Help:New user guide

It's been said before, but again, welcome to the Kingdom Hearts Wiki. We're glad you've come aboard to help us organize the massive universe of Kingdom Hearts into an organized wiki to help with player strategy, storylines and history, mini-games, and anything else crowded in-between the Darkness and Light.

Before you begin editing, please take a moment to look through the rules and guideline pages before you begin making large edits or massive amounts of them; it will keep us from having to undo something that didn't fit in the wiki's style, or you from having to redo some hard work. In addition, you can use this page as a quick link to find our guides around the wiki in one handy spot!

If you have any questions about anything below, please feel free to ask a fellow editor or staff member for clarification.

Community Portal
We recommend you make your first stop the Community Portal. This handy little page organizes and shows all the major areas and activities of the wiki, such as editing projects, hot forum topics, or where to post deletion pages. It's a good place to get a feel for how we work, or where to begin if you're not sure where your help might be needed.

Articles
All articles are written using an established Manual of Style to keep articles consistent and improve quality. Good grammar and spelling are also musts, of course! If you are not sure about the way an article is formatted, tables, or where information might go, you will want to check here first.

Images
To help keep the wiki database under control, the Kingdom Hearts Wiki has a strict official image only policy. Please do not upload fan art or non-Kingdom Hearts-related images to the wiki. This includes images of characters from other mediums, such as pictures of Disney characters from Disney films or Final Fantasy-related characters from Final Fantasy games.

If they are appropriately sized and not in large numbers, avatar and talk bubble images not related to Kingdom Hearts may be uploaded.

If you would like to place unofficial or non-Kingdom Hearts images on your user page or elsewhere, such as the forums, please use an off-wiki picture host, such as PhotoBucket and link from there.

Talk Pages
Talk Pages are what we use to communicate about Kingdom Hearts and the articles we're writing. They fall into two types:

Article Talk Pages
These are talk pages for the articles themselves, such as Talk:Sora for Sora's page. Topics posted on these pages should deal with information or discussion directly related to an article. Examples of appropriate topics to post might be:


 * Is there a problem with the table on Sora's page?
 * Where did the new information on Sora come from?
 * I think we need to reformat Sora's page...

Topics about opinions, speculation, or theories regarding a subject are not for Article Talk Pages! If it's not fact or dealing with facts, don't post it on the talk page! Topics like these should instead be placed in the Twilight Town Library Forum. Examples of topics you shouldn't post on a talk page would be:


 * Is Sora the most interesting character in Kingdom Hearts?
 * I think Sora will be in the next Kingdom Hearts game!
 * My theory on Sora's role in Kingdom Hearts...



User Talk Pages
User Talk Pages are, as the name indicates, for communicating directly with a specific user. It should be used to ask questions about wiki subjects only and relating to that user, such as their recent edits, ongoing projects, current uploads, or similar questions. It can also be used to ask a specific user for assistance.

User Talk Pages are not discussion pages! Conversations of a non-wiki nature belong in the Twilight Town Library Forum or IRC. You may leave a brief message on a User Talk page asking someone to join you in either.

Conversations about a wiki subject dealing with multiple users should be held in the The World that Never was Forum. Projects or wiki procedure decisions are common topics that should be discussed on Forums over Talk Pages.

Archiving and Editing policies
When a talk page becomes lengthy or unwieldy, we ask that you archive the page rather than delete so we can refer back to conversations as needed. If you need help creating an archive, ask another editor for help and we will be glad to show you.

Deleting or altering existing posts on a talk page will result in a warning, unless it is to fix spelling or grammar errors, remove spam or profane language, or to archive the page.

User Pages
User pages are your place on the wiki to talk about you! Please check out the Beginner's Userpage Guide for ideas, as well as the User Page Rules to see what does and doesn't belong on a User Page. As always, we remind you to be extremely careful about sharing personal information on a wiki page!

User extensions
Some users have created extra pages in their user space; these may be "sandbox"-type pages to work on a project that is not wiki-ready yet, write their own walkthrough for one of the games, or to organize their thoughts about the series. As long as you keep these extra user pages to a reasonable number and a Kingdom Hearts-related topic, they are permitted. They are not to be used for fanfiction, blogs/journals, or non-Kingdom Hearts materials; there are plenty of other places on the internet for those.

Talk Bubbles
Talk bubbles are often used on talk pages, particularly the forums, to differentiate users from one another. They range from simple (one character, one message) to animated with gifs to allowing you to change the bubble emotion on the fly. The basic template can be found right here for you to copy, paste, and modify as needed, and a selection of colors to use can be found right here. Troisnyxetienne has a handy guide to creating emotion-based talk bubble templates here. We also have several editors willing to lend you a hand in making a talk bubble if you so desire.

Whatever option you chose, you are allowed one talk bubble template page. If you want to change your bubble/bubbles, you will have to remove or archive the old ones; many users choose to do the latter on their User page.

If a page has rules for posting, make sure talk bubbles are allowed there before posting one, as some pages such as Pages for Deletion and Featured Media Voting do not allow talk bubbles.

Fanfiction, Original Characters, Shipping, etc?
No, no, a thousand times no. This wiki is meant for confirmed, official Kingdom Hearts-related articles and pictures only; fandom-related materials are not allowed. However, do not fret ... we have a counterpart, the Kingdom Hearts Fanon Wiki where you can post those materials to your hearts content.

That's it. Welcome to our fine Organization, and enjoy your stay!