Help:Community
From Free Talk Live
A wiki is only as strong as its community and strong wiki communities take work. This page will offer a crash course in how to use this website to participate in the community and how to function well inside the community.
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Watch lists
Each user has their own watchlist, accessible via the my watchlist link at the very top-right of the web browser. Anyone may watch any page on the wiki; any watched pages will show up in the watchlist when they have been edited. When an article is watched, its talk page will be watched as well, or vice-versa.
Using the watchlist is a great way to keep tabs on a large number of articles you may be interested in. Using watchlists is an important way to enable the wiki process to work. Changes will be made to pages, if you are interested in those pages, you'll have to check to see if you agree with the changes. If not, change it again. Through revision, the end product will be better than it started. Be careful though, if something becomes controversial, you'll need to start finding another way to reach an agreement over the content. Keep reading to learn how to use talk pages to avoid edit wars.
Talk pages
Every article in this wiki has an associated talk page; the talk page is where all interested parties communicate regarding the article at hand. When a topic is controversial, it becomes important to discuss changes on the talk page before they are implemented in the actual article. Effective communication in the talk page helps prevent edit and revert wars and provides a detailed account of how the article got to be the way it is.
When using a talk page it is good etiquette to sign your posts with 4 ~ (like this: ~~~~); that will create an automatic signature that looks something like this: Triddle 01:02, 2 March 2006 (Eastern Standard Time).
Revert
Every single version of an article is always available. If someone vandalizes an article, damages it by accident, or makes blatantly awful edits, the damage can be undone easily via reversion. Simply click on the history tab at the top of the article. Look through the available revisions until the most recent correct version has been identified; you can go to a specific version by clicking on the date in the center of the version history. Once you have identified the version of the article you want to revert to, click the edit button at the top of the article. You will be given a warning, something like this:
- WARNING: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since this revision will be lost.
That is fine because that is exactly what you intend to do: remove the changes that have been made since that version. Once you click on save page you will replace the article with the version you are looking at right now. At this point, the damage has been undone.
When things get hot
Controversial topics are guaranteed to exist. There will be disagreements about how a page should be structured or the content it should have. People here will make you mad. Aggravated responses are counter-productive to the community and should be avoided; remaining cool under all circumstances helps things run smoothly. Of course this is not possible all of the time, but the more it is limited, the better it is for everyone. Here are some things that can help you keep your cool:
- You can always revert. If someone makes a mistake on an article, or vandalizes it, the damage is only a single revert away from being solved.
- Try to gain consensus in the matter via the talk page. If that is not possible, head over to the Community Portal and try to get a neutral third-party involved. Perhaps they may be able to shed some new light onto the subject.
How to keep everything calm
These tips, if followed when editing, help grease the community and keep it moving smoothly.
- Contributors get aggravated and down right angry when they believe their content has been censored. This idea can easily be given off by mistake through something as simple as removing a sentence from an article during copyediting. If you disagree with some prose in an article, it is a good idea to move it into the talk page. This helps reduce the idea that the original contributors work has been censored; it would also be a good idea to leave some feedback on why you removed the content. This can help others make their own judgement call on the matter.
