Project:Contributing
Purpose of the site
Our purpose is to create a free, web-based compendium of knowledge, in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation. The goal of any specific article is to create a comprehensive and neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic. Contributors are encouraged to be bold in editing in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, facts-based style. Articles should be informative and researched, while avoiding argumentative, promotional, or opinionated writing.
Getting started
As a new contributor, you may feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of this project. Don't worry too much if you don't understand everything at first, as it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. Creatine.Wiki not only allows you to create, revise, and edit articles, but it wants you to do so. You just need to remember that you can't break the site and although there are many protocols, perfection is not required, as the site is a continual work in progress. Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles.
Introductions and tutorials
To achieve our goals, a wide range of how-to and information pages are made available. Aside from this page, there are some other introductions (tutorials) to the project. See Learn to Edit for an introduction to editing, or the Markdown Guide if you want to get straight into the syntax.
Creating an account
To deter vandalism and promote a healthy community, we ask that you create an account before editing pages. Creating an account is free and has several benefits for the community. To create an account in seconds, click Create account and fill out the few required fields. Your account will be created, and once you click the verification link in your email you will be all set for contributing to the site.
Community protocols and conventions
Creatine.Wiki does not employ hard-and-fast rules, and there is no need to read any page before editing. However, some standards and behavioral expectations may be enforced. General social norms should be followed by all contributors. Our community is made up of people from different countries and cultures, with different views, perspectives, opinions, and backgrounds, sometimes varying widely. Contributors should treat each other respectfully, work together collegially, and avoid behavior that would be widely seen as unacceptable, disruptive, tendentious, or dishonest.
Policies, guidelines, and formatting norms are developed by the community to describe the best practices, to clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goals. To varying degrees, policies and guidelines exist as rough approximations of their underlying principles. They are not intended as inflexible, controlling statutes on any set of norms or practices under all circumstances, nor to exhaustively define all matters within their ambit. They must be understood in context, using common sense and discretion.
Discussion and consensus
Behind the scenes of each article, there is a community of volunteer contributors working to present the best information possible. It is not uncommon for contributors to disagree about the way forward. That is when discussion and attempts to reach consensus should take place. Every article on the site has a talk page, reached by clicking the Talk tab just above the title. There, contributors can discuss improvements to the content of an article. You can participate too! If you ever make a change that gets reverted by another contributor, discuss the change on the talk page! The BOLD, revert, discuss cycle is a popular method of reaching consensus and may be useful for identifying objections, keeping discussion moving forward and helping to break deadlocks. Some contributors will see any reversion as a challenge, so be considerate and patient. While discussing matters, it is very important that you conduct yourself with civility and assume good faith on the part of others. Edit warring (repeatedly overriding or reimplementing contributions) is highly discouraged. There is a bright-line rule called the three-revert rule, the violation of which may lead someone to be blocked from editing to prevent further disruption. Disruptive editing is not always intentional, as new contributors may simply not understand the ins and outs of the site.
Most other types of pages also have associated talk pages, including the user page each user is assigned once they sign up. When other users need to contact you, they will usually do this by leaving a message on your user talk page. When someone has left you a message that way, you will see a notice the next time you log in to the site.
The basics of contributing
Creatine.Wiki is the product of the collective contribution of our community members, each one bringing something different to the table, whether it be: researching skills, technical expertise, writing prowess or tidbits of information, but most importantly a willingness to help. Nobody owns articles, so if you see a problem that you can fix, do so. Everyone is encouraged to copyedit articles, add content and create new articles if they have knowledge about the topic at hand or are willing to do the necessary research to improve it. Although you should use a broad vocabulary of regular, non-technical terms, do not use words or expressions that many readers may not know. If an article is written in a highly technical manner, but the material permits a more understandable explanation, then editors are strongly recommended to rewrite it.
Article development and content protocols
Articles make up the bulk of the site's content. The goal of each article is to provide a survey of the latest knowledge for the given topic. Accordingly, and because the site is open to editing by anyone, we require that information be verifiable in reliable sources. Ideally, all information should be cited to reliable sources and to evidence that is verifiable. However, we only mandate citations for quotations, material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged and contentious material. We strongly discourage people from writing about themselves, their companies, products, friends, websites, pet projects or any other topic in which they have a conflict of interest.
The quality of articles on the site may vary; many are very good, but some lack depth and clarity, contain bias or are out of date. In general, high-quality articles have the following elements: a lead section that gives an easy-to-understand overview, a clear structure, balanced coverage, neutral content, and are based upon verifiable information found in reliable sources.
How to edit
Editing most pages is relatively simple. The site uses two methods of editing: classic editing through Markdown syntax and through a VisualEditor. Markdown editing is chosen by clicking the Edit tab at the top of a page. This will take you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the page you were viewing. In this box, you can type in the text that you want to add, using Markdown to format the text and add other elements like images and tables. You should then press the 'Preview' button to review your contributions for any errors. When you have finished editing, you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit box describing your changes before you press the 'Submit' button. This will help others to understand the intention of your edit.
The VisualEditor option is intended as a user-friendly, "What You See Is What You Get" editor, allowing one to edit pages without the need to learn Markdown syntax.
