The Vault:Article layout guideline/Item article

	For the general guideline, see The Vault:Article layout guideline.

 

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This page contains The Vault's article layout guideline for items. It describes the standard layout for articles about ingame items such as armor and clothing, consumables or weapons.

Guidelines describe desired etiquette and common practice in the creation, editing and organization of articles on this wiki. Any registered editor is free to edit this page to improve its readability as long as the essence of the article remains unchanged. If you would like to suggest content changes or propose a new policy or guideline, please use the wiki discussion forum. See the policies and guidelines page for an overview of this wiki's policies and guidelines.

Infobox and categories

A few additional pointers regarding the applicable infoboxes and categories:

• There are various infoboxes for item pages, depending on the type of item in question. Please refer to The Vault:Templates for a list of infoboxes. For details on their usage, please refer to the respective template pages themselves.
• Most item pages are only categorized in one category, although specific exceptions exist (e.g. for weapon pages). The category depends on the game the item appears in (e.g. Category:Fallout items). Please select the right sub-category of Category:Items for the type of item in question. Examples for sub-categories are the game-specific versions of Category:Armor and clothing, Category:Consumables or Category:Weapons.

Item article layout

The layout is composed of three tables. The top and bottom tables are standard layout items found in every article; they are only included here for completeness and are collapsed by default. The middle table contains the actual specifics for item pages.

• Yes in the "headline" column means that the article should have a headline of that name if you want to include such a layout item.
  No in the "headline" column means that this layout item should not have a headline.
• Yes in the "required" column means that every item article should include this layout item.
  No in the "required" column means that not every item article needs to include this layout item.

Standard layout items (top)
Layout item	Headline	Required	Explanation
Page management boxes	No	No	Page management templates are used if you notice that something is out of order with a certain article or section and want to bring it to the attention of other editors or administrators. If the issue affects the whole article, these boxes should be placed at the very top of an article; if only a section is affected, they should be placed just below the headline of the respective section. The only exception are stub templates; see Stub templates below. For a list of page management boxes, please refer to our template overview or directly to Category:Page management templates.
Project tags	No	No	Projects are joint efforts of editors who work together to improve a set of articles that cover a certain area of interest. Some of these projects have tags or boxes which are placed on the pages which the project affects; these should be placed below the article management boxes.
"For" template	No	No	{{for}} is used to make a reader aware of other articles they may have been looking for when entering the title of the current page.
Infobox	No	Yes	The purpose of infoboxes is to summarize data relating to the article. Infoboxes should appear in the top-right corner of an article. For a list of infobox templates, please refer to our template overview or directly to Category:Infobox templates.
"Games" template	No	Yes	{{Games}} should be placed just below the infobox (if there is one). It produces small icons in the top right corner of an article which allow the reader to see "at a glance" what games or sources the article relates to or is based on. The template should be used in every article; almost no exceptions exist.

Item-specific layout items
Layout item	Headline	Required	Explanation
Lead section	No	Yes	Short summary that usually looks something like this: "{{PAGENAME}} is a weapon in Fallout 3." In general, it should contain: Name of the item (and alternative names) in bold. What type of item it is (weapon, armor, drug, edible etc) with a link to the appropriate overview page for this item and game. Which games this item appears in.
Background	Yes	No	If there is any background story/history for the item.
Characteristics	Yes	Yes	Properties of this item. For drugs, these are the effects. For armor, these include damage resistance, effects and what other items they can be repaired with if any. For weapons, these include damage, special effects, what items they can be repaired with (if any) and general properties (such as what type of weapon it is etc).
Variants	Yes	No	For weapons/armor; list of variants for this item. If the variants have own articles, these should only be linked to. If multiple variants of this item are described in the current article (on Fallout 3 armor pages, for example), a sub-section (with the name of the variant) should be made for each variant.
Location(s)	Yes	No	Location(s) where this item can be found (fixed location(s) only, no random spawns).
Related quests	Yes	No	If there are quests which are related to this item, list them here (just link them, no need to go into detail).
Notes	Yes	No	For interesting things about the item which do not fit into the other categories. Try to keep this section to a minimum.

Standard layout items (bottom)
Layout item	Headline	Required	Explanation
Behind the scenes	Yes	No	"Behind the scenes" is the place for information relating to game development and cultural references. See The Vault:Content policy#Behind the scenes for additional information.
Bugs	Yes	No	Game glitches, short "bugs", relating to the article subject should be here. See The Vault:Content policy#Bugs for additional information.
Gallery	Yes	No	If an article contains a lot of images, it is often better to place them in an own gallery section than to have them clutter the article. Please see Help:Gallery on how to use galleries and our image policy.
Videos	Yes	No	If an article contains embedded videos, they are to be placed here. See our video policy for which kind of videos are eligible to be placed in articles.
See also	Yes	No	The purpose of this section is to list links to related topics on this wiki which may not have been linked within the article content.
External links	Yes	No	Links to external (i.e. off-wiki) sites which are not references should be just above "References".
References	Yes	No	If references have been used in an article, {{references}} should be placed here.
Stub template	No	No	A stub template marks an article as being too short to provide more than rudimentary information about a subject.
Navboxes	No	No	Navboxes are navigational aids which allow easy access to other articles in a group the current article belongs to. They should be placed at the end of an article, just above the categories. The most article-specific navboxes should be highest and the least-specific lowest. A list of navboxes can be found in Category:Navbox templates. New navboxes can be constructed with {{Navbox}}.
Categories and interwiki links	No	Yes	Categories and interwiki links should be added at the very end of an article. A full list of categories can be found on Special:Categories. For additional information, please see our categorization guideline.

See also

• The Vault:Content organization guideline