Wikispooks:Standardisation

While trying to give users as much freedom as possible, it is nevertheless helpful to follow some standards while composing Wikispooks. The general approach is designed to make pages easy to find and interlink. Although, as a project page, this is only editable by administrators, all users are encouraged to contribute their ideas and comments to the talk page.

Templates for Pages

Full article: WikiSpooks:Semantic_Objects

All pages in the main: namespace should have exactly one object template, according to what the page is about. See here for a list of available objects. This policy was fixed in June 2014 and many legacy pages still have no template as yet.

Page Names

Naming of pages is obviously important so that links work as expected, but the importance goes deeper still with the use of Semantic Mediawiki since these names become semantic 'anchors' used to connect data items.

Using Wikipedia

Wikipedia is often a useful reference point as regards names, and all other factors being equal, provides a simple choice which will generally be understood. It should be noted that all other factors are not necessarily equal since pagenames are regularly massaged by interested parties, so while an equivalent Wikipedia page name is a good default, careful consideration is still warranted.

Subpages

Subpages are a mediawiki feature that allows easy display of a hierarchy like structure, i.e. A/B. Since January 2014 Wikispooks has been using this, and policy is still evolving as regards subpages, but it is currently recommended to use of subpages whenever a hierarchical (dependent) relationship exists. For example, since the JFK Assassination is an aspect of the man himself, subpages should be used to reflect this fact, so the page is John F Kennedy/Assassination. Similarly, the Warren Commission, which covered up the crime, was a derivative event, so the page is a sub-sub-page: John F Kennedy/Assassination/Cover-up.

Such standardised pagenames fulfill the role of binomial names in biology; existing in parallel with alternative common names, they provide an easily interpreted structure intended to help both software and humans in navigation around the pages, and could be used in conjunction with particular Semantic properties. Common subpage names may include: assassination, cover-up, perpetrators, misc ...

People's Names

For consistency, and to redress credentialism, pages of individuals should generally be devoid of a title. Where people are commonly referred to by their title, a redirect page is fine. e.g. Colonel Gaddafi is a redirect to the main page, Muammar Gaddafi. This can be varied where the title neatly resolves an ambiguity or where it has become integral to the name, e.g. "Dr Rola".

Names of books, films etc.

As of May 2014, Wikispooks has no clear policy on this. Putting them in italics might be a good simple standard, though more research needs to be carried out in this area before a policy is decided upon.

Singular/Plural

For consistency and clarity, page titles which are nouns should generally be given in the singular. So, the article about False Flag Attacks is actually entitled "False Flag Attack" - note that Mediawiki's link syntax means that this plurals can easily still be linked in like this: [[False Flag Attack]]s

Letter Case

Mediawiki automatically capitalizes the first letter of each pagename, but for multiple word titles, there is ambiguity about whether the other words should be capitalized or not. e.g. False Flag Attack or False flag attack? The standard is to use lower case where possible. This was only adopted in February 2014, so many old page names do not follow it.

Events with Dates

Many pagenames have dates for greater clarity or to avoid ambiguity (e.g. Iraq war 2003) Should these dates be after or before the rest of the page title? Wikispooks still lacks a clear standard on this.

Other Names

Although none are as widely used or as important as page names, there are a host of other items for which standards would simplify and improve WikiSpooks.

Properties

Full article: WikiSpooks:Semantic Properties

SMW uses relationships referred to as "Properties", most of which (but not all) have the form "Has something".

Templates

Full article: WikiSpooks:Templates

As with properties, these are mostly used 'behind the scenes', so they don't impinge much on the user experience, but standardisation of template names, structures and parameter names is important to allow more efficient coding and collaboration between those who do use templates.