Contributing to the Archive

The material on this page is incomplete. Please help contribute and expand this article. I will get back to this. Please do not edit this page.

Members are free to contribute to the Archive of Random Material through editing pages, posting on the forum, and improving the site. Members are encouraged to create and edit content for various topics by multiple means. If you are not already a member and you wish to contribute your knowledge, please join the Archive and start editing!

This page is a handbook for editing the content of this site. This includes the various presentation types for displaying information and how they are formatted, and this page displays certain guidelines that should be followed for each presentation type. Please take time to read through this page and familiarize yourself with the standards of this wiki.

A Wiki and Forum

The Archive of Random Material is a wiki hosted by Wikidot. As a wiki, members can freely edit any content page. Members can create pages, edit them, edit other pages, attach files, and tag pages with meta data. The Archive has no specific theme, and therefore any content created by any member can be accepted. The site is essentially empowered by the members and governed by administrators.

The Archive of Random Material has a forum in which members can freely communicate by posting brief messages. The forum has many categories so members can freely discuss anything including things pertaining to the content and its organization, overall site layout and looks, presentations, and simple fellowship. Through the forums, the member body can keep tabs with what is current about the site and how content is being updated by discovery.

A Member's Permissions

Later

What You can Do

Later

The Content Pages

Articles

How-To's

Tutorials

Essays

The Dictionary

Headers

Using Includes


The Archive of Random Material grows by the efforts of its members. Members are encouraged to create and edit articles for various topics in an encyclopedia type format so others can use the information in research. If you are not already a member and you wish to contribute your knowledge, please join the Archive and start editing!

If you are a member, this is the handbook to editing content in the Archive. This helps you get an idea of good format. Please read through this basic run down to familiarize yourself with the standards of this wiki.

The Guidelines

There are some general guidelines that must be followed when writing articles. The primary reason for these rules is to keep the Archive consistent, clean, legible, and legal. Please follow these simple guidelines when writing your articles, and keep these in mind when revising. See a detailed version here.

PF1: A page must contain content of a similar topic. If there is content on a page that does not match with surrounding context, it should be moved to where it best fits.

PF2: Pages should not be too long. If a page seems too long, divide it into two or more pages with different topics.

PF3: Similarly, pages should not be too short. If a page is too short, consider merging it with a page of similar content.

PF4: All content of the Archive must be formal. There will be no use of slang or bad language. Sentence structure needs to fit correctly, and grammar mistakes must be kept at a minimum.

PF5: Write in third person unless strong emphasis is needed.

PF6: Content must be accurate. Anything that is untrue should not be in this wiki.

PF7: If there are important terms in an article, the first of them needs to be referred to a glossary or other apparatus.

PF8: The content of any page should be neutral. Do not use this wiki to express opinion.

PF9: Be sure to include all details on the topic specified unless it violates guideline PF2. Do not leave important material out.

PF10: Use good sentence fluency and organization.

Forum

  • Be courteous to others. No insults, bad language, and put downs.
  • A forum can be relaxed, and it doesn't have to be very formal.
  • No misleading information.
  • Make a collapsible drop down if you have a possible answer to a Math Problem of the Month. See my forum post for details.
  • No double posts (posting directly after your own post). Use the edit option instead.

Vandalism

  • Vandalism will not be tolerated. Offenders will face possible ban from the wiki and revoking of membership.
  • If vandalism occurs, report it to an administrator, and an he/she will take care of the situation. Previous content can be retrieved through the history button at the bottom of the page.
  • Simple editing and goodwill fixing is not considered vandalism. An administrator will be able to tell the difference, and they will have the final say.

Citing Sources

CS1: No plagiarism! Always cite your sources if you are using researched info.

CS2: Sources need to be trusted. Books, government sites, encyclopedias, school sites, and primary sources are typically trusted. Try not to use Wikipedia or personal websites as a source.

CS3: Use parenthetical citations. That means, put the first part of your source in the text in parenthesis.

CS4: Do not directly copy any text from other sources unless you use quotations in the correct way.

Creating an Article

If you are reading this page, you are probably wanting to write an article. In the Archive, articles are written to be formal and provide information. There are many genres of articles to consider. For example, an article about Jupiter might have a special format because it is commonly researched and fits under a category (planet). So, when you write or create an article, please take time to observe the Add an Article page. This page will direct you on what you are planning to make. If you create an article using this page and do so correctly, then you will find that the article is automatically sorted through the system and a link is placed in appropriate spots. If you don't use that method, then you will need to ask an administrator or moderator to process the article manually.

When first writing an article (under no specified category), you will find some text already present. It goes as follows:

[!-- Leave this here until you are done with the article! --]
 [[include system:incomplete]]
[!-- --]
[!--Please select the appropriate template from the Initial Content bar.  If no template matches the subject of which you are writing about, feel free to start from this basic setup.--]

This will automatically display a header saying the article is incomplete. When the article is completely written to your first draft satisfaction, please remove the header by deleting the code. Also, it asks to select the appropriate template. The template is a background stencil that you can use to guide your writing. Some of the templates include writing about Presidents, biographies, countries, and more. You are encouraged to select one of the templates to help keep the Archive's content consistent. If, however, you select a miscellaneous topic, then feel free to start from scratch.

Another note. Before you create a page, make sure that the page does not already exists! Before you create a page, please take the time to search for that page in the Archive and make sure it does not already exist. Use the Index, which lists every article, or the search engine.

The Headers

Revision Station

Templates

Includes

Editing

To edit a page, you must go to the bottom of the page and find where it says "+ Page Options". It looks like this:

Last Edited: Dec 11, 2008; 17:40 -0-600 (17 days ago)

Promoting the Archive

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