Manifold Atlas: Instructions for writing

This page describes the scientific writing style of the Manifold Atlas.

1 Scientific goals

• The Manifold Atlas aims to be an reliable scientific reference for researchers and students of manifolds.

• Please write rigorously and clearly for a topologically literate audience.

• Assume that your reader is of advance under-graduate level or higher.

• Give proofs or references to peer-reviewed sources for all non-elementary statements.

• As far as possible define the terms and concepts you use:
  • a quick way to achieve this is to hyperlink to Wikipedia or another web resource if the term is adequately defined.

• Pages in the Manifolds chapter have a default suggested structure.

2 The editorial process

• The manifold atlas contains two sorts of pages:
  • evolving pages pages which are continually open to improvement and expansion but which are not scientifically quotable,
  • static pages which have been approved by the editorial board and which are preserved as quotable scientific documents.

• It will typically take many edits for a page to reach maturity.

• New and young pages bear the Stub template indicating that they are under development.

• After a page reaches maturity, the editorial board will organise for it to be refereed.

• Evolving pages which have been approved by the editorial board have an editorial message which links to the corresponding static version of the page.

3 Open-editing pages

• Open-editing pages can be edited by any registered user.

• Open-editing pages offer the possibility of massively parallel collaboration for recording, organising and developing information about manifolds.

• Open editing-pages require scientific co-operation and team-work a la Wikipedia.

• You should feel free to:
  • edit typos,
  • fix mistakes,
  • add hyerlinks,
  • add new sections and subections,
  • improve presentation and organistaion (but think carefully here).

• You should think carefully before making significant changes to existing text.

• When in doubt about a prospective edit use the discussion page or email the other active users on the page.
  • If there there is no response after a couple of days, proceed with your planned edit.

• In general questions of style or point of view should first be raised on discussion page before edits are made.

• After making significant changes, it is helpful to leave a remark on the discussion page explaining or describing your edit.

4 Author-based pages

• Author-based pages can be edited only by a single author or team of authors.

• Author-based pages offer the possibility for an expert or team of experts to develop information about manifolds in public and over the web.

• With the obvious exception, author-based pages are open to development, editorial review and discussion just as an open-editing page.

• All users can write on the discussion pages of author-based pages and provide feed-back, questions or suggestions.

• A new author can be added to an author-based page at any time if all the current authors agree to it.

• If all authors agree, an author-based page can be released to become an open-editing page at any time.
  • However this is, in general, an irreversible process.