A rhetoric of wiki

• will provide style guides for writers, presenting conventions that writers may use to guide their work, to suggest what to do, how to act, and what's needed next.

this is part of how ComposingProcessesEvolveFromInside the wiki.

Many wikis provide a set of pages to help new writers learn the ropes of the wiki - both the technical and the cultural ins and outs - and to remind the more experienced writers. The current pages tend to include

• a StyleGuide?, giving guidelines on writing style and conventions of usage
• TextFormattingRules? covering coding
• a SandBox?: a page for writers to practice on safely
• behavior guides, or CollaborationConventions?, or a page outlining being a good wiki citizen. For instance, Wiki:GoodWikiCitizen - on WikiWikiWeb? lists suggestions for respect, how to handle silent corrections, how to edit.
• a ToDo page, listing pages that need to be created
• WikiName? page - a page identifying the contributer. Writers sign their ThreadMode? contributions with their WikiName?

=== page style guides === I haven't seen these used much yet, but I would suggest they will appear. Page layout guides will help writers start and develop pages by establishing conventions for using placement on the page and page elements (headings, horizontal rules).

Page style guides can have a heuristic function: By suggesting what goes where, they can suggest what to do next.

WardsWiki? has a style guide to the page [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiPageLayout Wiki Page Layout]. Wiki Page Layout addresses some of the functional page layout conventions that have developed over the years.

=== page pattern guides === Again, I would expect to see page pattern guides, written to aide refactoring, to appear as wiki rhetoric evolves. /PagePatterns is one sketch.

see also [http://199.17.178.148/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?WikiAsCulture Wiki As Culture]