Editing Consumerium:Guidelines

==Guidelines==

===Editing===
*If your edits on an article introduce text that is bound to '''different contexts''' do '''one edit for each context'''. '''Avoid serial editing''' when illustrating or describing a '''single point'''

===Using Summary-feature===
*'''Do write descriptive Summaries''' for the sake of us all and also for [http://www.consumerium.org/wiki/index.php?title=Guidelines&action=history Page history] usability. If content is strongly changed indicate that in the Summary. A good idea is to first '''preview''' your edit and copy '''essential points from the preview text''', not the wiki source for better readability

*When starting [[a new article]] include a '''summary of contents''' or copy '''parts of the first paragraph''' and insert '''... three dots''' to indicate that this is a sniplet of the actual article.

===Minor vs. Non-Minor edits===
*Mark changes '''this is a minor edit''' if semantical content is not changed by the edit ie. it is ''minor rewording'' without any change in meaning or ''formatting'' or naturally ''typo corrections''


===Using REDIRECTs===
*If you are creating a '''#REDIRECT''', please copy the whole redirect directive to the '''Summary'''

*If a '''redirect is replaced''', please ensure the '''link is retained''' in the first paragraph or an intro phrase, the redirects are there for a reason

===Do's===
*'''Do use''' the '''"Show Preview"'''-button extensively.

===Do Not's===
* If you want to write that "[[Company X]] or [[Person Y]] is evil" put it in [[Disinfopedia]], [[Wikinfo]], [[Recyclopedia]],  or [[Wikipedia]] (maintain [[w:NPOV|NPOV]], Neutral Point of View), or write a proper sample [[Consumerium:intermediate page]] and mark it a draft for discussion only.

'''See also '''[[Rules]]'''

===POV===
*POVs (Point of View) should go to [[Talk:Guidelines|Talk pages, "The back side of the page"]] or to User-pages.  At any one time it would be good to try to have only one [[New Troll point of view]] challenging on a whole lot of issues.

* If you have general information you might want to contribute it to [[Wikipedia]] and post a reference to [[Wikipedia]] if it's a "closed" case or [[Research]] if it's still "open".

===Copying from Wikipedia and other sources===
*Use <nowiki>---- {{MSG:fromwp}}</nowiki> as a footer (put it to the end of the article) to mark articles adapted from [[Wikipedia]]

===Standards usage===

*Use the SI-system for measurements (it's cheaper for computers to process kilograms and meters and so forth)

*Use the UK way for [[types of companies]], Americans use Inc for all types of Incorporated bodies.

*Use [[w:ISO 639]] language codes for identifying languages, e.g. "en" is "english".

*USE [[ISO]] [[w:ISO 3166.1|3166-1]] (remember CAPITALISED, so we can tell even in [[Wiki]] what refers to language and what to a COUNTRY) for COUNTRY CODES since, it's freely available and several [[reference|other standards]] use these for prefix, so it'll make the code run faster if we don't have to lookup [[w:ISO 3166-1]] codes from tables all the time.

*On spelling:  [[International English]] uses mostly British spellings which are taught in most of the world.  Also concepts like "honour" (British, Australian, Canadian, India, etc.) probably mean something different than "honor" (American) if you judge by actual behavior, so, perhaps both words now have meaning.

===For Consistency in Editing===

* When editing pages please pay attention to the desired order of additions if it is stated on the top of the page (Chronological, Reverse Chronological, Alphabetical, By Category)

*It could be a good idea to set up a scratchpad (like: [[User:Juxo/Scratchpad]] for yourself, it's easier to produce high quality texts if you start them somewhere, where they aren't supposed or required to make sense in the begining. This also supports finding better article names since you can see what your scribbling turns to in a few edits.