Wiki Community/Manual of Style

The following is a proposed guideline suggesting a standardized method for formatting various type of pages on RocWiki. It is very much a work in progress.

RocWiki is a highly unusual wiki in that it attempts to merge encyclopedic knowledge with the personal opinions and experiences of its contributors. It also has a highly egalitarian ideal; editing is encouraged by everyone on almost every page and administration is highly decentralized. RocWiki also strives to communicate the opportunities that the Rochester, New York area provides both to its local citizens and people from outside the area.

As with any other manual of style, we expect that situations may arise where exceptions are appropriate. This is left to the discretion of the actively contributing community. New contributors should be aware that as with any other community, more experienced and more active contributors may be more persuasive in the development of consensus decisions.

Suggestion: On Wikipedia, the first mention of the page title is always in Boldface. I like that convention a lot for an encyclopedia. For a city guide, I could go either way. I've tried it on a few articles, and I like how it looks, but I'm not sure if that's just because I am used to reading Wikipedia, or if it looks better, heh.. See [Sunset Lanes] for an example of where I have tried this. —JaySweet

What's the practical benefit of bolding the first mention? — DaveMahon

There may be none for a city guide, so that's why I'm not sure it's appropriate :) In an encyclopedia, it is handy because it helps draw the reader's eyes to the highest-level description of the topic. This may be important if there are other words prior to the topic name, if there are tables/infoboxes/images that may distract the eye, etc. In a city guide, I think this is less of a concern, because we don't tend to have as much content per page. To me, I still kind of like it because it "looks nice" to me, but that might be just because it's what I'm used to. I suppose there may be some advantage if it gives the official name of a business, especially if the person got there via a redirect... I dunno, I was just throwing it out there. There may be no practical benefit. —JaySweet

Perhaps a better question is one of complete sentences. A lot of the entries just say "A restaurant in Greece. Serves Italian food." as opposed to "Tony's Pasta Joint is a restaurant in Greece which specializes in Italian food." I for one strongly prefer the complete sentences, but I can see an argument that they are unnecessary in a city guide. I drafted the paragraph below, but feel free to delete if people hate this idea —JaySweet

The descriptive text for a RocWiki entry should ideally be composed of complete sentences to assist with readability and clarity. For instance, rather than simply say "Restaurant in Greece, serves Italian Food," the first sentence of an article might read, "Tony's Pasta Joint is a restaurant in Greece which specializes in Italian food." Many articles will also contain lists, announcements, dates, timelines, etc. which may not require complete sentences, but if possible the initial descriptive paragraph should use complete sentences and proper grammar.

Contributors' individual opinions on all things Rochester are welcome in the Comments section of the relevant page. Opinions should be kept out of the main article text, however (see NPOV here). In the case of published reviews or commentary on a particular subject, these may be referenced in the main article text, as long as the commentary is appropriately attributed and not represented as established fact. If the commentary is available online, provide a link. Ideally, reviews and commentary should be in a separate section.

For example, it would be undesirable to say in the main article text, "City Wok offers great Chinese food, especially their incredible City Beef." (This would be acceptable in the Comments section, as always). On the other hand, "The Democrat and Chronicle gave City Wok a highly favorable review, and gave particular praise to their City Beef" would be acceptable and encouraged.

Since RocWiki aspires to be a guide to the city of Rochester, it is natural that a large number of the pages will feature local businesses. In addition, this is what many of the readers of RocWiki find to be the most valuable part of the guide. As such, it is important that the information on local businesses be presented in a manner that is consistent, accurate, timely, and neutral.

The template for businesses when creating a new page provides a guide to the general formatting that is preferred for businesses. A table at the top gives basic information such as type of business, location, hours, and contact info. Immediately below the table should be 1-3 sentences of prose describing the business in general terms. A brief description of the business' offerings may also appear in this first paragraph, but it should be stated in a neutral manner (see Neutrality below) and should be kept relatively brief

After this description, there is a lot of leeway. The page could contain a "History" section, a list of services, pricing info, or upcoming events and sales. However, these should be stated in as neutral a manner as possible, and they should be placed in a separate section to separate them from the general descriptive text.

