LPedia:Manual of Style

This is presently an incomplete proposal mainly based on actual practice.

Articles vs. Documents

LPedia is not Wikipedia. Unlike Wikipedia, which is based on the model of an encyclopedia, LPedia is more like a library. LPedia includes encyclopedia-style articles, including articles based on or describing historical documents, but it also includes the historical documents themselves.

The terms "article" and "document" are used in various ways in different contexts. Encyclopedias are organized into articles, but so are newspapers and magazines. The Mediawiki software and associated documentation often use the term "article" to refer to its primary structural unit -- a block of formatted text with a permanent identity, which can link to other such articles and in turn be linked to by other such articles. These units might sometimes also be called "pages", as they appear in a web browser in the same way as pages presented by other software. (However Mediawiki actually uses the same sort of structure to store text that describes the wiki itself, including help files and templates used in constructing other articles -- all of these are "articles" in that sense.)

In addition, like other wiki software, Mediawiki also allows for storage and retrieval of "files" which could also be representations of text but in a more traditional format, e.g., a PDF, plain ASCII, a format associated with some particular word-processing software, or even a scanned image of a page of text. In other words, the distinction between "article" and "file" in the context of discussing the software and related tools is one of storage format (which of course in turn has implications for how they are created and updated.)

This, however, is not the distinction with which we are primarily concerned with respect to LPedia policy. In the context of policy, the important distinction is between encyclopedia-style articles and "documents". By "document" we mean something of historical value that consists of text (or primarily of text) which had its own existence prior to and independent of LPedia. These properties do not require that such text be represented using any particular technology -- indeed the "same" document might be represented in more than one way. In particular, there are many cases where it is useful to represent such documents using exactly the same technology as for the encyclopedia-style articles, i.e., as pages formatted using the wiki formatting language. But even though they may be stored the same way, they serve a different purpose in the overall structure of LPedia, so they need to be discussed separately with respect to formatting guidelines and other policies.

	encyclopedia article	historical document
role in LPedia	to explain some aspect of the LP to summarize material from documents or other articles to serve as a catalog/index/guide to other encyclopedia articles to serve as catalog/index/guide to documents	to preserve/display something that existed independent of LPedia
representation	wiki text (default namespace)	wiki text (designated namespace) or PDF, TXT, TIFF, etc. (file space)
examples	an article about the history of the Platform a list of national conventions an article about a particular convention an article describing LP News a chart showing the history of LP News formats, editors, circulation	the text of the Platform for a particular year the minutes of a convention an issue of LP News an individual article from LP News a press release
source	created within LPedia, by LPedia writers/editors	created outside LPedia, by organization officer, committee chair, newsletter editor (imported into LPedia some time after original publication/distribution)
update policy	continuously edited to correct, amplify, and keep up-to-date, in accordance with customary wiki management practice	static -- generally not subject to update except for formatting changes applying to a class of documents and not subject to correction except for errors in the original transcription/import process

Conventions Relating to (Encyclopedia-Style) Articles

Note: These conventions do not apply to "Documents", even if represented as wiki-text..

Article and Link Titles

• All titles should be in title case, not sentence case: New York Election Results, not New York election results.

Titles that are names of persons should be in the form that that the person most commonly uses/used, and if there is more than one common form the simpler of them. In most cases this will be a personal name and last name. The personal name will in most cases be the person's actual first name, except when the person consistently used something else, such as a nickname. Middle names should not normally be included, i.e., Walter Block instead of Walter Edward Block, except in situations where there would be a name collision this way (Gary Johnson and Gary Johnson) or if the person is/was normally referred to using a middle name. Redirects with middle names and initials should be created. Initials have been presented without periods at the end -- Percy L Greaves, not Percy L. Greaves

The fully presented name with all names and titles, unabbreviated if the full names are known, should be in bold in the opening sentence or at least paragraph. ie: Walter Edward Block, PhD and Percy L Greaves, Jr

Among the reasons for simplified names is to reduce the changes of stray red links when the person has an article, and to reduce bot confusion when mining the wiki for data.

Headers

• All headers should be in title case, not sentence case: External Links, not External links.

Conventions Relating to Historical Documents

Documents may be represented as wiki-text or as traditional "files".

