Protospace Wiki:Wiki conventions

This wiki uses the MediaWiki wiki software (the same software that runs Wikipedia). For additional help with editing, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents.

Conventions

Page titles

Generally, page titles should be lowercase except for the first letter (which MediaWiki requires to be uppercase (though there is a workaround in case it needs to be displayed lowercase)). This allows linking to the article without having to unnaturally capitalize the title: [[large project storage]] instead of [[Large Project Storage]]. MediaWiki automatically handles it when you make a link with no uppercase first letter, but the other uppercase letters in the article title must be uppercase in the link for the link to work (unless you manually create a redirect). Unfortunately, when Matt F created most of the pages on the wiki, he did not think of this, leaving us with many pages with capitalized titles. Ian O is gradually decapitalizing them.

An exception to the above is titles that are formal titles of articles rather than just descriptive titles of pages. This can be somewhat subjective; it really depends on how you want people to mention your article in other articles.

Equipment page titles

Equipment page titles should follow the format <equipment type>[, <salient and/or differentiating qualities>][ (<make and model>)] ID:<tool's ID number>, where square brackets indicate optional parts and angle brackets indicate parts you fill in with the appropriate information. (This is a fully qualified equipment name; future improvements to the wiki will allow tools to also be referred to by short names, with some degree of automatic generation and association between the different kinds of names. FQENs allow easy disambiguation and sorting.)

Examples of good equipment page titles: Air compressor, 80-gallon (MAXair Premium), milling machine (ACRA AM4V), and inspection mirror, 18" gooseneck.

Examples of acceptable equipment page titles: Oxygen concentrator (doesn't contain any disambiguating qualities or make/model, but it's not really a problem because we only have one), jigsaw (same)

Examples of bad equipment page titles: Plate Joiner (capitalized), jointer (was okay but we now have another one)

Examples of very bad equipment page titles: Plasma Cutter (Yellow, huge) (capitalized (inconsistently); contains the wrong info in the wrong place), welder (Stick, orange) (same problems), vice (giant) (misspelled; contains the right info in the wrong place)

Pages for tool collections, such as rulers, squares, and welding magnets, have simple descriptive collection names.

Equipment pages

Pages for equipment we currently have should use Template:Equipment page, while those for equipment we no longer have should use Template:Equipment page removed. Note that the latter adds a few fields relating to the removal and substitute tools. (When updating the wiki for a piece of equipment being removed, don't forget to move it to the Old Equipment Removed section of the Tools We Have page.) See the templates' documentation pages for details on using them.

After the template and before any further sections, please add any categories appropriate for the equipment. The templates automatically add Category:Tools or Category:Tools no longer at Protospace, respectively. The other categories to apply to tools are subcategories of those; you can browse their child categories to find appropriate categories to add. Adding categories is done with the same syntax as links. For example, including the code [[Category:Woodworking tools]] adds the page to that category. (To link to a category as seen earlier in this paragraph, use e.g. [[:Category:Woodworking tools]].)

Equipment image names

Images of equipment should use the tool's ID number as their filename. For example, the image used on the Trotec's page is called 107.jpg, as the Trotec's ID number is 107.

Font Awesome icons

As listed below in the Installed extensions and modules section, this wiki has Font Awesome 4.4 installed. The following icons are suggested—use others that seem appropriate wherever you want:

  • For links that are only accessible to Protospace members (e.g. administration mailing list, my.protospace.ca), use the key icon: <span class="fa fa-key"></span>
  • For checklists, use the square-o and check-square-o icons: <span class="fa fa-square-o"></span>, <span class="fa fa-check-square-o"></span>

Installed extensions and modules

The following are extensions installed on this wiki that improve the capabilities of wiki pages. Please use them where appropriate in your editing.

Font Awesome

Font Awesome 4 is an open source Icon pack, we use the provided BootstrapCDN copy so we're not dragging down our shared hosting.

This wiki uses Font Awesome 4.4, which is licensed under SIL OFL 1.1 (Open Font License).

List of icons available in Font Awesome 4.
Note: This list is for a later version of Font Awesome 4 than is used on this wiki, so not all of the icons listed are available for use here.

We integrated FontAwesome in our wiki via LocalSettings.php (non-extension).

Example: <span class="fa fa-smile-o"></span>

Result:

EmbedVideo

The EmbedVideo Extension is a MediaWiki extension which adds a parser function called #ev for embedding video clips from over 24 popular video sharing services in multiple languages and countries. For Advanced usage click here.

Videos can be embedded in pages via a simple code shown below.

Example: {{#ev:youtube|c3NNoMc1GR8}}

Result: