GRWiki Guidelines

This page provides guidelines on GRWiki content. These are things to consider, not rigid rules.

Something is usually better than nothing.
Perfectionism is harmful.
It's ok to click "Save changes" when things aren't perfect.
We can improve things later.
Collaborate freely - Feel free to improve text added by other people. If something is confusing, make it clear. If you're unsure, raise the question on the Talk/Discussion page.
We encourage helpful comments in the change summary – especially when it's not clear why a change was made. :-)

Page Text

Text should be in the style of an encyclopedia. Avoid unattributed text in the first person.

In general, don't worry about style or formatting issues too much. We really appreciate good technical input in any form, and will help with formatting if needed.

Capitalization

In general we are aligning with relevant conventions in Wikipedia. Inter alia, we don't capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name. Again, don't worry about style too much – we need your technical input first and foremost, the admins and regulars will help with formatting and style.

Units

We aren't rigid about imperial units versus metric, e.g., kg versus lb. Use one, or the other, or both. On GRwiki, we use a space between the number and the unit. It's best to use a non-breaking space.

Talk/Discussion Pages

If you have any doubt about a change that you want to make, or a change that somebody else made, feel free to edit the associated Talk/Discussion page (the "Discussion" link at the upper left of each page). GRwiki administrators monitor those pages and will respond to questions. For example, if you want to start a new category but aren't sure, feel free to edit the Talk/Discussion page.

Please sign your contributions on discussion pages at the end of your text - you can simply type four tildes (~~~~) to do so. Using colons (: your reply, :: reply to your reply) helps making the discussions more readable.

It's a good idea to keep an eye on the "Recent changes" page so you can see the changes others are making to the wiki.

Quotes

If you quote a person or a document, make that clear by saying who/what is being quoted, and using <blockquote>...</blockquote> tags.

It's fine to have text in the first person inside of an attributed quote.

Attribution

Sometimes another website has the perfect photo, or perfect document, or perfect table of data that's not available elsewhere. In those cases, it is fine to link to the external resource from a GRWiki article.

But we want GRWiki to last for a long time, so it is good to make a local copy if possible, in case the external website (or just that resource) disappears.

One way to do this is to make a copy of the resource, but to comment out the link to the local copy, and have the active link go to the external site. If the external site disappears, we can uncomment the local link and comment the external link.

Links

Internal links are helpful. When another instrument is mentioned in a page, make that a link in case readers want to explore that connection.

Document Scans

Favor any scan over no scan. The presence of free scans of manuals and other documentation is hugely important. In many cases the availability of a free scan makes the difference between an instrument being put in the trash versus being restored.

Favor high quality over small file size. What seems like a big file today will not seem so big in ten years.

Favor one-up (one document page per PDF page).

When scanning a document, best quality is obtained by removing the binding and scanning the pages flat.

Beware of software that claims to provide automatic image enhancement for scans. Automatic enhancement often corrupts the scan in ways that are hard to notice until later.
Recommendation: Turn off all processing except for OCR. Always keep the raw scan in case it needs to be reprocessed for whatever reason. Maybe in twenty years, the automatic enhancement software will be reliable.

The eventual goal is for all PDFs on GRWiki to be text-searchable. If a PDF isn't already text-searchable, add the "Needs OCR" category tag to the file page.

It is fine to upload scans that other people made for free distribution. Don't upload scans from companies like Artek, where the scan was done to make money.

Rather than linking to a document on a remote site, prefer to upload of copy of the document to GRWiki. Too often, the remote site disappears and we end up with broken links and no way to access the document.

Strongly prefer PDF files with password protection completely turned off. QPDF is useful for removing encryption and thereby also clearing the various print/copy permission flags. A useful online alternative is https://pdf.io/unlock/

Photos

Any photo is better than no photo. Prefer high-resolution, in-focus photos. When photographing an instrument, it's good to also get internal photos.

Don't use photos from other websites if you think it will upset the owner of the photo.

Photo files in GRWiki

File names should be related to the subject of the photo.

Cameras generate semi-arbitrary filenames. Those should be replaced with more meaningful names before the files are uploaded. The filename extension should be lowercase.

For example, rename "IMG_143721.JPG" to "gr_1657_transformer.jpg".

When uploading a file, the name may get changed slightly by the wiki system. The text after the "File:" on the upload page (not the URL bar in the browser) is the name you should use when referring to the files.

Mostly, GRWiki refers to images inside of gallery blocks. When in doubt, look at how the markup is done on other pages.

Taking your own photos

Prefer photos with low noise (without artificial denoising). High noise often comes from having inadequate light and therefore needing high ISO.

Avoid geometric distortion (like taking a front panel shot from above, or a close-up taken with a wide-angle lens), and trim excessive unrelated background. Front panels look better shot from a few meters away using a telephoto lens/focal length.

Prefer diffused lighting (no hard shadows), natural color balance, and good color rendition. Good color rendition often comes from having minimal glare, which often comes from diffused lighting.

Using the in-camera flash head-on usually results in high glare, hard shadows, and poor color rendition, and should be avoided.

Indirect flash (e.g. via a white ceiling, to your rear) provides uniform, soft lighting. See e.g. this tutorial video (TL;DR: here's the crucial bit). In a pinch, use a home-made retroreflector on the in-camera flash, e.g. like this. Manually setting a high flash exposure (+2 or +3 is not unusual on rear-bounce) and using a high f stop helps put a large part of the image in focus.

Taking photos outside on an overcast but reasonably bright day can work too, but since you can't easily control ambient light intensity, this is tricky when parts of the instrument that emit light need to be in the photo. It's hard to get the right balance of ambient light and emitted light.