Difference between revisions of "Help:Editorial guidelines"

Revision as of 14:24, 28 February 2010

Please Read!

These are the currently accepted guidelines that should be followed when editing this wiki, as agreed by the majority of users. Any alterations or additions should be suggested in the Community Portal.

Above all remember this is a site for anyone aged 11 upwards - keep it clean!

Guidelines for editing

Please ensure you read the (non-exhaustive) list of unacceptable edits so you don't fall foul of the rules.

Very important!

• All articles must be in no way offensive to an individual, or group of individuals. Keep it polite and light hearted, and know where to draw the line. Anyone posting derogatory, offensive or blatantly insulting comments will be banned for one day, as a fair warning.

• Spelling and grammar should be checked before posting - it looks much more professional that way. Please take the time to write out your comments in full English - that is, not "txt spk". Pages which consist entirely of this nonsense are deleted immediately, so you're just wasting your time!

• You must not use images from copyrighted sources. Where possible, use thumbnails on content pages.

• Ensure all pictures must be suitable for a wide audience (ages 11 to 100-odd), and a reasonable file size - around 150KB is a good benchmark.

• If a quote involves a swear-word, use asterisks! Quotes that consist entirely of swearing are completely unnecessary so please keep them to yourself, as this is a site for all ages.

• When creating new pages, please Capitalise The First Letter Of Each Word!. If everyone does this; then we avoid duplicate pages which only have capitals different.

• When deleting large chunks of pages please state why. We want as much content as we can get on the wiki, so when deleting content please state a good reason.

A few helpful hints

• Please ensure you have something useful to write before creating or editing a page on the site. That way it saves others from spending time re-editing these pages. We don't expect everyone to write a 10,000 word essay when creating a page, so don't worry if it's a bit sparse to start with. However, something more substantial than "Person A is orange" / "Person B is fit" will ensure the page is still there when you go back to add to it.

• This is a Wiki site, and is therefore intended to be informative and well written. We do not want MySpace style pages for people with lots of exclamation marks and "lol" written every third word. Some good examples of well written pages are Doc Rob and Heskey's, and if you still aren't sure what to do please ask us!

• Quotes are regarded liberally, so exact word-for-word isn't needed, but they do need to have actually said it. Stories should be in their own sections.

• The 'Preview' button is your friend! Use it to check that what you have added looks ok on-screen. Repeated saving/editing fills up Recent Changes and makes it harder for the moderators to spot vandalism and other changes. On the same sort of lines, experiment in the Sandbox before moving formatting over to a full page.

• Try to include lots of internal links to subjects, teachers, quotes etc.. When people are browsing, they click on these, and it helps the site grow.

Further Information

• If you want to link to a page, please make sure the link is spelled correctly, with the correct capitals and punctuation. The first letter is not case sensitive, but the rest is, e.g. "technology" is the same as "Technology", but "Sports Hall" and "Sports hall" are different.

• Avoid external links to internal pages.

• All your changes appear in Recent Changes for easy editing.

• Please correct any spelling or grammar problems you come across if you have time.

• If you have an account, it is given its own talk page. This can be found at User_talk:''Your_username'' (for example, User_talk:Jonathan_Parton). Another user may occasionally write something in it, so try to check it regularly! (It's bolded in Recent Changes for easy identification)

• If you need further information on how to edit a page check out Editing Help

Basically, please keep this site clean, useful, and enjoy using it. We hope it continues to grow, but it will only do this if people are willing to put their time into creating an informative, concise, and above all funny database. Thank you for your support!