Wiki Editing Guidelines

[1604]

Thank you to everyone who contributes their time and effort towards improving the Wiki.

These guidelines are only intended to clarify existing rules, and make them more accessible to everyone.

Please:

• Follow naming conventions and photo guidelines when creating new pages or posting pictures.
• Contribute high quality photographs and reliable information. General guidelines on photo quality are listed here. Information should be factual and not based on assumptions.

Please don't:

• Repeatedly revert someone's edits. Instead, contact @Articulated, @Cappy, @Kevin L or an administrator if a revision you're trying to make is reverted back more than once, or someone is contributing content that doesn't belong.
• Replace photographs for the sake of replacing photographs. Generally, an image should only be replaced by a higher quality image.

We'll reach out if we think your contributions aren't following these guidelines. Multiple or severe infractions could result in loss of editing privileges.

If you have any questions, or feel we missed something, feel free to share your thoughts in this thread. Thanks!

Edited August 11, 2017 by Cappy

[j.p]

It looks like Cappy retired in 2018

[Detroit Diesel 6V92TA]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:15 PM, j.p said:

It looks like Cappy retired in 2018

Yes, but not sure why. I never found out who he was either unfortunately.

[T3G]

Not really the right thread for this, I don't think, but I didn't want to start a whole new thread for such a trivial inquiry:

What would be the preferred way to indicate delivery/in service dates for a vehicle? I didn't want to put everything in the notes section because it seems it would make the notes too cluttered. Wanted to check here before I go and add such information for 200 vehicles. I'm not fully certain I like this look, so if anyone has any guidelines please let me know. Thanks!

[Articulated]

1 hour ago, T3G said:

Not really the right thread for this, I don't think, but I didn't want to start a whole new thread for such a trivial inquiry:

What would be the preferred way to indicate delivery/in service dates for a vehicle? I didn't want to put everything in the notes section because it seems it would make the notes too cluttered. Wanted to check here before I go and add such information for 200 vehicles. I'm not fully certain I like this look, so if anyone has any guidelines please let me know. Thanks!

It's not really a trival inquiry, and Im sure others will want to weigh in with their opinions on the topic - but for one, I certainly appreciate reaching out for info/feedback before proceeding with a major series of edits!

The "Date" column is really only for build dates, like what is shown on the builders plate; other tables label this column more clearly as "Build Date" or "Production Date". The problem with adding additional columns is that it squishes the content in the remaining columns; so there is a practical limit to how much data some columns can handle/display. That's kind of why most systems have their rosters formatted to put the delivery and/or in-service dates in the Notes column, where there is more room to provide additional details and explanation. I would recommend sticking with the Notes column, perhaps arranged in chronological order (that would keep delivery notes organized/consistent at the top).

[Thomasw]

I would like to hear peoples opinion on something that bothers me about the wiki which is the topic of bullet points. I understand that there is a archaic rule where, if there is only one line of text there should be no bullet points. Personally I find this to be a very messy practice especially for pages with a lot of units with information in the notes section. I am of the opinion that any addition to the notes column should have a bullet point regardless on the number of lines as I find it looks less messy.

As an example here is the MTR page which I think looks quite messy with the mix of bullet points and non-bullet points. 

I find that the following iteration looks much cleaner 

 

I would love to hear everyone input, for or against. Thanks!

[School Bus 101]

3 hours ago, Thomasw said:

I would like to hear peoples opinion on something that bothers me about the wiki which is the topic of bullet points. I understand that there is a archaic rule where, if there is only one line of text there should be no bullet points. Personally I find this to be a very messy practice especially for pages with a lot of units with information in the notes section. I am of the opinion that any addition to the notes column should have a bullet point regardless on the number of lines as I find it looks less messy.

As an example here is the MTR page which I think looks quite messy with the mix of bullet points and non-bullet points. 

I find that the following iteration looks much cleaner 

 

I would love to hear everyone input, for or against. Thanks!

Personally, whenever I add in an additional note(s), I always use bullet points for each line, regardless if there is one or several lines. Having some notes with bullet points, and others without would look very messy in my opinion.

[Thomasw]

2 hours ago, School Bus 101 said:

Personally, whenever I add in an additional note(s), I always use bullet points for each line, regardless if there is one or several lines. Having some notes with bullet points, and others without would look very messy in my opinion.

I will be honest, so do I, but some wiki editors seem to swoop in after all my edits with the sole purpose of removing my bullet points...

[wt_enthusiast_photos]

14 hours ago, Thomasw said:

I will be honest, so do I, but some wiki editors seem to swoop in after all my edits with the sole purpose of removing my bullet points...

That’s happened to me before but I just added them back

[Thomasw]

4 hours ago, wt_enthusiast_photos said:

That’s happened to me before but I just added them back

Haha, not sure if that's the best solution moving forward but I can't say I've never done that. 

It would be nice for the moderators to pitch in on this discussion so that we can all agree on some black and white rule moving forward.

