Style Guide
Welcome to the History Project wiki's Style Guide which will provide you with the best practices for adding content to this wiki. As it is well-known, consistency is the key to success.
Categories
IMPORTANTǃ Every page needs a category. This allows similar pages to be grouped and discovered easily. Pages can have more then one category, e.g. a caller's page would use the categories People and Callers.
For a complete list of active categories and when/where to use them, click here.
For help with categories, see the Mediawiki Categories help page.
Dates
Dates can be formatted using a mix of alphanumeric styles, and should follow the two styles below.
- Year-month-day
- 2022-03-01 | best used in charts for optimal sorting
- 2022 Mar 01
- Day-month-year
- 01 Mar 2022 | best used for source citations and birth/death dates
Names
To create a person's page, use the most common name associated with that person even when it is a nickname or just initials.
The full name, including middle or maiden names whenknow, should be displayed as the first line.
Some people have a drag persona (eg. Steffany) or entire unique (eg. Boom). Use aka when adding this moniker below the full name.
Photos
IMPORTANTǃ Every page needs a photo. Photos are a great resource for capturing the spirit of people and events.
Each page should have a photo, placed in the top right corner as a thumbnail. This acts as a cover photo for the page when viewed on mobile devices.
- format as |right|250px|thumb|Caption
If no photo is available use the file File:No photo.jpg as a placeholder.
Subsequent photos should be placed in a gallery, usually at the bottom of a page, using the <gallery> extension, which creates a standard image display block for the images which may be of different sizes.
For best presentation, scan a print photo at a minimum of 300dpi. Image files can be resized to save storage space, but beware of adjusting the file too much that it become pixelated or blurry when expanded.
MediaWiki contains a feature MediaViewer that allows all the images on a page to displayed in a slideshow format.
For help with photos, see the Mediawiki Images help page.
Source Citations
insert text about the importance of citing the sources of information, which builds trust
Tables
insert text about using sortable tables
Templates
Use these templates as starting points for adding information to new wiki pages.
Videos
Videos should be added at the bottom of a page, usually after Photos.
The most common platform for sharing videos is Youtube. When adding a video to the wiki, all you need is the Youtube code (eg. U0-vele_zaM) and then use the <youtube> syntax. This creates a consistent video display on the page. You should add a caption below the video.
For help with embedding videos, see the Mediawiki Youtube extension page.
Wikilinks
IMPORTANTǃ Every page needs a wikilink. A wikilink is an internal navigation tool to direct a reader to another page on the wiki. Frequently found wikilinks are names of people (e.g. Bob Bellville, clubs (e.g. South Florida Mustangs), and events (e.g. Philadelphia Freedom).
MediaWiki's wikilinks provide page existence detection, in which a link is colored blue if the target page exists on the local wiki and red if it does not.
