Considering the nature of a wiki, where anyone can edit and contribute, there will be differences in writing style and in thoroughness of research. This is to be expected, so I think article writing guidelines should reflect that. The point of calling them guidelines instead of rules is for flexibility. If an article doesn't fit the guidelines, then that's completely acceptable, since a wiki encourages refinement as opposed to perfection.
The Wikipedia site is not the first wiki by any means, but it is the most successful and is the largest. It has some very good guidelines that I think we should consider. They're not "article writing guidelines", but more generalized ideals. The site has experienced growing pains and it would be foolish to not absorb this wisdom.
The Wikipedia's "five pillars", [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars[/url] 1 Wikipedia is an encyclopedia 2 Wikipedia has a neutral point of view, 3 Wikipedia is free content 4 Wikipedia has a code of conduct 5 Wikipedia does not have firm rules
Item 1 and 3 are already covered. This won't be an encyclopedia of general knowledge, but of sugar gliders. The creative commons license handles the free content.
Item 2 is a difficult goal to achieve. I'm not sure how practical this is given the heated nature of some topics in the context of pets and sugar gliders, as we are all human and have emotions. Perhaps this could be in a "nice to have" list. I'm interested in thoughts and ideas on this.
Items 4 and 5 are my favorite. By no means are these guidelines easy to follow, but I still like them.
Item 5 in the above link leads to "Be Bold" [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold[/url] and "Perfection is not required" [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy[/url]
I think the "Be Bold" article really sums up the ideal attitude that should be encourage when getting people to write. Another good read linked from the "Bold" article is [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AGF"]"don't take it personally"[/url]
There is a LOT of philosophy in those pages and it's easy to get lost in them, so I think we should pick what we think would work best for us. I don't particularly like a giant list of rules or guidelines. After a while they tend to feel overbearing, and really almost all codes of conduct are variations on just one, which is simply "be nice."
As I stated earlier, there will be differences in writing style, and that's fine. One of the sentiments I share with the wikipedia philosophy is that no one person can exemplify the goals, ideals or guidelines for a wiki, and those targets are reached through cooperation and collaboration with many people. With that said, I think the most important article guideline is to cite used references. The second most important guideline I can think of is to prefer books and scientific journals/publications over website sources. The reasoning behind this is that books and scientific journals will generally have their own references, so they can be independently verified as decent sources of information and be held to scrutiny, and also provide a bread crumb trail to other studies and information sources.
There is a lot of opinion and philosophy in this post, and everything is open for debate and discussion.
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