[hp2ena]

Hi everyone, does CPTDB have a style guide as to how content on the wiki is written and cited? Like, conventions for dates, references, etc? I can't seem to find anything on the wiki. Thanks!

[Articulated]

58 minutes ago, hp2ena said:

Hi everyone, does CPTDB have a style guide as to how content on the wiki is written and cited? Like, conventions for dates, references, etc? I can't seem to find anything on the wiki. Thanks!

There is no formalized "style guide" for the CPTDB Wiki. However, there are a number of style rules within the Naming Conventions, and a variety of other commonly-accepted formatting requirements, a lot of which have not been formally written down. The standardization example page is a good example of this as well.

[Dave Mackey]

On 9/18/2024 at 11:53 AM, wt_enthusiast_photos said:

That’s happened to me before but I just added them back

Bullets are only used when there is more than one item in a notes box. It's in the editing guidelines for rosters, if I remember correctly.

[ns8401]

3 hours ago, Dave Mackey said:

Bullets are only used when there is more than one item in a notes box. It's in the editing guidelines for rosters, if I remember correctly.

I don’t doubt that… but for some reason I like seeing them used to identify notes regardless of singular or multiple myself. Somehow it looks cleaner. I don’t make the rules though. 

[wt_enthusiast_photos]

On 12/13/2024 at 6:37 PM, ns8401 said:

I don’t doubt that… but for some reason I like seeing them used to identify notes regardless of singular or multiple myself. Somehow it looks cleaner. I don’t make the rules though. 

I agree. Many other Editors have been doing it as well. So I was fallowing suit and admins haven't said a thing about it. So meaning it's okay. Or they do not care enough if they are used or not 

[Articulated]

On previous occasions when I've tried to enforce the agreed-upon styling formats I've been called a Nazi and control freak by certain people; so at this point I'd rather let discussions like this form naturally rather than be seen as "imposing my will" upon the Wiki.

For bullets in the notes column, personally I have no significant preference towards using bullets or not when a table is comprised solely of single items. I recall one particular user being rather adamant about not using bullets for single notes, so that is why that formatting started to become common. And not having bullets saves a little bit of space in the cell. However, it ends up creating a sawtooth pattern if in the same table some cells with multiple items use bullets while others with single items are not using bullets.

So if I can suggest the following formatting rules for the Notes columns:

• Always the right-most column
• Always left-justified
• All cells use the same choice for bullets (either all cells use bullets, or if all Notes entries are single-items than no bullets may be allowed at editors' discretion)

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?

[Transit Spotlight]

2 hours ago, Articulated said:

So if I can suggest the following formatting rules for the Notes columns:

• Always the right-most column
• Always left-justified
• All cells use the same choice for bullets (either all cells use bullets, or if all Notes entries are single-items than no bullets may be allowed at editors' discretion)

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?

I agree with these formatting rules. 

[LilianaUwU]

I'd rather use bullets for all of the notes for consistency, but I don't mind if they're not there.

[19adam99]

I've always been anti-bullet point on single entries, especially when the 'note' is a lone reference tag, which seems to be something that happens more on VIN pages.

I could get behind a something like, if the table has nothing but single notes, no bullet points, but once there's one entry with two notes, everything gains a bullet point for consistency.

Typing a few extra asterisks isn't going to add a lot of extra work, I would know since myself & TechSpotlight have been sifting through VIN pages for a number of months now, transferring a neverending list of entries. 

I'm cool with whatever the community decides, as long as it's a community decision.

[wt_enthusiast_photos]

On 12/13/2024 at 3:33 PM, Dave Mackey said:

Bullets are only used when there is more than one item in a notes box. It's in the editing guidelines for rosters, if I remember correctly.

Look how crappy this looks

compared to. It looks more organized. 

[Thomasw]

I'm glad this discussion has been revived. I completely agree and stand behind the idea of no bullet points if an entire page is comprised of notes with only one entry but if there are more than one entry then standardize the entire table with bullet points. 

[T3G]

15 hours ago, wt_enthusiast_photos said:

Look how crappy this looks

 

compared to. It looks more organized. 
 

Fully agreed. The mix of bullet points vs. not looks incredibly unprofessional and makeshift.

[T3G]

Question on style editing guidelines: I've been going through various TTC articles on the wiki with the aim of making changes to clean up typos, sloppy quality writing, and lack of proof reading*, and I wanted to know whether there is an established guideline on whether active vehicle descriptions should be written in present tense or past tense. I personally favour the latter, as it is not factually inaccurate to say that a vehicle WAS specified with XYZ features, and the consequences of the present tense writing mean that when a series of vehicle is retired, editors don't always go through the article and make changes to the tense, the result of which you could be reading about a fully extinct class of bus being written about as though it still exists. Thoughts?

