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This article discusses stylistic conventions for the consideration of Wikipedia authors. Since this is a wiki, there are no editors. We must rely on developing our own good habits and occasionally taking a bit of time to correct the results of someone else's bad habits. But it might help to specifically enunciate particularly rules that some of us wish we'd make an effort to follow. So here's a page containing such rules. Rules are established according to the vigor of their enforcement; but realistically, enforcement depends on whether enough supporters of a rule keep track of changing pages and newly created ones. In practice, this community gets most vigorous about enforcement when a page has just been changed.) No one should feel obligated to follow these conventions; however it is useful to have them to refer to when questions arise. Since many of these have been written into articles they have been included here as links. If you add links, please incldue a short summary. Rules Ignore all rules. If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business. * Wikipedia Anti-Rules Keep rules simple. If a rule cannot fit on this page, but is so long it has to be on a subpage, maybe it is too complicated to attract followers. --LA2, Content Look to see whether someone has written an article before you start one yourself. A chronic problem we experience here is people writing article stubs (and sometimes full-blown articles) when they don't realize that other related articles, perhaps articles on the exact same subject, already exist. This is a problem. (Rule added Sept. 28, 2001.) Write stuff that is true. Don't write stuff that is false. You should write that P only if it is true that P; contraposing, if it is not true that P, you should not write that P. (Note: this might require that you check your alleged facts.) (Rule added Sept. 29, 2001.) Define and Describe similar to Explain Jargon Remember that the main purpose of Wikipedia is being useful for readers. Do whatever you see fit, if you think it will make Wikipedia more useful for readers. Try engaging in such Wikipedia-related activities that improve Wikipedia's usefulness most. You should decide yourself whether it's more important to write articles or to promote Wikipedia, whether it's more useful to write new articles or to improve existing ones, etc. Counter-argument: This is only relevant to Wikipedians who spend a lot of time here. New and infrequent contributors should only worry about doing stuff that's interesting to them; they can worry about "what's best for the community" later. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If, on the other hand, a word is not jargon, please don't just write a definition of a word and then stop; please don't just list the different senses that a word has. People who read an encyclopedia are not interested in words per se and their bare meanings, but in knowledge, information, facts about the items that the words identify. This doesn't mean we want only long articles, or that we don't want "stub" articles--it does mean, though, that "stub" articles should not consist just of a definition of a term. Establish Context Build the web. Article?s in an encyclopedia are nodes in a hypertext system. Don't just write the article, but also consider its place in the link web. Make upward links to categories and contexts (Charles Darwin was a biologist, Sahara is a desert in Africa, enlightenment happened in the 18th century). Make sideways links to neighboring articles (for proton see also electron, Oregon borders on California). Don't build category trees too deep and narrow, or too flat. Writing category directories first (top-down) will help ensure that subcategory articles get useful names (church names are not good now). --LA2 This may be found to contradict the "Make only links relevant to the context" rule. Cite your sources. When external sources are consulted in the writing or verification of an article, provide a list of references (books and articles as well as web pages). If an article is about a person or organization, list its homepage. Not only is this intellectually honest, but it will help readers to find more information. Do it especially if topic is controversial (like Genocide). Don't use external links where we'll want Wikipedia links. Don't put in links [like this] to external URLs linking text that we will want articles on Wikipedia about. Put external links in a "links" section at the end of the article. For example, if you're writing an article about Descartes and you know of a great article about Rationalism online, don't link the word "Rationalism" to that article. Put in a "Links" section and simplify wikify the word "Rationalism" like this: Rationalism?. (Rule introduced June 29, 2001.) Always leave something undone. Whenever you write a page, never finish it. Always leave something obvious to do: an uncompleted sentence, a question in the text (with a not-too-obscure answer someone can supply), wikied links that are of interest, requests for help from specific other Wikipedians, the beginning of a provokative argument that someone simply must fill in, etc. The purpose of this rule is to encourage others to keep working on the wiki. Explain jargon. It would be great if you would hyperlink all jargon (area-specific terminology that someone who might happen not to have had a college course in your subject might not understand) and explain it, and then explain all the jargon you use to explain that, until you've reached terms that ordinary educated people can understand. Avoid statements that will date quickly. Phrases to avoid include "recently", "in modern times", "now considered", "is soon to become", "the sixties". Imagine someone is reading your words in 1,000 years time. Will they make sense of it? Don't include copies of primary sources in Wikipedia. If working with primary sources is your thing, go to Project Gutenberg instead Warn people before discussing plot twists in novels, movies, plays, etc. For instance, include something to the effect of "Wikipedia contains spoilers. Wikipedia is an online open content encycylopedia; as such, it does discuss plot points of movies and books which you may not wish to read if you have not yet seen the movie or read the book." Not everyone coming to the site immediately recognizes Wikipedia as an encylopedia. Counter-argument: A complete and critical discussion