Policies and Guidelines for Editors

Contributions by members of the mathematical community are much appreciated. When making changes to the text please keep in mind that this text is being used in the classroom. Major reorganizations without discussion could result in problems in the classroom.

This page has a number of procedures and guidelines that keep the wiki working well. It's a lot of stuff. Don't let it scare you off - please contribute!

Editing Math & the Art of M.C. Escher

Editor Help

Help for editors (and readers) is available via the Help item in the navigation menu on the left of the page. It goes to Help:Contents, which has links to general help for all MediaWiki users, as well as the Style Guide. If you would like to practice making changes, consider using your personal user page, e.g. User:Bryan. You always have a link to your user page at the top of your window, when logged in.

Style Guide

All new editors should carefully read the Style Guide, and refer back to it when needed. The Style Guide contains conventions specific to the EscherWiki which all editors should follow to keep the EscherWiki uniform.

Please Contribute

Don't hesitate to fix or add new content. MediaWiki keeps track of all changes and all previous versions, and there is a handy Special:RecentChanges page as well. Please remember to write a short summary of your changes in the summary box below the edit window.

Preview Before Save

To avoid having lots of minor edits, remember to preview your changes before saving them. It's also better to make one large change as one large change rather than a series of small edits.

Discussion Pages

Every content page of the wiki has (or can have) an associated discussion page, for example this page has Talk:Policies and Guidelines for Editors. These Talk pages are used to discuss potential changes or air other questions about the corresponding content page. Please sign your contributions with ~~~~, which will be automatically converted into your name and a timestamp.

Other guidelines

Instructor resources

Many instructor tips and notes are simply placed on the discussion page for the corresponding content page. Students can, but probably won't view these discussion pages. For material that must not be viewed by students (e.g. Solutions to Exercises), use the "Instructor" namespace. Pages that have names beginning "Instructor:" are only visible to EscherWiki editors, i.e. not students.

Non-content pages

If you teach a course using the EscherWiki, you may want to create pages which are only relevant to your course, for example homework assignments, syllabi, and course notes. These pages should go into the "Course" namespace, which simply means their names should begin with "Course:". It is also suggested that you use the instructor name and possibly semester to avoid name conflicts, for example Course:SLU MATH 124: Math and Escher - Fall 2007 - Dr. Anneke Bart

Exercises

When creating new exercises, please add them to the bottom of the page so that numbering is not disturbed. Exercise renumbering can occur, but only during periods when a course is not actively using them. Consider adding answers to the appropriate solutions page. Be aware that students do not have access to the solution pages, and if you choose to distrubute solutions please do not do so electronically.

Illustration Rights

This wiki has permission from Cordon Art to use the work of M.C. Escher. Ideally, all other illustrations should be free of licensing restrictions. Realistically, as this wiki is developed that's not always the case. Please, if you upload a new illustration or photo, add a comment on the image page describing the source so that at some point in the future the licensing can be determined. Better still, if you created the content, clearly state that it is public domain or place it on Wikimedia Commons with an appropriate license. Wikimedia Commons is also an excellent source of free use images.