Discussion

If you want to use this Wiki please abide to the following guidelines.

License

If you contribute to this Wiki you must accept the license of this Wiki.

Top level pages

Unlike many other Wikis MoinMoin supports a hierarchical structure of pages. This is very similar to the directory structure you probably have on your own computer. If you are used to Wikipedia please notice that this is a completely different approach.

In such a hierarchical structure top level pages naturally play a special role. They are mainly seen as portals to an certain structure. Because of the multi-project nature of this Wiki there are only three types of pages which may be on the top level.

• Top level project pages

  These are the roofs of the respective projects as described above. If you would like to create a new project page please go to the OekonuxWiki/Forum, propose it there and wait for the reactions.

• Personal home pages

  These are the personal home pages of the people who are active in this Wiki.

• System pages

  Many system pages which come with this Wiki installation are located in the top level. In addition things like category pages or template pages are in the top level.

Pages for comments and discussion

A Wiki can also be a nice place for discussing the content provided. This Wiki asks for such dicussion because a good dicussion can improve the original content.

If you want to make a comment then always use the respective /Talk sub page. The page itself is usually written as a coherent text and as such should be not disturbed by interspersed comments.

On the other hand the /Talk sub page each page should have is the place to check for such discussions and to add comments. Check for the top of the page you want to comment on. There should be a link called Discussion and leading to the /Talk page. Please note that the /Talk sub page may not exist yet. If there is no such link feel free to add it.

If you comment a comment on a /Talk page please indent your comment properly (i.e. by two spaces more than the comment you are commenting) so a reader can follow the thread structure by the level of indentation.

Signed contributions

On normal pages there is usually no need to sign a certain contribution. The content of a normal page - i.e. not a /Talk page - is usually meant to present some coherent thought where personal opinion plays a minor role. If you want to express your very personal opinion in a larger text then please consider putting it under your homepage.

You are welcome to put your personal opinion to the /Talk sub page of a normal page. On /Talk sub pages signing a contribution is considered good style. To sign your contribution please write @ SIG @ (without the spaces) which is expanded to your user name and a timestamp on saving the page.

To modify sections in this Wiki that are signed, is considered bad style unless they violate these guidelines.

Syntax

In this Wiki you can choose among a couple of syntaxes for a page. The syntax of a page is marked with a syntax tag in one of the first lines. This looks like this:

#format rst

This would mark a page as using a syntax named rst which is a common abbreviation for reStructuredText.

The quick help appearing when editing a page gives help for the syntax of this page. (Does not work yet. -- StefanMerten 2006-08-08 18:28:42)

The syntaxes available and the pros and cons they have are explained here. The header gives the name to use in the format tag.

nocamelcase

As of 2006-08-08 the default syntax for a page is nocamelcase. I.e. if you don't give a format tag this syntax will be used.

nocamelcase is a slight derivation of the standard syntax of this Wiki which is explained next. The difference is that there is no automatic recognition of camel-cased words to build a reference to a page with that name (also known as WikiWord). In a structured Wiki like the OekonuxWiki camel case automatic does not make much sense and in some languages camel case magic leads to unwanted results.

Since currently this is the default syntax of this Wiki you can expect most users to be used to it. I.e. if you want to simplify changes for many people then this syntax is probably suited best. This applies especially for discussion pages.

wiki

This is the default syntax of the underlying Wiki engine. It is more or less the same as nocamelcase.

rst

ReStructuredText is a ASCII based syntax which is far more logical than any Wiki syntax. It is easier to learn, has lots of nice features and looks very natural if you think of how layout is done in plain text mails.

However, reStructuredText is still a rather young syntax and many users are not used to it yet. If you want to have a page with a nice layout and if you want to use features like a sidebar then this is probably the right format for you. On the other hand if you don't expect many people to make complex changes to a page there is no reason to not use this syntax.

media

In this Wiki it is also possible to use a (subset of) MediaWiki syntax as it is found for instance in the Wikipedia.

This is mainly to support an easy import of pages from Wikis based on MediaWiki technology. It is not recommended to use it for new pages in this Wiki.

plain

With this format you can create plain text pages which are shown without further formatting. Since reStructuredText syntax is very similar to plain text files often it may be another option leading to a nicely formatted output.

Languages

One of the goals of this Wiki is to be international. Though English is probably the language which most people with access to the Internet understand not all people can express themselves well in English. Therefore English it makes certainly sense if English is the most frequent language here but other languages are generally welcome.

The language of a page is marked up with a language tag in the first few lines. This looks like this:

#language en

The two-letter abbreviation follows the two-letter ISO encoding of the languages.

Check for the language policy of each project here to make sure which use of different languages is considered useful in this particular project.

Templates for new pages

This Wiki has a couple of templates which aid you in creating a new page. The templates support the guidelines explained here and often give tipps for frequent wishes.

The templates implement the guidelines for

• most page types

  In this Wiki there are a number of different page types. The most important used are:

  Normal page

  As the name says it is a normal pages which contains a more or less coherent and structured text. They are not meant for discussion. Each normal page may have any number of subpages.

  Discussion page

  As the name says it is a discussion pages. Most normal pages near their top have a link to their discussion page which is a subpage of the normal page. On this pages discussion of the content on the normal page is welcome. Following MediaWiki standards discussion pages are always called /Talk.

  Homepage

  This is a homepage for a user. Each person who is active in this Wiki should have an homepage telling a bit about this person.

  Sub pages of a user's home page are considered their personal pages and changes there are usually not liked. /Talk sub pages, however, are considered an invitation to comment.

  There can be more page types for special uses. For instance the Oekonux/Introduction has a special structure.

• some languages

• most syntaxes

The existing templates designed for day to day use are named after these three aspects. The name of a template consists of (up to) four parts:

• the page type in the target language

• the capitalized language tag unless it would be En

• the capitalized format tag unless it is the current default

• the string Template

There may be more page templates for special page types which need not follow this strcture strictly. However, care should be taken to prevent confusion.

Names for new pages

Good page names in a Wiki are an important topic. Though you can change the name of a page it is not recommended because this may break explicit links to this page inside and outside the Wiki. Good page names which created in a defined way also make it easier for people to get an idea of what a page may contain.

The idea is that someone can come up with a concept and by using the naming rules will end up with the same name as someone else would with the same concept in mind. And if someone reads an existing name can conclude the concept named by it by using the rules. Another important point is that there is only one way to spell a given name because otherwise when you want to link to a concept which may have several names you need to check which name actually has been used - which is very cumbersome.

To make choosing of good page names easier here are a couple of guidelines:

• Only letters and numbers

  That is no dots, hyphens, underscores, spaces ... in the name of a page. This makes names unique.

• No articles

  "the", "a", "der" and the like usually do not add to comprehensibility but there are two ways to do it - with or without the article. Thus use of articles would lead to ambiguity.

• Words start with a capital letter and are otherwise lower case

  This prevents ambiguity in character case.

  Please note that in this Wiki the case of every character is significant.

• Page names consisting of multiple words are written in camel case

  Camel case means that the first letter of an internal word is capitalized like in CamelCase.

  Please note that camel cased words do not automatically link to a page with this name.

• No abbreviations unless they are not widely recognized

  "Widely recognized" would mean to take an outside source such as Webster as a reference.

• Abbreviations keep their capitalization

  Capitalization of abbreviations is often important to recognize them so capitalization of abbreviations is kept.

• Keep the overall name short

  If a page has a very long name it is cumbersome to reference. Because this Wiki has a hierarchical structure names are long enough anyway.

• Discussion pages

  A discussion page should alway be named /Talk and it should be a direct child of the page is is discussing. This is supported by the page templates.