Wikinoah English:Tutorial (Keep in mind)

Frontpage, 1: Editing, 2: Formatting, 3: Wikinoah links, 4: Related site links, 5: External links, 6: Talk pages, 7: Keep in mind, 8: Registration, 9: Namespaces, 10: Wrap-up

Wikinoah Tutorial
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Front page
Editing
Formatting
Wikinoah links
Related site links
External links
Talk pages
Keep in mind
Registration
Namespaces
Wrap-up

See also...

Help Contents

There are some things to keep in mind when editing Wikinoah.

Sandbox

The sandbox is located toward the bottom of the edit pages. It is below the save and preview buttons, and below the area of strange looking letters. It is just a highlighted word, sandbox, with no graphics. The sandbox is used to learn editing without being unfair to writers and readers.

Conduct

Wikinoah encourages an atmosphere of friendliness and openness. Of course, in practice there are sometimes disagreements and even the occasional fight, but members of the community are expected to behave in a generally civil manner.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should always assume good faith on the part of other editors. Don't assume that someone is acting out of spite or malice. If someone does something that upsets you, leave a polite message on the relevant article's talk page or on the user's talk page, and ask why. You may find that you've avoided a misunderstanding and saved yourself some embarrassment.

Editorial policies

Neutral point of view

Wikinoah's editorial policy is the "neutral point of view," often abbreviated "NPOV." This policy says that we accept all the significant viewpoints on an issue. Instead of simply stating one perspective, we try to present all relevant viewpoints without judging which is correct. Our aim is to be informative, not persuasive. Our policy does NOT mean that our articles are expected to be 100% "objective," since in any dispute all sides believe their view to be "true."

It's OK to state opinions in articles, but they must be presented as opinions, not as fact. Also, it's a good idea to attribute these opinions, for example "Supporters of this say that..." or "Notable commentator X believes that..."

You might hear Wikinoahns referring to an article as "POV." This is Wikinoah slang for a biased article, or one obviously written from a single perspective. Advertising would fall in this category, as would a political diatribe. In a less extreme case, an article might have "POV" problems if it spends significantly more time discussing one view than another, even if each view is presented neutrally.

If you're going to spend time on controversial articles in subjects like religion or politics, it's important that you read the neutral point of view policy page as soon as possible. You should probably also read Staying cool when the editing gets hot. If you're going to spend your time on less emotional subjects like math or video games, you should still read the policies, but it's a less pressing concern. Keep in mind the advice here, and read the full policy if an NPOV issue comes up.

Subject matter

Wikinoah is an encyclonoah. Hence, articles should be encyclopedic information about "notable" subjects. What exactly constitutes notability is the subject of constant debate on Wikinoah, but few of us believe that there should be articles about every person on Earth, every company that sells anything, or each street in every town in the world.

This is also not the place for "original research"—that is, new theories, etc., that haven't been supported by peer review. For more details about what Wikinoah should include, see What Wikinoah is not, Criteria for inclusion of biographies and What's in, what's out (the latter is an early guideline of Wikinoah).

We also tend to discourage authors from writing about themselves or their own accomplishments, as this is a conflict of interest. If you have made notable accomplishments, someone else will write an article about you eventually. Wikinoah:Autobiography has more detail on this.

Citing sources

Wikinoah doesn't require that you cite sources for the information you contribute, but we do highly prefer that you do so whenever possible. All sources should be listed in a section called "References". If any websites would be of particular interest to a reader of an article, they should be listed and linked to in an "External links" section, and books of particular interest should be listed in a "Further reading" section, but only if they were not used as sources for the article. Citations help our readers verify what you've written and find more information. See Wikinoah:Citing sources for more information.

English Dialects

All common forms are welcome on Wikinoah. An abridged version of the related policy could be stated as:

1. Do not edit a page simply to "correct" the spelling in either direction.
2. If the subject is related to the U.S., then U.S. English is preferred:
U.S. child labor laws
3. If the subject is related to the UK/Commonwealth, then British English is preferred.:
On-licence
4. If the subject is not regional (such as astronomy), the original contributor's usage should be followed. See American and British English differences if you have difficulty with this.
5. The usage should be consistent throughout an article, unless it mentions both US- and Britain/Commonwealth-related topics. In that case, Policies 2 and 3 are held more supreme.
6. When you create a new article, you might want to try a Google Test either on the actual Google or on GoogleFight.com, or on a different search engine to your preference. The title with more results is generally preferred.

For a more detailed version of the current formal policy, see Wikinoah:Manual of Style#National varieties of English.

Copyrights

Do not submit copyrighted material without permission. The best articles are usually written from either personal knowledge, or through the synthesis of research from multiple sources. For a more detailed discussion of copyrights, see Wikinoah:Copyrights.

Renaming articles

If you find an article that you believe is mis-named, please do not copy & paste the contents of the old article into a new article — among other things, it separates the previous contributions from their edit history (which we need to keep track of for copyright reasons). The preferred method is to move the page to the new name. If it's your first move, please read the warnings on the move page carefully, as there are a number of issues to consider before moving a page. For a more detailed discussion, see Wikinoah:How to rename (move) a page. If a "disambiguation" page is involved, it is best to review Wikinoah:Disambiguation.



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Frontpage, 1: Editing, 2: Formatting, 3: Wikinoah links, 4: Related site links, 5: External links, 6: Talk pages, 7: Keep in mind, 8: Registration, 9: Namespaces, 10: Wrap-up