Wiki Contribution Guidelines

This page is about the experience for both the authors and the readers of the OpenOffice.org Wiki. Think of the "Zen for the OpenOffice.org Wiki" to make it clean, helpful and beautiful.

There are several sets ... starting with essential ones up to the administration guidelines.

Essential Guidelines

• Communicate your plans!
• Categorize your wiki pages
• Use many wiki-links between your pages
• Do not use redirects on category pages
• Keep drafts on your userpage
• ALWAYS PREVIEW your work before you save!

Standard Guidelines

Topic	Hints	Examples
General	Communicate your plans! Be constructive! Think of the problem - and think of its solution! Think of the reader, too! Don't hesitate! Better write down something quickly than thinking too much and forgetting to write it down. Put drafts into your userspace (see below). Be open to (early or late) changes to your contribution; don't blame others, think of the best solution to the problem. If nobody contributes, maybe it's good; if myriads of people change your contribution, it might be better. Keep an eye on your contributions. If they are reverted, it is probably for a reason. Find out why so you don't make the same mistake again. If they are kept, then you're doing good things! The real measure of a page is the number of page accesses shown at the bottom. To get a higher number of accesses add relevant links to your content and add categories!
Creating Pages	When doing drafts, do those on your User-page. Use it as your sandbox. You are not required to add tight categories and context links on your userpage. Think hard about the title of the page, its very important for search. Avoid Typos in the title! You should make the content easy to find. Embed your contribution into existing content. Link to your page from as many related pages as possible to provide the needed context and to prevent duplication.	User:B michaelsen esp. the staging area
Deleting Pages	To delete a page (because it is spam or outdated), add the Wiki Syntax {{delete}} anywhere on that page.
Links & URLs	Wherever possible, use Wiki-Links or InterWiki-Links Don't use HTTP links, when Wiki-Links or InterWiki-Links are possible. HTTP links do not show up in "What links here" list for example, making pages orphans easily. InterWiki-Links are easy to update, if a Wiki changes its base-URL.
Categories and Subpages	Always add new pages to an existing category by adding a text like [[Category:Marketing]] to the page. The all categories are listed in the Category:MainIndex This is very important to keep the wiki maintainable. Non-English content should always be sorted in the category of the language (or one of its subcategories). If you want to create a new category, you may need to add that to an existing category too (making it a subcategory). never redirect from a category page	Mercurial Build Environment Effort Writer Category:Documentation
Discussion tab and Userpages	Your bio should be on your userpage. You may redirect to it from the main-namespace. Use the discussion tab of a page to discuss pages and explain why you wrote something. Never redirect to the main-namespace from the talk- or the user-namespace.

Advanced Guidelines

You are a wiki administrator? Then you might be interested in the Wiki Administration Guidelines.

Topic Related Guidelines

Translations have some additional rules.