We strongly frown upon significantly changing the template. Changing colors, reordering rows on the table and significantly altering the page layout makes it harder for visitors to learn about your place of business. This is not a hard and fast rule, but new contributors especially should try to remain true to our provided templates and guidelines. These are designs that have consistently provided good results and have withstood the test of time.

Information about local businesses is subject to rapid change, and due to the number of contributors, RocWiki may not always be updated in a timely fashion. This can become particularly problematic for readers of the guide when, for example, dinner plans are disrupted by a change in restaurant hours, or a trip to a furniture store is wasted because it has relocated.

While readers are advised to check when a page is last updated, there are a few things that contributors can do to reduce confusion. Time-sensitive information should always be written in an absolute sense rather than a relative sense. For instance, if a restaurant page were to say, "Tonight's specials are...", it is difficult for the reader to tell when this refers to. Even if you intend to update the page every day/week/month, etc., you may forget, or your plans may change. It would be far better to say, "The specials for Thursday July 10th, 2008 are...", thereby eliminating any ambiguity. Similarly, saying, "The grand opening will be in September" would be far more helpful if the year were specified. Imagine if you forget to update the page, and then the following year someone decides not to visit your business because they think your opening is still a month away!

If a business has seasonal hours, these should be clearly stated.

We urge you to put "(as of <date>)" in proximity information subject to change such as hours and prices, to avoid any possible confusion.

While local business owners are encouraged to create a RocWiki page for describing their business, they are also encouraged to keep in mind that RocWiki aspires to maintain a neutral point of view whenever possible. This may sometimes be difficult when creating a page for one's own business. If you can't seem to stay neutral, don't worry; someone else may just come along and revise what your wrote. Almost always, they are not being malicious. Their edits may be far reaching at times, but the goal is to bring the text in line with with the RocWiki writing style and to provide relevant facts for the sites visitors. In the process, their endeavors tend to provide a a great deal of benefits in search engine rankings and general visibility for your business.

When presenting information on a local business, avoid phrasing it like an advertisement. For instance, the sentence "Now you don't even have to leave the office, as we offer lunch delivery every day from 11AM until 2PM, absolutely free of charge!" would be discouraged. It would be preferable to simply state, "Free lunch delivery is offered between 11AM and 2PM." Another example would be, "So-and-so Corp. has been serving the community for over 25 years." The preferred manner of stating this information would be "So-and-so Corp. was established in Brighton in 1982." Note that the latter sentence is not only more neutral, it is also shorter and contains more information.

RocWiki encourages local business owners to announce upcoming events and sales on the page for their business. Once again, a neutral tone should be used when possible (e.g. "Select items in the store are 15-50% off" is good, but "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" is not so good). In addition, it is preferred if sales and events be listed in a separate subsection from the main descriptive text, to separate it from the general description of the business. This will not only help to separate factual/historical material from promotional material, but it may also help the reader to locate sales and events they may be interested in. (As always, temporary sales should be described in an absolute rather than a relative manner, e.g. "Free wine tasting this weekend" is not very good, but "Free wine tasting July 12th-13th, 2008" is much better — see Timeliness above)

Slogans should be identified as such, rather than stated in the page text. For instance, rather than say, "Hurt in a car? Call William Mattar," the article might say, "The law office's commercials employ the slogan 'Hurt in a car? Call William Mattar."

RocWiki maintains pages even for businesses that have closed, as the project serves to record the history of Rochester as well. When a business has closed, this should be marked clearly in the table at the top of the page, as well as in the textual description. Information on hours should be removed, to avoid any possibility of confusion. The page should also be removed from any lists or categories which suggest that it is an active business.

If desired, the business may be added to the page Gone, but not forgotten.

While restaurant owners are encouraged to advertise their menus on RocWiki, please keep in mind that copying a restaurant's menu may be considered a copyright violation. Make sure you have the restaurant owner's permission before duplicating a menu. Even retyping the menu by hand may infringe on the owner's intellectual property.

The Address macro provided by the Sycamore software facilitates an automated link to Google Maps. This can be used conveniently for businesses, where it makes sense to have the address listed in a table at the start of the article. It is somewhat trickier for towns and cities, since giving the address of a city as itself would be redundant. The following template can be used in the first sentence of the article to resolve this problem:

'''[[Address("City Name, NY")]]''' is a city located near... ''etc.''