Some pages are protected from direct editing, at differing levels of restriction. The main types, in order from most to least common, are:
- Semi-protected pages, which cannot be edited directly by users without approved user access. This is normal for pages which would otherwise be vandalized particularly frequently.
- Fully-protected pages, which can only be edited directly by administrators. It is very unusual for an article to need this level of protection, but you can see it on key internal pages like the citation system.
When a page is subject to any of these levels of protection, you will see a 'View source' tab instead of an 'Edit' tab. You can still seek changes to these pages, by submitting an "edit request" – a user with the ability to edit the protected page will respond to your request. You can submit a request by clicking on the View source tab on that page and using the "Submit an edit request" link at the bottom right.
Documenting sources
This site aims to present objective information, so remember that it's a necessity to include references listing reliable websites, newspapers, articles, books and other sources you have used to write or expand articles. Please understand that these sources should verify the information but you must not copy and paste text you find anywhere, except for short quotations, marked as such with quote marks and carefully cited to the source the quote was taken from. New articles and statements added to existing articles may be deleted by others if unreferenced or referenced poorly or if they are copyright violations.
Generally, sources are added directly after the facts they support at the end of the sentence and after any punctuation. The site permits contributors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand where the information came from, and strongly encourages use of inline citations to do so. Common methods of placing inline citations include footnotes, shortened footnotes and parenthetical references.
Inline citations are most commonly placed by inserting a unique reference tag ([^example1]), directly in the text of an article, and then adding a corresponding footnote at the bottom of the article ([^example1]: Source). After publishing changes, it will display in the article as a footnote (e.g.[1]), and the source you keyed in will appear on the page in a collated, numbered list corresponding to the footnote numbers in the text.
Markup, formatting, and layout
Complicated articles may be best modeled on the layout of an existing article of appropriate structure and topic. Markdown is a common lightweight markup language used to format text. Markdown is used extensively throughout this site for such things as hyperlinks, tables and columns, footnotes, inline citation, special characters and so on. An "edit toolbar" is provided just above the edit box, which will allow logged in users to automatically place and format text using Markdown.
Article creation and notability
Before starting a new article, please ensure it fits our community guidelines and would be informative to our users. Please also search the site first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject, and please also review the article titling policy for guidance of what to name the article.
Renaming and page deletion
Pages can be renamed by changing their title. They can also be moved by changing their category. This is done by clicking on the 'Edit' tab at the top of the page (you need to be registered and have verified your email be able to do this) and then selecting a new category for the page. Before you do so, please carefully review this checklist of things to consider before a page move:
- Do not move or rename a page by copying and pasting its content to a different title. Doing so fragments the edit history.
- You may not always be able to move a page yourself and should refrain from doing so even if there is no technical impediment, where the rename would be considered controversial and thus should be discussed first.
- Technical limitations restricting direct moves include where the page is move protected, the target page is at a title protected from creation, or already exists and cannot be moved over a redirect.
While almost anyone can edit and move articles, to keep things manageable, only administrators can delete them. Note that removing all text from a page does not delete it, it just leaves a blank page, which is discouraged as it is confusing to readers. For all the gritty details, see the deletion policy and how to delete a page. Please remember that the deletion process is about the appropriateness of the article for inclusion. Therefore, please do not take it personally if an article you've contributed to or created is currently nominated for deletion or is already deleted. If the page is in your own user space (for example, your User page), then you can request immediate deletion of the page at any time.
Images, sounds, and videos
Images, sounds, and videos enhance articles greatly. A file that is already uploaded to the system can be inserted with the basic code "". For additional control on image placement, such as left/right alignment, sizing options, and caption text, please use the 'Insert Image' button at the top of the editor panel.
The 'Insert Image' button will open up the Image Gallery which will guide you through the process of submitting media. All files uploaded are searchable through this interface. There are various file formats available. For images, JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, WEBP and AVIF formats are recognized (other image formats may be as well).
Lists, tables, and templates
Lists are essential to the organization and presentation of content on Creatine.Wiki. Lists in articles and stand-alone lists are subject to our content policies and guidelines if they contain any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations. Outlines are a specific type of stand-alone lists designed to help a reader learn about a subject quickly, by showing what topics it includes, and how those topics are related to each other.
Tables are a commonly-used way of displaying information, particularly in articles that contain data. Tables are also subject to our policies of verifiability and established facts. The simplest way to insert a table is with the editing toolbar. Although HTML table syntax also works, Markdown can be used as a shortcut to create a table. The pipe (vertical bar) codes function exactly the same as HTML table markup, so a knowledge of HTML table code helps in understanding pipe code.
Help resources and interactive assistance
The help resource system consists of a wide variety of how-to and information pages, written to differing levels of technical expertise and in widely varying styles. This variety, however, has its flaws: it is easy to navigate to a page that regurgitates the same information, contains concepts that have not already been covered, or is overly complicated for one's needs. In short, the effects can be quite frustrating at times. To browse help related pages see the help menu or help directory.
Don't worry if you do get stuck, witness disruptive editing or are involved in a dispute; there are volunteers available to assist you. There are a number of help forums and services which allow users to ask questions, seek assistance, ask for administrative intervention and similar matters. For general matters related to using and editing this site, forums include the help desk, your talk page or an article's talk page. For more specific questions you may message an administrator directly.
