User:Anshinritsumai/Standard Editing Procedure/Sasukepedia Obstacles

''' THIS MANUAL IS NOT COMPLETE, and should not be used until approved by Anshinritsumai. '''

Welcome to Standard Editing Procedure - Sasukepedia Obstacles. Here, we will be covering the various details that we do and do not include in an obstacle (or Events, in the case of Sportsman) related article. These pages can be some of the easiest, and hardest pages to edit in a wiki due to the nature of content.

What makes an obstacle? How is the obstacle constructed? What is the purpose or goal of this obstacle? What are the general statistics of the obstacle? Has the obstacle been changed at all, even just a little bit? When an obstacle has been changed, at what point do the changes to it constitute it's own article? Or should it be classified as a new version of the same obstacle, assuming it maintains it's original design philosophy.

These are all questions that we need to be able to answer in an article related to obstacles (or, again, Events in the case of Sportsman).

Obstacles
Obstacles are, like previously mentioned Competitions and Competitors, are an absolute necessity to the drive that powers the sports entertainment competition shows that we all know and love, and document here on Sasukepedia. The competitions, wouldn't exist without obstacles, or competitors to attempt them. Now, some people are more interested in competitors, while others are more interested in the competition as whole; and while they enjoy those aspects, it's only natural to have a few likes and dislikes in regard to certain obstacles that competitors will have to encounter at some point in their runs, assuming they make it that far.

Now that the purpose of obstacles is stated, we can now begin with the standards of writing an article for an obstacle.

Obstacle Infobox


As with competitor and competition pages, Obstacles also get their own infoboxes to help summarize useful information in an easy to read and presentable fashion at the top of the page, for reader's interest. Again, as stated previously, infoboxes are at the absolute beginning of any article, placing them elsewhere may break the formatting of the page (as you will see later in this article for demonstration purposes. By placing them at the very top of the article, as the first thing, the article will format the template to be aligned to the top-most portion of the section it is included, and aligned to the right side. Based on this simple fact, placing the infobox first, will allow any text that follows it to essentially word-wrap around the infobox seamlessly. In addition, no matter how much information we may or may not have about a specific obstacle in one or more competitions, all obstacle articles should at the very least have, said obstacle infobox.

Obstacle infoboxes deal with a very minimal amount of information, probably even less than Competition infoboxes. Specifically, the summarized information includes the name of the obstacle, an image of the obstacle, a space for a caption for the image (if applicable), translated name(s) of the obstacle, the first and last competition that the obstacle had been showcased, the total number of competitions the obstacle had made an appearance, the first person to attempt the obstacle, and the first person to clear the obstacle.

Sportsman, however, makes use of only the name, image, caption, translated names, first competition, last competition, and total number of competitions; partially due in part to the nature of Sportsman events.



Introductory Paragraph
Filled almost entirely with statistics, obstacle pages are one of the most barren (see: boring), article types within the wiki. But on the flipside of things, this unfortunate lack of information, it also makes it one of the easiest article types to essentially "complete."

Our primary focus in an obstacle article is the provide information on the obstacle's history and purpose, with little regard to the how's and why's someone failed on a particular obstacle. Leave that for the competitor pages, if anywhere at all. Some of the things we want to know, are when the obstacle first made an appearance, and when was it's last appearance. A small, brief summary describing the article and it's purpose are some other things we would like to have clarified in this section. If there are alternative version, or the obstacle has been changed in any way, be sure to make mention of them, but do not deviate from the original design philosophy or go into detail; details come later. Like the competition pages, we want to keep things as simple as possible, don't overload the introductory paragraph.

Main Body Sections
First and foremost, before you write anything in this section, take some time to consider whether or not the obstacle had any radical changes that essentially make later versions, entirely new obstacles. If the changed versions qualify to be entirely new obstacles, then they deserve to be placed on their own separate obstacle pages. Otherwise, we'll want to use the main body sections to incorporate information based on the obstacle's history.

Two such examples, would be the Cliffhanger, and Soritatsu Kabe. Both of these obstacles, have had muliple versions in their history. The overall design philosophy was retained and the obstacle was changed only slightly over the years, maintaining a consistency throughout. One such exemption however, would be the Great Wall, which replaced the Soritatsu Kabe in SASUKE 18. In essence, it shares the overall same design philosophy, however the addition of a rope that a competitor is required to grab and use to climb up the remainder of the wall, essentially changed it into a new obstacle entirely. In SASUKE 19, the Soritatsu Kabe once again made a come-back, replacing the Great Wall that had replaced it. With this is mind, we want to separate the Soritatsu Kabe and the Great Wall into separate articles, but make note of all the versions of the Soritatsu Kabe had (except the Great Wall, which is a different obstacle in this case).

What we're essentially doing here, is making sure that we keep out separate obstacles, that while similar, are not the same obstacle. Once this issue has been verified, we can begin on the construction of the main body section of the article.

When dealing with the versions of an obstacle, such as the Cliffhanger which had 5 versions (Cliffhanger, Cliffhanger Dropout section, Altered Cliffhanger, Shin-Cliffhanger, and Ultimate Cliffhanger), we want to separate their design & construction, difference from other versions, statistical information such as results, and the history of that specific version.

Content
Now that what we have correlated our information in regard to versions or even separate obstacles based on design principle, we can summarize the required information for the article. With the introductory paragraph filling up a basic summary of the design goal of the obstacle, we can use the main body sections to fill in some other information.

First and foremost, whether you're dealing with multiple versions of an obstacle, or a single obstacle with only 1 version, you're going to want to structure the article in almost exactly the same way.
 * Infobox - one at the top of the article ONLY, unless multiple versions, then 1 per version section.
 * Introduction of the obstacle or the version.
 * Brief description of it's design (looks & functionality)
 * Brief description of any minor changes that don't warrant new versions, trivia, or controversy.
 * Results table.

Results Tables
Finally, once everything is done and out of the way; everything being your infoboxes, introductions, and descriptions; you can move into the statistical information of results tables, essentially finishing this section (or article if only 1 version).

Again, results tables are functionally the same regardless of what type of article you're editing, but the content that they display will vary. Keeping this information in mind, as always, it's time to learn how to utilize the standardized results categories we use here on Sasukepedia, specifically designed for obstacle articles.

Competition #, # of clears, # of attempts, and % of completion.

For example, the following code will produce the following table.



As always, note the alternating colors of the rows. The use of results tables is to produce easy to read statistical information for readers of the wiki. With this in mind, you will see all the code required to produce tables with this alternating color scheme, as well as the color required for the title row, in the example above.

As previously stated, while the results tables are functionally the same as the results tables from competitor and competition pages, the content contained within them are fundamentally different. Keep this in mind as you will be learning how to use results tables in competitor and competition pages as well.