Author style guide
This DGF wiki style guide describes the overarching theme of the DGF Wiki. In short, follow the currently accepted DGF wiki page template.
Design Considerations
Wiki self-similar design leads to
- better understanding & more efficient navigation and learning
- quicker wiki development
- more convergent vision of the document, helping to resolve debates.
The goal is to build an accurate, useful, and attractive document.
We will try to follow many conventions of Wikipedia. For example,
- Each time a term is used for the first time on a page, it is linked to the page/section that defines it. The second and later time that term is used, do not link.
- Lengths of pages should be constrained above and below. A page that is too complicated should be summarized and split into multiple pages. A page that is too short is a stub and should be elaborated or deleted and reincorporated in the root page.
We follow Wikipedia’s style guide for three reasons. First, out of respect for the most effective decentralized organization ever created. Second, people are already trained to navigate Wikpedia's page style, so it will lead to greater learning efficiency. Third, if we have an improvement, we should first try to convince Wikipedia to change.
Page Structure
The archetypical design structure for organizing content in a page:
Top:
Short intro
Contents = Links to sections in current page Overview
Bottom:
links to
- Detailed design of this subject
- Applications
- Mathematical formulas related to this subject
- Code related to this subject
- Downloads available for this subject
- See also [internal links]
- Notes [footnotes for this page]
- Citations [auto-generated footnotes with shorthand for the full references below]
- References
Bottom Bottom: smaller font, grey
Members; Contributors’ Guide; general announcements...
Body
Split into 3 sections, based on the information theory triad:
1. Overview/judgements/perceptions/ info storage
Current conclusions on the subject. This comes first, because the wiki is the information storage part of the project.
[Followed by Contents Links]
2. Why?/theory/legislation/thought/ info processing
History
Why it's right
Future
3. Execution/action/ info transmission
Applications
Each of these subjects can be further broken down into subsections along the same lines. If necessary, within the page, but preferably in a linked page for that subject.
Typography
When defining a term, use italics. For example: "The minting ratio determines the proportional number of REP minted to the fee."
Reference style
Articles
Author1 First Name Second Name & Author2 & ... (Date published) "Title", Publisher.
Available at: http://website (Retrieved date: year month day)
Example:
Craig Calcaterra & Wulf Kaal & Vlad Andrei (2018 February 18) "Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and Anonymous Systems", University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-11. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125822 (Retrieved 2023 April 11)
Books
Author1 First Name Second Name & Author2 & ... (Date published) Title, Publisher.
Available at: http://website (Retrieved date: year month day)
Example:
Craig Calcaterra & Wulf Kaal (2021) Decentralization, De Gruyter, pp. 57-59.