WikiIndex:Manual of Style

WikiIndex: Manual of Style (WI:MoS) is a meta article describing how all content here on  should be presented. That means all articles within the 'Main:' namespace, descriptive information on all category pages, source and any copyright information on all pages, and accordingly, structure on all related Talk pages.

It will be noticed that this WikiIndex wiki site is powered by MediaWiki, which is the same software which Wikipedia (and all other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) wiki sites) use; therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that WikiIndex will use the same (MoS) as found on the English Wikipedia. However, there are fundamental differences between WikiIndex and Wikipedia. The most obvious is that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia covering nigh-on all topics and subject matter (meaning their article pages need to follow a strict and consistent form, befitting of an encyclopedia), whereas WikiIndex is an online directory or 'index' about only 'wiki'; albeit all aspects about wiki; including wiki sites, wiki engines (the software which 'powers' a wiki site), wiki farms (the service created to host wiki sites), wiki people (the individuals or 'users' who create content on wiki sites, or who develop and create wiki engines or wiki farms, or any other people who are significant within the wikisphere), together with specific wiki concepts and wiki ideas. Therefore, whilst WikiIndex might appear to follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style, or WP:MoS (and we certainly do use many of its basic concepts, because there is nothing to be gained from 'reinventing the wheel', to coin a pertinent phrase), WikiIndex does have some significantly different approaches of page layout and structure when compared to Wikipedia.

Whilst this actual 'WikiIndex: Manual of Style' article is still ashamedly barren, our actual style has been long established over many years, by many people (former and current editors) who have worked together to reach consensus about how we 'do things' here on WikiIndex. Our 'meta' category, Category: WikiIndex contains many separate articles about the structure and operation of WikiIndex, and those articles should be referred to for answers regarding specific points regarding this WikiIndex wiki. Should any subject or concern arise which has not already been explained, please open a new discussion on either WikiIndex talk:Manual of Style (the talk page for this article), or alternatively on the community portal talk page.

Articles
All articles here on WikiIndex which are about a specific wiki site should be named to match the actual wiki site it is referring to. One article page should be used for only one wiki site, so there is no need to worry about singular or plural. For non-English language wiki sites, WikiIndex historically favoured using the native language name of the wiki site for its article page name here; the aim was to 'internationalise' WikiIndex, and be inclusive for all languages. However, this had the effect of creating difficulties - especially when using non-Roman text languages; because not only do some non-Roman languages fail to correctly display, for those which do display correctly, they appear not only appear incomprehensible, they are invariably also impossible to type. Therefore, all articles should be named using Roman-based text (ideally Anglophile), and the native language name can be made into a redirect.

Stub articles
Stub articles are a great way of 'inviting' others to add more information to an existing article. Here at WikiIndex, we are not shy about needing additional people who can add their own experiences of the wikisphere to any of our existing articles, and especially so our stub articles. Therefore, we place our stub templates so that they appear at the top of their respective article (or category) page, in a similar manner to a 'hat-note'. When including the relevant stub template, please add it above any descriptive and size template, but below its infobox template (such as ).