Xenharmonic Wiki:Article guidelines: Difference between revisions

These article guidelines will hopefully make life easier in this wiki, not only for authors but also for readers. Some of them are adopted from Wikipedia, but we will keep it short and trust into good communication.  

 

Don't forget to follow the [[Xenharmonic Wiki: Conventions]] and [[Xenharmonic Wiki:Notability guidelines]]

We follow {{w|WP:THE}}, {{w|WP:PLURAL}}, and {{w|WP:NCCAPS}}. In summary:  

The title or '''lemma''' should be in English sentence case (e.g. ''Sentence case'') as opposed to title case (e.g. ''Title Case''), in other words, only the first letter is capitalized if there is not an abbreviation or name in it. The reason behind this guideline is that it is much easier to remember how a lemma is spelled and it can be easily embedded into sentences without changing anything. The first letter of a in-wiki link is automatically capitalized, exactly as article names are.

The title should also be in ''singular form'' unless it is a collection for different types of things. To link to <code>[[<nowiki />interval]]</code> or <code>[[<nowiki />interval]]s</code> is much easier than to link to <code><nowiki>[[intervals|interval]]</nowiki></code>, because the link text automatically incorporates the letters following closing double brackets.

* {{preferred|Val}} (correct)

* {{avoid|<s>The val</s>}} (avoid)

* {{avoid|<s>Vals</s>}} (avoid)

* {{preferred|Normal lists}} (correct)

* {{preferred|Online platforms}} (correct)

If you want to add custom visual styling, don't try to hard-code the intended style in the article namespace by adding lots of <code><<nowiki />span style="..."></code> elements. If everybody uses their own personal style, pages can easily appear messy and become hard to read and edit in the source editor. It is also hard to edit a page if you don't understand how it is constructed. If you find something that doesn't look right, try to find the responsible CSS clause for it or ask an organizer or administrator to do so. If bugs in the CSS style get fixed, this will make more than one user happy.

Within articles, use from H2 (<code><nowiki>== Title ==</nowiki></code>) for the highest level down to H6 (<code><nowiki>====== sub sub sub sub heading ======</nowiki></code>), but try to avoid too many levels of sub sections. To go down to H4 will often be enough, most articles will only use H2 levels.

== Escape templates and HTML codes ==

Certain characters and character sequences have special meanings in Wiki markup, and sometimes need to be escaped using escape templates or {{w|character encodings in HTML|HTML codes}}. However, this should generally be done only as a last resort since they often make the wiki text difficult to read and edit.

 

Additionally, using escape templates is not necessarily effective when rendering templates with arguments, as in many cases the result may be interpreted as markup anyways. This is because escape templates merely delay the interpretation of the character sequences they represent as Wiki markup, but they assume that the character sequences themselves are ultimately to be interpreted as markup.

<pre<includeonly/>>

{{avoid|<nowiki>{{((}}Example template|argument{{))}}</nowiki>}}

'''Use this instead'''

<pre<includeonly/>>

{{preferred|<nowiki><nowiki>{{Example template|argument}}</nowiki></nowiki>}}

 

== Stub template and other templates ==

When placing [[Template:Stub]] on a page: always place the Stub template at the very end of a page's source, separated by two blank lines from whatever comes before (usually categories).

 

When placing or using any template, read that template's documentation before placing it. All templates and their documentation can be found in [[:Category:Templates]].

* [[Help: Help]]

* [[Help: Editing]]

* [[Xenharmonic Wiki:MOS page style guide]]

[[Category:Xenharmonic Wiki guidelines]]