Q: What convention should I adopt when entering a new Gleanings page?

A: yyyymmdd_descriptive_information

The wiki page name for a gleaning is used to provide a date context and should generally begin with a numeric date in the format yyyymmdd. Since all gleaning pages will also occur within the overall structure of Gleanings, its alias within the structure is used to provide additional information as described elsewhere.

By using a name beginning with a date (or pseudo date, see below), the time line of gleanings can be automatically generated for us.

Many gleanings will feature multiple individuals, so in general it isn't sensible to include persons' names within the descriptive information. Often source related information such as a volume and page number or edition number will be more meaningful.

Gleanings will cover a multitude of types of sources and record types, so providing detailed guidance here over what addition descriptive information to suffix the date with is not practical. Please spend some time browsing the existing gleanings and try to follow any existing conventions where-ever practical. If you can't find a good match for the records you have in mind, please consult with your Mentor Team via their Talk page.

Please remember the Wiki isn't well behaved with spaces in its file names, so please used an underscore rather than a space as a separator.

Pseudo Dates for Gleanings

Unfortunately not all historical records are linked to a specific day. In some instances, it is only possible to tie the source record to a month, quarter, half year or year.

For an event occurring some time during a month, please use 00 as the day number.

For an event occurring some time during a quarter, please use 00 as the day number and the final month of the quarterly period.

For an event occurring some time in a half year, please user 00 as the day number and the month number of the final month in the half year period.

For an event which can only be tied from the source records to a specific year, please use 00 (zero zero) for both the month and day numbers.

Whenever a pseudo date is used, please remember to include an explanation of your choice of pseudo date within the Commentary section of the gleaning page.

Rarely it will not be possible to tie a source to a single year, in which case the page name should start with the start and end year range in the form yyyy_yyyy_descriptive_information

See also FAQ What is a Gleanings Page
and       FAQ Content of a Gleanings Page