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DispatchFactbookInternational

by Mustapha-mond. . 164 reads.

Mustapha Mond - Creating A Wiki Style Factbook

Creating Your Nation's Wiki-Style Factbook

Wiki style factbooks are inspired from Wikipedia articles and other wikias.

Before creating your nation's factbook you should be familiar with the learning material on the Gondwana Handbook. Try to use the precise terminology of political philosophy and political science when describing your nation.

This guide will show you how to create an article that is highly informative, organised, and visually appealing.

Table of Contents

A. Introduction

B. "Must-have" Information
1. Geography
2. Economy
3. History
4. Military
5. Government Structure and Political Structure
6. People and Population
7. Communications

C. Other Information

D. Factbook Setup Tips
Keep it simple
Keep it together
Keep it in a safe place
Keep it organised
Make it appealing, but keep it clean
Keep a copy in a safe place

E. Formatting Guides

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A. Introduction

In this topic, I'll show you how to make the factbook of your dreams. We can do this, keeping it simple and clean to the average eye, but packed full of everything people want to know about your great nation! Everyone should have a factbook - whether for their own use or intended for others to use, they're extremely helpful, especially for military or commerce related roleplays, or just general need for lookup of information.

And you know what they say, after a Gmail account and an iPod, a factbook on NationStates is third on the must-have list of tech magazines everywhere!*

* - Not really, but it's fun to dream.

B. "Must-Have" Information

First in a factbook, you must have information to be formatted. That's what a factbook is all about, of course: displaying information about your country in an organised, easy-to-read format so that other nations can learn about you in an easily-accessible resource.

1. Geography

You can/should include in geography at least 5-7 of the following: relative location, absolute location (coordinates in latitude and longitude), area, comparative area, bordering nations, coastline length in kilometres, maritime claims, terrain, climate, elevation extremes, natural resources, land use, irrigated land, natural hazards, environmental issues and current environmental agreements.

2. Economy

You can/should include in economy at least 10 of the following: a paragraphical overview of your economic structure, gross domestic product, GDP per capita, population below poverty line, unemployment rate, income tax rate, household income consumption % share, inflation rate, labour force, budget, industries, electricity (production, consumption, exports, imports), natural gas (production, consumption, exports, imports), oil (production, consumption, exports, imports), agricultural products, exports (value, commodities, partners), imports (value, commodities, partners), internal or external debt, economic aid, currency, currency code, exchange rates, fiscal year.

3. History

Make sure your history is concise but don't write a book. Always ensure that you have covered to at least a minor extent all the major events that have occurred in your nation since its inception, or even beforehand if you like. This is the big killer for spelling and grammar, but easy for formatting.

4. Military
You can/should include in military at least 5 of the following: branches, manpower, available manpower, percentage of total population, expenditures (and as part of your GDP), allies, annual nationals reaching military age, manpower fit for military service.

5. Government and Political Structure

You can/should include in this category at least 7 of the following: country name (long form, short form, common reference), government type (republic? monarchy? dictatorship?), capital city (cities), administrative divisions (provinces, states, territories), major cities, date of independence or founding, national holiday, constitution, legal system, suffrage, executive branch structure and figures, judicial branch, legislative branch, political parties, international organisation participation, UN description category (check your nation's main page on nationstates.net for that).

6. People and Population

You can/should include in "people and population" at least 5-7 of the following: total population, age structure, median age, population growth rate, net migration rate, life expectancy at birth, nationality, ethnic groups, religions, languages and literacy.

7. Communications

You can/should include in communications at least 5 of the following: country code, number of televisions, number of telephones, number of cell phones, number of radios, radio broadcast stations, major radio broadcasters, television broadcasters, internet hosts, internet service providers, internet users, web TLD (domain extension).

C. Other Information You Can Include

Really, anything you think pertains to your nation and would be interesting and a positive addition to your factbook can be added. Unnecessary things like how many clowns live in your nation should be excluded from your factbook to leave room for the more frequently looked up facts.

D. Factbook Setup Tips

The most important thing to remember about factbooks is that they are yours. You have the power to make them personal to your style, your feeling, what you want in there, but remember, there are guidelines, general forum guidelines for sizing, emoticon use and language that you still have to follow.

Keep it simple

Nobody will visit your factbook more than once if they can't read what you have. Make sure that if you have lots of information in your factbook, you have made it very well organised and neat. (See Section D4 for more)

Keep it together

If your factbook is shorter than, say, 200 lines, keep it all in one post. If it's longer, like mine (link) for instance, try to separate into bunched posts. If you keep a factbook the length of mine in one post, it will take a while to save changes to your post, and that can become tedious, especially on smaller, one-letter or one-line edits.

Keep it in a safe place

It is especially important, just like on a regular post, to make a backup copy of your factbook in Notepad, just in case Jolt crashed and it lost your post. Just think how you would feel after all that work, and then seeing it flushed down the toilet by a server error. Save your work. Constantly.

Keep it organised

Don't start putting things in randomly. Before you begin to input information into the posting window, it's better to put your text and headers in notepad, then copy and paste into the Jolt posting window and format all the text and headers there. Make sure all information that is relevant to each other goes together. For example, geographically related stuff should all go in a category of your factbook named something along the lines of "Geography". Things like "land area", "natural disasters", "water area" could go in that category. Of course, economic stuff should all go in an economic category, history in a history category and military in a military category. A good example of formatting to follow is the LinkCIA World Factbook.

Make it appealing, but keep it clean

Now that you have all this beautifully organised information, it's a good idea to start formatting.

Finish It Off!

When your information and formatting completed, just run through your post to check for formatting errors (a good way to check is by previewing your post before you actually submit) and for spelling or grammar mistakes.

Save it somewhere

Make sure you have copied your completed factbook into a 'word' file to create a backup (and if possible, upload a copy to your personal website or server). Remember, you are taking a copy of all the text with the BBC (Bulletin Board Codes).

Post your nation's factbook link in Gondwana's Forum with a short introductory message.

E. Formatting Guides

The link below has the information to get you started.

Guide to wiki-style factbook.

Additionally, these BBCode-like tags can be used in Dispatches, Telegrams, Regional Message Board (RMB) posts, Regional World Factbook Entries (WFEs), and World Assembly proposals. This link has the codes: NS Codes

You can also copy the template from the Sultanate of Somersetonia's Factbook. Because it is a dispatch, you will be able to access the BB Codes and then copy the format into your new factbook. Look in the bottom right corner and click on 'raw' to get to the codes. Here is a picture of what you are looking for ...
Link

This BBC colour template has most of the colours you might need.

Mustapha-mond

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