WiKirby:Article creation policy
The following is a treatise on how and when and when not to create articles on WiKirby.
No new stubs
Readers and editors alike will come across several red links on articles. In most circumstances, these links are red because the subject matter has yet to be broached by an editor who is confident enough to cover it fully. Under no circumstances should a new article be built just for the sake of existing. An article that only consists of one sentence is not one worth reading, and should not be created. Articles like this are candidates for deletion, and should be either deleted or expanded as soon as possible.
Repetitive content and uniqueness principle
For the sake of brevity and not to artificially inflate the wiki's article count, articles should be mostly unique in the subjects they cover, and should not largely tread the same ground as other articles. As an example, the tag-team boss Pon & Con have an article which discusses both of them along with other aspects of their boss fight. Given that neither Pon, Con, or their children are ever seen or interacted with separately, it is not appropriate to create a page for Pon, another for Con, etc.
On the other end of the spectrum, there may be subjects that are extremely similar in appearance, behavior, or both, but officially operate under different names and identities. A good example of this are the pages for Susie, Parallel Susie, and Pres. Parallel Susie. All three of these subjects are effectively the same character and fight in almost the exact same way, but since they are separate entities in-universe and operate separately, they each get their own separate articles.
Expansion of sections into full articles
In some cases, an article may become so complex that it is necessary to split sections off into their own articles. In this case, the information in the original section should be ripped out and replaced with a shorter summary with a link to the new article inset, using the {{Main}} template. Generally speaking, expanded section articles should not in turn have their sections split into smaller articles, in order to prevent too much nesting from occurring.
For more information about this particular subject, see the Article manipulation policy.
Defining new red links
When writing an article, an editor may be tempted to create internal links to pages that do not yet exist. When doing this, it is the editor's responsibility to be mindful of the following questions:
- Is the red link an official name for a subject? (More on naming standards here)
- Is the subject important enough to warrant its own article? (e.g. "Kirby" is an important article, but "Kirby's left cheek blush" is not)
- Is the subject something that is not covered at sufficient length in an article of a different title? (e.g. there is no article for the Boost Patch in Kirby Air Ride because it is covered adequately on the Patch page)
In a perfect world, WiKirby would neither have nor need red links, because all information about everything would exist on the wiki. Despite this world not being perfect, an editor should carefully consider adding new red links, as this will only serve to exacerbate the imperfection. Sometimes this is necessary for the sake of memory and multi-tasking, but ideally, an editor would create a new page and link to it using a new link instead of creating a red link.
