User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes
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Wikipedia has a daunting array of styleguides and policy pages. They come under very little central coordination and are subject to change without wide notice. This makes it hard for users to keep track of changes to rules and policies that they need to be aware of, and to attain a sense of how the project is evolving.
This page displays the important changes, month by month, in a central location; this enables all WPians to quickly and conveniently see what is happening.
Contributors to the pages in question have the opportunity to notify us of changes for the upcoming monthly summary. They are asked to post notifications of substantive changes (with diffs) on the talk page.
Summary updates are posted at the talk pages of MOS, (main page), FAC and FAR shortly after the start of each calendar month. Copy-editing and relatively trivial changes are generally not suitable for these summaries.
March 2008
- Multiplication symbols. Added: Do not use an asterisk to represent multiplication between numbers in non-technical articles. The multiplication sign in exponential notation (2.1 × 108) may now be unspaced, depending on circumstances (2.1×108); previously, spacing was always required in exponential notation.
- Images. There were minor changes to the advice concerning the direction of the face or eyes in images, and concerning the size of images.
- Punctuation in quotations. "Punctuation" was added to the requirement that "Wherever reasonable, preserve the original style, spelling and punctuation".
- Em dashes. "Em dashes are normally unspaced" was strengthened to "should not be spaced".
- Instructional and presumptuous language. "Clearly" and "actually" were added to the list of words that are usually avoided in an encyclopedic register.
- '"Pull" and block quotes. Removed: Pull quotes are generally not appropriate in Wikipedia articles. Added: Block quotes can be enclosed using {{quotation}} or {{quote}} (as well as the existing specification, i.e., between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags).
- "See also" sections. Clarification that links should be presented in a bulleted list, and that rather than grouping them by subject area, it is helpful to alphabetize them.
- Criterion 8. The second clause was removed: "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic
, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding."
Licensing policy
- A new resolution of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, promulgated 23 March 2008
April 2008
Post notifications on the talk page, please, not here.