Creating a page about a track

This page contains guidelines that we recommend to follow when creating a page about any STK track.

Motivation

This wiki is made to help players understand some aspects of STK that are otherwise told only accidentally, or told only to friends, or told never, or there is no reason to just tell them. Generally, we intend this wiki to be useful for new players. In particular, a page about a track should have enough new (and useful) knowledge for a new player. This doesn't mean though the information written on a page should be obvious for experienced players.

This wiki is not intended to be itself a library of the best times/runs/records, this would make a page false each time a record is beaten, and to keep it in a true state, we'd need to update records manually without major changes involved. So basically this would mean many extra changes without changing the actual content. (Manual changes are bad but even automated ones don't make the situation better.) Instead, we plan to make another service about statistics and records which could be integrated into wiki pages so that the page is not changed each time something is beaten.

Some guidelines just force to have more or less similar style.

Guidelines

• Use English (including English track names).

• It is completely OK to not make the whole page at once and leave it in some work-in-progress state, some sections/links/images/paragraphs can be not included immediately, any contribution is valued.

• Please make the name of the track in bold on the first line of the page.

• Please specify the creator(s) of the track if it is possible. In the future we can probably add an automatically generated text with that but it is not of utter importance.

• Please include the official game screenshot aka icon. Preferred format is [[File:filename.png|thumb|right|Screenshot]].

• A view of the track from top is very welcomed, if you have Artist Debug Mode enabled, please do that screenshot too.

• Do not include precise lap times to display the records unless this information cannot be found on any server with records, public YouTube/PeerTube videos, nor speedrun.com records board. Though a rough approximation for a typical lap time is allowed and even welcomed because this doesn't change frequently.

• If you know something about history of the track (version of appearance and/or inclusion, name history, etc.) please write it in History section.

• The following section is Description. It should
  • contain short information about preferred kart types for the track, possible lags, default number of laps, online gaming popularity, maybe music and landscape, etc. It can be before the track description itself, after that, or distributed between both places;
  • contain a description of the track itself. This includes listing the parts of the track in the order of completion and describing their difficulty, things that can go wrong, useful pieces of advice. If the track splits at some points or its parts merge back, it should be described: if there are two paths, both should be described with time and difficulty comparison; if there are more paths, you should describe at least fastest one(s). Otherwise, splitting the track description into parts can be done arbitrarily.

• If there are useful links like a good speedrunning or TAS video you are very welcomed to make a Links section and add the link to it there. However, please do not say "current record" or other such phrases when describing it, see above. A speedrun by PlayerName (probably with date or result mentioned) is enough.

• Basically any other information about the track is welcomed too. Please use objective facts if possible instead of subjective ones or advertising, and please don't refer to "community" or "many players" unless you are really really convinced the STK community thinks so. Examples:
  • has a good gameplay for many players because of X, Y, Z - not approved
  • is rather popular among online players because of X, Y, Z - approved
  • one of the best-looking tracks - not approved
  • the developers and [[Name of Top Player|some top players]] are very much satisfied with the track's appearance - approved
  • a tournament for pro players - not approved
  • organizers make a big effort to attract high-skilled players to the tournament - approved

• Please put links from the first occurrence of a common STK term to its own page (too many links are bad, too). Examples: [[TAS]], [[List of tracks|track]]. Same applies to players, arenas, etc.

• Adding a track identifier to ease the installation from server lobby can be useful.

• If you need a degree sign, here you have it: °.

• Remember that your page will still be reviewed. Don't try to put trash into it.

Special cases

If the track is a meme (e.g. Cyber Park) or has another special feature that makes some of the points above useless, you can do whatever. But for most tracks this is not the case.