IIWiki:How to create a nation page
The very first thing to do is to navigate to the page that you want to create. You can do that simply by editing your address bar. For example, you being on the main page https://iiwiki.us/wiki/Main_Page and want to create an article for your nation "The Federal Republic of Bigtopia" - you first need to figure out what part of that nation's name is supposed to be in the article's title. The Standards and Conventions let you know, but to save you time, you do not include "the" or the type of nation that it is ("Federal Republic"). So, you change the URL in your address bar from https://iiwiki.us/wiki/Main_Page to https://iiwiki.us/wiki/Bigtopia
Main steps
The primary things you want to do in order to generate your nation page are:
- Put together your Country Infobox
- Devise the headers that you want for your important sections. This will create a table of contents and make your article seem more full than it actually is if you are planning on taking a long time to get additional content created. Please note that this is expected of new articles per our Standards
- Write your introductory paragraph
- Add categories
These things should all be considered mandatory for postings your article, but they by no means need to be in their "complete" final forms. The infobox, for example, might just have some basic fields such as GDP, Population, and Capital filled out until you come up with more information.
Country Infobox
You can paste the infobox from the documentation on the linked template page. Any fields you are planning on never using can be deleted. However, if you think you might use them in the future, I would recommend leaving them in and blank. Blank fields do not show up, so they don't clutter the front end of the article for readers, but do remain easily available to you later on.
A shortened version of the template with fields you're most likely to use included and those you're unlikely to use excluded can be found on Help:Nation pages
Headers
Headers define the layout of the content of your article. You can have whatever headers you'd like, but I would recommend using other nation articles as examples of what to include and in what order. You can also get some from Help:Nation pages
Introductory paragraph
This is as you might see on Wikipedia the paragraph (or several) introducing the article. It's a quick summary of the nation that sits at the top of the page above any headers. You can look at any nation article here or on Wikipedia to get a feel for what to have here. We normally ask that you do not write an introduction as long as many Wikipedia articles get, however.
Categories
You are required to categorize all of your articles. There are many commonly used categories, as well as many possibilities that you might be creating just for yourself. For generic categories (eg. "countries") I would recommend seeing what Wikipedia and other IIWiki articles have done, rather than risk having different phrasings/spellings and therefore not including your article in with the main set of similar articles.
Some common categories include: Countries, MT, Republics, Monarchies, Dictatorships, Oligarchies
If you are in a Nationstates region, you should also include your region.
If you are unfamiliar with Nationstates RP tech levels, MT is "Modern Tech" - there is also FT for "Future Tech," PMT for "Postmodern Tech," and "FanT" for "Fantasy tech." Additionally, there is PT for "Past Tech" but since IIWiki has an encyclopedia approach, if your nation is PT then that is its own "modern" and all actually MT nations also have PT history, so there isn't really much of a reason to use PT.
FAQ
Do you have examples?
Yes. Latium and Sante Reze are two go-to examples for nation articles. If you want a good example of a thorough Wikipedia nation with most formatting you will ever need used, I generally recommend France
How do I do X?
For whatever it is you want to do, you can always use the editor to see how others did it. I highly recommend this approach. If you can't find an example on IIWiki, then you can always find examples on Wikipedia. Again, I recommend France first, and you can usually find anything within one or two clicks from there.