Tip Sense:Guidelines and Policies
From Tip Sense
Guidelines are more important then policies. Because often it is noticed that if you trust people and provide a general guidelines they tends to collaborate better as a team than when they are bound by strict policies.
Contents |
Structure of a Tip Article page
Just because there is a one page detailed information on structure of a Tip Article, it doesn't mean to scare you.
Because when you create a new Tip Article by following Start a New Tip Article button at front page of Tip Sense. An empty template already created for you. All you do is simply fill in the template. However it is a good idea to know details about structure of a Tip Article and that is why this page is created. So new administrators and users with more interest can learn from it and eventually suggest improvements.
Click below to know more only if you are intersted, this is definitely not needed for basic page creation.
General Guidelines
Tip Article Titles
- Spaces are allowed.
- Start each word with capitol letter.
- No other characters are allowed for example no numbers or symbols.
- Please chose a title that is descriptive for example "Car buying Tips" it clearly means that article is about Tips used during car buying. "Or Saving in energy Bills Tips"
- Try to have word "Tips" added in the title at the beginning or at the end. But add it wherever it makes more sense.
Tip Article Contents
- There are hundreds of blogs and WikiPedia articles and commercial web sites already available on various subjects, we don't have to duplicate the same information at Tip Sense. If you are taking information from a public domain please try to process the information in such a way that make most sense.
- For example create a tip or two from one big paragraph from original source. This way next time you or someone else need the same information they don't have to digg through detailed pile of pages and paragraphs, but the useful information will be quickly available in forms of Tips at Tip Sense.
- If you want to simply copy paste the knowledge from somewhere then probably it is not a good idea and better to leave it at it's source. For any knowledge/information to happily live here it must be processed in the form of tips and check lists.
- You are highly encouraged to attribute the credit to original source if you are referring it's information to create Tips at Tip Sense. Feel free to link them and mention them at "Sources/Reference" section.
- You should try to provide some description and different sections of your Tip Article should feel linked. For example if you are writing about Camping Tips and providing a list of cooking materials. It is a good idea to message the reader of your article by using few words "Here is a handy list of material you need for cooking", and then start the actual list. Instead of right away providing list of cooking material. Please try all possible ways to make the Tip Article interesting and with different sections linked with one another.
Categorizing
- As a rule of thumb if you are not sure which category your Tip Article belongs to, then it should be left alone.
- If you know that your article can live in one of the existing categories then you can add [[Category:Name of My Category]] anywhere in the article (preferably at the very bottom).
- By doing so your Tip Article can be part of "Name of My Category" if that category didn't exist already, then it will be created for you automatically.
- If you left your article without category, an administrator from current list of administrators will notice this soon and categorize the article for you.
Check Lists
No Tip Article is complete without a good Check List to depend on. Most people read through Tips only once or twice but what brings them back to Tip Sense is check list. Next time whenever they plan to do for example Camping they are going to check Tip Article for camping but this time unless new Tips are added they may want to only print Check Lists that are part of Camping Tips Tip Article.
- You can have more than one check lists on different areas.
- They must all be separate sections so they are not hidden and their links are available at Table of Content. So create a new section all you have to do is add "==" at beginning and end of the section name. If it is under a section that already has two "==" then to create a subsection beneath it you have to add another "=" and it will then be "===". To know more about working with sections please refer quick 5 minute guide.
Can my Tip Article live here?
Ask yourself following questions and quickly decide if your Tip Article can happily dwell here with the family :)
Questions? answer to which must all be YES
- Your Tip Article is precise and most important essence is quickly available to print or email or to read within 1-2 pages?
- Your Tip Article is something that you would like to make publicly available and handy online. So you can access it anywhere and others can do the same?
- Your Tip Article should not seem like an encyclopedia or detailed exhaustive knowledge. But it is precise always useful set of handy Tips?
- At least there should be a reasonable number of audience for a added Tip Article to benefit.
Questions? answer to which must all be NO
- Your Tip Article deem like a common sense act, for example don't take off your hands while driving?
- Your Tip Article is an intellectual property of an individual or organization, and you don't have their permissions?
- Your Tip Article is an hate agenda against people or place?
- Your Tip Article is an exhaustive encyclopedia and it is almost impossible to get essential information out from the Tip Article?
Keywords Description
Optionally it is a good idea to provide keywords and page description to the Tip Article. This way in future these Tip Article will easily be indexed by search engine and will show up when you search them outside of Tip Sense at for example live or google.
This is how you provide Keywords and Description to a Tip Article.
- <keywords content="List of Keywords comma separated"/>
- <metadesc content="Short description"/>
Generally its a good idea to use keywords which are also mentioned in content of your Tip Article, and which will help search engine find this article. For example when I was writing Camping Tips article below are keywords and description I used.
- <keywords content="Camping list, Camping Tips, Outdoor Tips, Useful things to carry"/>
- <metadesc content="Very Short and precise Tips and check lists for camping enthusiastic. Hope you find it useful, also please don't hesitate to add and expand the Tips and check lists"/>
And description should be one line that describe the Tip Article this description will show up with search result. Please be careful to put short precise description and keywords with no spelling mistakes.
Keywords and Description is only meta tags and not visible inside the article but they are available to search engine. As long as you have done by following above approach and as long as it is not visible in the page it is safe to assume that you done it right.
General policy
These are some agreed-upon guidelines and policies that we use for developing Tip Sense. If you have a question about the specifics of these policies, or want to see them changed/amended/clarified, use the Contact us page to suggest. Or better yet take a lead in changing by becoming an administrator.
- All Tip Sense content is 100% free. No copyrighted work can be included in Tip Sense without the expressed permission of the copyright holder to license it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License 1.0. See Copyleft for details.
- The text should be fair. We try to maintain a professional attitude towards all topics, and give an objective description of it. But there are no whetstones here; people with axes to grind should set up their own personal Web sites.
- Content should target our Goals and Non Goals. Everything put into Tip Sense should help us meet our goal of making a free, up-to-date, and reliable Tips collection. Content that doesn't help us do that doesn't have a place in Tip Sense.
Goals and Non Goals
Goals
- Top most goal of Tip Sense is to be biggest collection of processed knowledge in the form of Tips.
- Tips must be easy to understand so your efforts for creating them is paid off.
- Growing into a biggest collection of processed knowledge which is always precise and available to easily consume.
Non Goals
- We never want to be Encyclopedia or WikiPedia.
- We don't want to grow very fast with inferior quality overall.
