FamilySearch Wiki talk:Manual of Style

This is the place for discussing stylistic details that affect many pages on the wiki. It covers mostly content changes that affect collections of wiki pages, whereas stylistic issues regarding the user interface, or general look and feel of the site, can be found elsewhere.

This page covers two kinds of stylistic ideas:


 * 1) Ideas that have reached a consensus among the FamilySearch Wiki community and can thus be executed over many pages.
 * 2) Ideas that have been proposed and need further discussion and consensus before implementation. (These ideas cannot be implemented over many pages until they have achieved a consensus decision.)

If you have an idea to add to the Manual of Style (MOS), see Transforming a Style Idea to a Manual of Style Guideline, and then add your topic to Proposals being discussed section below.

Issues that have reached a consensus decision

 * Use "History" Heading Rather than "Local Histories" in Place Pages
 * Format for Citing and Linking to Works in FHLC, Worldcat (OCLC)

Proposals being discussed

 * 1) Access Codes (how to designate whether a linked site is free or fee-based)
 * 2) Breadcrumb Trails
 * 3) Changing the Font Size and Color of Heading 1
 * 4) Adding References or Links to Books for Sale
 * 5) FamilySearch Wiki Talk:Consensus
 * 6) FamilySearch Wiki Talk:Source Citation Formats
 * 7) Linking to works in the Family History Library Catalog (FHLC) and Worldcat (OCLC)
 * 8) Naming Conventions for Geographic Names
 * 9) Disambiguation
 * 10) Interactive Maps and Lists of Sub-divisions
 * 11) Linking to Directory Sites Whose External Links to Paid Sites are Ambiguous
 * 12) "Names, Personal" versus "Names Personal"
 * 13) "Language and Languages" versus "Languages"
 * 14) Localities template to replace populated places section
 * 15) Infobox template
 * 16) Wpd (Wikipedia) template
 * 17) Hotlinks
 * 18) Spelling in the English-language wiki

What to do with Help:Naming Conventions?
Help:Naming conventions was created before we had the Manual of Style. It was also created "back in the day" when we discussed stylistic items in User Group meeting (Community Meeting) to reach consensus. Since Help:Naming Conventions deals with style more than instructions, I'm thinking it should be added to the FamilySearch Wiki namespace. I also wonder which (if any) of the conventions on Help:Naming Conventions deserves to be added to the Manual of Style or this discussion page. Ritcheymt 04:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I support the proposal to move Help:Naming conventions to the FamilySearch Wiki namespace. --Steve 09:25, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for large projects
It would be helpful to have some guidelines established for large projects, such as the pages created for US state or county pages. I'm thinking specifically of the England probate registers project that includes a page for each of the 40 counties. It's user-friendly to have the same "look and feel", including the heading and subheading styles. Anne 18:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

A Place to Start
I think it would be easiest to piggyback of what other wikis have done. People who begin contributing may already be used to these conventions. For example, the Wikipedia Manual of Style gives some great ideas on what our conventions should be. Perhaps we lift from there and then change things as it becomes necessary to do so. --Gregorybean 02:16, 20 October 2009 (UTC)