of artistic works cannot be done without mentioning of crucial plot points. If you're writing such an entry, you shouldn't have to be worrying about adding a spoiler warning. People who don't recognize that WikiPEDIA? is an encyclopedia deserve to be punished. Delete patent nonsense. When you run across patent nonsense, simply put the deleted text on the Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense page. The problem with this is that people disagree about what is patent nonsense. So be careful, anyway. It's possible that this makes supporters of this rule "[wiki reductionists]". Always fill Summary field. Even a short or silly summary is better than no summary. We've found that it often piques someone who has more expertise than the article creator to flesh it out. General Issues * [being bold in editing pages]? * Neutral point of view Avoid bias. Since this is an encyclopedia, after a fashion, it would be best if you represented your controversial views either (1) not at all, (2) on *Debate, *Talk, or *Discussion pages linked from the bottom of the page that you're tempted to grace, or (3) represented in a fact-stating fashion, i.e., which attributes a particular opinion to a particular person or group, rather than asserting the opinion as fact. (3) is strongly preferred. See the neutral point of view article for elaboration. * naming conventions Use color sparingly. You do not know how much color is presented on the recipients machine. Wikipedia is international. Colors have different meaning on different cultural backgrounds. Too many colors on one page make them look funny but unencyclopedic too. Use the color red only for the purpose to alert something, show up serious errors. Editing * editing policy. Give the author a chance. Add comments at the bottom of a page instead of within the text when you disagree with an author and deleting or re-writing portions of his or her material would substantially alter its meaning. Then the author may make changes in his or her own style, and/or discussion of the material can be moved to a Talk Page. Of course, when you encounter obvious vandalism of another's work, delete the patent nonsense. Integrate changes. When you make a change to some text, rather than appending the new text you'd like to see included at the bottom of the page, if you feel so motivated, then please place and edit your comments so that they flows seamlessly with the present text. (But note that [being bold in editing pages]? does not mean add all new material in bold type.) Wikipedia articles in the end shouldn't be a series of disjointed comments about a subject, but unified, seamless, and ever-expanding expositions of the subject. (Rule introduced 29-Mar-2001) Links Make only links relevant to the context. It is not useful to mark all possible words as hyperlinks; only mark words that are relevant to the context. In particular, when editing the text for a random topic, don't link to years and dates. (The article for a particular year or date is relevant to very few of the articles that links to it). Link only one or a few instances of the same item. Do not link all instances of it. [/Make links relevant]?. There's also a rule about this below; see below and see [/Make only links relevant to the context debate]?. Avoid making your articles orphans When you author a new article page make sure at least one other page links to it(preferably more to increase your chances that your article does not become an orphan through someone elses refactoring). Otherwise when it falls off the bottom of the Recent Changes page it disappears into the [Mists of Avalon]?. There should always be an unbroken chain of links leading from the Home Page to every article in the Wikipedia. List links to references and primary sources List external references and primary sources, using links to web resources. You can take advantage of Wikipedia's autofootnoting of bracketed urls and/or make a list at the bottom of the page. See the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack pages for examples. Formatting Make smart use of soft line breaks. This is mere formatting, but it makes the diffs of articles much easier to understand. For instance, the lists of Wikipedians supporting/opposing rules on this page used to be on one, unbroken line. By adding each new name on its own line, it is easy to view the diff of the article to see exactly what changed. For another example, have a look at how brilliant prose is organized. (Rule added Sept. 29, 2001.) Do not highlight every instance of title item in text body. The reader knows what article he or she is reading from both the title at the top of the page and the browser's title bar. Making every instance highlight with bold typing style is unnecessary. Use font size less than the size of the page title for headings, and use font size only one step size larger or smaller than the group of text it refers to. (Very big fonts only make sense if you have a detailed outline structure that needs several levels of headers.) Technical Issues Pay attention to spelling, particularly a new page name. Articles with good spelling and proper grammar will encourage further contributions of good content. Sloppiness in one aspect of writing can lead to sloppiness in others. Always do your best. It's not that big a deal, but why not get it right? Use free Internet resources like http://www.m-w.com/dictionary or http://www.dictionary.com. Group things to about seven items plus or minus three. The human who is information processing has a capability to store this many items in short term memory. Longer lists, unending prose and unwieldy sentences are uncomfortable for most readers to process. Use all kinds of grouping instead. Use lists, sublists, paragraphing. And use short sentences. Balance parts of a page. Let there be a balance in weight of the parts of an article according to its length (e.g. content, bibliography, etc.) It does not make sense to have a few sentences on a topic and a huge list of literature links. (This may be difficult to obey when an item is new, though.) * Commas and quotation marks * Wikipedia commentary/Use pinyin not Wade-Giles Metapages * The WikiProject concept (Many of the issues here have been directly copied from Rules to consider (with the discussions edited out). Seems to me as if this is appropriate; if not please comment here and/or fix it - thanks! justfred) /Talk? |
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