Help:Writing an article about a real-world person

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Looking for help with basic wiki editing? Visit Help:Contents or ask for help in the Discord chat!

Looking for help writing about a character in the Pathfinder campaign setting? Visit Help:Writing an article about a person!

Many people contributed to the Pathfinder campaign setting, rules, and associated media. PathfinderWiki provides articles containing biographical information and credits for these creators.

Summary
Use the {{Biography}} infobox template to summarize basic biographical details. Add a photo only if you can provide a source, and preferably with the person's permission. List their works, and provide links to their online profiles.

Using the {{Biography}} infobox template

Want more information about templates? Visit Help:Templates.

PathfinderWiki uses infobox templates to provide an easy-to-glance summary of important facts about a creator. You should begin the article by adding the {{Biography}} infobox template:

Visit the {{Biography}} template page.
Copy the code from the Template box in the {{Biography}} documentation.
Navigate to the article you're creating. You can do this by clicking a red link to that article from an existing article or entering the article's name in the wiki search box.
Paste the {{Biography}} template at the beginning of your article.
Fill in the blanks after the equal signs in the template.

The template automatically displays only the information that you fill in; leave any fields you can't fill in blank, as they won't be displayed and will help chroniclers complete them if new information becomes available in future products. You can see the example template for Jason Bulmahn by editing this page.

If you need help deciding what to put in the template or understanding what its fields represent, see the {{Biography}} template documentation or ask for help in the Discord chat.

Citing sources

Remember to refer to the citation policy and practices to provide references for your article's content. Citing sources is very important—uncited content may be flagged or removed. All content in a biographical article should be factual and included either in cited references or the "External links" section.

Sections

Whenever possible, provide at least the following sections in a biographical article:

Pathfinder credits: If the creator has been credited in a Pathfinder product, link to the PathfinderWiki articles for those works. There are templates that can help format these credits or automatically generate a simple list.
External links: Links to social media profiles, portfolios, interviews, and other relevant content outside of PathfinderWiki.

For examples of well-written articles about people, see Jason Bulmahn, Lyz Liddell, and Wayne Reynolds.

Credits

For authors, there are two types of lists you can use to list their credits:

{{Credit}}: List credits in a table with links to specific articles or sections.
#dpl: The DynamicPageList extension generates a list of articles that belong to a category.

A dpl example:

{{#dpl:
| category = Works by Jason Bulmahn
}}

For artists, the {{DPLGallery}} template generates a gallery of artwork thumbnails. Add the usestore=yes parameter to include product covers.

Categorization

Want more information about categorization? Visit Help:Categories.

Although the following list is not exhaustive, an article about a creator should be generally belong to these categories:

Category:Authors, Category:Artists, Category:Actors (real world): Occupational categories.
Category:Freelance contributors, Category:Paizo staff, Category:Paizo editorial staff, Category:Former Paizo editorial staff: Employer or affiliation categories.

Unsure about categories?

If you have written an article and are unsure about which categories to apply, or simply want your categories double checked, then please feel free to add this text at the bottom of your article in this format:

[[Category:Please check categories]]

This flags to others that the article's categories need checking or adding. We hope that, soon thereafter, another chronicler will be along to help.

Names

A creator might have multiple names (such as pen names or alternative credits), or have changed their name over time. PathfinderWiki uses the person's preferred name for the article, and redirects other names used to refer to that creator to the article.

References

As with all articles, remember to add a References section and {{Refs}} template to the end of the article if you cite specific sources. This automatically turns your inline references into a sorted and linked bibliography.