ProleWiki editorial guidelines

We have editorial conventions that help maintain a consistent style throughout the whole wiki. This discusses mainly form, not content. The latter must follow ProleWiki's principles.

Don't forget that the best way to learn how we can maintain a consistent style is by looking at how other articles are built. You can suggest changes in the discussion page.

Content pages

ProleWiki currently does not favor any regional variant of English spelling, so do not make edits just to change spellings to a certain country's variants.

Title

• Use sentence case in the title of our articles except in the case for proper nouns (only the first word of a sentence and proper nouns are capitalized).

  The economic basis of the withering away of the state (do)
  The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State (don't)

• For countries, use the official state's name when titling a page. For example, our page is titled Russian Federation, with Russia redirecting there as the Federation is the most current incarnation of what is called Russia. Likewise, China redirects to the People's Republic of China. This applies to both sovereign states (countries) and divisions within a country.
  • For former countries and states, include the years it existed in parentheses after the official name and connect the years with an en dash (–), not a hyphen (-). For example, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991).
    • If a country began and ended before the Common Era, use BCE only in the second year: Roman Republic (509–27 BCE). If a country begin before the Common Era and ended during it, use BCE for the first year and CE for the second: Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE).
• For organizations, use the full official name and do not abbreviate. Organizations commonly known by a non-English name or abbreviation should use the English translation in the title (Islamic Resistance Movement instead of the Arabic acronym Hamas).
• For people, use the most common name using the Latin alphabet, but remaining in the original language. See for example Deng Xiaoping (pinyin), Maximilien de Robespierre (not the entire name but the most common one), Hồ Chí Minh (with Vietnamese diacritics), Muammar Gaddafi (common transliteration from the original Arabic). Create redirects as needed to cover all possible spellings you can think of as well as alternate names.
  • Transgender people should use their chosen names for the title and have a redirect from the dead name. The dead name should not be mentioned in the main page.
  • Hungarian and Japanese names should be written in their native order, which puts the family name first and given name second like Chinese and Korean names do. Write Abe Shinzō instead of Shinzō Abe, for example.
  • For monarchs, treat the dynasty name as their family name and add a regnal number in Roman numerals between their first and last name if necessary. For example, Elizabeth II Windsor. For Chinese emperors, the family name of dynasty members is usually different from the name of the dynasty they ruled. For example, all Qing emperors had the clan name Aisin-Gioro, as in Aisin-Gioro Puyi.
  • For non-royalty with feudal titles, do not include the rank in their name but do include the location after a preposition from the original language: for example, Otto von Bismarck (Bismarck is from the title Prince of Bismarck and is not a surname).
• Be as specific as needed. For instance, the Russian revolution can mean both the 1905 Russian bourgeois revolution or the 1917 Russian socialist revolution. In this case, a title which already disambiguates this difference is recommended.

Body

Lead

In the introductory paragraph (lead) of an article, use bold for when the subject of the article or any synonyms are first mentioned. This ensures the subject of the article is defined more clearly.

Historical materialism

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia

Historical materialism broadly refers to applying the philosophy of dialectical materialism to the study of social life.

If there are multiple names of the subject or acronyms, bold those too on their first mention. For people, begin with their full official name and put a more common name later if necessary. The official name does not have to be the same as the birth name or legal name. Put their lifespan in parentheses immediately after the first name listed if they are dead, or their birth date only if they are still alive.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin... Miguel Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel y Bermúdez (born 20 April 1960) ...

Bluelinking and redlinking

• Bluelinking: Blue links made to other articles should be made only once, when they are first introduced in the article. This is to prevent readers from getting distracted by excessive use of blue links. Blue links can also be repeated inside infoboxes (appearing once in the infobox, and once in the body). (Note how the second mention of Marxist-Leninist is not linked in the example)

ProleWiki is a Marxist–Leninist encyclopedia founded in September 2020 aiming to make information accessible to revolutionaries and those who wish to study revolutionary theory. We stand for the principles of anti-imperialism and we aim to combat the liberal hegemony in Western society by presenting a Marxist-Leninist understanding of political economy.

• Blue links should also strictly be made in body text, never in headings. This is for readability reasons and coherence.
• Make sure links are specific enough and avoid linking to disambiguation pages. Linking to abbreviations is fine (for example, DPRK redirects to Democratic People's Republic of Korea), but generic links such as Red Scare or Russian revolution will not link to the intended page.
• External links should not be used in the main body. If you need to use an external link as reference, then use it as citation. You can also create an "External links" section at the bottom and put external sources there.

In-text citations

• Avoid placing a citation after a space

  Jeff Bezos is a parasite.^[1] (do)
  Jeff Bezos is a parasite. ^[1] (don't)

• Avoid placing a citation before punctuation

  Without revolutionary theory,^[1] there can be no revolutionary movement.^[2] (do)
  Without revolutionary theory^[1], there can be no revolutionary movement^[2]. (don't)

Naming conventions

When referring to someone with an abbreviated name, generally use their surname; for example, when not using Friedrich Engels's full name, say 'Engels' instead of 'Friedrich.' However, Vietnamese names are an exception and use the second (given) name. Mongolian names only have a patronymic or matronymic and then personal name with no surname, and Icelandic names have a given name and then patronymic. In both cases, the given name should be used.

