files on this wiki. These guidelines are generally derived from or are wholly reflective of Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Any topic or edge case not covered here is expected to follow Wikipedia's MoS, but the guidelines that are present here take precedent over Wikipedia in the event of a discrepancy.

Failure to comply with these guidelines will not be punished according to the same standards as the general wiki rules, but compliance is still expected.

General guidelines

• Avoid creating unnecessary pages or subpages. If the info you are trying to add is related to an in-game asset/feature, please place the info on that entity's page.
• Edit in an “encyclopedia” style, avoiding use of the first person or any personal bias. Avoid words like I, me, you, etc.
• Do not include large blocks of quoted text. Brief quotes are permissible when appropriate but should be used sparingly. Generally, summarize external information and use citations to direct users to the source for additional reading.
• Correct all typos found, even if changing the sentence layout is necessary. Comprehension is important.
• View changes in the "Preview" window before saving them, so as to catch incorrect links and typos, and improper formatting. While creating multiple edits to the same page is allowed, it creates clutter on the recent changes screen and in the page history.
• The default language is American English, however English pages may also use European English. All pages must have an English version, and should be translated English -> Other. Use of country-specific slang must be avoided.
• Editors should only translate pages if fluent in the language of the translation.
• Parts, assets, and other in-game objects should be named and translated according to the official in-game translations.
• Use files (images, videos) sparingly. Some pages benefit from visuals to aid the text or convey a concept, but refrain from including several files on a page that do add any significant value to its content. Use a gallery when appropriate.

Retaining existing styles

It is generally discouraged for an editor to change the style of an article from one style to another without substantial reason. Edit-warring over style is never acceptable.

Unjustified changes from an acceptable, consistently applied style in an article to a different style are generally subject to being reverted.

If an editor believes that an alternative style would be more appropriate for a particular article, seek a consensus by discussing on the article's talk page. If an issue is to be raised regarding general application of the MoS, then discuss on the MoS talk page itself. Unless consensus is reached, the preexisting style is to be maintained. Lack of consensus in once instance does not prohibit further discussion later on should new sufficient, constructive, and appropriate discussion points be introduced.

Overall article guidelines

Page layout and formatting

• Typically, a page will start with a short intro, then the content of the page, a history section, and a "See also" section. Please follow this when creating content pages. Categories should be used sparingly.
• Please use sane formatting, and do not Capitalize Words Like This, or L I K E T H I S.
• Do not overuse bold, italics, or colorful text. This detracts from the effect of said text when it is actually necessary.
• Usually [[Kitten]]s is preferred over the piped version which would be [[Kitten|Kittens]]. Any text can be placed immediately after a link to become part of the link.
• Do not create circular links, i.e. do not link a page to itself. This also means that a page should not link to a redirect that links to the page itself.
• If making a comment to other editors is necessary, place the comment in comment delimiters, <!-- Comment --> so it cannot be seen by users. This can be necessary to explain the page's specific formatting.
• The first instance of the page title should be bold. This should usually be in the first sentence of the article. No other instance of the page title should be bold. For info on how to bold words.
• The first instance of an asset name on a page can be linked, via double brackets (eg. [[engine]]). Further mentions of the same item should generally only be re-linked if the second link is more than a page-length away from the original.

Capitalization

• For article names and section titles capitalize the initial letter (aside from rare exceptions), but otherwise follow sentence case (Celestial bodies), not title case (Celestial Bodies).
• Proper nouns such as planet names ("Earth", "Jupiter", ...) should be capitalized. However, the content they contain should not be capitalized.
• In-game object names which are common nouns and should not be capitalized unless they start a new sentence.
• When linking to another page within a flowing text, use normal capitalization for the link. For example: "in order to create a [[maneuver]]..." and not "in order to create a [[Maneuver]].... Remember that the first letter is automatically capitalized to resolve the page when the link is clicked.

Article titles

An article name should be a recognizable or description of the topic, balancing the criteria of being natural, sufficiently precise, concise, and consistent with those of related articles.

• The final character should not be punctuation unless it is an inseparable part of a name or an abbreviation, or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required.

Section headings

Section headings should follow the general guidelines above as applicable. The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line before it. A single blank line after is optional and ignored, but *two* blank lines will create additional visible space as is not to be used.

For technical reasons, section headings should:

• Be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place.
• Not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.
• Not contain images or icons.
• Not contain <math> markup.
• Not contain citations or footnotes.
• Not misuse description list markup (";") to create pseudo-headings.
• Not contain template transclusions.

These technical restrictions are necessary to avoid technical complications and are not subject to override by local consensus.

As a matter of consistent style, section headings should:

• Not redundantly refer back to the subject of the article, e.g., Early life, not Dean's early life or His early life.
• Not refer to a higher-level heading, unless doing so is shorter or clearer.
• Not be numbered or lettered as an outline.
• Not be phrased as a question, e.g., Languages, not What languages are spoken by Kittens?.
• Not use color or unusual fonts that might cause accessibility problems.
• Not be wrapped in markup, which may break their display and cause other accessibility issues.

Time and dates

• Times and dates for specified events should reflect that of their GMT+0 equivalent for standardization.
  • Since game versions are published with an date in their build info, that date shall be used on their respective pages.

Citations

• Article content describing information that is not derived from the game (e.g., developer comments, business information) should be properly cited.
  • The {{Cite web}} template is included in the "Cite" dropdown in the editor toolbar to simplify this process.
• Citations should point to the most accessible source. For example, if a developer quote is made on the forums and on Discord, the forum post should be cited since logging in is not necessary to view the post whereas it would be for Discord.

File uploads

• When possible, avoid putting important text in images, as it is not search-able, and makes finding that info harder. The text also can not be translated, so each language would need its own version of the image.
  • If a translated version of an image is needed, please upload it under the same name as the original image, with your language suffix at the end, e.g. (Telescope_ui.png in German -> Telescope_ui-de.png)
• When uploading an image, please use a descriptive, unique name. Images given a non-descriptive name will be renamed.
• Files should generally not include a date code in the filename, this is achieved and accessible through the edit history.
  • The primary exception to this is if a date code itself is directly relevant to the content of the file, and should follow the YYYY-MM-DD format and be appended to the end of the filename, e.g., 'Ahwoo homepage 2025-12-02.png'.
• Asset icons should be named after their English in-game name.
• When uploading an updated version of an image, use the "upload a new version of this image" link found on the old file's page. This ensures that all old instances are updated automatically.
• Please mark any duplicated files for deletion by placing the {{Delete}} on the page.
• If uploading images that are not of KSA, please ensure it is explicitly permissible to use under the license the file was published under.
• Gifs of mechanics are allowed and encouraged.
• Please ensure that the image you are uploading is of good quality. Use the PNG filetype when possible.
• All in-game sprites/icons that were retrieved directly from the game source files need to be designated as such on their page. This is essential to indicate that you do not own the copyrights of the image.

Templates

• Templates are to be used for formatting/common text on many pages. Do not create templates for only a few pages, except for special circumstances.
• Templates should be have their use described using Template:Documentation by including it in the template code: <noinclude>{{doc}}</noinclude>
• Avoid making many sequential edits to a commonly used template. This creates strain on wiki.gg's servers to update across all the pages. Perform edits to those templates with a single edit only. If you need to edit a protected template, please contact an admin, as these templates are especially heavily used.