XenReference:Guidelines

Shortcut: XB:G

Introduction

XenBase is a wiki whose content serves the foremost purpose of facilitating the composition of music, rather than the mere documentation of theoretical concepts. It is a place for approaches of all kinds, especially those that break from the established language of the xenharmonic community, such as regular temperament theory.

This is not to say that mainly theoretical or mathematical content is unwelcome on XenBase. Rather, its presence simply needs to be justified: a piece of theory belongs in every place where it is relevant, that is, where it can reasonably be said to be useful for the average xenharmonist to know about when trying to understand or use a particular interval, tuning, temperament, or scale.

Browsing some special pages may be helpful for understanding the way XenBase works, namely Special:AllPages and Special:Log/upload.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_guidelines, for inspirations for this page.

XenBase is maintained by users of the XenGrove Discord server.

Stylistic guidelines

• Scales and other concepts should be referred to by their names, rather than systematic identifiers, if those names are well-established on XenBase (see #Naming below) - e.g. "mosh" as opposed to "3L 4s" - especially in page titles. To reduce confusion, in page bodies, specify name (identifier) if necessary (e.g. "mosh (3L 4s)").
• An exception is made for EDOs (e.g. refer to 6edo as "6edo", not "whole tone scale") and just intervals without inordinate complexity.
• '''Bold''' is to be used for title terms, and ''italics'' to be used for emphasis.
• Names of regular temperaments should be capitalized: for example, "Mavila", "Slendric".
• Use {{monzo|a b c ...}} and {{val|d e f ...}} for monzos and vals.

Terminology

• Use "prime-limit" (not "prime limit") and "odd-limit". Since "limit" by itself most commonly refers to prime-limit, always specify "odd-limit" if you mean odd-limit rather than prime-limit.
• Don't say "dyad" for "interval" ("dyad" and "interval" are different in some contexts like musical set theory). If the mathematical sense is meant and can cause confusion, say "real interval".
• Scales are periodic unless stated otherwise. Don't say "periodic scale" unless absolutely needed for clarity (e.g. contrasting with aperiodic scales).

General guidelines

If you wish to describe something on the wiki, it should be specified what it is and where it comes from (e.g. how a certain comma emerges in xenharmonic musical systems and what that tempering represents, or the proximate utility of a certain theoretical concept) in the page before providing its derivation or listing further properties, especially if that documentation amounts to what can be obtained from a calculator such as xen-calc.

Therefore, articles should preferably contain much more text content than tabulated information (unless the article's purpose is itself to list things).

Naming

Names provide character to whatever thing you're giving a name. They turn some abstract structure into an object you can form an individual mental conception of and familiarity with. Names are good! But this is precisely why nomenclature should not be taken so trivially.

If you seek to speak a name for something on XenBase, remember the following.

• Names are not obligatory. Not everything that is described needs to be named.
• Names should not be confusing. A name does not need to necessarily relate to some essence of what its referent is, but it should not suggest that it is something that it is not. Calling a comma the "slendrisma" is confusing, for example, when it is not the comma tempered out in Slendric.
• Names should not be conflicting. Precedent - in this case, established usage in the xenharmonic community (such as on xen.wiki) - should be respected, unless there is a positive reason and limited loss to overturn it.
• Nomenclature alone is not constructive. The act of naming something is itself an act that requires justification, which generally implies gaining familiarity with it either through being its first documenter or significantly improving the documentation that exists.

Furthermore, the act of assigning a name means nothing if that name fails to come into active use or common understanding on XenBase. The minimal criterion to make a name more than an idiosyncrasy is more than one user or source referring to an object by that name.

Cleanliness

In general, long pages with many related topics are preferable to a plethora of stub pages. Therefore, if there is not sufficient worthy discussion of a topic to merit a full, detailed article, that topic should be included within some other page (so long as it is notable). Rank-2 temperaments, for instance, should at least for the time being redirect to the page List of regular temperaments. The same goes for EDOs and the list of EDOs; the same goes for MOSes and the list of MOSes.

