Contributing to the DotNetNuke Wiki
Anyone can contribute to the DotNetNuke Wiki by clicking on the "Edit" button at the top of an article or at any of the subheadings. Before beginning to contribute however, it may help to read some helpful articles such as the
Example_Article and
moderator policies as well as the
WikiMarkup Reference. It is important to realize that in contributing to the DotNetNuke Wiki, 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. Wikipedia's "
The five pillars of Wikipedia" cover this approach well and is recommended reading before editing. All wiki content is subject to review and revision by moderators.
Many articles understandably start out as stubs or placeholders. However, we encourage contributors to be conservative with creation of new articles before enhancing existing placeholders. There is a lot of information that will be relevant for the DotNetNuke Wiki and we look forward to collecting it all. But it is important that visitors are able to find substantial content instead of simply placeholders.
Recognizing Contribution
Users who contribute to the DotNetNuke Wiki will be recognized for their effort. The Community Recognition System will be monitoring wiki activity and crediting users for their effort. Cross-posted content will be recognized with author credit at the end of the article.
Formatting Content
Page Creation
All Registered Users have permission to edit the Wiki and create new pages. New pages won't be accessible until approved by a moderator.
- Before you create a new page link, be sure to check if a similar page already exists. An example of this is "Actions" vs. "Module Actions". You can use the verbiage "Actions" but still link to the proper page via proper syntax [Module_Actions|Actions] which produces: Actions.
Linking
A few simple guidelines will help keep links consistent and easily maintained.
- Internal links should be formatted using "relative" linking (eg. [/tabid/510/default.aspx|DNN]).
- links to wiki pages should be done via the "link a page" button which will generate the correct format of link. If manually generating these links using the pag name within square brackets works fine, but consider using the seperator to generate an informative title e.g. [Providers] is fine but sometimes a format such as [Providers|Detail on providers] is better
- Offsite links should be formatted to display the offsite indicator. The key is how you format the link: [http://www.dnnsoftware.com|DNN] produces: DNN, while [/tabid/510/default.aspx|DNN] produces: DNN.
- External links should also be formatted to open a page in a new window (eg. [http://www.dnnsoftware.com|DNN]). . This is accomplished by preceeding the link with a caret(^) (eg. DNN).
Recognizing Cross-Posted Content
We wish to encourage contribution and consolidation of helpful information and therefore encourage blog or other article writers to contribute information cross-posted from their own sites. Cross-posted information will be recognized by formatting a reference at the base of the page crediting the original author and directly linking to the source of the content and the author's profile on www.dnnsoftware.com (if appropriate).
Because a wiki is organic and will grow and change, we do expect the original content to become enhanced and change over time, however the original content links will remain, as long as the original content can be found online.
Media
At this time we're not encouraging the use of any kind of media in the DotNetNuke wiki (images, audio or video). There are a number of reasons for this, but right now we're limiting our wiki content to text. Any media submitted will be subject to moderation (as of 8/3/2010).
Page Layout
The general order of content should be laid out as follows:
- Introduction
- Table of Contents (optional)
- Article content
- Contribution Credits (for cross-posted content)
- Related Content (links internal to dnnsoftware.com
- External References (links to relevant information on other websites).
The Example_Article provides detailted instruction and examples for formatting a wiki article.Known Issues
- No integration with the DotNetNuke File System. Images must be manually formatted.
- Page names cannot include spaces. Notification does not occur when the page reference is created, but only when the page creation itself is performed..
- Notifications are 'opt-in' only, even for Moderators... moderators must remember to do this.
Related Content
External References