Wikipedia:WikiProject Eritrea/Guidelines

''These guidelines are under development. You are encouraged to discuss and improve it.''

To write and edit Eritrea-related articles, please follow the conventions below. It is important to remember that any topic that is not covered in the remainder of this document is likely covered elsewhere. The following conventions are helpful:
 * see Manual of Style for general information
 * see WikiProject Ethnic groups for notes on the style of articles related to ethnic groups
 * see History for notes on the style of history articles

Use of non-Latin scripts
It should be remembered that using italics or bolding names in either Ge'ez or Arabic scripts is not recommended as it tends to make them less legible. It is also important to remember that in the English Wikipedia that the editor is writing primarily for a reader of English. This means that articles should not be littered with Ge'ez and Arabic, instead they should only be used for proper nouns.

Remember that the inclusion of the Arabic or Ge'ez is to disambiguate articles, to reduce confusion.

Romanization systems
The following romanization systems for Arabic and Tigrinya are complete, though rarely utilized. It should be understood that these romanization schemes are not universal. These may be added to but should not be considered exclusive of other systems. Their use on individual pages should be discussed amongst its editors.
 * Arabic
 * Tigrinya

Introductions
All encyclopedic articles whose title's include a name of either Arabic or Ge'ez descent should have the name written out in both scripts. If the spelling varies (or the word used) amongst a number of languages using the same script specify the language. For example: A template can be used to simplify this system.
 * ...Adi Tekelezan (Tigrinya:  , or Ad Tekelezan, Tigre:  , Arabic:  )...

Naming convention
If an article already exists and you are to wiki-link to it from another article, do not provide the translation. The reasoning for this is that it is redundant, on the linked page, the same translation will appear and so is quite unnecessary. For example:
 * ...the Habesha (Ge'ez: ሐበሻ, Arabic: حبشا) people are a grouping of...

compared to:
 * ...the Habesha people are a grouping of...

When the user links to the page Habesha they will be presented with the translation, making the former redundant in this example.

Numerals
In Eritrea Western numerals are used in nearly every function, and so as a matter of style (and uniformity with the rest of the English Wikipedia) the WikiProject Eritrea recommends its usage. True (Eastern or Modern) Arabic numerals as well as Ge'ez numerals are not to be used. If either is used in a source text it should be converted to Western numerals.

Dates
As a continuation of the policy in the previous section (Numerals), it should be remembered that Eritrea uses the Gregorian calendar. To this end all dates, especially the more recent dates (since 19th century) should use this calendar system. Dates from the Julian or Ethiopian calendars should be converted to the Gregorian system.

When reporting full dates it is important to wikilink these dates. If the complete date is known it should be presented in the ISO 8601 standard and wikilinked
 * - (YYYY-MM-DD)

Using this method will allow the dates to be presented according to the individual user preferences. For more information regarding this please refer to WP:DATE.

Categorization
For pages categorized by personal name ensure that the categorization is done with respect to their culture. This is especially important in the case of categorization because a person is first identified by their given/personal name and further specified by patrimonial names. For instance, in the Ge'ez tradition: instead of Russom, Semere or in the Arabic tradition: instead of Abdella, Ali Said. To prevent unwanted changes to the categorization key be sure to type in the name and do not leave it empty. This will let a future editor know that the categorization was done intentionally. If this results in edit conflicts make sure to post an explanation as to why the categorization is done by adding the following text above the category section in the editing field: If conflict persists, be sure to add the page to the watch list on the WikiProject Eritrea to-do list under the appropriate heading (Current disputes).

Templates
The WikiProject Eritrea encourages the use of Templates to cite your sources. This is quite important in maintaining uniformity and organizing information. When using these templates (in fact for any application on Wikipedia) please use the ISO 8601 standard, YYYY-MM-DD. In the text of an article this should be wikilinked (enclosed in brackets, XXXX-XX-XX ).

Presented below are two of the most commonly used templates in the WikiProject Eritrea. * To reference websites you should use the following template: cite web For a much more extensive collection of citation templates, and their uses please go to [[Wikipedia:Citation templates.
 * To reference books you may use the following template: cite book