Policies

From the LDC Language Resource Wiki

Latest revision as of 19:44, 19 May 2011

(Mamandel 23:17, 28 April 2010 (UTC))

Content

This is a publicly accessible research resource, not a listserver or debating forum. Content should be accurate, objective, useful, and civil. An entry may say

Jones's (1997) brief treatment of honorifics differs from the other analyses.

but not

*Jones's (1997) treatment of honorifics is inadequate and inaccurate.

Who can add to the wiki

Anyone with web access can read the wiki. But because this is an academic resource, only people we have approved and registered as editors can edit the content pages.

Each article page has a Talk (aka Discussion) page associated with it. These pages are open for anyone to discuss the content of the articles (TBD 20:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)). As an example, I've put the basics of using talk pages on this page's talk page in an appropriately titled section.

The talk pages are not moderated, and the LDC is not responsible for their content.

Organization

Each language included in this wiki has its own namespace and category. The two serve different purposes:

Namespaces

Namespaces are a way of controlling the file structure of the wiki, to permit editorial access on a language-by-language basis. For example, all pages dealing just with Tamil belong in the Tamil namespace. At the moment (28 April 2010) there are two such pages:

• Tamil/Tamil: the main page about Tamil
  (URL: http://lrwiki.ldc.upenn.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Tamil/Tamil)
• Tamil/Nonstandard encodings: a list of nonstandard encodings and fonts specific to Tamil. This list is too long to fit comfortably in the Encodings section of the main Tamil page, so that section contains a brief subsection with a link to the list page.
  (URL: http://lrwiki.ldc.upenn.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Tamil/Nonstandard_encodings)

We use namespaces to control administrative rights on a per language basis, and possibly later by subtopics. As the wiki develops, a contributor might expand the present section on Tamil lexicon resources and move it to a new page, Tamil/Lexicon, with a link from the main Tamil page. Still later there could be entries treating specialized vocabulary resources in detail:

• Tamil/Tamil: the main page for the language, also accessible as simply Tamil
• Tamil/Lexicon
  • Tamil/Lexicon/Technical word lists
  • Tamil/Lexicon/Names

and so on.

Categories

Categories are a way of organizing access to the content of the wiki, to help users find what they are looking for. Each language listed on this wiki has its own category, with the same name as the language. Every page dealing specifically with that language is in the language's category (as well as being in its namespace), but there are pages that are relevant to several but not all languages. For example, ISCII is an eight-bit encoding system designed to allow encoding of many Indian languages before Unicode came into general use. So our ISCII page is not in any language's namespace, but it is in several language categories.

Pages

As a wiki is something like an encyclopedia, the units of content are often referred to as "entries", as well as "pages" in the usual web sense. But "entry" could also refer to a single resource listing; and a wiki has other web pages than its content proper, such as (in one way) this Policy page, and (in another way) the Talk pages as well as other special pages. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk_pages.

Editing the wiki

See How to edit wiki pages, which is not just about how to this or that, but includes policies as well: manner as well as means.