User:Nescientist/Effect section guideline
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This article is a proposed guideline for Bulbapedia.
Please discuss the proposed guideline and suggest possible changes on the article's talk page. |
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Please feel free to edit this page. Major changes to this page should be discussed on the talk page. |
This is meant to present a guideline for any dedicated section on an article's effects. In particular, it is meant to provide a coherent structure for "Effect" sections of moves and, to a lesser extent, of Abilities (both "In-battle" and "Outside of battle" effects).
Goals
This guideline is meant to specify and complement the guidelines to every good wiki content, and therefore shares many goals with other parts of Bulbapedia.
More specifically, effect sections should be...
- concise: they should contain all relevant effects, for every game and generation, but they should not contain information on anything that is not special/unexpected in any way, or that is obvious by just common sense;
- clearly arranged: they should enable readers to grasp any information they are looking for as easily as possible (and preferably without reading parts that are irrelevant to them);
- future-proof: they should (ideally) not require any change when the effect remains the same in the next game/generation (compared to the current effect);
- standardized: similar effects should use similar wording (especially within move and Ability variations).
Guideline
Generally, any effect should have prose that explains its basic effects at the beginning of the section and without a dedicated subheading. However, if effects unterwent change during the course of the franchise, subheadings such as "Generation I", "Generation V onward", or "Generations II to IV" should additionally be used to describe effects that are limited to some games, ordered from oldest to most recent.
General Effect section (no subheading)
This section should contain any relevant effect that has always been like that, and that has never changed. It should contain the most defining, most basic, and most relevant effects first, and minor effects such as interactions with specific other effects last.
If the effect has a special interaction with effects of multiple moves or Abilities, these should preferably be referred to by their own article (if such exists), or else by their category (if such exists), or else by an exhaustive list.
Examples:
- Ice Beam inflicts damage and has a 10% chance of freezing the target.
- Parental Bond (...) does not affect multi-strike moves.
- Twister can hit a Pokémon during the semi-invulnerable turns of Fly, Bounce, and Sky Drop, and if it does, it will have its power doubled for that Pokémon.
Specific generations
Sections for specific generations should contain any information that is relevant for games of some, but not all generations; if there is no such information, no subsections should be used. These subsections may not be necessary for all effects, but if they are, they should jointly cover all generations/games without overlaps, from the introduction of the effect (the move or Ability) until the present (or future) generations, in that order.
Examples:
- Pound should have no subsections, because its effect never changed.
- Tackle should have the subheadings "Generations I to IV" and "Generation V onward", because its power and accuracy were increased in Generation V.
- Synchronize should have the subheadings "Generations III to IV" and "Generation V onward", because its interactions with bad poison, Psycho Shift and Toxic Spikes have changed in Generation V (they were different before).
If any particular effect only occurs after a certain point in time (but nothing notable happened before), it should preferably be introduced with formulations such as "X now <effect>" or "X now also <effect>".
- Shadow Tag (Generation VI subsection): Ghost-type Pokémon are now immune to Shadow Tag.
If any particular effect spans multiple subsections, it should only be noted in the first one, preferably with formulations such as "Starting in <generation/game>, X <effect>".
- Earthquake (Generation II subsection): Starting in this generation, Earthquake can hit a Pokémon during the semi-invulnerable turn of Dig, and if it does, it will have its power doubled for that Pokémon.
If any particular effect replaces another effect, it should preferably be noted with formulations such as "X <effect1> changed to <effect2>" or "X now instead <effect2>".