This page goes over the various standards and expectations that you should follow whenever you're making new articles or guides. Most of it is just style recommendations to keep PIH with a fairly uniform format.

SHORT AND SWEET:

- Use Baldur's Gate page as a reference. Make your guide look like that.

- Familiarize yourself with available templates and use them appropriately.

- Be clear, succinct, keep the ultimate goal (hardcore playthrough) in mind.

- When in doubt, discuss on the forum.

IN DEPTH AND LONG: See below.

Main Pages

Each guide should have a main page that goes over some basic information and provides links to the various resources associated with the guide. Usually, this will simply be the same as the game's name, such as Fallout 2, but in the case of multiple guides being available for totally different styles or runs of the game (such as a heavily moddable game like Oblivion or Morrowind) that page could be a disambiguation page instead. Disambiguation pages are used only when there are two or more guides that have totally different premises on a game.

Ex: A disambiguation page would be used if there were an Oblivion guide that used only the most recent patch and another Oblivion guide that uses Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, a mod which fundamentally changes the game by disabling unlimited level scaling, among scores of other things. A disambiguation page would not be used for two guides of Fallout 2, one of which assumes the player is using the player-made Killap patch and another which assumes the player is using the last Interplay patch. Killap's patch merely fixes bugs does not fundamentally change the game mechanics, so the differences betwen playing with and without it are minimal.

If a guide main page is the same as the game's name, its category should be labelled properly according to genre. If not, the disambiguation page will hold the genre.

Ex: At the bottom of the Fallout 2 main page, you will see Category: RPG.

This main page should not be overly long and must include the infobox template with all fields filled out, including a Difficulty Rating image. See Fallout 2 and Template:Infobox for more information on usage (just steal Fallout 2's infobox and change the fields if you want). Walkthroughs should be clearly separated from FAQs or reference material. In the case of especially long or sprawling games, walkthroughs should be split up into more focused sections for easier reference and to keep as much of the guide below the 32KB 'problem limit' as possible.

Note: The 32KB 'problem limit' refers to how some browsers have trouble editing pages that are around or above 32KB. We don't care that much about the limit itself (pages work just fine in most major browsers), but it makes for a good wake up call that you've got something that might benefit from being split up.

Ex: Fallout 2: Early Game Walkthrough as opposed to Fallout 2: Mid Game Walkthrough.

Main pages, like all pages, should include proper headers. If a particular section is somewhat long but there are fewer than 4 headers, consider forcing the Table of Contents with .

Table of Contents listings should follow this general outline:

1) Overview information

2) Reference materials (character builds, item guides, enemy bestiaries, etc)

3) Walkthroughs

4) Suggested reading or fun add-ons

5) Works cited

Branch Pages

Branch pages are linked to by the main pages and should cover one specific facet of the guide. Whether it be an FAQ or a section of the walkthrough, each page should not extend beyond a single concept.

Ex: Sample concepts include a survival FAQ, character builds, AI analysis, and so forth.

Try to keep as many pages under 32kb as you can. This is by no means a hard line rule (The Fallout 2: Early Game Walkthrough is over 70kb and there are no plans to change it), but use that the large size warning as a flag to consider if something can be broken up. Do you change subjects anywhere in the guide? Are there sections that don't really belong? If so, break it up. If not, don't worry about it. Don't go through trying to cut a word here and there to get it under the size warning limit. Keep it clear.

All branch pages should properly cite any resources you used (if not drawn from your personal experience with the game) and include a link back to the guide main page.

Branch pages should not be set into a category.