Gentoo Wiki:Guidelines

Rationale
There are a number of reasons why a guideline (or style guide) is necessary for the wiki.

First of all, it creates a consistent look and feel of all articles on the wiki, giving a much cleaner and more professional look. Also, this allows for better cooperation across articles as all editors work using the same guidelines and styles.

Second, it reduces the likelihood that contributors continuously update the layout of an article, for instance switching variable names from  to   and back. Such changes too often trigger people (through the wiki watchlist) that want to watch over the content of the page, making it hard to keep track of changes in an organized manner. It also puts unnecessary stress on the infrastructure with little to no gains at all.

Third, it allows for contributors to easily get accustomed to writing on our wiki. It lowers the fear of making wrong edits and helps in finding out if an edit is acceptable or not.

This document is not meant to be fully exhaustive as this could lead to a reduction in contributions, where editors feel that it has become too rigid or difficult to understand the rules and guidelines on editing this wiki. Do not be afraid to make an edit, and making wrong edits (unwillingly) is nothing to worry about - we have plenty of editors that will fix this up.

Writing style
The writing style of wiki articles describes how the article itself should be written. It covers the language aspects of the articles.

Avoid first person
As the wiki is a community effort, and the content pages are informational, there should be no mention of "I" or "we". Articles should be written in third person, as reported fact.

Third person and passive voice are preferred, as they sound more professional and objective. The user can be addressed as "you" where appropriate (which is called "second person writing"), but it is discouraged to do so. For instance, do not use "You should now install the package" but use "Next, install the package". Similarly, "You can opt to only install the client" can be rephrased as "It is possible to only install the client".

Use lead-in sentences
Before any operation, create a lead-in sentence or topic sentence. This creates a nice flow of the text towards the action-oriented parts.

For instance, instead of immediately starting with an Emerge box to inform the user how to install a package, first create a simple paragraph such as "Install the software on the system:".

Use American English
There are several flavors of English in the world. To keep a consistent layout, it is advised to stick with the American English (also known as US English).

Formatting
Try to follow these formatting principles as much as possible.

In-line layout elements
In-line layout elements are elements that are rendered within a paragraph. The next table shows the most common elements and their use case.

The use of the  tag for commands is to ensure that commands are not mistaken for parts of the English sentence itself. Linux (and Unix in general) often borrows English words for commands (think about less, more and so on).

Use of newlines
There should be an empty line above a heading and below. This improves readability by editors (wiki syntax) and simplifies the translation effort used by the community.

Keep paragraphs short (generally one to five sentences) as that makes the article easier to read. It also simplifies the translation effort used by the community.

Blocks and templates
Use Templates where appropriate.

A Note is usually following a block with some additional information, like so:

The use of the Important template is when special attention is needed - it gives a stronger signal to the user than a regular paragraph with some emphasizes would give.

The Warning template is when the user really needs to pay special attention as otherwise breakage might occur.

Use a KernelBox to display to the reader which Linux kernel configuration settings need to be applied. The content should be obvious for users on how to reach the particular configuration setting. Do not use the short-hand  notation.

Use a FileBox to display (a part of) the contents of a file:

Use a Cmd to display a non-administrative command (with output if applicable).

Use a RootCmd to display an administrative command (with output if applicable).

Use a CodeBox to display code snippets. Do not use CodeBox for file content or command output.

Article structure
This section describes the structure of specific articles, depending on their type and purpose.

Titles and section headings
The title of an article should be short, specific and unambiguous. Full capitalization should be avoided as much as possible.

The title of a section (also known as "section headings") within an article should start with a capital letter, but the rest of the section title should use small caps. This is called sentence case.

Section headings should be level 2 or higher (3, 4, ...). The use of a level 1 heading is meant only for the title of the article itself, and is automatically used. As such, level 1 headings should not be used by contributors.

Start of an article
A wiki article should start with a short introductory paragraph, without any heading.

Headings such as Introduction or Overview are discouraged. If the article requires any conceptual knowledge before the operational content of the article can be given (such as installation instructions, configuration instructions, package administration tasks, etc.) name the section according to this concept.

Documenting a package or software title
When a package or software title is documented, add an  to the beginning of the article, in which external resources such as the project homepage, wikipedia article, and/or ohloh statistics are summed up:

If there is need for conceptual information about the software title or package, then the first section of the article should be properly named (after the concept that is explained - do not use a generic title like Introduction or Concepts).

Next, follow with a section on the configuration of the software title or package on a Gentoo Linux system. This section includes information on USE flags, installation instructions and so on.

Next, follow with one or more sections on the operational aspects of the software title or package. Try to structure this section on a use-case basis, so that an entire operation is contained within a subsection. "Listing boot entries" or "Deleting encryption keys" are examples of good sub sections, whose main section could be called "Manipulating the boot entries" or "Encrypting volumes with cryptsetup".

Finish up with references to more in-depth material about the software title or package.

References and links
At the end of the article, if resources are added, the following titles should be used for these lists:


 * "See also" which is used for links to articles, guides, howto's and concept guides on the wiki.
 * "External resources" which is used for information and guides outside of the Gentoo wiki. These are resources that the reader will probably want to read up on to go more in detail on the topic.
 * "References" which is only to be used for the source references. This section should only include  to have the wiki automatically generate the list of references used in the article.

In case of the See also and External resources sections, try to inform the user why this resource is interesting to read or how it is related to the current article.

The References section is meant solely for the in-article references. Whenever the article takes information from an external resource as "fact" or source information to make further claims within the article, a in the given order (as far as that information is known):
 * 1) Author of the source
 * 2) Title of the source (as hyperlink)
 * 3) Main origin of the source, such as the main site (as hyperlink)
 * 4) Date of publication
 * 5) Date of retrieval of this information

For instance: