Whenever you have a lot of different people working on a project together, there need to be some basic rules or guidelines to keep everyone on the same page. This page covers the basics of what Torontopedia Etiquette is

Humour

Humour is encouraged. That being said, we also want to be the 'Torontonian's guide to Toronto". There is a balance somewhere in there, God Alone knows if we'll ever find it. When in doubt, make the joke anyway, and someone will let you know if it's out of line.

Commenting on Edits

Always supply a comment to describe what change you made to a page, even if the comment length is longer than the change itself. The comments summarize the changes and can be examined in the change-log for a page. It is much easier to find a specific change (a fictional example might be the deletion of the website for a business) if the change log included a comment that indicated that specific change. Include minor changes in comments so the search for a specific alteration can skip those entries.

Fact and Opinion

Separate fact and opinion. This seems to be more of an issue on pages about businesses where an author will praise or disparage an establishment based on their own opinions. Facts include things like location, decor, and prices — try to keep the factual part of a description bias-free, somewhat positive, or at least friendly. Opinions include the quality of services, details of an individual visit, or basically anything where another individual might have an entirely different experience. Opinions are best expressed in a Comment. Feel free to add a Comment block to the page if it's lacking one.

Talk, Talk Talk

Feel free to edit anything at will, but you have to realize that the 'revert' option is easy to use, so you should comment on edits if you feel they need to be justified.

If you see something of opinion you disagree with, comment on it in the Talk section before you just edit or edit it then leave a comment. There is nothing worse than seeing something you saw as OK changed, and not understanding why someone had a problem with the sentence or paragraph.

Editing to Add More Information

Edit pages to add more information rather than remove information. If you find a factual error, you may wish to note it as a misconception and explain why it's wrong rather than just deleting it. Avoid removing facts just to parallel the structure of other pages — start updating the other pages instead. In cases where a page needs to be cleaned up, try to move whole sentences and paragraphs instead of rephrasing: you may miss a piece of information that was important to someone else and it will seem like you arbitrarily deleted it.

NPOV

Neutral Point of View is often abbrivated to NPOV. There are different meanings to this abbreviation on different wikis, and in newspapers or other media. In our case the section Fact and Opinion above covers out needs pretty well. As the wiki expands, and more people join, we may need to expand the definition, but things have gone well so far.

Editing Comments

One of the formerly "unspoken rules" of Torontopedia is that each user's comments are their own. Nobody else should edit those comments. If you disagree with an opinion expressed in a comment, just add a comment with your own opinion. This of course implies that it is also inappropriate to edit other users' comments for grammar, spelling, etc. The only acceptable edit to someone else's comment is to "wikify" page names if another page was mentioned in the comment. This enhances the interconnectedness of the wiki. Malicious editing of other users' comments is potentially a bannable offense.

Editing your own page

Torontopedia has 'user pages' (currently just the username) for users to have a page about themselves where they put information. For users that are a 'public figure' or public figures that are NOT users, it's generally good form to not edit your own page. In the near future, there will be a Users section for wiki users, separate from the please-don't-edit-about-yourself 'person' page. If you are a user, and a moderately public person, please put your "user" page as "User/WikiUserName", and leave the Your Name (With Spaces) page alone.

We don't have an official policy, but we will do allow contributors to remove/close pages for people if they are not reasonably a 'public' figure (ie, not in the news, no newspaper article on them, not the head of a community group, company, etc) if they are asked. For public figures, the page usually end up staying after a discussion.