Working together

Conventions are styles not enforced by wiki software. Wiki software is, in general, very free form. The users (Community) find a way to work together. There is generally a small group of people who are regular contributors who work out a style. Some people contribute to the content by refining the formatting, and others choose to only edit the words

Category page

See for a list of conventions.

General Procedure for determining wiki conventions

There are many possible uses of MediaWiki, and you should be clear on which type of document you are writing, and what the scope of the wiki is that you are using. In general:

Read the style guides for the wiki
Look at what other people are doing. And if you like it, copy what they are doing.
If you don't like what they are doing:
1. Use talk:pages, IRC, or email list to ask about and suggest changes, or gain understanding.
2. Check page histories to see if there are rabid moderators
  1. Do what you wanted to, and If you get targeted continue the WikiWar till you get banned or the moderator quits, (or resolution occurs), or
  2. Grin and bear it, or
  3. Move on to another wiki (not actually that bad of an idea, because you may have misunderstood something)

Sites and their style

http://meta.wikimedia.org is a Community base style wiki

Many internal wiki's are Project management style wiki amongst others. (Content Management System)

Process documentation style wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org is an Encyclopedia style wiki

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org is a Knowledge base style wiki, though you wouldn't know it by their conventions.

Who uses wikis

Wikis are very free form. It's very easy to make content not follow a convention. You might consider a content management system if one meets your needs, and can force your content to follow style guides.