Wiki Life: The Principle of Invisibility

When i started contributing in Wikipedia in 2006 there were not many articles with principles and policies. The Wikipedia evolves very much and today we find many guide to the best practices to contribute to the Wiki.

One of the principles that are presented is the use of signatures in the articles.
"When editing a page, main namespace articles should not be signed, because the article is a shared work, based on the contributions of many people, and one editor should not be singled out above others." - Wikipedia: Signatures

Unlike Wikipedia, many of the TechNetWiki's articles were first written in Blogs and later migrated to the Wiki. During this migration (of content and culture) many habits that had brought us into the TechNetWiki blogs.
One of these habits is signing on articles. Increasingly i found articles with signatures. But this would be a habit or a trend?

Wikipedia doesn't present the question of signatures as a "Principle of Invisibility," but i think of it this way. "Who" should receive the biggest highlight in an article in a wiki is article itself and the information it contains.

If we observe the Wikipedia articles, the articles are written in a way very impartial. Instead of writing "In this article i'll talk about," we would find "In this article you will find information about ...".

When i creating an article in a Wiki I always think it's the beginning of a collaborative work and if I want more people to contribute, i need to worry about writing in a way that at any time, any paragraph or sentence somebody can include an information.

I not found something in the TNWiki documentation regarding the use of personal signatures. But whenever someone asks me to help migrate an article from a blog to Wiki, i try to follow the principle of invisibility and I advise new contribuites to be as unbiased as possible so that there is always room for new content / information from other authors in the article. 

  

  
 Ana Paula de Almeida  TechNet Profile | anapdealmeida.com |   @anapdealmeida

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