Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 0: Difference between revisions

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Various proposals have been floating around for a while that Wikipedia discuss and present some stylistic conventions for the consideration of Wikipedia participants.

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

No one should feel obligated to follow such (stylistic) conventions--it's important that we stress this lack of obligation, because one of the things that makes Wikipedia so active is precisely that people feel so free to input information in whatever format they feel comfortable with.

Well, we already enforce/strongly encourage Neutral point of view

I think we can begin by assembling some links here to some of these existing discussions.

Commas and quotation marks

The WikiProject concept is probably appropriate here. (If you disagree - then hey, just delete the link)

Wikipedia commentary/Use pinyin not Wade-Giles -- (Warning! Discussion in progress as of 1 October 2001) (I.e,, don't poke your head in unless you're willing to get it shot off. :-) )

Link to How does one edit a page/Quick reference or not?

It seems to me as if how to put tags into the document, falls under the category of Manual of Style. That's where I looked for this information, rather than at How does one edit a page/Quick reference. In fact I can't even find How does one... when I'm looking for it (How to...). Maybe I'm wrong. Seems like having a link here doesn't hurt tho. --justfred

There probably is a better place for it, but "Manual of Style" most definitely isn't it. Or maybe it should just be linked more prominently from the homepage. "Manual of Style" means something very specific to most writers, namely, a list of editorial decisions made for a particular publication. The technical details of how two write something are, by definition, not editorial choices, they're technical requirements. --LDC

I will concede this, style is style not details. On the other hand I find lots of "HTML Style Guides" that tell you how to write HTML... --justfred

I'm sure you have, and they are mostly worthless. Anything called an "HTML Style Guide" shouldn't tell you what the tags do, it should tell you why to use certain tags for certain purposes. Believe it or not, the art of writing English prose effectively existed long before the web, and even before computers...:-)

All right. I'd like to see Wikipedia standards for:

weights and measures

Nondiscriminatory language.

There are no such standards, and I encourage our not even trying to adopt any. --LMS

Please, let's not just reproduce the content of other Wikipedia pages here. There's no point in doing that, and it "forks" the content. I'm going to delete this unless someone can explain why I shouldn't (or, if someone else would like to delete it (or the copied parts of it), that would be grand. --LMS

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 Various proposals have been floating around for a while that [[Wikipedia]] discuss and present some stylistic conventions for the consideration of Wikipedia participants.
 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]]
 No one should feel obligated to follow such (stylistic) conventions--it's important that we stress this lack of obligation, because one of the things that makes Wikipedia so active is precisely that people feel so free to input information in whatever format they feel comfortable with.
 -----
 <i>Well, we already enforce/strongly encourage [[Neutral point of view]]</i>
 I think we can begin by assembling some links here to some of these existing discussions.
 * [[Lee Daniel Crocker/Writing style|Commas and quotation marks]]
 * [[ManningBartlett/WikiProject|The WikiProject concept]] is probably appropriate here. (If you disagree - then hey, just delete the link)
 <br>
 * [[Wikipedia commentary/Use pinyin not Wade-Giles]] -- <i>(Warning!  Discussion in progress as of 1 October 2001) (I.e,, don't poke your head in unless you're willing to get it shot off.  :-) )</i>
 -----
 <b>Link to [[How does one edit a page/Quick reference]] or not?</b>
 <br>
 It seems to me as if how to put tags into the document, falls under the category of Manual of Style.  That's where I looked for this information, rather than at [[How does one edit a page/Quick reference]].  In fact I can't even find How does one... when I'm looking for it (How to...).  Maybe I'm wrong.  Seems like having a link here doesn't hurt tho. --[[justfred]]
 There probably is a better place for it, but "Manual of Style" most definitely isn't it. Or maybe it should just be linked more prominently from the homepage. "Manual of Style" means something very specific to most writers, namely, a list of editorial decisions made for a particular publication. The technical details of how two write something are, by definition, not editorial choices, they're technical requirements. --LDC
 I will concede this, style is style not details.  On the other hand I find lots of "HTML Style Guides" that tell you how to write HTML...  --[[justfred]]
 I'm sure you have, and they are mostly worthless. Anything called an "HTML Style Guide" shouldn't tell you what the tags do, it should tell you ''why'' to use certain tags for certain purposes.  Believe it or not, the art of writing English prose effectively existed long before the web, and even before computers...:-)
 ----
 All right. I'd like to see [[Wikipedia]] standards for:
 * weights and measures
 * Nondiscriminatory language.
+::There are no such standards, and I encourage our not even trying to adopt any. --LMS
 ----
-Please, let's not just reproduce the content of other Wikipedia pages here.  There's no point in doing that, and it "forks" the content. --[[LMS]]
+Please, let's not just reproduce the content of other Wikipedia pages here.  There's no point in doing that, and it "forks" the content.  I'm going to delete this unless someone can explain why I shouldn't (or, if someone else would like to delete it (or the copied parts of it), that would be grand. --[[LMS]]