This section details the recommended procedures that we'd like you to use when using our wiki. There may be other ways to achieve the same goals, but we ask you to, whenever possible, follow these steps.

What should be put into the wiki? Good question and it's a difficult one to answer.

However, for now, we'll say that you should add the following types of knowledge into the system.

• Definitions - these should be added to the Glossary
  
• Projects - Amplifer, Source, Speaker projects, all should be added to the wiki.
  
• How Tos - construction tips
  
• Domain Knowledge - How to perform certain calculations, comparisons between different types of products, etc.
  

A wiki article is only as good as the sum of it's parts. Please follow as many of the steps below to create a new article. If you don't understand the reasoning behind some of the steps, please try them anyways as they are the result of our experience in creating wiki content.

Each of the following topics are discussed in the sections below.

Topics

1. Pick a Topic
   
2. Pick a Title
   
3. Pick a Link location
   
4. Add your Article to the Link/Index Page
   
5. Create your Article
   
6. Create a discussion thread
   
7. Link discussion thread from Article
   

Some topics are really easy. If you're starting a diy Design Project (amplifier design, speaker design, etc) or if you have valuable URLs to share then add them to the relevant sections of the wiki (see section Pick a Link Location, below).

Some topics are more difficult. For instance, if you find yourself asking for more information about a particular topic then chances are that someone else is also interested in that information. Once you've collected that info and distilled it in your own head, make a wiki Article out of it.

Similarly, if you find yourself answering the same questions over-and-over again, write a wiki about it. When the next n00b comes along and asks that question again, hit them with a URL to the wiki page containing the info; it's a polite way of saying RTFM.

Note: Please do not create wiki pages to ask questions.

This is the hardest part, seriously. This is because the title of your article, or some subset of it, will become the natural language URL for the article. For Example, the title of this page is the Wiki Editing Guide and I've chosen to name the page WikiEditingGuide meaning that it's full URL is now:

The following are some rules of thumb when picking titles for pages.

Rules of Thumb:

1. Try for five words or less
   
2. Use Namespaces where appropriate
   
3. If it's a project, give the project a name - nothing is less descriptive than "500W PA build". There are literally hundreds of those on diyAudio and they're impossible to find or differentiate from each other or search for in the system. Please, for the sake of our sanity, give your project a name!
   
4. For Projects, use the Article Naming Guidelines
   

Before you create your article, browse the wiki and find a place to insert it. By that I mean, find the appropriate page to edit where people are going to see a link to your new article.

Do not skip this step as it is almost as important as the article itself.

In the past, we've had a large number of articles be created in the system but no one could find them because the author didn't take the time to put a simple link from one of the other pages, thereby wasting all of the work that they'd put into writing it.

Once you've found the right place to put your article, edit that link page, add the link to the page that you want to create and save that page.

For example, if you wanted to add a link to this page from the front page, you would edit the front page, find the spot to put the Link and enter:

Where the WikiEditingGuide will be the URL of the page while the Wiki Editing Guide is the text that will appear in the edited page, in place of the link.

Now save that page and go to the link. You'll notice that the wiki link that you've created is highlighted and underlined.

By now, you've Picked a Topic, picked a Title, Picked a Link Location and Added a Link URL to your Article (even though it doesn't yet exist).

If you haven't done all of these steps yet, please backup and do so.

Creating an article is easy. Click on the Link that you'd created in the Link Page, the wiki will take you to a page that says:

Click the Edit Tab and start typing.

Wiki articles/pages are living documents. You don't have to get it all right in the first try. If you want to add more info, simply go back to it and edit it again.

Important: If a template exists for the type of page that you are about to write, please use that template when you create the page. Unfortunately, this means that you have to browse to the document template, copy it's wiki code and then paste it into your new article.

For more information on article templates, please see: Using Document Templates

In general, information that you share will warrant some discussion. For projects, you're going to want feedback, for informational articles, you may want a place for people to ask followup questions.

Either way, you should provide a venue for these kinds of discussions.

If you've created a discussion thread for the wiki page (or if one already existed) please make sure that you add a Link to the thread (using the URL tag) within your wiki.

This makes it easy for people to find the discussion thread once they've found your wiki article.

If you're presenting an article on a subject that draws information from other stuff out there on the web, please cite your sources. Not only does it go a long way to supporting your point of view, but it's also quite likely that someone else will want to read that info too.

For example, don't copy an article from another page without first getting permission, from the original author, to do so.

Have a look at the main Help Page.

In the Special:Wikicodelist!

Wiki is a group effort and, because we're all a group here, we should do our best to follow some small guidelines on etiquette.

Don't make sweeping changes to the overall structure of the wiki without first consulting the community. For instance, radically changing the front page is kind of a no-no.

Before making changes, please discuss what you want to do by posting a thread that details your ideas.

Someone probably spent a lot of time writing an article so to go in and drastically change the content and the message of it is bad etiquette. If you have something to add to it or correct some small mistakes, the you should make those changes.

However, if you compeletly disagree with the content of the article, don't completely change the work that is already there. Instead, click on the 'Discussion' tab and add your arguments there. This will allow people to view both the original wiki article and your arguments against it.

Should the general consensus be that the wiki article is wrong, then, by all means, rewrite it.