Wiki Editing Customs

The style of writing in Wiki generally follows these rules:

Start a page with an introduction (or OpeningStatement). In the introduction, state any context or assumptions that apply. Remember that NobodyReadsEveryPage.
Be simple and concise.
Take care with text exceeding 32K characters. Some Web browsers can't handle more than that in an editing text box, and copy/paste may be unable to handle so much text.
Be careful with spelling and syntax. It may help to enter the text in a word processor first, use its spelling and grammar checking, and then paste it into the Wiki editing box.
Avoid slang, jargon, or dialect that may not be widely known.
Avoid the Latin abbreviations i.e. and e.g. ('that is' and 'for example'), which are often confused with each other; use the English phrases instead.
Use appropriate punctuation: commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, and so forth. They help reduce ambiguity and improve readability. Correct capitalization helps too.
Avoid using redundant spaces and blank lines, especially before or after a punctuation mark, except that a dash should always be separated from adjacent text. Note that blank lines before and/or after separator lines ("----") are not only redundant, they cause the page to be spread out vertically more than necessary. This forces readers to scroll more than required to read the content.
To maximize compatibility with a variety of web browsers, it's best to stick to the traditional 7-bit ASCII character set. This means avoiding the em-dash and en-dash in favour of either a single or a double hyphen, according to taste. (See RulesForUsingHyphensAndDashes for some argument on this point.)
For signing, use of "-- name" is recommended. Replace any "--name" with "-- name". Where a single paragraph is signed, the signature should usually be part of the paragraph; for a sequence of paragraphs, the signature should be on a line by itself following the paragraphs.
Note that if you have a WikiHomePage, but don't use its title for signing (or for a UserName cookie), it may seem that you are not a contributor.
Pages may end with a footnote section. The footnote includes (the last) "----" line followed by any combination of a set of references (starting with "See:"), a set of contributors (starting with "Contributors:), and/or one or more categories. Do not put a blank line before or after the footnote.
Add comments at the bottom of the page (just above the footnote). If the comment deals with a specific statement on the page (rather than the topic as a whole), quote that sentence just above your comment. (See WikiInterpolatedComments for some arguments on this point).
However, instead of writing comments about typos, bad grammar, incorrect facts, incomplete lists, and so forth, please correct and complete the page directly.
Always categorize books and movies. Usually, people are categorized to show whether they are contributors, authors, artists, etc. Try to follow the general categorization consensus that has evolved here. (See CategoryCategory).
Keep use of external graphics files to a minimum - they can substantially increase the load time for a page.
When citing a book or a paper, provide the ISBN, a link to a publisher's or author's Web site, a link to an online copy of the work, or some other specific way that a reader can use to find the work. A paper's title is conventionally given enclosed in quotation marks, and a book's title in italics.
After editing a page, always review the newer version.

Feel free to extend the above, rename the page, etc.

Many of the things here are not, in fact, customs. For example, I'm aware of no custom regarding citations of papers or books, and I have to take serious issue with the line about using a single hyphen as a dash. (Double hyphens online are a good way to get around the fact that we don't have em-dashes.) [Note: the "line about using a single hyphen as a dash" used to suggest always doing so.]

Is it worth it to prescribe these little rules, when they may distract from getting an overall sense of what keeps Wiki living? -- FrancisHwang

I've made additions which may accommodate your points (in which case, please delete the objection if it's now met). The 'sense of living' shouldn't be harmed - rather, punctuation, spelling, and categorization should improve, reducing the extent to which edits are less visible due to later minor edits to correct spelling or punctuation errors. Whitespace next to a dash is so that the line can be split at the dash in the edit box. Avoiding unnecessary whitespace is because in most cases, consecutive whitespace in the edit box is rendered as one space anyway. See also TypesOfSignature.

The point I was trying to make is that it is counterproductive to focus people's attentions on line-level problems (grammar, spelling) when the much broader issues need much more focus than that. I do not think we have a problem here with the small stuff. If somebody's writing some really insightful commentary, but their punctuation and spelling is bad, I can overlook that. I'm concerned with questions like: What does the page look like? Is it small enough to read comfortably in one sitting? Is it well-organized so that comments on similar topics are close to each other? Is it distinct from every other page on this Wiki, or is there the chance that there are great comments on the same topic lurking at some other alternately named page I will never find?

Wiki isn't about correctness. It's about usefulness. I'm concerned that a page such as this will overemphasize the former at the expense of the latter. -- Francis

This page wasn't intended to overemphasize correctness. If the other points can be expressed concisely as additional bulleted tips/customs which are useful, I would be happy to see them included, but I think much of what you said is common sense and/or covered well elsewhere. I started with correctness simply because I do correct obvious spelling errors, and other minor grammar and punctuation errors which make prose more difficult to read. After all, spelling and grammar errors, are not usually included deliberately. Such minor corrections sometimes make it harder to see what the latest non-minor changes were. To some extent, large numbers of minor errors have a tendency to discourage some editors. The idea of using a word processor to minimize errors here has been mentioned before - I didn't invent it.

By the way, can someone tell me if the true dash characters are a problem on certain operating systems or machines, such as Apple Macs or Linux?

Yes. Non-ASCII characters are incompatible, and at best show up as garbage, when taken from any one of the following systems and then viewed on any of the others: Mac, Windows, Linux, various browsers, etc. Unicode could solve this but it is not the default character set almost anywhere. This applies to 100% of the characters that are not shown on the keycaps of the common keyboards used in the U.S., such as "smart-double-quotes", non-ASCII apostrophes, letters precomposed with diacritics, and so forth, not just em-dash. The problem is that, although any one of those non-ASCII characters may exist on all these platform, they all use different codes for it, so if you think you typed em-dash, some other platform may believe that to be a smiley face or something.

A lot of the "non-standard" characters, often used in Windows-based editors, do not render properly in KDE's Konqueror browser. (I haven't tried other Linux-specific browsers.) And I know that they don't render correctly in the AWeb browser that I use on my Amiga computer. Lynx just ignores them, occasionally leaving odd words like clich in the text. It might leave extra garbage at the end of the line, though, because they count as characters when erasing the previous page.

It's more suggestions than customs.

I originally said tips in the heading. Hopefully, most will become customs. Some are already long-standing suggestions given elsewhere, and which deserve to become customary. I deliberately omitted one or two (previously known) suggestions that never caught on.

Queries:

Q: Why replace "--name" with " -- name"?
A: It looks better and aids text searching. It may also ensure it is recognized by a SignatureSurvey. A single hyphen is sometimes used instead of two hyphens if the author is being quoted and is not a wikizen.

(moved to RulesForUsingHyphensAndDashes)

[DDDV] Here's something all you guys might like. Not em-dash-specific, but punctuation-in-general-specific: EatsShootsAndLeaves

CategoryWikiEditing