Guidelines

Working With the Patterns Wiki

You need to register, as described in the Help page. Although anyone can read the Patterns Wiki, only registered users can create new content or edit existing content. This ensures that all content is properly attributed to the author.

You should always login - make it a habit to check the upper right corner for your login status. Why you login, your preferences are activated and you will have access to the full capabilities of the Patterns Wiki.

Visibility of the Patterns Wiki

I do not plan to take any specific actions to either publicize the Patterns Wiki on the Web or block access to the Wiki. Things to consider:

• avoid posting personal information on the Wiki, such as e-mail addresses that might get SPAMed
• avoid posting material that might come back to haunt you

Wiki Etiquette

Wikis can only be successfully through the contributes and collaboration of many people. Therefore, the first guideline should always be:

Jump in and get involved!

On the other hand, the ability to change someone's words can cause problems, either inhibiting us from stating our views, or taking offence at someone else's changes. The following suggestions (adapted from Wikipedia Wiki Etiquette) can help avoid problems.

• Assume others are acting in good faith and are working towards the goal of improving the Patterns Wiki.
• Be civil and polite. Read your input through the eyes of another person.
• Work towards achieving a consensus, especially in 'Article' pages. 'Discussion' or 'talk' pages are a good place to explore issues in an attempt to determine the consensus position.
• Recognise good contributions of others. Again, 'Discussion' or 'talk' pages are useful for 'words of encouragement'.

Article vs. Discussion Pages

Article pages are always a 'work in progress', but should reflect the current consensus position on a topic in a concise and readable fashion. Someone new to the Wiki should be able to get a good grasp of the Patterns project by reading the key article pages.

Discussion pages are intended to capture dialogue on an issue. Comments on a topic are normally in chronological sequence. To help the reader, it is a good idea to 'sign' your work. The Edit GUI has a 'signature' button (2nd from the right) which inserts two dashes, your name and the date/time (a series of four '~' symbols). I suggest we put our signatures at the beginning of contributions.

Using the '+' Tab

When the 'Discussion' window is active, a '+' tab appears to the right of the 'edit' tab. Using this tab allows you to either:

• add text to the current (last) section of the discussion page (if you leave the Subject/headline: blank)
• create a new section by filling in the Subject/headline: with the section title

You can always go into edit mode to modify or add content to previous sections.

Linking to a Discussion Page

Pages in Wikis can be in different 'namespaces'. Pages in different namespaces can be linked by prefixing the pagename with namespace:

Discussion (or 'talk') pages are in the Talk namespace' with the same page name as the article. For example, to link to any discussion associated with this page, use

[[Talk:Guidelines]], which renders as Talk:Guidelines

Monitoring Wiki Updates

There appears to be no good way of keeping on top of changes. Adding pages to my watchlist combined with e-mail notification can generate a lot of e-mails, and does not inform you of newly created pages. Recent changes captures every save.

I suggest the following:

• Manually update the Update Log when adding substantial content or creating new pages.
• Add Update Log to your watchlist and enabling e-mail notification.
• Add pages that you are particularly interested in to your watchlist.

Using 'This is a minor edit'

It is natural to periodically save your input while composing content. If you turn on the This is a minor edit checkbox just above the Save page button, users who are watching the page will not get an e-mail every time.