Think of the TN Wiki as like an airport. There are a lot of different people there, moving through the airport with purpose, on the way to many different destinations. However, there is a certain decorum and consideration that we all must pay to each other and to the rules, or the whole thing breaks down. Then none of us can get to our destinations.
These contribution guidelines are those "rules". If you were at our airport, we'd expect you to:
You must sign-in to contribute. You must join to sign in. To learn how to join, see Wiki: How to Join. The fastest way to get started is to click on a tag that indicates someone is looking for your help. For example, needs work, or stub. The easiest way to get started is to contribute a link to one of the survival guides.
NOTE: Do not just copy/paste from TechNet/MSDN or other websites, or blogs, or other sources of material that you did not create. If you do this and then save this without any editing, rewriting and improvement by you, you are plagiarizing another's work. If you are working on material that started on a blog or another website, it is important to link to the original material at the top of the article. For example, "This document was originally published as <link to original> and has been reproduced here to allow the community to correct any inaccuracies or provide other enhancements before updating the original version of this topic.". Copy/pasting and then saving under your name is plagiarism. We frown on that here. Violations of copyright will be deleted.
Label pre-release content: Clearly indicate the version of the product when it is important. Do not post content about products that are under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or that are not publicly available. Do not post information about pre-release content. The place to participate in the pre-release process for Microsoft products is Microsoft Connect.
Clean HTML- Copying and pasting from Microsoft Word or PowerPoint will likely result in formatting problems. See the formatting section below for more specific instructions. We recommend authoring in Windows Live Writer, and then pasting from there. You can download Windows Live Writer for free at: http://download.live.com/writer.
If you're not paying attention to the other people who talk about the same stuff you do, then your content won't be successful.
If you've come up with incredibly clever taglines, fantastic copy, and informative posts that perfectly embody everything you are and you honestly think everyone else will love it, too, because you took so much time doing it... but you don't verify that with anyone else, then your content won't be successful.
Consider readers who are not native English speakers - by following How to Write for an International Audience, you can dramatically increase your potential reach.
Ask for help. If you have questions, or would like to collaborate with someone from Microsoft on some wiki content, just post a request in the wiki forum.
When editing raw HTML refer to W3Schools.com for appropriate HTML syntax and use the "Try it yourself" feature to render raw HTML to preview how it will be displayed.
Entering [ [Publishing Guidelines] ] (without spaces between the brackets) in the wiki editor page will generate a link to this page. If the named page does not exist it will be created. By default new links are created as sub-pages to the page where the link is created. If the page exists elsewhere in the wiki then the link should point there unless the user specifies a subpage link. (See below) <need Telligent verification here>
The URLs for wiki articles can be referred to either by the full URL or as a partial URL. Linking from the wiki is as simple as using basic HTML linking or the editor's link button to generate a new link. Links external to the wiki are indicated in wiki articles with a graphic, like this:
You cannot attach files. You can link to videos you have posted elsewhere, to scripts on the Script Center Gallery, and to files you have uploaded to other servers such as SkyDrive and Flickr.
If you did not create it (such as a screenshot from your computer) then add a link to the source (Be Nice)
Tags are similar to keywords and are included in the search index, but are not displayed to the reader of the content. At least one tag is required for all new content created.
Do not delete tags, even if you think they are wrong. Add your own tags instead. For example, if you find some useful content tagged as "HyperV," do not delete these and replace them with "Hyper-V". Just add your "Hyper-V" tags to the tagstream. Someone tagged it with "HyperV" for a reason important to them, and is counting on using that tag to find the article. Please add a tag for the language in which your post was written. For English, add en-US. This assists members of the community to easily locate and filter articles written in English.
Use standard formatting commands, such as <h1>, <h2>, etc.. All the formatting is done via style sheets (both for print and screen).
The title of the article is stored separately and is used for the <title> tag, breadcrumbs, side-bar navigation, and most importantly the URL.
In the above example the title of the article is How-To Contribute. The URL is http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-contribute.aspx. If you change the article title to "Wiki: How to Contribute", the URL will change as well and break the links. Title capitalization is preferred (all words start with a capital lever, except most prepositions and articles).
There is no Table of Contents for the wiki. Feel free to create a mini-TOC for a long article. To add an automatic TOC to your article, simply type the letters "toc"(without the quotes) between two brackets (see the top of this article for an example).
How to Create Quick and Basic Tables for TechNet Wiki
When an article is longer than just a section or two, it could be useful inserting the "Return to top" links at the end of each section. Kurt L Hudson explained how you can add this feature to your Wiki article in a post on the WikiNinjas Official Blog.
If you accidentally publish a duplicate article, or have a good reason to want to remove an article, you cannot do it yourself. Only an administrator can physically remove an article. Instead, you have to change the article title and content, and replace the tags with
This article is also available in the following languages:
Maheshkumar S Tiwari edited Revision 137. Comment: Added link in See also: Wiki: List of Articles for TechNet Wiki
Richard Mueller edited Revision 134. Comment: Clarify title capitalization
Peter Geelen - MSFT edited Revision 133. Comment: Suggestion box is alive!
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 132. Comment: Added See Also link: Plagiarism at TechNet Wiki - First Empirical Data and Analysis
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 130. Comment: Fixed misspelling
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 129. Comment: Added link to German translation. Sorted chapter "Other Languages" by locale.
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 128. Comment: Fixed typos
Carsten Siemens edited Revision 127. Comment: fixed typo
tonysoper_MSFT edited Revision 124. Comment: tonyso
Thiago Cardoso Luiz edited Revision 121. Comment: ajust grammar
Ed Price MSFT edited Revision 13. Comment: Added "How to" template.
Ed Price MSFT edited Revision 19. Comment: EDITS: Updated title and added See Also link.
Ed Price MSFT edited Revision 31. Comment: Added a "See Also" link.
Eric Battalio MSFT edited Revision 32. Comment: applied standard formatting
Eric Battalio MSFT edited Revision 33. Comment: tweak
Eric Battalio MSFT edited Revision 34. Comment: revert useless change
Monica Rush edited Revision 35. Comment: Copyedits
Monica Rush edited Revision 40. Comment: Removed boilerplate until we figure out how we can add it without diminishing the search experience.
Monica Rush MSFT edited Revision 41. Comment: Modified language about pre-release content. It may not be final, but we want to include pre-release content because we already make it publicly available and users will find it valuable. The issue is labeling it properly.
Monica Rush MSFT edited Revision 42. Comment: Formatting fix.
Monica Rush MSFT edited Revision 43. Comment: Fixed typo.