This page describes one of Red Dead Wiki's policies and guidelines
All users are expected to follow policy, except where it would damage the wiki. If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints, please post them on the talk page.
All page titles must be accurate, concise and meaningful.
Remember that editors will need to link to the articles, so the title needs to be easy to remember and type. Visitors will read and follow links, so the link needs to be accurate and meaningful. Visitors will also search for the articles, so the title needs to be relevant.
Capitalisation
All page titles should be in title case, including all articles and categories.
Title case is where all words are capitalised, except common short words such as "and," "the," "if," "of," or "in." All game and character names should start with capital letters.
For example: Cheats in Redemption - not "Cheats In Redemption" or "Redemption cheats."
This wiki does not observe the "sentence case" convention seen on some wikis, including Wikipedia. Any pages copied to this wiki must be renamed to title case.
Templates can be given lower case names such as {{delete}}.
Language
All article titles must be in English, except where it is a direct quote from the games, or the official name of something.
Where there is a difference in language, such as that between British and American English, both spellings are equally correct. However, you should try to be consistent within a single article. You should not go around changing American English spellings into British English or vice versa.
Length
Article titles should be concise. Avoid long titles such as "List of large two-handed weapons in Red Dead Redemption."
In this scenario, remove as many words as you can, which keeps the title making sense and correct. A shorter title, such as "Large Weapons in Redemption," will do.
Avoid abbreviations unless they are easily understood and consistent. In long titles, game names can be shortened to "Redemption" and "Revolver"; however, they cannot be abbreviated to "RDR."
In articles, titles should state "X in Y" (Weapons in Redemption) rather than YX ("Redemption Weapons") to make it very clear. The titles "Redemption Missions" and "Revolver Weapons" could easily be misunderstood.
Game Content
All articles about in-game content must be titled their correct in-game name, matching the in-game spelling. However, punctuation can be simplified to make the title easy to link to.
- Main article: Red Dead Wiki:Disambiguation
If multiple articles would have the same name, you should create a single disambiguation page that links to the various options. However, there may be some situations where one article (or even a redirect) is much more prominent than the others (ie John), so the title should go there and the alternatives be listed at the top.
Characters
Characters articles must be titled with the full proper name of the character when known, excluding any titles. For example, Agustin Allende, not "Allende", "Colonel Allende", or "Colonel Agustin Allende." Similarly, nicknames should not be used when the character's real name is known: Alwyn Lloyd rather than "Welsh." In such a case, however, redirect pages should be created from the commonly-known nickname to the character article: Welsh (redirect page).
In cases where the character's full name is not known, the following rules apply:
- If only a first name or last name are known, that name should be used. Examples: Daren (with a redirect from Colonel Daren) and Christina.
- If only a nickname is known, with no information about the character's real name, that nickname should be used. Examples: Irish and Shaky.
- If the single name (or nickname) conflicts with or would be easily confused with other articles, a clarifier should be added. Example: Chicken (Revolver Character).
- If only a nickname and either a first or last name are known, the nickname may be treated as a first name if that is how it's used in the game. Quotation marks should not be used around the nickname in the article title, though they would be used within the article text. Examples: Curly Shaw, Bloody Tom, and Lightning Larouche. However, Harry Schultz instead of "Hatchet Schultz" and Chris Bailey instead of "Ugly Chris" since their full names are known.
- If nothing is known about a character's name, a suitably descriptive title should be used where possible. When a succinct, accurate title is not possible, the article can simply be titled "Unnamed ______". Examples: Outlaw on Horse, Unnamed Woman, and Perro.
Weapons
Weapons are named how they are in-game, even if they have a real-life counterpart with a different name.
If a weapon's name is not given in-game, a simple but accurate form of their real-life name should be used.