Wiki Writing Advice

From Juggling Patterns Wiki - Your resource for new passing / juggling patterns

When I started with the first wiki article, there were no rules/standards to adhere to - except for my experience as a Wikipedia author some years previous. Many of the Wikipedia rules and guidelines do not apply, because this wiki is not meant to be an encyclopedia.

While at first I created content into a void, there is quite a body of connected juggling patterns there now and it becomes time to standardize some things to make orientation on a page simpler. Obviously there will be older pages that do not adhere.

Wikipedia-like rules

One wikipedia rule still applies:

  • stubs (very short entries) are ok when they provide useful information, but pure placeholders ("I will write something here soon - 13.5.1836") are not.

Example: e.g. I have added lists of siteswaps for juggling patterns that fit the scheme of the categorization but that I have not done, but I would not just create a page that says "I want to write about manipulator patterns here" without any useful info.

Word explanation pages like magic are often short stubs. Please provide at least some links back into the wiki with example patterns that use the concept/thing explained

Juggling Pattern Page Structure

A page describing a juggling pattern should have the following sections:

  • Pre-requisite patterns "Patterns to do before this one"
  • Pattern Description

This gives the sequence for A and B and says who throws cross or straight passes and how they start and shows an animation via a template that uses code from passist.org and also links directly to passist.org. (Thanks to Christian, having that feature helped a me a lot) This should also have specific tipps/advice for the pattern addressing common problems people have.

  • "Sibling Patterns" Patterns that are similar and also of similar difficulty. For lack of a name on the less well-known pattern, I often call them "brother of X" or "sister of Y"
  • "Patterns to do next"

Every pattern page should at least have one pre-requisite "previous" and one "next" pattern leading to a chain that reaches back to the most trivial starts.

Pre-requisite and "next" patterns must share similarities with the pattern described on the page. Pattern difficulty can only be compared as long as the patterns in question share enough similarities. Doing a 7-club 2-count will not help you learn 3 ball mills-mess.

Every pattern page should also be present on one overview page and should link back to it.

Juggling Pattern Page Naming

There is no fixed naming scheme so far, because it is still hard to decide what would be the best naming scheme. So this so far is a collections of ideas what a future naming scheme might be.

Probably makes sense to have a naming scheme like:

  • Pattern name (or Sequence like "PzzPz" if no name) - siteswap

Example: Killer Bunny - 564

  • It might make sense to include the number of clubs into the pattern name. This is a must when a pattern name is used for several patterns with differing amount of clubs.

Example: 7-club 2-count (or 7 club 2 count or any of the combinations with one minus. There should be a rule where to put a minus and where not, but I haven't found a good rationale for one so far)

This would make killer bunny a

  • 5-club Killer Bunny - 564

It might or might not be a good idea to include the number of jugglers into a pattern.

This would make Killer Bunny a

  • 2 person - 5-club Killer Bunny - 564

Juggling Pattern Abbreviations

Actually, this should become a wiki page Juggling Pattern Abbreviations, that is linked from all sequences.

Compatible Patterns

Of course I am aware, that compatible patterns can just as easily be computed by a program or app (as many or even all of the siteswap things on the pages are)

At the moment (start of 2026), there are several ways compatible patterns are treated/included:

  • via a "family" relationship e.g. a lot of the why nots are compatible and I included more compatible patterns with the family - or the zapnips were designed/calculated by me as compatible patterns to selfless-passing patterns and are described together
  • on the pattern page itself

But there often are a *lot* of compatible patterns and I am thinking, if there should be dedicated "compatible patterns" pages that can be referenced from each page and avoid repeating the same list on every pattern.


Props

All siteswaps in principle work for all possible props. Because I do club passing, usually I assume everything is clubs. But in time, I do want to start from zero also on solo juggling patterns and also have a page on learning to juggle 5 balls. In general, if props matter, the pattern page should handle all props or if there is a lot of prop-specific advice, there should be one common pattern page referring to a "pattern_name (balls)" and "pattern_name (rings)" etc. page


Multi Language

Multi-lingual mediawikis are kind of difficult to set up and maintain and I want the wiki to be able to continue even in case something happens to me.

So - at least for now - if non-English translations of a page are made, they will appear as sub-pages to the English page, keeping everything in a single mediawiki instance.


Images

I managed to get all images on the starting page to be of a same style just recently (Jan 2026). All future pictures added should try to stay in the same style

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