Article Guidelines for Packing Houses of Santa Clara County

Guidelines for Articles in Packing Houses of Santa Clara County

"Packing Houses of Santa Clara County" is a Wiki - a shared place where we all can write, edit, and share research on the history of the Santa Clara Valley. That means that you're involved - you're not just a reader, but someone who can help extend our knowledge of San Jose history. To understand the mechanics of how you make changes, read the generic Help:Editing_pages documentation.

We do have a specific reason for this blog, and so that means write about anything. This blog exists to collect and record the history of the dried, fresh, and canned fruit industry in San Jose. It's ok to stretch outside these boundaries to related business - other local businesses in San Jose at the time, or connections to companies in other places.

Our wiki is also intended for historical and detailed information about San Jose and the fruit industry - articles that may be too specialized or trivial for [| Wikipedia]. If your article might be interesting to more than just historians and model railroaders, write it up on Wikipedia.

Kinds of Pages

Generally, pages should fit into one of four categories:

Business: a description of an industry, its history, and where it operated. Example: United States Products.
Person: a biography of a person involved in the Santa Clara County fruit industry. Example: Edith Daley.
Document: copy of key related document that deserves to be linked and cross-linked to the other documents. Example: Southern Pacific 1931 Siding List
History: a summary of a particular set of events or time that is relevant to the fruit industry. Example: Collapse of Prices in the Early 1930's.

Provide citations so others can find the original documents. Provide links to web pages where you find information, or cite the books where the information is published. Someone else may want to read the original documents; giving them pointers will help immensely.

Give publication name and date whenever providing a link to a web page with old newspapers or books. There's no guarantee that Google or Newspaper Archive will still be showing old newspapers in three or four years; if you name the source ("March 20, 1920 California Fruit News"), a future reader can always search for other places with copies of the same material.

Formatting

When you write or edit pages for a Wiki, you add formatting by providing hints about how things should be formatted. General rules for formatting any Wiki are available on the Help:Formatting pages. Here are some specific requests on how to format pages on "Packing Houses of Santa Clara County".

Wikipedia formatting

For help in formatting of this wiki, here are Wikipedia's Help pages. This wiki uses the same software (MediaWiki), so the syntax is the same.

Businesses

Every business should have an infobox - the key details of the business in a box at the upper-right-hand corner of any page. An infobox looks like this before formatting:

{{Infobox_Industry
| primary_business = Dried Fruit Packer
| primary_town = San Francisco
| primary_dates = 1908-1946
| brands = Pansy, Rosedale, Daphne, Carnation Pink, Heliotrope
| aliases=Guggenhime
| predecessors = 
| successors = [[Hunt Brothers Packing Company]]
}}

If you go to the page for Guggenhime and Company, you can see what it looks like after formatting.

"Primary business" should list the main business the company was known for. Common choices include "Dried Fruit Packer", "Cannery", "Manufacturer", or "Broker".

Every business should also have a "Locations" section and table listing the street address of the different places where the business existed. The table looks like this before formatting:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Location !! Years !! Address !! Details
|-
| San Jose || 1893-1917 || [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Cinnabar%20St%20at%20Senter%20Street,San%20Jose Cinnabar St at Senter Street] || Listed as "Andrews and Coykendall Ham Co." in 1893.
|-
| West Side || 1900 ||  || Listed in San Francisco Call 1900 list of delivery spots. 
|-
|}

Look at Andrews and Coykendall Ham Company to see it after formatting. Each location has a city, the years the business was known to be at that location, exact street address (with link to Google Maps), and a notes field to mention interesting details about that location. Locations should either be confirmed addresses, or indicate that the location is likely to be a guess:"Probably norrthwest corner."

Person

Pages describing a person involved in the fruit industry should have a quick bio and links to any companies that person worked for. Highlight the stories that make that person interesting.

Photos

Photos that are in the public domain (published before around 1930, or that you took yourself) can be uploaded to the server, and added to pages. In-line photos should always be placed so they're right justified and 240 pixels wide (to match the infobox). Here's the formatting I use:

[[File:Cozzens_dryer.jpg|240px|thumb|right|W. W. Cozzens Dryer pen sketch]]

Photos that aren't in the public domain should not be uploaded to the site - it's not legal, and it's not fair to the current copyright holder. These photos are still really important for research, so add a "Photos" section to the page and add an explanatory link that readers can follow to see the photo.

Article Guidelines for Packing Houses of Santa Clara County

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