* A recent bugbear on this account would be the changes made to the article for the TTC's OG hybrids, whereby every single unit that still survives was indicated as being equipped, from 2021-2025, not with Wi-Fi, but with "wifi". It's a minor issue, and if it was written in casual conversation I wouldn't say anything, but if the aim of this project is to create something that looks professional, then it would be nice to take care to stylize the feature according to its official name. As well, on most pages that describe units that were chosen for the VISION pilot project, units are indicated as being chosen "in Summer 2016" and being removed from service "until Summer 2018", another form of sloppy writing. There's tons of little issues like this all over the site. I have no issue with going through pages like this when I find them and changing the style of the writing, but it would be nice if some care was given to presentation before new information is put in in the first place.

 

[ns8401]

7 minutes ago, T3G said:

Question on style editing guidelines: I've been going through various TTC articles on the wiki with the aim of making changes to clean up typos, sloppy quality writing, and lack of proof reading*, and I wanted to know whether there is an established guideline on whether active vehicle descriptions should be written in present tense or past tense. I personally favour the latter, as it is not factually inaccurate to say that a vehicle WAS specified with XYZ features, and the consequences of the present tense writing mean that when a series of vehicle is retired, editors don't always go through the article and make changes to the tense, the result of which you could be reading about a fully extinct class of bus being written about as though it still exists. Thoughts?

* A recent bugbear on this account would be the changes made to the article for the TTC's OG hybrids, whereby every single unit that still survives was indicated as being equipped, from 2021-2025, not with Wi-Fi, but with "wifi". It's a minor issue, and if it was written in casual conversation I wouldn't say anything, but if the aim of this project is to create something that looks professional, then it would be nice to take care to stylize the feature according to its official name. As well, on most pages that describe units that were chosen for the VISION pilot project, units are indicated as being chosen "in Summer 2016" and being removed from service "until Summer 2018", another form of sloppy writing. There's tons of little issues like this all over the site. I have no issue with going through pages like this when I find them and changing the style of the writing, but it would be nice if some care was given to presentation before new information is put in in the first place.

 

To some degree this is what happens when folks who don’t have professional experience writing these sorts of things are doing it. Realistically this is a collaborative effort and I think we shouldn’t get bogged down in whether what already is there looks perfect or not but rather in improving the articles and refining them. They will always be living, breathing documents. We all need to work together to improve it and try not to be upset if someone else didn’t get it right. Having the knowledge correctly written down even if it isn’t formatted correctly the first time is still better than if nobody bothered to share it in the first place. People should more than thrilled to go fix formatting for 10 minutes if somebody just uploaded a wealth of information. 

[KawarthaTransiteer]

Curious to know if there is a consensus on image names for vehicles which share the same fleet number as another/a previous vehicle, as some agencies and operators recycle fleet numbers for different vehicles.

• An example would for GO Transit's railcars and buses, since both are numbered in the 2000-series. I know that some images are named following the current photo guidelines, with separate suffixes for each photo (e.g. there is a photo of D4500CT 2609 named GO Transit 2609-a.jpg, and a picture of BiLevel coach 2609 named GO Transit 2609-b.jpg).
• Another example would be for the TTC, with vehicles numbered in the 9400-series. There is a picture of Orion V 9400 named Toronto Transit Commission 9400-a.jpg, and pictures of XDE60 9400 are named Toronto Transit Commission 9400-b.jpg and Toronto Transit Commission 9400-c.jpg.

Personally I don't find the current method of using different suffixes adequate, as I don't think it differentiates between different vehicles well. I know that this is a slight annoyance for me when I'm going through images of vehicles for some operators on the Wiki. I couldn't necessarily find anything existing for this, so I thought up the following options for these situations:

• In cases where two different vehicles have the same fleet number concurrently, a descriptor word would be used to differentiate between each vehicle. For the GO Transit example above, perhaps the D4500CT picture would be named GO Transit bus 2609-a.jpg, while the railcar would be named GO Transit railcar 2609-a.jpg. Descriptor words would have to be agreed on on an agency-by-agency basis.
• In cases where a vehicle shares the same fleet number as a previous vehicle, the vehicle year could be added. For the TTC examples above, the Orion V picture would be named Toronto Transit Commission 9400 (1996)-a.jpg, and the XDE60 pictures would be named Toronto Transit Commission 9400 (2023)-a.jpg. That year could be either model, build, or order year; if a year is unknown, maybe the vehicle model could be used instead (i.e. Toronto Transit Commission 9400 (XDE60)-a.jpg), or even (2nd), (3rd), etc could be used.

As it's impossible to anticipate fleet numbers being reused in the future, I propose that the year/model vehicle would only be added for the second (or third, etc.) iteration of that particular fleet number. Additionally, I think that there should be an order of preference for it considering some vehicles do have separate model, build, and order years. From most to least preferred I was thinking the order could be order year, build year, model year, vehicle model, then a (2nd).

Additionally as there undoubtedly are hundreds of photos that fall into the above situations, my proposals would mainly be followed for new pictures only.

I'd like to know others' thoughts and opinions about this.