MisesWiki:Commons/Archives/2010

Style guide

I would like to recommend that we use the Chicago Manual of Style as a basis for a MisesWiki:Manual of Style rather than the Wikipedia Manual of Style. The WP:MOS makes a large number of stylistic concessions in order to appeal to international speakers of English, resulting in a MOS that incorporates a variety of styles. Mises.org uses CMS as its style guide, and I think it makes sense to use it here as well, as most of our readers are Americans. Two things affected are:

• Spelling (use American all the time)
• Punctuation in relation to quotation marks (commas and periods should always appear inside quotation marks)

I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that come to mind. Thoughts? --Forgottenman (talk) 16:09, 29 November 2010 (CST)

Yes, keeping the readership in mind, that's probably a sensible idea. You'll have to be patient with me though, as I'm used to writing under British conventions. Sovereign 12:08, 15 December 2010 (CST)

New project

It seems we could use a new project for the organization of small things - checking links, wikification of text, creating stubs, etc. Also needs a way to easily vote on the next page of interest. Ideas? Pestergaines 18:05, 2 December 2010 (CST)

Sounds reasonable. I'll set it up with some ideas at MisesWiki:WikiProject Cleanup. We'll need to develop more cleanup categories. --Forgottenman (talk) 09:38, 3 December 2010 (CST)

Looks nice already! Thanks. Pestergaines 15:03, 3 December 2010 (CST)

"External links" --> "Links"?

Any thoughts on not using WP's convention of calling the links at the end "External links" but instead simply "Links"? My thinking is that in many cases the links are pointing to mises.org pages (such as literature pages, blog posts, etc.) and thus are not strictly "external." Plus, the word is redundant anyway. We could still use "See also" for referring to tangentially related wiki articles. --Forgottenman (talk) 10:43, 6 December 2010 (CST)

I am open to that upon first reflection. I am assuming we would likely continue a "See also" section for other related Mises Wiki article links not mentioned already in the main text. -- RayBirks 10:46, 6 December 2010 (CST)

Right. --Forgottenman (talk) 10:49, 6 December 2010 (CST)

Actually, that is a good idea! Pestergaines 11:23, 6 December 2010 (CST)

Positioning links from Mises Wiki to Wikipedia

I have been noticing links to Wikipedia main articles in various locations within the list of links to other resources, articles, etc. Perhaps we might suggest that, if the link to the related main Wikipedia entry is included, we make it the final entry in the list. I am thinking the reader is somewhat more likely to be getting a Classical-Liberal (and similar) point of view in the first links indicated, with the general readership-orientation of Wikipedia best fit for the reader's last choice. If this is already the working style, then perhaps someone might confirm. Thoughts? -- RayBirks 12:02, 9 December 2010 (CST)

That seems reasonable. Same for other general resources, I suppose. --Forgottenman (talk) 12:09, 9 December 2010 (CST)

Article # 400

Don't know if anyone noticed, but our 400th article is on none other than Taxation !! -- RayBirks 13:06, 12 December 2010 (CST)

Yes, great work everyone! I wonder when we can get to 500. :) Pestergaines 17:59, 12 December 2010 (CST)

Guide

A guide of articles for newbies to basics of Economics or mises would be great. I don't know where start and it would be great to have that sort of guide/suggestion to start reading some articles. —unsigned comment by PLj9N (talk) 19:22, 12 December 2010.

An excellent idea! As we build the wiki a "reader's guide" of some sort would be quite helpful for others as well, I imagine. Thanks! --Forgottenman (talk) 21:55, 12 December 2010 (CST)

I second (third?) this. I would also suggest that there be two introductions: one for those completely new to economics (in a similar vein to Murphy's Lessons for the Young Economist), and one that introduces concepts in Austrian economics to those who are familiar with "mainstream" economics. -- Six 23:59, 12 December 2010 (CST)

Definitely agreed. The wiki itself is meant to be a backbone for educational efforts. One could start a project with a bunch of pages and steal text left and right, concentrating on simple writing. The underlying pages would supply links to more resources and would contain the more difficult and obscure details.

Add another wanted on the heap: a category for reading lists. Pestergaines 09:00, 13 December 2010 (CST)

Repeat a link if already in references?

A minor issue perhaps, but if a link is already used as a reference, is there a working rule of thumb about whether or not to further include it as a separate and distinct link? The question occurred when looking at this entry: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (At this writing, the Attarian work is mentioned twice.) --RayBirks 21:08, 15 December 2010 (CST)

Good catch. In general I think there's no need to link in both places. There may be a few exceptions to the rule; perhaps if the link is essential to the subject it might be permissible to put it in both. For example, if we cite the mises.org pdf of Conceived in Liberty in the Conceived in Liberty article, we'd still want to link the pdf in the external links section. But in this case references only is probably fine. --Forgottenman (talk) 12:05, 16 December 2010 (CST)

Creating a new sub-category

Tried to create a subcategory of Writings by Author|Chodorov, Frank and I don't seem to be doing it correctly. I supplied the new entry Out of Step (book) with the sub-category, thinking I'd end up with a red link to create it, but it's not appearing the way I imagined it. Perhaps someone can enlighten? Thanks in advance. --RayBirks 13:34, 18 December 2010 (CST)

You needed to create a new subcategory by adding the full category name to the Chodorov work: Category:Writings by Frank Chodorov. What you did was simply add the book to Category:Writings by Author—the "|Chodorov, Frank" didn't do anything because that is only used for sorting on the category page. In general, my process for creating a new category is to add a nonexistent category to an article, resulting in a red link. Then click the red link to access the about-to-be-created category page. On that page, add the parent category and create. See Category:Writings by Frank Chodorov to see what I did there. --Forgottenman (talk) 10:54, 20 December 2010 (CST)

Thanks! Will explore more later.  :) --RayBirks 11:19, 20 December 2010 (CST)