how-to-play

If this is your first visit, please see the introduction page.

How to Play

Guidelines

Before contributing please observe these guidelines:

1. You have to create an account (see Wikipedia Username guidelines) before editing/creating pages.
2. Read about microformats.org Voluntary Public Domain Declarations and please consider adding the Template:public-domain-release to your User page accordingly to release your contributions to microformats.org into the public domain.
3. Try the irc channel (preferable) or mailing lists first (and read the mailing-lists page before doing so).
4. If you write something opinionated, sign it with your username - you can easily do so with a datetimestamp in MediaWiki with four ~s, e.g.: ~~~~.
5. Please only create pages directly relating to microformats on this wiki. Other pages will likely be deleted.
6. Please obey the naming conventions for pages.
7. Don't use talk pages. See #3.
8. Please try to ensure that you produce valid XHTML.
9. When you paste code, add some line breaks at a reasonable width.
10. Please do not use "?" or other punctuation in the headings - it helps to keep the URLs to their fragment identifiers shorter and easier to read, copy/paste etc.
11. Headings may be explicitly marked up with <h1> <h2> tags etc. in order to avoid having them show up / pollute the Table of Contents. If you find such headings in a page, please do not change them to "=" or "==" style headings.
12. Avoid renaming/changing heading text, including even just their capitalization or to comply with above rules that apply to headings. Headings are often used as permalinks, and changing the heading breaks such permalinks that have already been used. Thus be careful when creating headings. You may change a heading if you are careful to leave a <div id="oldheadingID"></div> around the new heading with oldHeadingID set to the necessary value to maintain heading permalinks.
13. Avoid global editorial wiki changes / edits (e.g. the same or similar edits applied to numerous pages, say, more than a dozen or so pages). If you have an opinion on how to globally improve something stylistically or editorially on the wiki, please add it to your section on the to-do page, and then perhaps ask the community using the microformats-discuss mailing list what folks think of it. Interpret absence of response(s) as disinterest and thus implicit rejection. Admins may from time to time do global wiki changes to remove spam, repair damage done by other global wiki edits etc.
14. Please avoid simple contradictory responses such as "No" to questions and issues. Instead provide at least a short sentence with a reason which provides information beyond what is provided in the question or issue.
15. Do not remove "red links", nor create empty / placeholder "..." pages for them just to make them not red. The red links usefully communicate a need or a desire for that page to exist, and the person expressing that desire may not be the same person that is able to take the time, or has the necessary skill/background to draft such a page. The links to pages not yet created often serve as an effective (and easy to execute) "to do" list. Removing those links makes it harder, less convenient to do so. (One exception noted so far: red links to non-existent microformats e.g. "hbib", should be delinked, as it is desirable for it to be harder/less convenient to create new microformats). Finally, as such links do provide information, they are not redundant.
16. Do not use the MediaWiki "Categories" mechanism. As with "Talk" pages, this community does not use all the features of MediaWiki.
17. Do not create new "User:" links by hand. User: links should only created as a result of users actually signing their edits with ~~~ or ~~~~. That way each User: page will correspond to an actual login, rather than accidentally linking to a page which doesn't represent a login. If you see a red link which appears like it should be a User: link, e.g. [[DavidJanes]], rather than editing the link in place, create a redirect at the destination of the link to the person's User: page.
18. Check "what links here" before moving pages, and fix any links to the page you're moving, if appropriate.
19. Please use U.S. English (en-US) spellings of words on English microformats pages. This is by convention, e.g. see the W3C Manual of Style Spelling Editorial Guideline.
20. Use templates for RFC 2119 terms such as MUST.
21. References to (X)HTML element names should be lowercase and marked up with <code>...</code>, e.g. the input element. This convention is adopted from the practice used in the W3C Manual of Style.
22. Use example.org for hypothetical URL examples rather than a fake domain name (which may eventually be registered, used for spam etc.). When doing so, be sure to use <nowiki> tags, e.g.: <nowiki>http://example.org/</nowiki> so that the URLs to example.org are not auto-hyperlinked by MediaWiki.

Accessibility

1. Use upper case for acronyms like HTML but use <strong style="text-transform:uppercase"> to add strength to phrases like "do not". This improves accessibility (citation needed) for text-reading software and other agents (list and versions of text-reading software and other agents affected needed).

Wiki Cleaning

See spam-removal.

If you see something which you think needs massive cleanup on the wiki, please point it out to admins on the irc channel or microformats-discuss list rather than doing it yourself.

Related

See mediawiki-customization for brief notes on how the microformats wiki is different from a "typical" MediaWiki install, in many ways to help with how-to-play and naming-conventions.