- Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.
- Incremental - It must be both possible and useful to cite unwritten pages. (incomplete)
- Organic - The structure of the site is expected to grow and evolve with the community that uses it. (co-evolution)
- Mundane - A small number of conventions provide all necessary formatting.(undistracted)
- Universal - The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically and editor and organizer.
- Overt - The formatted and printed output will suggest the input required to reproduce it. (concrete)
- Unified - Page names will be drawn from a flat space so that no additional context is required to interpret them. (vocabulary)
- Precise - Pages will be titled with sufficient precision to avoid most name clashes, typically by forming noun phrases. (happy accidents)
- Tolerant - All input will produce output even when the output is not likely to be that desired.
- Observable - Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor.
- Convergent - Ambiguity and duplication can be removed by finding and citing similar or related content.