The Layout Guide (LG) is a core policy on the wiki that governs the overall structural layout of articles. This differs from the Manual of Style, which focuses solely on content formatting.
An article can be roughly grouped into three main sections: the header, the body, and the footer.
Please note that this policy is a work in progress.
Article header
Title
The first thing a user sees when viewing an article is the title. Article titles should be descriptive of the subject without being too verbose.
When dealing with characters or people, the most commonly used name of the person should be used for the title. For example, Lord Bowler is used for the character instead of his real name, James Lonefeather, because he is known most commonly by his epithet. Redirects may be used for less common uses of the subject's name.
Disambiguations
Disambiguations are used to differentiate subjects with the same title. Because of the limitations of MediaWiki software, no two articles can have the same title. To disambiguate from an existing article, a parenthesized suffix should be added to the new article's title. For example, because there is a character named Crystal Hawks, the episode of the same name is named Crystal Hawks (episode) on the wiki.
Header templates
More info on this coming soon.
Infobox and introduction
Infobox
Many articles on the wiki make use of infoboxes, which provide users with a quick and easy method of finding information about the subject of the article. Infoboxes are incredibly useful and versatile and should be used whenever possible, however not all articles require them.
Generally, only a single infobox is needed per article.
Featured quote
Support for a featured quote describing the subject of the article will soon be added.
Introduction
The introduction is one of the most important parts of an article. It introduces the subject to the reader and covers key parts of the subject's history and other relevant information. Think of it as a quick summary of the rest of the article.
Table of contents
A table of contents is automatically generated whenever sections are added to an article. This allows for easier navigation of articles, especially long ones. To prevent the generation of a table of contents, the magic word __NOTOC__ should be placed somewhere in the page content. Do not abuse this. Most articles should have a TOC.
Article body
Sections
Generally, the body of an article will have several sections, but short articles may only have one main section. If you're not sure how to section an article, chances are there is already an existing complete article that can be used as a guide.
Behind the scenes
The behind the scenes section should be used for information that is relevant to the article, but doesn't fit in the article body. This can include production information on in-universe articles or trivia about real world articles that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Appearances
The appearances section is only for in-universe articles and should include all appearances of the subject in the show. We have a handy template for this (see Template:Appearances).
Notes and references
The notes and references section functions as footnotes for the article and includes a list of citations from the article body. Proper referencing templates should be used.
External links
The external links section should contain relevant links to external sources, such as Wikipedia or IMDb.
The navigation section is for navigation boxes, which group related information all in one place for easier internal navigation.
Categories and sorting
Categories are what make the wiki easy to navigate. All articles should have at least one category so that they are easily discoverable through the category tree.
Articles that begin with words such as "the", "an", and "a" should make use of the {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word in a fashion such as this:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., The}}
This allows for smarter sorting on category pages.