Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas of India/Guidelines

This page provides guidelines for writing start class articles on Protected areas of India.

Guidelines

Some Wikipedia conventions

For main articles use this template: {{main|main article name}}
Add a non breaking space (& n b s p ;) between a unit and the value e.g. 15 [[metres|m]] (50 [[foot (unit of length)|feet]]) renders as: 15 m (50 feet)
For geographical coordinates use the following templates:
- {{coor d|22.15|N|82|E|}} – Use for geographical coordinates in metric or in degrees.
- {{coor dm|22|15|N|82|5|E|}} – Use for geographical coordinates, if both the degree and minute has to be displayed.
- {{coor dms|22|15|42|N|82|5|33|E|}} – Use for geographical coordinates if the degree, minute and second has to be displayed.
Use & m i n u s ; for negative numbers.
For 'related topics' the convention is: ''{{See also|ARTICLE NAME}}'''

Basic Wikiproject India conventions

Use only British English spellings as per the guidelines for India related pages.
All units should be metric (SI) units. Imperial equivalents should be given alongside in brackets.
Use the Indian numbering system of lakhs and crores. Give their equivalence (millions/ billions) alongside.
For monetary figures, use the Indian numbering system but also give its US dollar equivalence in brackets.

Precedent

Guidelines are based on precedent. Very few FAs exist on Protected Areas, probably less than 25. Some of these are listed below, please take a look at their styles.

Kaziranga National Park in India.
Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Redwood National Park, Death Valley National Park, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Shoshone National Forest in the USA.
Banff National Park in Canada
Rondane National Park in Norway
National Parks of England and Wales among cover articles

Sections

Infoboxes, templates and categories
1. The correct subcategories under Category:Protected areas of India should be used.
2. For Infobox see Protected areas of India/Infobox for use in Protected areas of India Articles.
3. The correct template should be used: these include {{National Parks of India}} for National parks.
Introduction : Typically a sub-500 word ramble which talks about the geo-political location of the park, its latitude and longitude, date of creation, environmental significance (if any), important animals and important recent news (if any).
History of the park : The history of human habitation inside and near the park boundary, history of human exploration in the park, incidental human history in the park (like wars, etc.), and history of the park as a protected area.
Geography of the park : Political geography including the state and subdivision, climate, area, the physical geography (relief), and geology, pre-human history of the park
Natural history of the park : Biomes, flora, fauna, fossil records
Conservation issues : Possibly sourced news and environmental updates about the park and its conservation efforts
Park specific information : Tourist information including tourist activities, lodging and approach
The park in popular culture : In books, drama, films, documentaries, etc.

See Kaziranga National Park and Jim Corbett National Park for the suggested template, categories, infoboxes and section breakup. This is just a recommendation, and deserving exceptions are always welcome.

Naming conventions

The name of the National park should be presented in

English (which would typically be the name of the article as well)
Local language(s) of the region corresponding to the park (e.g., for Gorumara National Park, it is Bengali)
If the local languages are Indo-Aryan languages, then the IAST forms of those
IPA in Indian English

Other named entities can be presented in English and the IAST form of the local language (or in the script of choice of the local language).

Wikilinking

Wiki links: The first occurrence of a concept in an article should be wikilinked. Multiple wikilinking of the same entity is usually not practiced, but should be carried out if
- Previous wikilink is outside the visible window, and the concept is important in the local context
- It is the first occurrence of the entity in a table
- It is the first occurrence of the entity in an image caption
Red links: A named entity is left red linked if the editor deems it is important enough to merit a page of its own on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia: Notability
Redirects:A concept may redirected or merged into the main page. The first occurrence of the concept is bolded. A concept is redirected if it is
- Deemed not notable enough to merit its own page, but important enough such that Wikipedia searches may be conducted for the concept
- Deemed notable, but lack of information at the time of editing limits the information on the concept to the present article. In such cases, in the face of new information, a full-fledged page for the concept may be made at a later date.
- All alternative spellings for the main article name are redirected to the article in question
Italicize: Any other named entity or concept should be consistently italicized, not just for its first instance.

Page size

Around 25 kb should be the bare minimum. A page size of under 30kb is easy to read. Up to 32 kb should be sufficient, but a page size of over 35 kb is considered too large to read. This number is exclusive of references, external links, interwiki links, footnotes, table and infoboxes markup and see alsos.

Referencing

See Wikipedia:Cite your sources for the exact formatting for websites, books, journals etc.

Referencing or sourcing should have indexing using the <ref> tag as a minimal sourcing technique. Sourcing for contentious statements or black and white facts like census, climate should be sourced at the sentence level. Transcription of more general information can be referenced at the paragraph level.

See Geography of India for exact workings. See the Mumbai page how the =Economy= and =Demographics= are referenced for referencing facts and figures.

No links to tourism sites, with the exception of official government sites, non-profit NGOs and news and database sites in the External Links section.

An optional section on books written about the Protected area, in the Further Reading section.

Images

Most good PA articles have many photos, highlighting geographic features like rivers and mountains, flora and fauna. Typically we would like the following :

At least one vista of the park (preferably panoramic, though such images are hard to obtain) - often obtained from non commercial Creative Commons licensed Flickr photographs
A map of the park - we might need the assistance of WikiProject Indian maps
A relief or satellite map of the area - NASA images among other sources are uploadable on Wikipedia
At least one photograph of representative flora or fauna of the park, shot in the park - flickr is a good search tool for such images
At least one photograph of historic structures (if any) in the park - again, flickr is a good search tool for such images
Photographs of newsworthy or historic events in the park - such photographs usually have a fair use basis

License

Wikipedia needs free images. By *free* we mean that images should be allowed for any use, be it derivative or commercial (with conditions). The image should *NOT* come from a copyrighted source or be stolen from a website. You can only upload an image of you have an account here. When you upload an image, in the summary, mention the source of the image and tag it with a licence. Popular free tags include:

{{PD}} – public domain
{{GFDL}} – GFDL license
{{cc-by-sa}} – Creative commons.

If you have a free image to upload, please upload it in Wikimedia commons: instead of the English Wikipedia so that it can be embedded into all Wikimedia projects.

There are a lot more licenses: you can read more here: Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and Commons:Licensing .

File types

use .jpg for photographs only
use: .gif for animations only
use: .png for all other types (maps, charts, diagrams etc.)

Please upload at the *highest* possible resolution you can afford to.

Use in text

An image should be related to the text alongside. The images should be preferably right-aligned as it is easier to read the text. Size for use on the page can vary from 220px to 270px, but try and stick to one size for all images. Avoid overuse of images, and overlapping of images into the next section. Always test at 800x600, the standard web resolution.

Gallery

A Picture gallery may be created with pictures related to the protected area. For showing a gallery the following code can be used. <gallery> File:Bad Title Example.png|Caption1 File:Bad Title Example.png|Caption2 </gallery>

This will produce:

Caption1
Caption2