File Names

Photographs

Photographs typically relate to one or more of: people, locations, organizations, activities, and dates. In addition, elements of a set of related photographs are commonly identified using sequence numbers, assigned either automatically by the camera or after the fact by an editor. In general, both to help other users understand to what a photo relates and to minimize name collisions, file names should include multiple components reflecting different aspects of the subject matter, e.g., person and activity, or person and location.

1. In most cases including at least three components will be helpful.
2. Single-component file names will almost never be appropriate.
3. It will almost always be appropriate to include something about the date -- at least the year.
4. Multiple photos from the same event may include some sort of sequence number if there is no other obvious way to distinguish among them.

Examples of appropriate file names:

• Ohio-convention-1988-keynote.jpg
• JohnSmith-mayor-1998.jpg
• LNC-meeting-2010-03-12-DSC03267.jpg
• fairbooth-Springfield-MA-1982.jpg
• 2003-Connecticut-convention-2.jpg

Examples of file names that are NOT appropriate:

• 12.jpg
• 20161203.jpg
• DSC02245.jpg
• John-Smith.jpg (when? where? doing what?)
• fairbooth.jpg (when? where?)
• convention-2012.jpg (where?)
• California-convention.jpg (when?)

Other Image Files

Other image files containing graphics such as logos and maps should similarly be distinguished from each other through the use of multi-component names. Again, including at least a partial date will usually be helpful.

Audio Files

Audio files should be distinguished by subject, topic, and date. Examples of appropriate file names are:

• 1996_Nolan_Birth-of-Party.mp3
• 2002_Smith_War-on-Drugs.mp3

Examples of file names that are NOT appropriate:

• 0894612.mp3
• nolan.mp3
• convention.mp3 (when? what party? who?)

Other Files

Files containing formal documents, scanned newsletters, and so on should have multi-component names reflecting the nature of the particular material, with a standard naming convention chosen to allow coverage of both existing and future material of the same type.

Suggested general format:

SERIESABBREV_YEAR-MONTH-DAY_VOLUME-NUMBER-PAGE_TITLE_AUTHOR

SERIESABBREV	YEAR-MONTH-DAY	VOLUME-NUMBER-PAGE	TITLE	AUTHOR
A standardized abbreviation such as LPNews	XXXX-XX-XX e.g. 10/18/67 is 1967-10-18	VX-NX-PX Such as volume one, number (issue) two, page three is V1-N2-P3	Title/name of a particular article, section, report, etc., with words separated using hyphens See-Jane-Run	Last name only such as Doe (unless more required for disambiguation)

SERIESABBREV is a standard abbreviation for the series (e.g., publication). The ones assigned so far are:

• LPNews (LP News)
• LPledge (Liberty Pledge or Libertarian Pledge)
• PRrelease (press release)
• Bylaws
• LNCMIN (minutes of LNC meetings)
• LNCECMIN (minutes of LNC Executive Committee)
• LNCPM (LNC Policy Manual)

YEAR-MONTH-DAY is the publication or listed date which should be in that format (using hyphens).

VOLUME-NUMBER-PAGE is the volume, number (issue), and page numbers which should be in that format (using hyphens).

TITLE is a shortened form of the title used in the original document, e.g., "Case for a Libertarian Political Party" might become CASE-FOR-LIB-PARTY, "Chairman's Report" might become "chair-report".

AUTHOR is the last name of the author (for signed articles, reports, etc. only)

Not all documents will have all of these fields. Here are some examples of how this would work.

a TIFF showing page 2 of the October 1982 (volume one, number or issue two) issue of Libertarian Pledge	LPledge_1982-10_V1-N2-P2.tiff
a PDF of that entire issue	LPledge_1982-10_V1-N2.pdf
a press release issued 15 December 1995 about Bosnia	PRelease_1995-12-15_Bosnia.txt
National Bylaws issued 1996	Bylaws_1996_LP.pdf

Note that the main components are separated by underscores, with hyphens used between sub-components (e.g. for dates or article titles).

Case should not be considered significant, since files generated by different software may follow different conventions about that.

Needed conventions

Standard Sections for State Party Articles

What are they and what are they named? Not only could this improve consistency, it would also make it easier to set up maintenance bots.

Locations for Tag Templates and Navboxes

Which tags should go where by default?

Presentation of Lists of Historical Activists

A standardized presentation of names, positions, and years could make it practical to mine the state, county, and similar pages for peopel and information to generate article stubs.