WikiMac:Dive in
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- I've had a very big thing against people editing, or suggesting edits, to stuff I used to own: my former dot-com-ish website, my current website, etc... Since moving into Wikipedia, I've lost that notion. That remains unchanged at WikiMac. Go ahead, ye WikiMac people, and edit to your heart's content. -- David
That's a very good thing. Wikis (such as this website) develop faster when people fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure the language is precise, and so on. It's okay. It's what everyone expects. So you should not ask, "Why aren't these pages copyedited?"
Amazingly, it all works out. It does require some amount of politeness (e.g., don't edit to create nonsense, don't start edit wars, don't start labelling people or calling them names, etc...), but it works. You'll see.
Contents |
[edit] What To Do...
[edit] ...if a "bad article" jumps up
WikiMac does not recognise "bad articles". There is no such thing, on WikiMac, as a "bad article".
Sure, there are bad websites. Please allow Willis and Flanders from Web Pages That Suck, for example, to tell you all about bad website design. There are bad fruits, too, and sometimes, the supermarket may provide you with a Jurassic-era apple with millions of holes in it. Bad things happen.
But bad articles are non-existent on WikiMac.
What you may think is a bad article may be:
- an inferior article
- outright rubbish/nonsense
- vandalism
There are specific recommendations in each of these cases.
[edit] ...if an inferior article jumps up
Correct it, add to it!
Make the article "less inferior" according to your standards. If it's too short (less than three paragraphs), add {{stub}} to the end of the article.
[edit] ...if outright rubbish/outright nonsense jumps up
If you encounter outright patent nonsense, don't worry about the creator's feelings (creator here as the person that wrote the article). Correct it, add to it, and, if it's a total waste of time, replace it with brilliant prose (and relegate the deletions to the corresponding talk page, or just dump it).
That's the nature of a Wiki.
[edit] The Question of Stubs
An idea from Wikipedia was the whole concept of stubs. As on Wikipedia, WikiMac stubs are items with relatively few amounts of information. In general, stubs are items with:
- no images (the presence of an image, coupled with at least two lines of text, already disqualifies it from being a stub);
- a maximum of three lines of text, or 300 words, whichever is shorter;
- any page with the words "in development", etc... on it.
Insert a stub (responsibly!) by typing in {{stub}} at the bottom of the page-in-question. That page will instantly be classified in the category (Stub) and a floating, yellow dialogue appears on the page with the text The article... is a stub.
WikiMac has nothing against stubs. Nobody gets a digital bruising just as a result of creating even one single stub. We realise all articles, potentially including the Main Page, originated life as stubs.
We were born as stubs too -- just one cell! Articles live that same life; even a relatively long document (without stub status) can be made longer. The Yangtze can become the Amazon. Your local tunnel can challenge the Gotthard tunnel. Things grow. (David grew. Believe it!). Growing is natural. Stubs that outgrow stubs will be destubbed, and new items will start out life as stubs or short articles.
Stubs that eventually grow into articles will become articles, but there exist a few articles where, although the content is "good enough", it could be better. Those pages are semistubs. Stick the label {{semistub}} on them -- that's it.
Discrimination against stubs is not fair and is not OK on WikiMac.
[edit] Don't "own" articles!
You should not "own" the articles you write. As we're a free site, with every article prone to editing at any time, you should accept the fact that what you write will be edited.
For the most part, the instinctive desire of an author to "own" what he has written is counterproductive here, and it is good to shake up that emotional attachment by making sweeping changes at will when it improves the result.
And of course, others here will boldly and mercilessly edit what you write. Please: Don't take it personally. They, like all of us, just want to make WikiMac the best it can be.