Wikimedia:Manual of style

See also: Wikimedia:Editing policy

This Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki manual of style outlines basic guidelines which should be considered when formatting content and creating pages on this site.

At all times, the needs of the specific type of content (resolution, minutes, legal document, etc.) takes precedent over any guidelines provided on this page. These guides are more to help avoid unnecessary inconsistency and guidance where the type of content does not provide an existing framework.

General guidelines

See also: m:Communications/Communicating about the Wikimedia Foundation

• Try to utilize English which will not be difficult to translate into other languages
• When in doubt, refer to manual of styles on Wikimedia project wikis or the "Communicating about the Wikimedia Foundation" guide on Meta-Wiki

Contractions and acronyms

To make content easier to translate and understand across languages, please avoid use of contractions and acronyms.

When using an acronym is necessary or difficult to avoid, please be sure to introduce the acronym's meaning in its usage.

Title, header, and page name formatting

Whenever possible, sentence case capitalization should be used for all titles, headers, and page names.

The primary exception is using a flexible use of proper noun capitalization for policies and other content with a large external audience.

Examples of pages where proper noun capitalization is most appropriate:

• Major Organization Policy
• Board of Trustees
• Official Board Committee
• Formal Board Resolution

Examples of pages where sentence case capitalization is most appropriate:

• Policy specific to only this wiki
• History of past departments
• Information from a regular board meeting

Namespace placement

See also: Wikimedia:Namespaces

Whenever possible, content should be placed within these namespaces to facilitate greater searching of content.

Main namespace

General content or content without a clear namespace

Talk namespaces

Discussions and archives of discussions

Wikimedia

Content specific to this Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki

Policy

Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Movement policies

Resolution

Resolutions by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustee

Legal

Wikimedia Foundation legal documentation

Minutes

Minutes of Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustee meetings

Archive

Archived or historical content no longer in active use on this wiki and available for migration to another wiki (generally Meta-Wiki)

Page titles for Legal, Minutes, Policies, and Resolutions namespaces

Page titles should be left for translation and not altered with {{DISPLAYTITLE:}}. Instead, the page title - with inclusion of Wikimedia or Wikimedia Foundation in title as appropriate - should be placed immediately below the <tvar name="2"><languages /> tag using h1 headers (= {{int|Lqt-talkpage-history-tab}} =).

Example:

= Wikimedia Foundation Donuts Policy =

Resolutions namespace

Content placed within the Resolutions namespace should be resolutions which were considered by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The {{resolution}} template should be used at the top of resolution pages for proper formatting.

Policies namespace

Content placed within the Policies namespace should be official Wikimedia Foundation policies. The {{Policy-board}} or {{Policy-staff}} templates should be used to help with displaying information for readers.