Appropedia loosely follows Wikipedia's Manual of style.
This page is an attempt to clarify our own manual of style.
Issues
Some differences are appropriate, as Appropedia contains different types of content, such as projects. Perhaps project titles should be capitalized, to distinguish them from topic articles. Projects should all have a status tag associated with them to provide users with a basic gauge of the reliability of the information.
A source of inconsistency is that some of us are following Wikipedia standards based on their Manual of style, and others of us are following academic journal style guides.
The points in the following sections are an initial attempt to resolve (or at least discuss) these issues.
Proposals
High priority
These affect the consistency and usability of Appropedia.
Capitalization of topic pages
We generally use lowercase for titles (except for proper nouns). Is it acceptable to rename topic pages to follow this guideline/policy, even if it's a student page currently being worked on?
Titles - plural or singular?
For topic pages, plurals have become the default for some of us. The original thinking was to emphasize the plurality of options in a given topic area, and to tie in with the fact that we have multiple project pages for a given topic. It also helps distinguish us from Wikipedia.
However: There are some words where the plural isn't obvious E.g. is it "technology" (as an uncountable noun) or "technologies"?
Headers at the beginning of articles
E.g. Introduction, Background, Definition, Abstract, or a header that's identical to the page title.
The wiki approach would probably be to remove these. That would bring the first sentences closer to the top of the page (by dropping the table of contents lower down as well as by losing the header).
However journal papers are required to have a header for the intro, and this practice is followed by some editors.
One option: As a general policy avoid the headers, but have an exception for journal articles (& drafts & submissions).
Category tag placement
Categories are usually placed at the end of wiki articles. This seems least distracting, and experienced wiki editors know where to find them.
Sometimes they are at the top in Appropedia. Comment: Am I going to offend anyone if I run a bot to move them all to the bottom? --Chriswaterguy 01:21, 30 January 2013 (PST)
Usernames
A suggested guideline (as opposed to a strict policy) of using names and words in usernames would make usernames easier to remember - partly because we can pronounce them in our minds when we read them. If we remember each others' usernames, it makes Appropedia a more friendly and familiar place.
Brief initials would be fine, under this suggested guideline, on their own or combined with a word (e.g. "CP Solar", "PB compost" or "AS Arcata") but combinations of initials and numbers would be gently discouraged.
Lower priority
These are less critical and have less impact on the usability of Appropedia. However, they should be addressed quickly - the longer we leave them, the more cleaning up there will be to do.
Template names
Comment: I use all lower case and don't run words together, which makes sense to me. If we do them all in one reasonably logical way, it'll be easier to remember when we go to use a template. However we're importing a lot of Wikipedia templates, which tend to be named with words that run together, so we have a consistency and familiarity issue. --Chriswaterguy 01:21, 30 January 2013 (PST)
Thoughts, suggestions? Even if you think "fine" or "don't care", leave a comment so I know you don't have objections. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 02:53, 11 September 2012 (PDT)