LPedia:Manual of Style
This is presently an incomplete proposal mainly based on actual practice.
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 of personal name and last name -- Walter Block instead of Walter Edward Block except in situations where there is a name collision this way (Gary Johnson and Gary Johnson) or if that is not the way this person's name is handled in normal day-to-day interactions. 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.
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.
- In most cases including at least three components will be helpful.
- Single-component file names will almost never be appropriate.
- It will almost always be appropriate to include something about the date -- at least the year.
- 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.
Other Files
The wiki does not currently allow for uploading of PDFs or sound or video recordings. Specific recommendations for these kinds of files should be added if/when that changes.
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.
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.