User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes

Wikipedia has a daunting array of styleguides and policy pages. They come under very little central coordination and are subject to change without wide notice. This makes it hard for users to keep track of changes to rules and policies they need to be aware of, and to attain a sense of how the project is evolving.

This page displays the important changes in a central location, month by month; it enables all Wikipedians to keep abreast of what is happening, quickly and conveniently.

Contributors to styleguide and policy pages are asked to notify us of changes for each upcoming monthly summary by posting a brief note of substantive changes (with a diff) on the talk page.

Summary updates are posted here and at the talk pages of MOS, (main page), FAC and FAR shortly after the start of each calendar month. Copy-editing and relatively trivial changes are generally not included in these summaries.

January 2008
Post notifications for the next month on User_talk:Tony1/Monthly_updates_of_styleguide_and_policy_changes, please, not here.

Guidelines for preparing the summaries
General principles
 * Be as succinct as possible; the primary purpose is to create a useful report for editors at large, and not to overwhelm them with detail. Simplicity is the aim.
 * Do not allow your own POV to intrude; you're merely reporting.
 * Use editorial comments [in square brackets] to note any inconsistencies with other manuals that you know have been created by a change, or where a page has reverted to a previous month's version or is still unstable.

Process
 * Start by displaying the whole-month diff; do it from the last edit in the previous month to the last edit in the current month.
 * Ignore copy-edits and mere changes of terminology that won't impact on users at large.
 * Don't bother listing a page just to state that there have been no substantive changes during the month.
 * Insert a piped link to start each point; diffs tend to be too complicated for our purposes here.
 * If a change is complicated, consider reproducing the whole point, underlining insertions and striking through deletions. Try to minimise the use of this option, which can look complicated and be visually distracting if used too often.
 * For extensive changes to a page or section, consider write something like "Major changes to the guidline/policy on ..." without specifying the actual wording. Try to minimise the use of this option.

Location
 * Each summary is located at a subpage of this page named by month and year, such as March 2008.
 * These are transcluded in the sections above, and may be transcluded elsewhere.