PvXwiki:Guides/2012 Rewrite

Build articles on PvXwiki are meant to be concise descriptions of a specific build, and often do not explain outright many of their skill and strategy choices since it would be repeated verbatim across many builds. Guides on PvXwiki store these explanations so that builds and users may refer to them as needed.

Effective Guides
For a guide to be worth storing on PvX, it must satisfy a few conditions:
 * Usefulness: the idea must have merit and be useful to someone trying to play Guild Wars effectively. Guides should focus on metagaming concepts, and while some wiggle room is given for guides outside the standard meta, a guide that fails to take an effective approach is generally unacceptable.
 * Thoroughness: all aspects of the guide must be complete, and important information should not be left out.
 * Accuracy: all parts of the guide must show proper understanding of game mechanics.

Guides that do not meet these criteria must be tagged with guide-stub until they are brought up to standard. User consensus will determine whether a guide is considered complete.

What a Guide Shouldn't Do
Guides are not meant for bypassing the vetting system, and should not just be a build or listing of builds. PvXwiki guides also should not be redundant to guides on Guildwiki or Guild Wars Wiki. PvXwiki guides should generally focus more on build/skill selection and tactics than guides on either of those wikis, in keeping with our Article retention policy.

The guide namespace should also not be used to store long usage or lists of farming locations for specific builds. This information should go on the build page itself, or a subpage of that build if absolutely necessary.

Creating Guides
All guides should be created in the Guide namespace, by starting their name with Guide:. The rest of the name should be descriptive of the guide's content, relatively formal, and not overly verbose. Examples of properly named guides are: Guide:Zaishen Trapping, Guide:Nicholas the Traveler Farming, and Guide:General RA Tactics.

Incorrect versions of these names would be Zaishen Trapping, Guide:Nick Farm, and Guide:The most awesome way to play RA.

Guides do not have a rigid structure as Builds do, but PvXwiki:Guide Format and Syntax provides a good starting point for writing a clear guide.

Categorization
There are many types of guides, and some guides may have some qualities of multiple types listed here. A guide should be tagged for each category it qualifies for by adding to the top of the guide page.

Build Guides
These guides provide pointers on customizing a highly variable build, designing a build from the ground up, or analyzing the features of several related builds. The first tends to see use for farming builds, while the second allows a reader to make useful builds around limitations that PvX:WELL assumes don't exist (such as limited skill selection). The third provides an in-depth look at common skill choices and build patterns to show the reader why they are effective.

Example: Guide:Invinci-Monk Guide, Guide:AB Nuker, Guide:Generic Utility Ranger

Strategy Guides
These guides explain tactics and playstyles, providing a breakdown of how they work, when/why/where they are effective, and what the counters are.

Example: Guide:AB Mobbing

Area Guides
These guides are meant to explain a gametype and the conventions for builds used in them. They focus on effective ways to play the format. Also, guides of other types may focus on a certain gametype.

Example: Guide:Introduction to Alliance Battles

Guide Deletion
There is no vetting or WELL process for guides as there is with builds, and there is no set-in-stone grace period before a stub guide is deleted. However, if a user notices that a guide has remained unfinished for a long time they should attempt to complete it or encourage discussion. If the community deems an unfinished guide non-worthwhile, it may be tagged for deletion. An admin will review the situation and either delete the page or continue discussion and editing as appropriate.

If two guides cover heavily overlapping topics, a user may tag one or both of them for a merge (depending on whether the merge should be symmetrical or asymmetrical).

Guide Archival
If a guide becomes outdated and cannot be made relevant again, it should be archived by placing Archived-Guide at the top of the page (see the template page for what parameters should be filled in).

If the guide has any other categories (such as Category:PvE Guides), they should be commented out (surround with ) or removed when it is archived.