CZ:Proposals/Create workgroup style guides

This proposal has been assigned to the Editorial Council, and is now in the Editorial Council proposals queue.

Driver: David E. Volk

Complete explanation

Whereas the CZ wants to promote high quality, fully informative articles, and

Whereas, desirable sections that should be included in articles may be forgotten, and

Whereas, consistent style, formatting and color schemes are desirable for any major website

Whereas, a reference guide will aid an Author is writing a new article to approval standards, and

Whereas, this guide will to serve remind Editors of the specific requirements of the workgroup.

The following is proposed:

That CZ creates style guides for each of the Workgroups to promote fully informative, stylistically consistent articles within a given workgroup to not only aid authors, but give Editors consistent guidance in determining whether an article is approvable or not.

• Actionable item 1. Get agreement from the Editorial Council and/or Approval and Feedback groups that such a standard should exist. Which group should be decided by the Proposals manager.

• Actionable item 2. If accepted, put out a call for a lead author(s) for each workgroup to get the guides started.

• Actionable item 3. Once a good first version of a guide is assembled, email a notice to each workgroup for further suggestions and refinement of the style.

Reasoning

As described above, the proposal would ensure consistent styles within a workgroup and point out what must be done before an article is approvable. It will also help to avoid much reformatting. The current discussion regarding music articles for albums (see Revolver talk page ) vs. discographies is an excellent example of a typical topic that could be covered in a group style guide.

The guide can also give useful hints on how to do things, like make math equations and arrows, fill out group specific templates (elem_infobox, chem_infobox, taxonomy_infobox, etc) correctly, the location of obscure pages only needed by that workgroup.

Implementation

• Actionable item 1. Get agreement from the Editorial Council and/or Approval and Feedback groups that such a standard should exist. Which group should be decided by the Proposals manager.

• Actionable item 2. If accepted, the drive (User:David E. Volk) will put out a call for a lead author(s) for each workgroup to get the guides started.

• Actionable item 3. Once a good first version of a guide is assembled for a given workgroup, the leader author(s) will email a notice to authors and editors of that workgroup for further suggestions and refinement of the style.

Discussion

Possible lead authors might look at Chemistry style guide to aid with their first verion, or add comments.

I was just thinking, David, that in addition to style guides or maybe to complement them, it may be possible to create a CZ_Howto: namespace so there is a central "index" of how to do anything on this wiki, regardless of workgroup type. However, I don't know if this would be a separate proposal or not. --Robert W King 11:38, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

How to page

Robert, I don't think a "How To/How do I" page needs a proposal or to be part of this one. We can just start making one. I should have the phrase "How do I" it in. David E. Volk 11:49, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

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