The following are the standards for Wikipedia, we have adopted similar standards and have edited them slightly to fit Sniki.
Contributing to Sniki
Anyone can contribute to Sniki by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute however, you should check out some handy helping tools such as the the policies and guidelines, as well as our welcome page. It is important to realize that in contributing to Sniki, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add verifiable and factual information rather than personal views and opinions. (Vandals are reported via the Administrator Notice Board and may be temporarily blocked or permanently blocked depending on the transgression.)
Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles or lists. Once you have determined that there is no article on Sniki on a topic you are interested in, you may want to request that the article be written (or you could even research the issue and write it yourself). Sniki has many on-going projects, focused on specific topic areas or tasks, which help coordinate editing. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and the projects help coordinate efforts. To ensure that a specific item has not been written about, use our search feature and look through any pages that come up on that topic to ensure they are different from the one you would like to write about, also be sure to add any new social networks to the list of networks on the main pages.
Editing Sniki pages
Sniki uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design.
What is the "Wiki Syntax"?
Sniki syntax (also known as Wiki markup, Wiki language, Wiki text) is a markup language as a simple alternative to HTML code that allows quick content creation. There is no common Wiki syntax but each Wiki engine (such as MediaWiki (Wikipedia), MoinMoin, TWiki and others) have their own specific syntax. In our (Wikidot) syntax e.g. to create link to a different website you simply write visit this! instead of HTML:
<a href="http://www.example.com">visit this!</a>
To learn more about the Wiki Syntax go to our Wiki Syntax documentation.
So I have edited a page. Is the previous revision lost?
Not at all. All pages have "history" which consists of a series of revisions. Each change (title, content, rename, file upload etc.) creates a new revision. By clicking the history button at the bottom of a page you can browse the list of all revisions of a page.
In principle the rule is no content is lost. This applies perfectly to pages - pages have history and can not be deleted (only moved to a "deleted" category).
The rule does not apply to uploaded files due to limited file storage size. So Users (who have permission) can replace/delete files.
Why are there 3 modes of editing a page?
For convenience. It works fine when your pages are very long and editing the whole content is not always the best solution.
So the modes are:
- whole page edit
- section edit
- append
Each of these modes introduces a page edit lock such that no Users can both edit a page at the same time of their locks conflict. But as you might expect different users can edit non-overlapping sections of the same page at the same time. Or edit a section and append. These locks do not conflict.
Anyway - with long pages it is much easier to use the section mode or append mode than editing the whole long page.
Why is there no WYSIWYG editor?
WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get, such as TinyMCE or FCKeditor) are still not very suitable for editing Wiki content. Although we would like to have an intuitive content editor the available ones do not meet our requirements since it is very difficult to produce well-structured documents with such tools.
So what we ended with is "aided editing" - you still edit the raw source (which is a great advantage - produces clean, structured code) but the editor provides numerous buttons and wizards to make things easier a lot.
The buttons above the text input area do not work.
At the moment the interactive editor works only with major browsers, i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer. See Browser requirements for more details.
Learn more about embedding code from other sources >
Edit pages
* no need to learn HTML
* powerful and easy Wiki Syntax
* editor with useful toolbar and code assistant
Edit together
* Wikidot is also about collaboration and communities
* invite other people to your Site and let them edit content and discuss
* no limit for number of members nor size of your Site
Discuss
* you can add discuss/comment options to each page
* you can set up a forum (just like our Community Forums)
Sniki content criteria
Sniki content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with external sources, and neutrally presented, with external sources cited.
Editorial administration, oversight and management
The Sniki community is largely self-organizing, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized tasks, such as reviewing articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism, watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75–80% approval rating after enquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Sniki.
A variety of software assisted systems and automated programs help several hundred editors to watch for problematic edits and editors. An arbitration committee sits at the top of all editorial and editor conduct disputes,[17] and its members are elected in three regularly rotated tranches by an established enquiry and decision making process in which all regular editors can equally participate.
Handling disputes and abuse
- Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.
- Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through the dispute resolution process.
- Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of Internet sock puppets or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other Sniki processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.
In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.
Editorial quality review
As well as systems to catch and control substandard and vandalistic edits, Sniki also has a full style and content manual, and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes involved include peer review, good article assessment, and featured articles, a rigorous review of articles which are desired to meet the highest standards and showcase Sniki's capability to produce high quality work.
In addition, specific types of article or fields often have their own specialized and comprehensive projects, assessment processes (such as biographical article assessment), and expert reviewers within specific subjects. Nominated articles are also frequently the subject of specific focus under projects such as the Neutrality Project or covered under editorial drives by groups such as the Cleanup Taskforce.
Technical attributes
Sniki uses WikiDot software, the open-source program used not only on Sniki projects but also on many other third-party Web sites. The hardware supporting the WikiDot projects can be found by going to Wikidot.com. Full descriptions of these servers are available on this meta page.
Feedback and questions
Sniki itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable and able to do so. Oth
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Community discussion
For specific discussion not related to article content or editor conduct, see the Village pump, which covers such subjects as announcements, policy and technical discussion, and information on other specialized portals such as the help, reference and peer review desks. The Community Portal is a centralized place to find things to do, collaborations, and general editing help information, and find out what's going on.
Contacting individual editors/contributors
If you need more information, the first place to go is the Help:Contents. To contact individual contributors, leave a message for them by visiting their profile.