Creating an article
From New Zealand VoIP Users Group
Request for expansion: This page has been marked as requiring expansion. Please see its talk page for details of why. You can help the project by expanding this article with quality information. If you expand this article to the point where it has merit as it is, please remove this notice.
Creating an article is a simple process, and we have a minimal set of guidelines for style (in an effort to keep this wiki easy to use).
Your article should be directly related to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products, services, systems, concepts, software, protocols, hardware, vendors, and should be helpful to other community members.
Contents |
Examples of good articles
Good articles help educate people, and help a user to acheive a specific task. Articles can be factual articles about a given topic, tutorials (or 'walkthroughs') on how to do something in particular, or simply an explanation about a service or product of value to people using VoIP in general.
- An article explaining what Skype is, where to get it, how to install it, and how to use it. Including its history, how it works, and some tips for both new and advance users are also welcome.
- An article about the SIP protocol, its widespread use, how it works, what it can do, examples of technology that utilises it, and some links to more information about it (even offsite).
- A how-to on integrating a particular providers service (e.g. VFX), into Asterisk or Trixbox or other SIP based PBX solution.
Examples of bad articles
Bad articles are articles that do not do anything valuable for the community. This includes (but is not limited to), advertising, poorly written articles that mislead users, or are hard to understand.
- An article about xyz.com having a special price for next month for new users who sign up.
- An article doing nothing but promotion of a commercial operation.
- An article that would be considered an advert of any kind for a commercial operation.
- An article that is not factual, or is not well thought out, and fact-checked.
Articles that are deficient for any reason will be marked as per the policy on marking articles below.
Internal Linking
Please ensure that any terms/words in your article that should, could, or eventually will, have their own page on this wiki and that add to the relevancy of the article in question, are linked using the following syntax : [[VoIP]] (example: Skype is a (generally) softphone based VoIP service). You can highlight a word in the editor, and click the underlined 'Ab' icon to mark an internal link.
Internal links that point to non-existent pages will be automatically created in the Wanted Pages section. (This is very useful!). So please only create internal links if the subject matter will be of value to the community.
External Linking
Please ensure that any to other web pages, sites, files, articles etc are hyperlinked. The syntax for external hyperlinking is [http://www.asterisk.org asterisk.org] which is [<the url> <description>]. This is a hyperlink to asterisk.org.
Discussion Pages
The discussion page (or talk page) of any article may be used for discussion about that article. You dont need to list your edits in the talk page. You MUST sign all your comments in a talk page with your name.
When you use the talk pages, please sign all your comments with --~~~~ (thats two hyphens and four tildes with no spaces).
Heres an example of a signed comment. --tonyhughes 21:34, 8 April 2007 (PDT)
Example of a good talk page entry:
"The section on VoIP handsets needs expansion to explain differences between USB Audio device phones and SIP phones --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)"
"I beleieve the section about iTalk has incorrect setup information - can anyone confirm the username format? --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)"
"Is this page just spam? Wheres the merit? I am considering marking it for deletion, or as a commercial article. --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)"
Examples of a bad (or unnecessary) talk page entry:
"Cleaned article up --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)" (the wiki format shows us who cleaned, and when, and what, its redundant to say it here)
"Added section on USB handsets --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)" (we dont need to list additions - the additions speak for themselves)
"Corrected spelling mistakes --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)" or "fixed hyperlinks --tonyhughes 15:11, 16 April 2007 (PDT)"
(please, make these corrections, but they dont need to be listed/discussed)
Marking Articles
Anyone may mark an article. If you do mark an article, you MUST say why in the articles talk page. When you use the talk pages, please sign all your comments with --~~~~ (thats two hyphens and four tildes with no spaces).
Heres an example of a signed comment. --tonyhughes 21:34, 8 April 2007 (PDT)
Article Marks
To enter an article mark, simply insert the codes below (including the brackets) into the article. Generally (unless otherwise specified) article marks should be inserted at the very top of an article.
{{cleanup}} - Mark for cleanup, for articles that need formatting, grammar, spelling or layout work.
Example:Request for cleanup: This page has been marked as requiring cleanup. Please see its talk page for details of why. You can help the project by cleaning up all or part of this article. If you clean this article up in full, please remove this notice.
{{delete}} - Request for deletion, for articles that dont belong here. Blatant advertising will be marked for deletion.
Example:Request for deletion: This page has been marked as a candidate for deletion. Please see its talk page for details of why. You can help the project by Contributing to the talk page discussion (to either save, or condemn the article). Only admin or experienced users should actually delete articles (unless its obvious Spam).
{{commercial}} - All articles by, for, on behalf of, in favour of, or otherwise excessively benefiting a commercial operation may be marked with this tag. This does not make blatant advertising okay, the article must still have merit and value to the community to be allowed to continue to exist. This tag provides warning to readers, and a heads up to admin.
Example:Commercially motivated article: This page has been marked as possibly being commercially motivated. Please see its talk page for details of why. You can help the project by Contributing to the talk page discussion. Only admin or experienced users should be removing this tag.
{{expand}} - Request for expansion, where a topic covers the basics, but a more comprehensive article would be of value to many people, or the article is percieved as missing information required for it to be considered useful.
Example:Request for expansion: This page has been marked as requiring expansion. Please see its talk page for details of why. You can help the project by expanding this article with quality information. If you expand this article to the point where it has merit as it is, please remove this notice.
