We decided it was time to clean up the guides section, so here's what's gonna happen! It's a lot to read, so please bare with me.
We will have two new sections.- The draft guides section: self explanatory. If you would like to make a guide, it must be posted in this section first as a "draft".
- The final/recommended guides section: the good guides will be moved/posted in this section. Threads to be created in this section requires mod approval to prevent people jumping to this section to post their guides.
Draft guides section
Currently, all the old guides have been moved to this section.
If you want to make a guide, you
must post it in this section first. You post your guide there and receive feedback from members. There are two possible outcomes:
- The admins/mods and/or members approves your guide straight away. If your guide is already good in the first draft, it will be moved to the final/recommended guides section. You can still edit your guide to update it there if required.
- Your guide requires editing because it doesn't follow most of the guidelines (below).This is where members can also help provide constructive feedback for your guide and you can continue to edit/update it. Once it reaches the stage where it satisfies the criteria, we may move the guide there for you or ask you to create a new thread there and we'll approve it.
That's not to say that the good guides that get into recommended sections do not require feedback, because they do.
We will:- Move the thread for you if you start off with a guide that satisfies pretty much all the recommended guides criteria (below).
- Ask you to make a new thread in the recommended guides section once you have finalised your draft. We may ask you to do this if your original thread in the draft section are filled with members' feedback/help on your work, so we have a "cleaner" version of your guide in the recommended section.
If you are required to make more than one post because you can't fit everything in the first post, then feel free to make another thread in the draft section and we'll move the new one to the final section.
Please
DO NOT make another thread without the mods asking you to. ONLY make a new thread if you have a finalised version ready and the mods have approved/agreed to move it to the final section.
Recommended guides section
Features:- Exempted from necro rule (draft is not).
- Members will not be able to create threads here without the mods' approval.
[IMPORTANT]Guidelines to follow for recommended guides:- The information must be correct.
- The guide MUST be formatted nicely so it is EASY TO READ. We cannot emphasize this anymore. No one wants to read wall of texts, even if you've got good points in your guide. Make subheadings, bold the headings, use the list functions, use paragraphs, etc.
- English should be good. We're not asking for perfect grammar, buh typin liek diz wud not rly halp uno?
- Refer to the Wiki! Sometimes, you are not required to list out information and things if they are provided by the Wiki. It may make your guide less lengthy and perhaps easier to follow.
- Do NOT make several posts to separate your sections if your sections are relatively short. If each of your section is close to reaching the 10k character limit for the post, then feel free to separate them via separating the posts. But if your sections are only 3 paragraphs each, there is no need to separate them in posts.
- Do not plagiarise other people's work. Credit them if you have used someone else's work (be it information or pictures), credit them if they edited your work for you, etc etc. It's just common courtesy to do so.
- Be prepared to take in constructive criticism. If you're going to be unhappy when someone (constructively) criticizes you, then I suggest you not to make one at all.
Can't do this without you guys!
We encourage collaboration between members working on guides together if they wish. You may have the main writer, an editor (to correct spelling/grammar if English is not your first language), have a person create pictures/banners for your guide to make it look nice, etc (of course, this is not compulsory). Feel free to make a thread in the Draft guides section to ask for help if you would like to create a guide.
DO NOT make a thread saying "hey who wants to make a guide with me?!?!". State what guide you are planning to make, and what kind of help you need with.
Furthermore, when we decide if a guide should go into the recommended section or not, we may be depending a lot of the decision on members' feedback. If many members disapprove of a guide for whatever reason, we may decline it and ask for it to be edited/improved.
Keep in mind that sometimes, us mods aren't always active in game so we may not be up to date with all the info, so we'll really need you guys to point it out if someone is making a "bluff" guide with a whole heap of incorrect info.
A note on constructive feedback
Here's a neat little link on
constructive criticism. Things like "your guide is crap because I said so" is not constructive nor helpful and will possibly be removed. Don't like someone's guide? Say why you think so and suggest HOW to improve them. There's no point complaining about something if you don't even know the solution to it yourself. Also please note on how you word your feed backs. Be nice, I'm sure there a ways to say "your guide is not good" nicely while getting the same message across.
Also, we do not really encourage people talking down other people's style of playing for their class as it's pretty subjective. Some people like full END mages or full SPR archers, some people don't. We don't really appreciate it if you go into a guide and say "THAT WAY OF PLAYING SUXXXXXX" because no,
you suck for saying that. Unless, of course, someone is being ridiculous and makes a guide about full INT fighters and honestly trying to persuade people it's right.
A few more things- Guides on how to increase enhancing success rates will NOT be accepted. Reason being is that this process appears to be random, and despite the so-called "patterns" that people find, none have been proved to be entirely correct.
- If someone already made a guide on the same topic, then you cannot write another one. Reason being is that we do not need multiple guides on the same topics that says the same things. Of course, there are some exceptions. For example, someone may have made a guide on how to play a PvP mage. You may also create a guide on PvP mage if your playstyle is significantly different from theirs (and thus you'll have different content). Another exception would be that if the original guide is extremely outdated the the guide starter is no longer updates it, then we may consider putting your guide in.
Last of all...
It's okay if your guide does not get into the recommended section straight away! We don't expect everyone's guides to be spot on first go. Not making into the recommended section straight away does not mean we won't consider it afterwards. If you slowly work to improve it, we'll be more than happy to approve it.
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