One part of the manual of style that could cause confusion is this paragraph under the "Content Criteria" section:

• All content needs to be objective. Opinions, gameplay strategy, and "my favorite"-style passages should not be added to articles. Accordingly, guides may only be posted as subpages of one's user page or as a blog.

The last sentence above, if understood narrowly, would suggest that even the walkthrough articles that we have on this Wiki violate the guidelines.

I believe that the main intention of the above guideline is to delineate between subjective and objective content, rather than the type of content (gameplay guides). So for this purpose, I suggest rewriting it as follows to first clarify the subjective vs. objective distinction, and then apply this distinction to the context of gameplay strategy:

• All content must be objective.
  • All content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing views fairly and without bias. Opinions and "my favorite"-style passages should not be added to articles.
  • Content on gameplay strategy must be factual. Subjective guides may only be posted as subpages of one's user page or as a blog.

For the first sub-bullet, I suggest adding the policy of "neutral point of view." Other Wikis have an entire section on this (e.g., Wikipedia, Elder Scrolls Wiki)

One example of something that doesn't presently meet the objectivity requirement, in my opintion, is the "Troops" section of the Dvali article. The images there, especially, don't present a neutral point of view on the topic but instead indicates editorial disparagement.

For the second sub-bullet point, it is my suggestion. I think you should address what type of strategy content is approrpirate.

That's a good point, there are definitely articles and article sections that contradict that particular guideline. I think including walkthrough material is fine, as long as it's as objective as possible. Your second bullet point could be extended to say that walkthroughs should be compatible with all of the main playstyles, and not just be combat-focused for example. This description would hopefully help editors understand what constitutes an objective vs. subjective guide. Including a statement about neutral point of view is a good suggestion! I'll make sure the manual of style includes that too.

The troops section of the Dvali article clearly wouldn't fit the above guidelines. I'm not sure whether the Dvali article is suited to walkthrough-like language anyway. What would you say to removing the walkthrough content, and keeping only the description of the types of troops? This would include changing the images to ones where they're not all dead/knocked out...

I agree regarding the further clarifications on the gameplay types and edits for the Dvali article. The Dvali article has a few issues, like the use of non-official-but-overly-specific terms like "specialist." I've been intending to edit that article, but never got around to doing so.

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I also suggest the following updates pertaining to sections in articles. The following is part of the "Canon" section of the guidelines.

• Any action can be chosen by the player must not be marked in the main section of the article (since the canon about the choice is not set), but in the notes section a different section suitable for discussing player-influenced events that are not necessarily canon. In the main section, you can write that "JC Denton or Adam Jensen etc. confronts the character etc." but that's all; never explain the choices; never write your favorite choice in the main section: choices are for the notes section.

As you may recall, we moved away from over-reliance on "notes."

Additionally, we added sections like "mission appearances" to provide something that is more specialzed for discussing gameplay-related content for characters. So "mission appearances" would be an example of "a section suitable for discussing player-influenced events that are not necessarily canon" that is currently in use.

BTW, did you ever have more thoughts as to whether "mission appearances" is the best approach to a heading for gameplay and player-dependent events? I had suggested using "mission appearances," but it later occurred to me that this heading doesn't fit some characters, like Tomas Romanek whose interactions are not related to any specific mission. Some Wikis use "Interactions" as the section generic to quests, non-quest interactions, as well as the fate of the character (example: Ulfric Stormcloak). This approach is worth considering.

In any case, for the time being, the suggested edit above would at least make things more open ended, so as to not state that "notes" is the only possible section for player-influenced content.

For consistency, the section on "notes" could be edited as follows:

• Notes - if any information related to the topic of the article needs to be clarified, it should be added to the notes section. This is also the one possible section where the choices offered to players that do not have a set canon are may be included.

There are actually other issues relating to sectioning that are not addressed. While the guidelines say that "Biography" is the standard section for characters, it is silent as to organizations. For organization articles, some use the heading "History" (Illuminati). Others use "Background" and "Activities" (Task Force 29). I think these are worthwhile topics to address at some point. I think you could get more participation in the wiki if people can be clear as to what does and does not comply with the wiki's standards.

No worries if you don't have time, I have no problem doing it either!

