Style Guide
From Sequenza21/NetNewMusic Wiki
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EDIT FOR CONTENT AND FOR STYLE. I MAY HAVE LEFT THINGS OUT, GOTTEN THEM WRONG, BEEN UNCLEAR, ETC. --GHB
This is the official Style Guide for the New Music Wiki. In the interest of maintaining consistency across the site, and of keeping the underlying organizational architecture functional and useful, we have developed this set of guidelines. Please read this page all the way through, and follow the guidelines. If you have suggestions for additions or changes to the guidelines, please bring them up in the Community Portal before you make your edits so that we can discuss them and continue to improve the site.
We've included some technical guidance on some of the most basic tasks, but once you get the basics down, you may want to visit the MediaWiki User's Guide to learn more about what a Wiki can do, and what you can do with it.
Contents |
Getting Started
Setting Up and Account
Before you can edit pages you must set up an account. Just click the "Create and account or log in" link in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and make yourself a username and password. Using your real name or a variant is nice, but not necessary.
Creating a New Page
- A "red link" means someone has created an internal link to a topic but no information has yet been filled in. You can open the new topic's edit page by clicking on the red link.
- You can create internal links to other topics to be filled in later in your posts by selecting the words you want to highlight and hitting the "Ab" button in the toolbar. This will create a topic page that can be reached by clicking on the red link.
- If there is no "red link" and you don't have a place to put one, you can create a new page from scratch by typing the title you want to use into the Address Bar of your browser where the title of the current page is. (To start a new page from here, you would replace "Style_Guide.")
Formatting a New Page
We have templates established for certain common types of pages to ensure consistency across the Wiki. Copy the appropriate template (go to the template, click the "edit" tab, and copy everything in that window) from the list below and paste it into your new page. (Hint: It's easiest if you have two browser windows open so one of them stays at your freshly minted page, while you use the other one to navigate to the template.)
- Individual -- The biography of a composer, performer, conductor, musicologists, journalist, etc.
- Organization -- Practical information about ensembles, schools, Performing Rights Organizations, media outlets, etc.
- Article -- An in-depth discussion of a movement, idea, period, instrument, award -- anything that is neither an individual nor an organization.
- Other (No Template) -- A short definition of a term, an instrument, a piece of music, or anything else that doesn't fall into the Individual, Organization, or Article categories and so is created from scratch, with no template. Ask yourself "am I writing enough that I will benefit by using one of the established formats?" and "am I writing something that needs a unique format?"
You can add and remove sections of the template, as meets the needs of your page. For example, if you don't have sources to list in a bibliography, just delete the whole bibliography section.
Entering and Editing Text
Many people may not be familiar with HTML (hypertext markup language), the programming language behind most Web pages, including this wiki. That's ok---you don't need any HTML to enter or edit content for the wiki. If you hit a RETURN key, a line return will result. If you use the BOLD button above, type some text and paste it in, that will show up as bold.
In other words, you do not need to write any HTML tags at all. In fact, please try not to use tags unless you know what you're doing, since some standard HTML tags may not be interpreted as tags and will show up in your text as <a>, etc.
Links
- To create a link to another page within this Wiki, put double-brackets [[ ]] around the title of the page. Please note that this is case-sensitive; Morton Feldman links to a current Wiki page, but morton feldman will appear as an empty, red-linked page.
- If you want the text of the link to say something other than the title of the page use the format [[title of linked page|text you want displayed]]
- To create a link to a page outside of this Wiki, including to pages on other Wikis, put single brackets [ ] around the url. If you want the text of the link to be something other than the url, use the same format as above, but with the single brackets.
Stylistic Rules and Guidelines
- Always write in the third person ("he" and "him", not "I" and "me"), even when writing your own biography.
- Stay objective. Avoid overt praise or criticism. Don't use laudatory press quotes. While many of the contributors to this Wiki are contributing in part for publicity, remember that this is first and foremost a resource, and flagrant self-promotion undermines that mission.
- If you're not sure it's true, don't write it. Far better to leave something out than to get it wrong, which both mis-informs readers and puts other editors in the position of having to clean up after you.
- Proofread. Also, since MediaWiki doesn't have spell check functionality, you might compose content in the text editor of your choice, spell check, and then copy the finished document back into Wiki.
- Take advantage of the benefits of hypertext by linking to other pages (particularly a specific page about the subject in Wikipedia) and creating sub-pages of your own work. For example, if you are writing a biography of Conlon Nancarrow, consider also creating a page about the history of the Player Piano, and linking the Nancarrow page to it, rather than explaining in depth about the instrument on the Nancarrow page. Even a small page that others can expand upon is worthwhile.
- In some cases, Wikipedia has a long entry on a subject which needs to be included in this Wiki. Rather than duplicating the effort, create a "redirect" page like the Morton Feldman page. As with this example, feel free to add additional points not covered in the outside source below the link.
- If you create a page which could reasonably have more than one name (Galen Brown and Galen H. Brown, or Piano and Piano-Forte) make a redirect for the name you didn't use as the title for your page.
Etiquette
- Participate in the Community Portal. Stay abreast of the current issues and needs, let people know what you've worked on. And be friendly.
- Don't introduce major changes, either to articles or navigational pages, without consulting the Community first.
