Join the Fediverse:Style guide

On this page you can find some information about editing this wiki: what you should consider, what might be different than on other wikis. Anything to styling and the way we present content.

Links

Generally on wikis that use the Mediawiki software (like e.g. Wikipedia) you create external links like this: [https://wikipedia.org Wikipedia] and inthernal links like this [[Main Page|link to main page]]. So in both cases the link comes first, but with internal links that's just the name of the article. Then comes the text that should be displayed.
But we do internal links differently. See Project:Template_guide#Internal_links.
We use {{Internal Link |target=Main Page |link-name=link to main page]]. This allows the link also to work on translated pages.

Each subject mentioned in an article should be linked to the first time it is mentioned. If that would result in a text with lots and lots of links, then just link the articles that are really relevant.
And we should usually link to basic guides/articles about the page, so e.g. if an article mentions the Template:Internal Link we create a link like this {{Internal Link |target=What is the Fediverse? |link-name=Fediverse}}.
Only if the advanced article (if even two articles exist) is more relevant we link e.g. to Template:Internal Link instead of Template:Internal Link.

Categories

See Project:Template_guide#Categories.
Generally you assign a category to an article by writing e.g. [[Category:Fediverse]] somewhere in the article (usually on the bottom). We instead use {{category |category=Fediverse}}. This is again to make sure categories work well with translations.
To link to a category we use the standard [[:Category:Fediverse]] (note the colon before the word category).

Each page (except the main page) should have at least one category (drafts should only have the Category:Drafts, because we don't want to draw too much attention to them until they are finished). There is no hard limit for how many categories an article can have, but usually 4 are more than enough. Pick the ones most relevant for the topic. E.g. in an article about a Fediverse software, let's say Mastodon, use Category:Mastodon but not Category:Fediverse. The latter should only be used in general articles about the Fediverse.

Capitalization

Capitalization of Software projects, protocols and apps

Capitalization of certain words should be consistent. Here are some examples of Fediverse projects:

First letter in upper case	CamelCase	all lower case	special
Fediverse Mastodon Pleroma Lemmy Pixelfed Funkwhale	WriteFreely PeerTube BookWyrm GoToSocial ActivityPub	lemmur	diaspora*

Capitalization of page titles

Applies to everything that has a page, so including files, templates, categories...

Generally each page title should (also has to) start with an uppercase letter. After that it should be capitalized like a sentence, so almost only words like the ones above should be capitalized.
A namespace is not part of the page title and also has to be capitalized. So an example for a category's full page name would be Category:Example category name about a Fediverse topic.

Unfortunately a lot of pages were created without following this guideline in the past. Please don't rename pages yourself, because that would break every time the page is linked to or similar. Instead let User:Paula know, so she will fix it.

Naming scheme

• What is Fediverse project?, e.g. What is Mastodon? is the scheme for basic guides on Fediverse projects.
• File:Fediverse project logo.svg, e.g. is the name of the official square logo of the project in color. If no svg is available, a png can be uploaded.
• File:Fediverse project.svg, e.g. is the logo in black.
• Fediverse project white.svg, e.g. is the logo in white (here with a black background, which is not part of the file).
• Fediverse project full logo.svg, e.g. is a long version of the official logo in color if that exists.

Headlines

Usually we use ==Headline== for the largest headline in an article and then add on = for each level below. In cases where it's needed another level =Headline= can be added above.

Order of projects in lists and tables

The order of Fediverse projects in lists and tables should follow the order in Table of all Fediverse projects.