Use examples

At least in non-technical articles, when defining any concept, make sure you use at least one concrete example to aid understanding (e.g. when explaining the terminology tempering out, say "For example, 12edo tempers out the syntonic comma, since ⟨12 19 28][-4 4 -1⟩ = 12*-4 + 19*4 + 28*-1 = 0.").

This also goes for general mathematical statements (e.g. "A MOS aLbs has basic tuning (2a+b)-edo. For example, 5L2s has 12edo as its basic tuning."). A good rule of thumb: "Whenever you have a statement with variables, use an example with those variables filled out."

Personal terminology

When using personal terminology in an article, explain it in the article (e.g. in a glossary section) or link the term to another article that explains it, preferably about your theory most relevant to that terminology. Don't put personal terms in the mainspace glossary, which is meant for widely used terms.

Categorization

[[Category:Foo]] keeps getting changed into [[index.php?title=Category:Foo]]. Until we figure out a way to prevent this, use Template:Cat to add categories.

Temperament extensions

As a general guideline, temperaments on XenBase are interpreted as their largest strong extensions that are both reasonably simple and natural. Here "natural" means that we don't have to make choices as to how to map a given interval since there is only one extension of comparable simplicity/accuracy. (We prefer not to split hairs about naming differences between temperaments with similar tuning ranges.)

More on "naturalness"

If a given strong extension is the simplest acceptable one but entails a substantial drop in accuracy, like the 2.3.5.11[34 & 41] extension of 2.3.5[34 & 41], the strong extension is not considered "natural". This also includes base temperament having a strong extension that has a significantly narrower practical tuning range; for example, the pental Meantone edo 19edo supports Septimal Meantone on paper but doesn't tune the 7/4 nearly as well as 31edo does.

Guidelines for advanced content

Some theoretical information on a normal article may still be important but may also be difficult for beginners to understand. This should be put, at the user's discretion, in Template:Adv, like: advanced temperament data. If a section takes an extended tour deep into the weeds (most commonly, mathematical derivations such as anything involving Taylor series), however, it is recommended to split it off as a separate advanced page.

Advanced pages are still subject to the above general principles, save that their intended audience is meant to be users hungrier to understand how a certain concept is derived or generalized. This distinction implies that advanced pages are usually NOT supposed to be linked directly from general content unless it is clear that the link leads to a more complicated discussion.

Guidelines for specific article types

See XenBase:Tuning system article format.

Notability

Documentation in accordance with all the above guidelines should ensure the prioritization of compositionally-relevant information. Content that does not serve a discernably relevant role fails to be notable on XenBase. Our notability guidelines are inspired by those on xen.wiki, but expect them to be more consistent here.

What is notable?

[TBD]

What is NOT notable?

The following types of content generally fail to meet our notability threshold:

• Arbitrary numbers: Isolated intervals or commas without demonstrated context or purpose.
• High complexity: Temperaments of high complexity or edos with extremely high divisions (e.g. 31132edo), unless accompanied by a clear explanation of its practical compositional utility. This also includes temperaments and commas in impractical subgroups (e.g. 2.43.83).
• Technical data without context: Interval tables, temperaments, commas, or other technical data without accompanying compositional explanation.

[TBD]

Worldbuilding policy

Shortcut: XB:WB

Pages about fictional tuning practices derived from worldbuilding are permissible in mainspace. However, like any non-technical mainspace page, such pages must concentrate on compositionally-relevant information; long detours into fictional history should be in a separate userspace article. In-universe terms should, like personal terms, be clearly defined in the article and, if necessary for clarity, demonstrated with sound examples. Ideally, the page should enable the reader to compose music faithful to the fictional musical culture.

Any pages about fictional practices should have {{worldbuilding}} at the top.

[TBA]