Social protocols

Netiquette for Wiki users

A Wiki server is very open: anybody can create and edit pages, potentially destroying someone else's work. In order to make the best use of this medium, users spontaneously develop some conventions to adapt the system to their needs. Since these conventions are not enforced by the technology, they are called social protocols. On the Internet, this is often referred to as netiquette.

Wiki pages tend to be of various styles. Some pages are indexes for other pages, some pages hold conversations, discussions or arguments, other pages contain text that synthesize various contributions. Often, a page changes style over the course of its life.

In pages that hold conversations, discussions or arguments, each contribution is generally separated by an horizontal ruler (a line of 3 or more hyphens in the source text) and signed. The signature should be a link to the author's Wiki home page (see authors). Some users prefer to add contributions to the end of the page, following a chronological order, others prefer to insert them at the beginning, making then easier to get to, and sometimes it makes more sense to insert the reply after the point being replied to. When a page becomes to long, it is a good idea to split, summarize or re-organize it. This is the strength of Wiki over newsgroups and mailing lists.

To add a comment in the middle of a page, you can simply indent it so it appears like a quotation, and maybe insert a ruler before and after your comment. Don't forget to sign it (see authors).

When you create a page, think about its title, since it cannot be changed after the page is created and it will be the only way to reference the page. Try to use a title that will make it easy to reference the page from other pages: avoid long titles, use simple words (see also titles).

Although the site map contains links to all the available pages, it is important to keep a high connectivity between the pages. Think twice before removing a link from a page, and make sure that the destination of the link is still accessible otherwise.

Wiki does not allow pages to be deleted. The best alternative is to create a category such as Trash and put pages that you want to delete in the Trash category (see categories). Only the administrator of the site can physically delete a page (his or her email should be on the site's home page).

Feel free to add to or comment these guidelines here. I am interested in knowning what kinds of social protocols Wiki users develop, and how they use the technology in unanticipated ways. [mbl]

Version 1, Tue 24 Nov 1998 09:00:44 [mbl]