Stupid Little Edits

In gentler words - the kind of work your Wiki Gnome does. Categorizing pages, fixing typos, removing your signatures to ease refactoring, etc. These are usually considered a Good Thing.

On the other hand, some view this as a problem, because it causes more entries in Recent Changes.


The focus of this wiki is textual content, not perfect punctuation and presentation.

Don't reflow paragraphs by removing newlines. This does not affect the appearance of the page and just clutters recent changes.

Don't convert between the various forms of dashes (Em Dash, En Dash, -, --, –, —).

Don't prefix every signature with '--' just to satisfy the Signature Survey.

Don't convert British spellings to American spellings (color/colour).

Don't just insert/remove commas, periods, etc.

Currently, there is an automated Shark Bot which will revert these kind of edits.

But do Fix Your Wiki.

Fix obvious spelling mistakes and poor grammar, but only if it aids understanding.

Add and fix Wiki Links.

Convert broken character encodings to Utf Eight (there was recent breakage due to a server upgrade).

Add bulleted lists.

Refactor pages to improve structure and reduce duplication.

For new content, please try to follow the Wiki Style Guide.


"...removing your signatures to ease refactoring..."

I cannot object to this practice strongly enough. When I put my signature on a particular contribution it is because I want my words kept as is. There have been times in the distant past when something I said was buggered up by someone wanting to "streamline" or "correct" one of my statements. Instead of improving my contribution these do-gooders screwed the pooch badly. I wish my statements to be left alone when I sign them.

On the other hand, I have made plenty of contributions to this Wiki that were unsigned, sometimes with my name added to the list of contributors at the bottom of the page. This is a great way to let any involved Wiki Gnome sort out the Thread Mode diatribe into a more concise Document Mode statement of Thesis Antithesis Synthesis and still maintain one's tracking of ongoing discussions.

Please don't remove signatures without asking the original author of the statement.


See original on c2.com