Talk:Beginners Guide

Headings

I don't think we really want to encourage people to use Level 0 headings (single equals sign) at the tops of their pages. Generally, Level 0 headings aren't even mentioned to beginners as they provide the same style as the page title. They were not meant to be used for your average article. ("Start with 2 equals signs not 1 because 1 creates H1 tags which should be reserved for page title."[1]) The page title is always visible, so generally, all you need is a subheading, levels 1 and higher. See: Wikipedia:Cheatsheet, Wikipedia:Tutorial (Formatting), Wikipedia:How to edit a page (Note: MediaWiki's more technical documentation refers to headings marked by a single equals sign as Level 1 headings matching the underlying HTML, in contrast to Wikipedia's convention which I have used here.)

The only reason to use a level 0 heading is possibly to provide a second main title. This always looks less than entirely pleasing aesthetically, but sometimes might be conceded to be useful. This article, for example, uses the Level 0 heading to provide a kind of alternate page title which includes the funny copyright symbol. I'm not sure why that is deemed an important feature, or why it has to appear in the title rather than somewhere else. I'm also not sure why you care to assert your copyright at all over such benign material, but I imagine you must have your reasons.

Whatever those reasons may be, I've done a decent bit of redundant title removal on this wiki and it does not make sense that we would encourage such a practice. --Seanmcox 11:09, 28 November 2007 (MST)

Sean, thank you so much for your input on this. I've taken out the copyright, which was part of the original document I copied this from. I completely agree with you that it is unnecessary. I've also fixed the reference to using the level 1 heading in the article. I value your input and would welcome any changes you have to make it better. Heather 12:11, 28 November 2007 (MST)

Awesome. :-) You've done a nice job with the page. I really like the added visuals. --Seanmcox 12:23, 28 November 2007 (MST)

Style Guide

One thing I've been curious about is this redundant style guide. Why is there a second one here rather than a link to the existing, more comprehensive style guide. particularly, today, I was interested in reviewing the capitalization guidelines, and I found the redundant version was incomplete, seemingly contradictory and therefore, confusing. For example, it says to use "Deacon", but conversely "bishop". The full (old?) style guide is more clear and makes more sense. I'm not sure why we'd even want to have a second confusing one. --Seanmcox 09:43, 14 December 2007 (MST)