Ah yes that should be updated as well. One alternative section title to "Mission appearances" or "Interactions" is to specify the game you're talking about, like "In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided" for example. This allows for interactions that don't occur during a particular mission to be mentioned, but also means that a separate section is needed for interactions over different games (so Pritchard for e.g. would need two). I'd prefer to know what yourself and other editors think of these options before choosing one. I'm probably leaning towards Interactions though, if I had to choose.

What's written in the manual of style about a possible article layout was only meant to be a rough guide for people new to the wiki. From my experience, it's hard to find a structure and even section titles that work for every article of a particular type. I agree we should aim for consistency though, but should also allow for flexibility in specific cases where the guidelines don't work well.

"History" is intended to be a parent section that discusses the entire activities of the Illuminati, including activities before the games themselves (i.e. background). So a possible fix is to have all of the background and activities information included as subsections to "History", like the Illuminati article. For Task Force 29, this would mean that Background and Activities would become the subsections of History, and Divisions, Notes, etc would be separate sections. What's your take on doing that?

I think "Interactions" is better than "Game Name" as the section title given that we are using a canonical "Biography" section. The reason is that a canonical biography section also reports events that occured in a specifical game (and is not merely a "background" section containing backstory prior to events of a given game). Thus, having "Game Name" alongside "Biography" would cause confusion in regards to whether the two should overlap in content, because the distinction between "Game Name" content and "biography" content is not immediately clear from the section title itself. 

On the other hand, "Interactions" more clearly suggests something different from "Biography" in that the former covers gameplay-content and gameplay-related choices that are not necessarily canonical. Therefore, given the existing organization of having a canonical biography section, I think "Interactions" is better than "Game Name."

"Game Name" can be a sub-section of "Interactions" if necessary (as in the case of game-name sections in the current "mission appearances" section of the Janus article).

I'd also like to add that another problem with "mission appearances" is that this section is difficult to consistently implement if the character appears in too many missions (like Jim Miller). What some Wikis do is that the list of missions is presented as a sub-component of "Interactions," if a list of missions is of interest.   

For organizations, I agree with going with "History" as the main section, and "background" and "activities" as sub-section (if appropriate). 

That's a very good point, and I think leaves "Interactions" as the only option that works across the board. Unless anyone else has another suggestion, the manual of style should be updated to mention this, and we can start editing articles to include this title. In the process, we can also add subsections for particular games when needed, like you suggested.

Great, "History" it is then!

Honestly I've never seen the "Interactions" header before so it threw me off a bit. What exactly is it spposed to encompass? Because right now I'm more towards the "Associated quests" or "Mission appearances" thing but I've only seen those used to actually list out quests, not to go into detailed discussions on them (and as pointed out, some appear so often it makes them moot).

Also, I don't know if this is the thread to bring it up, but I notice we have the generic "Walkthroughs" category. I'm wondering if it'd be better to split it up games to make it easier to find a specific game's walkthrough.

Here are some wikis that use "Interactions" as a standard section heading for character articles:

• Elder Scrolls Wiki (Example)
• Red Dead Wiki (Example)
• Pillars of Eternity Wiki (Example)
• Fallout Wiki (Example) ("Interactions with the Player Character")
• Diviniity WIki (Example)  ("Interactions with the Player Character")

"Interactions" generally cover gameplay-dependent events that aren't nececessarily canon. The section is also used to detail different variations in which the player character interacts with the in-game character.

This type of heading is more common in Wikis for games where character storylines are open-ended and depend on player actions. It is less common in Wikis for games where the story is not so open-ended.

Ahhhh, yeah we solved that a bit differently on the Witcher by using a font template to denote a difference in choice and effect it had on the game (see the section Strenger Meeting Geralt here), but that was because the main editor wanted to have character pages read more like a story/biography than making direct references to the game like "in X quest Character A did something and lived" etc. but now it makes sense with the Interaction header.

Conditional statements ("if...") appear in this wiki as well (for example, the last two paragraphs in the biography section of Peter Wörthmüller, and the last paragraph in the biography section of the Richard article), actually, although there's no special formatting. However, it seems like conditionals do not comply with the canconicity requirement of the "Biography" section as stated in the manual of style. I didn't even realize this myself until recently, which is why I've edited some articles to take out conditionals. Personally, I would prefer not using conditionals in "Biography," because a traditional story or biography does not have such conditionals.