Help:How to help
Assisting the wiki can be done in many forms.
Create pages for missing content
As the game continues to expand, new features and items will enter into the game which the wiki will not have cataloged, such as the planned (at time of writing) animations and clothing being introduced into the game.
Please check if the page already exists before creating a new page, for the sake of preventing duplication.
Alternatively, check the missing pages category, which lists pages that are currently noted as missing. However, please note you will need to go a fair bit down the list as all languages are collected in this category, so it lists French, Russian, Japanese (etc.) missing pages together. Please note the /#
symbol after a page name relates to the Language, so if you see Lettuce/fr, it means the lettuce article in French.
Edit existing and/or stub pages
On occasion The Indie Stone, wiki administrators, or editors will set up stub pages to be improved on later by other wiki editors. These simply need filling out/formatting with the most recent information.
Stub articles
Stub articles are pages that are considered to be severely lacking in information and far too short to be given a dedicated page. All stub articles are categorized by the {{Stub}}
notice, which adds them to a dedicated category for improvement. Some stub articles may not use current boilerplates and should be updated accordingly if required.
Articles in need of improvement
Some editors who read the wiki find pages that are clearly out of date and require a modernization to bring them back into a relevant state by adding a notice to the page. These pages can be found under the "Articles in need of improvement" category.
Version pages
Due to how the boilerplates work and current wiki policy, all pages are required to have version numbers attached to the page. This helps discern which version the page was edited and brought up to date. The version category collects all pages edited in that version. See the "Version" categories page for the list of pages potentially needing updating. Once the page is brought up to date, the version number must be updated to reflect it has been corrected. If a page is found to not be using a boilerplate, please either add a boilerplate, or add the {{Header}}
template to the top.
Translations
- Main article: Help:Translations
Translating the English pages (which at this time is currently the most numerous of the wiki pages) into their relevant language is an enormous task which simply requires a bit of time from wiki editors. Please try to only translate pages which are close to the current working version, as translating a page from several versions ago could potentially be a redundant exercise unless you can confirm the information is current and assign the page to the current version category.
The use of the {{Revision}}
notice on pages allows for a page to be put in a different language by linking to the assigned variant as well as check the revision date of the English page to see if it is up to date. Help with translating pages is very much appreciated.
Moving pages
Try not to move pages unless necessary, one such change would be to replace capital letters with lower case, also refer to the style guide. A lot of links on various pages have been spelled with capital letters when they are in the middle of a sentence. These need to be changed to lower case where appropriate. Such as "Concrete Bucket" to "concrete bucket".
On the basis of pages on items/events/future planned features which are not part of the game yet such as a feature not implemented, these don't need to be moved but need to be categorised in the "Category:Future features" category with the {{Future}}
template.
Reporting spam
When reporting spam, the first thing you should do is check to make sure that the article in question is not focused on Project Zomboid. Check the page's title, look to see that there is not an extensive history for the page. If you are not sure that the article is not legitimate, leave a note on the article's discussion page.
If you are absolutely positive that the article is spam and does not belong on the wiki, insert the following into the article before any content:
{{Deletion|Spam|speedy=1}}
Preview to make sure a red box has appeared on the page, then save your changes. An admin will delete the article after review. To report someone you believe is a spambot, simply leave a message on an admin's talk page.
Adding pages to categories
When creating a new page or coming across a page that hasn't been added to an appropriate category, edit using this format:
[[Category:NAME]]
You can find a listing of category names on this page.
Adding message boxes to pages
Message boxes are the boxes added to the top of pages to indicate problems or concerns with the article. One example is the in need of improvement mbox:
Adding this mbox to a page is as simple as inserting this line at the top:
{{Improve}}
Adding mboxes will not only display helpful information, but it may also add the article to a special category. For a list of mboxes, see PZwiki:Mboxes.