References

Use our citation template for books and scientific articles, and the web citation template for material usually available online or periodicals, newspapers, etc. There is a separate citation template for videos on YouTube or similar platforms. These options are available through Visual Editor.

When citing a work that is in our library, you do not need to add a link under the URL section, although you may add extra links under the MIA, PDF, or Libgen parameters. The template will automatically link to the work in our library.

Order of final headings

The end of a page must always follow this order in its headings:

• See also [links to other internal pages]
• Further reading [links to books or articles in the library]
• External links [links to outside pages]
• Notes
• References

Library

It was decided that when importing library works, we will not remove sections from the source or edit sentences in other ways. However, it was decided that we are allowed to add a foreword of our own as well as our own footnotes (called annotations) like so:

Library work infobox

• Books should all contain the Template:Library work infobox (call it with two curly brackets {{ }} ). The infobox should include at least the work's title, author, publication year and the source (either link to PDF or text or "X publisher edition" if taken from paper copy). It will automatically retitle the page according to the first two parameters. Ideally, the infobox should use as many parameters as possible.

Library foreword

• We can add our own foreword to contextualize the text, explain why the reader should read it, explain that we've added our own footnotes but have not removed anything from the text.
• Use the Template:Foreword and populate the parameters, it will create the heading itself as well as any necessary styling.
• Remember that your foreword represents ProleWiki as a whole.
• If the original book also contained a foreword, put the original after the ProleWiki foreword.

Library notes and annotations

• For notes included in the original publication or source, add a basic citation (Ctrl+Shift+K) and set its group to the chapter number followed by a period or leave it blank for shorter works.
• For new ProleWiki annotations, add a basic citation and put it in the ProleWiki X. group like this
  • Replace X with the chapter number. Where you want to start counting is up to you when importing a work.
• Preferably add ProleWiki annotations at the end of a paragraph.
• Use sparingly, only to add corrections or important context not provided in the foreword or original notes.
  • Correcting typos and spelling errors does not require annotations, but if you are not sure, check your proposed corrections with the editorship. They may sometimes look like typos but are actually an accepted word or an alternative correct spelling.
• Editors without the trusted role should confirm their footnotes with the trusted editors before saving them on a page.
• References list should be at the end of the chapter or the end of the text, as a subheading nested under the editor's notes, and called "ProleWiki annotations." Example:

Modernization of texts

Spelling variations of proper nouns

If a library work contains an outdated spelling or Romanization of a place name or personal name, add the modern spelling in brackets afterwards:

In December 1905 a Bolshevik Conference was held in Tammerfors [Tampere], Finland. (History of the Communist party of the Soviet Union)

However, if the same spelling is used multiple times, only add the modern spelling the first time and leave it unchanged the other times:

After Ungern's defeat, the Chinese general Chang Tso-lin [Zhang Zuolin] endeavoured, with the help of Japanese imperialists, to throttle the people's revolution in Mongolia and bring the latter under his control. On July 1, 1921, a meeting organized by Chang Tso-lin was held in Mukden which was attended by representatives of the feudal nobility of Inner and Outer Mongolia. At the meeting plans were discussed for seizing Outer Mongolia; Chang Tso-lin made active preparations for a march on Urga [Örgöö]. (History of the Mongolian People's Republic)

Units of measurement

If a library work contains non-metric units of measurement, add the metric equivalent in brackets afterwards. For example:

It should be mentioned that in 1937 the collective farms alone (without the state farms) produced a marketable surplus of over 1,700,000,000 poods [28,000,000 tonnes] of grain, which was at least 400,000,000 poods [6,600,000 tonnes] more than the landlords, kulaks and peasants together marketed in 1913. (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)

In this example, the pood is a traditional Slavic unit of weight equal to 16.38 kg.

Essays

Essays have much less strict guidelines and can be organized in any way editors want as long as they follow our principles.

Common mistakes

Dashes and hyphens

• Use - for hyphenated words using a prefix such as anarcho-communism and for subtraction or negative numbers in math.
• Use – for connecting numbers (including years) or for connecting full words (not prefixes) such as Marxism–Leninism.
• Use — for a pause in a sentence or connecting groups of more than one word.

Forgetting to sort pages

• When creating a new page, make sure you sort it properly. Pages about individuals should be sorted based on their surname and then given (or chosen) name unless there is no surname. If this does not match the order in the title page, set the page to sort as surname, forename. In the source editor, add {{DEFAULTSORT:surname, forename}} to the bottom of the page. In the visual editor, go to options --> categories and add this order under "Sort this page by default as."

See also

• ProleWiki's code of conduct
• ProleWiki's principles
• Editor onboarding