Don't panic! We never want guidelines to interfere with your ability or motivation for expressing yourself and getting your ideas out. Your ideas are the most important thing. This is a style guide, which means it's just the style we try to aim for to make sure we're all on the same page when it comes to conventions.

Introduction/Summary

The Conway Wiki is a community wiki, and as such it should represent the voices of the community. Check out how other articles are written, see what you like, and write to your heart's content.

Including humor is definitely fine, and so is including small details. Know something weird about a place? Include it!

The Conway Wiki is not Wikipedia, and we don't encourage revising to a neutral point of view (using NPoV to create new articles is fine). At the same time, we don't want a slew of f-bombs or savage attacks on certain groups of people, so do try to be civil.

Layout

Conway Wiki article layouts should be typified by the Templates. Article formatting should match the layout of the templates whenever possible. New templates should be created for categories of articles which the existing templates don't fit well, and existing templates should be modified to match the most elegantly formatted articles in their respective categories.

Page Names

Opinions may vary about what this is, but in general pages should have the most intuitive name possible. Example: the page with information about restaurants should be called Restaurants. Note: It shouldn't be called "Conway Restaurants" because this is the Conway wiki—we can take for granted that the restaurants are in Conway.

Pages for specific things should use the correct, full name (unless it's a local geographic region with a common name like Central Arkansas), and excluding the initial definite article "the" (unless it's a proper name that requires the article to be coherent, such as The Old Gin). Example: The UCA page is University of Central Arkansas (and not "The University of Central Arkansas"). Common synonyms should be given pages with a redirect using the redirect button on the "Edit" page. Example: UCA redirects to University of Central Arkansas.

Capitalization: The first letter of each word in the page name should always be capitalized unless it is an article, a preposition, or a form of the verb "to be". In these cases it should be capitalized if it is the first word, or if the official name always capitalizes that word by convention. Examples: "Is Pickles Gap the Dillest?" and "Pickles Gap is the Dillest of the Dills". Acronyms should have each component letter capitalized, unless it is conventional to do otherwise. Examples: UCA is all caps, but "Scuba" is not.

Tone

Here's what we have so far:

1. The site needn't be neutral point of view. This is community run, so the perspective is generally just what we decide it should be - so everyone participate!

2. What we are going for is the cumulative point of view of the Conway community. Try to provide point and counterpoint (or the nonbinary equivalent) when opinions are expressed, especially if those opinions represent a real divide in the community and not just the lunatic ravings of a depraved individual.

3. Facts are certainly encouraged. This is the Conway Wiki—facts about Conway belong here, even the little and silly ones!

4. Humor is encouraged, but try not to be disparaging or use excessive profanity.

Feel we're missing something or could have said that better? Use this comments section or the talk page to suggest changes, or if it's something unlikely to cause controversy, just edit it yourself - we can always change it back, if there are problems.

See also: Wiki Ethics, Conway Wiki Guide and Good Style. 

Building pages so searching works best

Try to avoid segmenting and replicating information across pages. Putting the same information on a bunch of pages makes keeping information updated extremely difficult and also makes searching very hard. Keep the information about a particular topic on the page devoted to that topic, for the most part. General pages that collect information from specific pages are terrific and useful, but keep in mind that you want to minimize replication of things that change frequently otherwise it will become harder, down the road, to keep it all updated.

Thoughts? I'm not sure I'm phrasing this very concisely or clearly, so I'd appreciate any help.. Maybe it would be best to just say "When editing, keep in mind the years to come and what will need to be updated and how difficult that may be."? —PhilipNeustrom

(from AlphaDog) How about:

• "Avoid relative time references, e.g. yesterday, to help us keep the wiki current; it would be preferable to include a specific date reference that will still make sense six months from now."
• "Duplicating information on multiple pages makes it very difficult to keep the wiki current and virtually ensures that there will be misinformation published somewhere. Whenever possible, try to link back to the original Conway Wiki source rather than duplicating information."
  • Is this duplication of information thing a reference to the Latin American Restaurants page? —SummerSong
    • I don't think it's intended as a personal slight. I've noticed a lot of redundancies getting posted as well, so I think it's just a matter of good record-keeping. Maintaining multiple sources of info inevitably causes big problems down the road. —AlphaDog

Citing Sources

It is good practice to cite any sources you use, particularly if you are using a direct quote or facts/figures from a publication or website. Note that Conway Wiki does not follow the strict Verifiability and No Original Research policies of Wikipedia, especially the latter, since the local nature of the subject allows for much primary research.

If a reference is applicable to a specific passage, use a footnote after the end of the sentence or paragraph. e.g.

Chief Jim Hyde resigned in June 2006. [[Footnote(Keene, Lauren. ''Hyde resigns as chief.'' ["The Conway Post"]. 2014-07-14.)]]

If a reference is applicable to large parts of the page, cite it at the end in a "References" or "Sources" section. The format of the citation is not important but should at least contain the title, author and date of publication for both printed material and online resources. Linking to the URL via the title is preferred, but do not just cite the URL, as it could change. Giving the author, title and publication (even for online articles) gives later editors and readers a chance to find the article via internet or site search engines.

Note that another way to reference material is via interwiki links. Material that is removed from the target can be retrieved by looking up the history of the citation and then the history of the target article. As a result, a simple link can be made.

Comments and questions:

Hit Edit to add your questions!