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Content Guidelines

Guidelines for editors.

General Guidelines

These guidelines apply to all sections of the wiki.

General Rules
  • Content must abide by the Atelier community rules.
    • They are posted in the Discord server and are also mirrored here.
  • Content must be written in English.
  • Content must be kept reasonably legible.
    • Please be as grammatically correct as possible. 
    • Avoid excessively long sentences and paragraphs.
    • Organize well, whether it be formatting, headers, or content ordering.
    • Don't go overboard with formatting.
      Use the stock text size, font, color, and formatting aside from situations where it's necessary to deviate.
  • Plagiarism is prohibited.
Author Approval

Due to the status of the wiki as a community reference of information, editors must be approved beforehand based on the following:

  • Membership within the Atelier Discord community
  • Evidence of both design/engineering knowledge and writing skills

To gain approval, please fill the form available in the Discord community.

Common Wiki Section

This is applicable to all wiki shelves not under the Original Content shelf.
This is also the group of pages for "traditional wiki-style" content that remains objective - for more informal and self-authored content, see the Original Content section below.

General Rules
  • Keep content objective, third-party, and "wiki-style".
    • The style of writing should fit in with text out of a wiki, information resource, technical documentation, or encyclopedia.
    • Use of first-person speech, conversational forms, and pronouns are prohibited aside from as excerpts.
  • Place books, chapters, and pages under reasonable organization.
    • Avoid duplicate content.
    • Separate things out into chapters and pages where applicable.
      As a general rule of thumb, if a reader would have trouble figuring out which citation is for which area of the page when looking at the citations section, it's time to separate the page into multiple pages.
    • An example of the rough scope of content is as follows:
      • Shelf: PCB Design
      • Book: Microcontrollers
      • Chapter: AVR Microcontrollers
      • Page: Atmega32u4
  • Verify correctness of content as much as possible.
  • Make sure content is meaningful - for example, don't copy-paste a datasheet since it offers no value over just reading the datasheet.
  • Guides and tutorials may be placed into the common wiki sections; however, they must be indisputably objective guides.
    • For example, a guide for installing KiCad or Git can be written into the common wiki. 
    • However, a guide on "how to design a keyboard PCB" or "how to design a case" is very author-specific, and should not be placed into the common wiki.
      Write these in the Original Content section instead.
    • When in doubt, ask in the Discord community's wiki channels.
  • Don't conduct editing wars.
    • When there's a possible revision or conflict of information, use the Discord community's wiki channels to discuss solutions.
  • Citations are necessary. See below.
Citations

Due to the niche nature of keyboard design, there won't always be a third-party source to site.
To resolve this, the Atelier wiki allows for two types of sources: External Citations and Internal References.

External Citations

  • When possible, use external citations over internal references.
  • Pick meaningful sources of reasonable trustworthiness and applicability to the topic.
    Avoid sources which are controversial, would lead to conflict, would endanger the reader if visited, or would otherwise go against the Atelier community rules and guidelines.
  • Cite external sources in APA format at the end of each page. 
    Link to them inline via a superscript in the style of the following:

    This text references a citation.[Source]

Internal References

  • When external citations are inapplicable or nonexistent, cite internal references.
  • First write the content in the Original Content section described below, or on your own site/page.
    Then, link to that under the Internal References section.
  • If you are referencing an Atelier Discord community discussion, also list it under internal references.
  • For internal references, use a simpler citation format:

    Author(s) - Title of article or Summary of content

Original Content Section

This section exists for guides and references that are original works.
Examples are the following:

  • Primary/original works and research
  • Single-author guides and tutorials, especially ones that are based on a specific methodology preferred/developed by the author
  • Development logs and stories
  • Similar content which are heavily user-bound and would not fit well within the structure of a typical wiki.
General Rules
  • Wiki editors may request an Original Content book for themselves, in which they can write original content.
    For requesting a user book, please ping a wiki manager or ai03 in Discord.
  • Within this section, users may only write in their own book.
  • Pages in this section may endorse specific designers, designs, brands, methodologies, and similar as long as they are of reasonable scope and applicable to the page. 
    If doing so, make sure it is within scope of the Atelier community guidelines/rules.
  • For general knowledge which would fit well within the Common Wiki section, please contribute to the Common Wiki section instead.
  • The style of writing within this category can be a lot less formal and strict than in the Common Wiki.
  • Citations are necessary only where a lack of would be plagiarism.
Original Content Disclaimer

Since content in this section is more empirical and less stringently moderated than the Common Wiki, all pages in the Original Content section must include the following disclaimer at the very top of the page.

Original Content Disclaimer

This page is under the Original Content section of the wiki.

  • Pages in this section may include opinion- or methodology-based content.
  • Pages in this section may include original research.
  • Pages in this section are primarily written by a single author.
  • Pages in this section are generally less error-checked than the common wiki sections. 

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