A guide to authoring tips & tricks on the Wiki!

Want to quickly share your skills with other players? This article is your go-to guide for writing effective Tips & Tricks for the War Thunder Wiki! Whether it's an aircraft, tank, or ship, you'll learn how to write short, insightful tips that actually help fellow players and will pass through the approval process.

What is a tip or trick?

It's a short text publication meant to help the player use the unit in question.

Tips and tricks can be written about any unit (aircraft, vehicle or vessel - it has "/unit/" in the URL), but, unlike articles, they cannot be written directly on collection pages. If you add a collection to a tip, that tip will appear on all the units within the collection, rather than on the collection page itself.

How to write it

Generally, tips and tricks should present the user with a single, concise problem statement and a single solution. Alternatively, provide only the solution if the problem is obvious. Finally, you may describe how to perform certain tricks with the unit, if these are sufficiently unique to the unit in question.

If you attach an image, it must be a high-quality in-game screenshot that is clearly and directly relevant to the text. The screenshot can be taken by another player, as long as you credit her/him. If the tip is illustrated by anything other than a screenshot, such an illustration must be created personally by you, rather than simply downloaded from the internet or generated by AI. Also, avoid all unnecessary elements of the user interface or any other distractions. The goal of the illustrations for the tips is to be as quick to understand as possible.

Note that tips, unlike articles, are rarely discussed with the authors during the review process - instead, all tips that do not comply with the guidelines are simply closed. The expectation is that if you wish to fix your tips, you will submit them as a new entry.

Pros and Cons

You could say that, much like the units, tips and tricks also have some pros and cons when compared with regular articles:

Also, keep in mind that, much like articles, tips can become outdated as the game is updated. However, unlike articles, there is no obvious indication of when a tip was published until you open the full page of the tip (as shown in the examples below).

Finally, much like all community-made content, tips are prone to being skewed by the subjective perspective of the writer, who may not have much experience with the vehicle in question. Player ratings require a certain minimum number of battles played; tips and tricks do not, as some tips may be discovered very quickly.

Ideas

Want to share your knowledge but not sure where to start? Here are a few samples that might help you get started:

• In ground vehicles and some of the bluewater vessels, you can cover the way ammo racks are emptying when decreasing the amount of shells taken into the battle - example for Tigers 1
• Mechanics specific to the vehicle - example of tanks with two gun sponsons, example of a combination of features in the BR range
• Means of mitigating specific design flaws - example of addressing a weak spot, example with engine overheating
• Using specific advantages of the vehicle to win the fights - example with flaps
• Details of the arcs of fire  - example on a PT boat
• Certain in-game settings that could be selected specifically for the vehicle in question - example with a sight
• Which shell is preferable when the vehicle has two shells of the same type (e.g. two high explosive fragmentation shells)

Common pitfalls

Afraid your tips might be rejected? Learn from the mistakes of other editors. All of these samples are taken from actual tips that were submitted and rejected:

• Tips cannot be mini-guides (this is the most common issue from what I have observed)
  Sample: "X excels as a mobile sniper with great optics, thermals, and a powerful APFSDS round, but suffers from paper-thin armor."
  Sample 2: "X featured extensive weapons options including the ability to carry a maximum of 12 ARH missile smaking this aircraft a very capable BVR missile slinger with the ability to queue up to 8 missiles at a time. Though it might be tempting to use the aircraft's thrust vectoring ability, it should only be your last resort as the X's engine is quite underpowered compared to its contemporaries"
• Generic descriptions of the characteristics of the vehicle, its munitions, or its modifications
  Sample: "This truck (unless if it has momentum) can not climb at all, even with the tires upgrade I still find myself needing to be towed up a simple small hill"
  Sample 2: "The HEAT shell on this tank is pretty powerful, with a whopping 23KG of TNT, it can deal serious damage"
  Sample 3: "The 'GWP'(Great War Pattern) modification will give you an additional howitzer for smoke shells, but the side side machine gun ports will be a weak spot."
• Plain critique or a description of a vehicle
  Sample: "X is a huge disappointment. It's slow, clumsy, and loses energy easily, stalling constantly in combat. Its engine is insufficient. The lack of air spawn is infuriatingly unfair."
  
• Multiple tips within one. Also: Bad grammar, incorrectly named components (turret basked, not "tank basked"), typo ("disadventage").
  Sample: "1st don't get any short around hull because a big of turret ring (Tank basket ) it's make disadventage; 2nd try to play most like rat because tank it's not very mobility; 3rd suffer so much because this new internal module have only german and USA right now you should play more careful than before"
• Bug reports
  Sample: "X was actually used as a heavy tank, rather than a medium tank, as  stated in the game description."

• Excessive wording. Also, in this particular sample: extremely generic, there are hundreds ground vehicles to which this can be applied.
  Sample: "Something i learned quick is that if you stay still while being shot at i die almost every time but i learned that if you move forward and turn your sloped armor will have a lot higher of a chance to deflect shells."

• Suggestions how to upgrade a vehicle are not considered to be a tip, especially when they're extremely generic (again: there are countless planes for which this "tip" is true)
  Sample: "Prioritize G-suit over any other modification - it will give you a huge benefit in the dogfights!"
  Sample 2: Hide your hull below a hard cover - your turret is well protected and will survive hits from most enemies.
• Mentioning specific BRs or BR differences
  Sample: "This tank is an AMAZING sniper. Its gun is the same as the Jadgtigers which is 2.7 higher. The X's gun depression is also amazing so its great for sniping over hills."
• Pointing at a specific game modes, rather than targets/situations
  Sample: "I recommend using this plane more at ground realistic battles instead of air. For it has the advantage of rockets at its low BR, but in air battles it can be a little slow and have a longer turn rate."
• Loaded wording / non-encyclopaedic
  Sample: "It’s a monster against aircraft one tap to the wing and kaboom the plane is on fire"
• Repeating information already provided in the description on top of the article.
  Sample: "X is a early war soviet heavy tank that preferably is used for CQC (close quarters combat) due to good armor and the bad gun limiting long-range capabilities."

Conclusion

Tips are meant to be simple combinations of a problem + solution written in an encyclopedic tone, without mentioning BR, bugs or generic information applicable to a huge number of units.

That's... about it.

Tips are the easiest form of contributing to the wiki - if you're missing specific information about your plane, ship, heli, tank or anything else - feel to do the research (forums and the old wiki might help) and post it as a tip when you'll discover what you were looking for!

See also

• Similar guide for authoring the articles