Style Guide

What is not allowed
Please do not make articles about websites that have not existed, this includes websites that are still in development or any stage of testing. This also applies for adding any features on the page that haven’t been implemented yet on the website.

Additionally we do not accept websites made with website builders, as they are just using premade templates, and do not have any specialey do not have anything special and tha or otherwise look like they were designed by a small child.

Do not include weasel words or your own personal opinion, try to keep articles neutral as possible.

Make sure to spell check your edits by any means possible, we don’t appreciate edits that look like a grammatical mess.

Play nicely
No name calling or schoolyard insults. Due to COPPA, only users above the age of 13 are allowed to have accounts so kindly act your age or if you’re under 13, kindly delete your account.

Originality, licensing, credit, etc.

 * Credit to Home wiki for the original style guide edited to suit Altpedia.
 * Original work is preferred.
 * If you copy from another site that permits copying, for instance Wikipedia or pictures from Flickr with appropriate licensing, give credit to the original source.
 * You may not use copyrighted work without permission except under the guidelines of fair use/fair dealing unless such works originate from a nation with copyright laws that lack such exceptions. (Legal Disclaimer: This is not written by a lawyer and can not be considered legal advice) Fair use is not a catch-all shield that prevents any and all copyright claims regardless of use but rather content as judged by four factors:
 * 1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. More often than not, wikis fall under educational and/or archival use.
 * 2) The nature of the original work (more leeway is sometimes given if the source is factual rather than fictional)
 * 3) The amount and substantiality of original work used.
 * 4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

Wikis are informational/educational/archival. The use of content such as logos and other identifiers used on Altpedia for informational purposes usually falls under the purview of fair use. Screenshots of websites likewise most likely would be fair use as well.

Formatting

 * If the page is substantially incomplete, the stub template should follow the initial paragraph.
 * Images are recommended for pages where images are applicable.
 * There are many stylistic differences in spacing. Most of these are flexible. Some examples are
 * spaces after the * for a bullet or # for a numbered list
 * links to pictures are on their own line
 * blank lines before (and sometimes after) a section header (This isn't necessary to make the formatting work correctly, but it makes the text easier to read and sections easier to find in the edit view.)

Naming

 * Article names should be singular in most cases, unless there is a pressing reason to make it plural. Pluralized versions of names should be made to redirect to the singular. (Example: room rather than rooms)
 * Category names should be plural in most cases, unless there is a pressing reason to make it singular.

Spelling
Many English words have different correct spellings. For instance, "color" (U.S. spelling) and "colour" (British spelling) are both correct. Either may be used here. But after one or the other is used on an article, please be consistent.

Try to stay away from "slang" spellings. So, use "light" rather than "lite". Over time some slang spelling become accepted.

Capitalization
In English, proper nouns are capitalized. Names and adjectives based on names are capitalized. So France, the name of a country, and French, the adjective referring to things from France, are both capitalized. By the way, the Internet and Web (which is short for World Wide Web) are both proper nouns. (That norm may change over time.)

Because a wiki turns the first letter of any page to a capital, some people think that they need to capitalize all links. That is not the case. A link to room or a link to Room will both connect to the same article named "Room". When creating the link, use the capitalization that fits where it is located. So in a sentence starting "Room to grow", room is capitalized, but in "my favorite room" it is not capitalized.

Capitalization for titles has many different styles that are correct in different contexts. In the U.S. students are taught "Title Case". That is, the first word in a title is always capitalized, and every word that is not a preposition (in, of, by etc.) or article (a, an, the) is capitalized. But in some parts of the world, that is not the way things are capitalized, and it doesn't work well for linking to articles in a wiki. So over time it's become the norm in many wiki that in page names only the first word and the other words that are always capitalized, like proper nouns are capitalized in a page title.

Crosslinking, and making it easier
A "crosslink" is what we call a link within the wiki (or some people may use it to mean links within a set of wiki like to related wikia). Some of the standards on the Home wiki were developed the way they are because it makes it easier to enter links to that content later.

So for instance as described in the "naming" section on this page, we use the singular rather than plural for most article names. If a page is named "bed", we can link to it by just adding square brackets like bed. So I can write "any bed with a headboard" or "for homes with many beds" and the links with both work. That's much easier than having to write "any bed with a headboard" each time. And, did you know that a the wiki engine is designed so a suffix that's not part of the page title will still look like part of the link? So in the beds example, the link will still underline the "s". It will look like beds.

Similarly by using "wiki case" instead of "title case" for capitalizing page names or titles, it can be easier to link to those pages. If the name of an article is "Kitchen Table", then every time we write about a kitchen table and want to link to that article, we have to create lots of extra redirect pages or pipes like kitchen table. But, if we use wiki case, we can link to the article with kitchen table, which becomes kitchen table and would links to the article "Kitchen table" if this was the Home wiki but it's not.

Category names are plural for two reasons. First when you're writing about a category, you are usually writing about more than one example, so plural is appropriate. Also, it's a practical thing. As explained above, article links are singular to make it easier to link to those articles. Links to categories already need special treatment, so using a pipe each time isn't as difficult to remember. Furthermore it provides an extra way to distinguish between the article.

Linking to non-existant pages or articles that do not exist yet
It is ok to put a link to a page or article that does not exist yet, but which would belong on this wiki.

On the other hand, please do not add links to articles that don't really belong here or are unlikely to be written. So a link to "mall food courts" probably doesn't belong on this wiki, so unless you want to create it as a link to another wiki where the article belongs, don't make it a link.

Lists
Please properly capitalize and punctuate like this:
 * Make a meal.
 * How to select a contractor?

One word, two or hyphenated?
Sometimes a phrase becomes so common that it eventually becomes a single, commonly accepted word. Usually it begins as two words used together frequently, for example, dish washer. Often the two words are then joined with a hyphen, like water-bed. Over time the words may eventually join to become a compound word like dishwasher. Sometimes words go the other way too, and what was a compound or hyphenated word becomes separate. On this wiki, the recommended practice is to do a Web search or two. See which way you find the most or best search results. In general, if there's a tie, use the single word in preference to the hyphenated or two word version.

Crosslinking
Please help integrate the articles in this wiki. Each article should have a link to at least one other article in this wiki. So when you create a new page, think about what other pages a reader might be interested in. Link to them in the text or in a "Related" section. To help make sure people see your articles, you can go into other articles and add a link to it in their "Related" section.

Proposing new norms or style guidelines
Most of the guidelines described here were developed in other wiki or over time here. This article covers the existing style or norms -- mostly what's already accepted here. But, we can change or add items. If you want to describe a norm that already exists here, please feel free to add that to this page. But if you are proposing a new or additional guideline, please start a discussion first.