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Species pages here at FicSpecies follow a certain pattern, so that all pages look roughly similar. In short, every page starts with the the species header, and uses similar sections for breaking the article up.

Species articles at FicSpecies are written entirely in-universe. In other words, try not to mention that you are talking about something fictional, as this destroys the feel of the wiki. Also try to use the present tense as much as possible. "Hobbits are a race of..." not "were a race of...". The only exception to this rule is species that are considered extinct.

Page title

The title of the page should be in singular form. When a species has more than one name, use the most common. Be sure to capitalise separate words. So, Dwarf is better than Dwarves, Wood Elf is better than Wood elf, Orc is better than Ork, and Mermaid is better than Merman or Merperson. This is to make them easily distinguishable when browsing.

Header

Always make sure the "SpeciesHeader" template (shown by a little green puzzle piece, if not in source view) is at the very top of your article. Note that the header template automatically adds a page into certain categories, based on the values you insert. So be sure to fill the origin, class and sapience fields carefully.

Sections

Remember that you don't need to include all of these; although the "Appearance", "Habitat" and "Behaviour" sections are highly recommended.

Appearance

This recommended section is where you'll put information regarding a species' biological features and physical appearance.

Biological traits

In this optional section, you can include information not readily apparent, but relevant to a species' biology, such as its methods of reproduction, any powers or abilities it may possess, etc.

Habitat

A recommended section used for describing where the species can be naturally found.

Use FicSpecies:Habitats to see what kinds of habitats a species might inhabit.

Behaviour

This recommended section deals with information regarding how a creature behaves. Whether or not it is aggressive, social, etc. should go here, as well as all details about social life and diet, and other habits unique to the species.

If the species is sapient, here is where you can put information regarding its society, religion or technological level.

Morphs and subspecies

In this optional section, you may put some information regarding known morphological variants, castes or subspecies. If there's a lot of information on each kind, feel free to use subheaders for individual subspecies/varieties; otherwise just list them in bullet format.

Related species

This optional section can be used to link to other organisms that are closely related to, but don't actually belong to that species.

Relationship with other species

Use this optional section to include information about how the species interacts with other species in its environment. If there's a lot of information, you may use separate subheaders for individual species.

Gallery

In this optional section you can include a gallery of images of the species. This is particularly useful when individuals of the species vary greatly in appearance. This is also a good place to dump additional pictures that would take up too much space if added elsewhere on the page.

Featured in

An optional section in which you can list media such as books, poems, songs, etc., in which the species has been featured.

Notes

This optional section is a good place to list interesting facts or additional tidbits of information that don't really fit in anywhere else. It is the only section where out-of-universe things can be mentioned.

Categories

See the little bar at the end of the article, the one with "add category" in the box? Surprisingly enough, this is where you add categories to help navigate articles on the wiki. If you used the Species Header template correctly, your article will already be added to the Species category, and to the categories related to its medium of origin, classification and sapience level, as filled in the template. Other categories will be added every time you use Template:Catlink in the text of the subsequent sections (so be careful with what you link!). Feel free to add more relevant categories to the article as you see fit. This will help group similar articles together and make browsing fictional species much easier. As a rule of thumb, keep category names in the singular form; e.g., "Humanoid" instead of "Humanoids".

Examples

Good examples of species pages are Ewok (sapient) and Nasobeme (non-sapient).


So there you have it, a simple layout guide for how pages should look on FicSpecies. Hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, or need help with anything, don't hesitate to contact BlueFrackle, Dyga19 or Kyoo Moo. :)

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