User:J Greb/Docs

Guidelines

The guidelines below are drawn from the information at Wikipedia:Navigation templates, Wikipedia:Colours#Using colours in articles, Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/Style guidance, and various discussions and consensus on the talk pages of navboxes used withing the Comics Project.

Article inclusion criteria

Live links

The items listed must be for existing articles. The navbox should not be a place to list "non-articles" (black text) or "wanted articles" (red links). Stylistically, non-linked text can exist in the navbox, but it should be as a clarification to a linked article.

Examples include:

• Barbara Gordon ( Oracle ) — from {{Batman}} — An alias to help in identifying the topic of the link
• The Incredible Hulk (1977) — from {{Hulk}} — Denoting which exact spin-off is linked
• Olan Soule (v) — from {{Batman in popular media}} — Denoting a voice actor. "(voice)" is also used for this.

Related

The articles included should be clearly and primarily related to the navbox's topic, which is always listed in title bar.

For navboxes focused on a character this can include creators, supporting cast, notable or primary foes, locations, equipment, story lines, comic series titles, spin off media, and other related topics. For those focused on teams the same groupings apply as well as sub-groups of the team and team members. Please note that in some cases there exist list articles which are a comprehensive catalogue of one or more of these groupings, inclusion of a link to the list(s) is preferable to adding all of the items from the list to the navbox. This reduces the clutter in the template and makes it easier to find articles.

"Clearly and primarily" means that the article to be included is immediately recognized and associated with the topic, before anything else. This is important to keep in mind when adding articles on characters, storylines, and comic series.

Examples of this:

• Doctor Doom is included in {{Fantastic Four}}, which counts the character as a primary foe. The article is not included in any other navbox, even though he has been pitted against most of the Marvel Universe, since he is not central to those topics.
• Superman is not included as a supporting character on {{Batman}} even though there are stories where he filled that role. This is not the primary point in the article about the character.

Adding links to articles on common terms and/or objects is discouraged since the topics of these articles generally have a notability that is not based on the topic of the navigation box. So, for example, Norse mythology would not be included in {{Thor}}.

Special cases:

Creators

Creators are limited to the writer and artist that either first created the character, {{Batman}}, or first created a "head liner" character using the name, {{Green Lantern}}. This is to avoid clutter in the navboxes and on the articles. (See Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for what most biography articles would look like without this limitation.) As shown in the examples, lists of prominent writers and artists that have contributed to the stories either exist or can be created. Existing lists can them be added as a link to the navbox.

Team members

Since most team memberships are fluid, including articles on teams for characters or individual members for teams is discouraged. There are some general exceptions to this such as the X-Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes. In these cases the characters are used almost exclusively within the stories of the team. It is reasonable to include the notable characters along with a link to the membership list article. Keep in mind that "notable" does not automatically mean "current".

In a similar way, to simplify the navboxes, if a notable foe is part of a team that should be listed, list just the team, not the team and the individual members.

Size

Navbox in general

Navboxes should do more than just repeat selected links present in all, or most of, the articles. If the articles are already tightly interlinked, then a navbox may not be needed.

And as noted above, they are not meant to be all inclusive. Large lists should be looked at for places where removals can be made.

Groups

In general if a grouping of articles is small, 3 or fewer items, it should be placed in a more general group with similar sub-groups. For example: If a topic has spun off a movie, 2 television shows, and 3 video games, a "In other media" group would be preferable to the smaller "Film", "Television", and "Video game" groups.

Colors

The colors used for the navboxes, if any are used at all, should be picked so that the text remains clearly visible. Choices that make any of the text potentially hard to read should be changed.

Placing on articles

In general, the navboxes should only be placed on article which are in the template.

Discussions

Inclusion and exclusion of articles has been shown to be a contentious issue given the large groups of characters that are central to some navbox topics. Keep this in mind when adding or removing articles. If the same articles are constantly being added and removed, take the issue to the template talk page so that a consensus opinion can be reached and applied evenly to the template.