Welcome to the encyclopedia development pages. Like most projects of this kind, there are always Things To Do and Content Suggestions to work on.
If you'd like to contribute to the development of the Sakai Encyclopedia, there are some things you should know about.
Open Contributions
The Sakai Encyclopedia is intended to be wide open to the entire Sakai community. It is yours and we want everyone to feel included. If you see a piece of information that seems wrong, do a bit of research and correct it. If somethings is missing, write a little article and add it to the encyclopedia tree. If there doesn't seem to be a good place to put it, make a new branch and add it there.
Cross-linking is good. One way you can improve existing materials is to add a page link (see [Sandbox]). Cross linking makes exploring the encyclopedia easier.
Naturally, things can get a bit chaotic. The original developers of the encyclopedia (ok, just me), have created a few rules which will make things a bit more orderly. Following them will help make life easier for everyone.
The "rules of the road":
- Strive for accuracy. Check your entries against installed code.
- Identify the release of Sakai when a feature appeared or was removed.
- Use the Confluence formatting code appropriately.
- Avoid editing wars. Don't change things for the sake of change.
- If you have an opinion, enter it as a comment on a article.
- If a page is locked, enter corrections, additions, or requests as comments.
Moderators
In order to add some additional order to the encyclopedia organziation, moderators will be assigned to portions of the encyclopedia tree. If you would like to be a moderate please send mail to markjnorton@earthlink.net. Moderators have the following responsibilities:
- Inspect edits to pages for accuracy.
- Maintain the page tree for this section, re-organizing it as needed.
- Solicit people to write articles as needed.
- Monitor comments and make improvements as needed.
- Lock down pages deemed to be stable and complete.
- Move pages that become obsolete to an appropriate, release oriented place.
Moderators are not intended to be dictators, but rather as people who help guide the process.
Adding Entries
When you are adding a new entry to the encyclopedia, think about modularity. Smaller articles that are modular in nature can be used more generally. It's easier to cross-link to a smaller piece of information. That said, there has to be some substance to each article as well.
Have a look at how other articles are written in terms of style, layout, information content, etc. Eventually, we will create a style guide that will add a common look to articles, but don't get bogged down in that just yet.
There are lots of sources for a potential article. Think about extracting some JavaDoc comments from various class or method definitions and editing them into an article that decribes a service. Email exhanges are a rich source of potential pieces of documentation. Documents may exist in other forms that can be usefully included. Finally, share what you know directly.
If you are adding information that was created by someone else, you can use the meta macro like this: {meta}Author: George Washington{meta}.
Adding Comments
Confluence has the ability to add comments to any page. Use a comment if you want to add your opinion or want to make a suggestion for improvement. In some cases, the page you want to edit may be locked by a moderator. You can either send email to a moderator, or just add a comment making your suggestion.
