VassarWiki:About

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This page is a proposal under consideration.

It does not yet reflect consensus and is open for discussion.

Welcome to VassarWiki, a wiki for the Vassar College community!

Put simply, a wiki is a collaboratively edited website. While many wikis are encyclopedias, they don't have to be. VassarWiki was created to be an encyclopedia and more: an open space for the Vassar community to collectively share and organize information. We hope to build a persistent institutional memory and bridge otherwise isolated corners of our campus.

Getting started

Who can contribute?

Anyone connected to Vassar can contribute! All you have to do is sign up with your Vassar email. If you're connected to Vassar but lack a vassar.edu email, you have to apply to have your account approved.

How do I contribute?

Once you register an account, click the "Edit" button by a section or at the top of the page. You can either use the visual editor (recommended if you're new to editing) or switch to the source editor on the upper-right.

Make whatever changes to the page you want, write a short edit summary, and save your changes. If your changes only contain superficial differences (e.g. fixing typos or minor formatting errors), click the minor edit button before saving your changes.

If you want to create a page, search the name of the page you want and click the red link. You may want to use a template to get started.

What can I contribute?

See also: VassarWiki:What should I contribute?

Contributions generally don't require prior approval, so be bold! If there's an issue with your edit, another contributor can revert it and you can discuss on a talk page if needed. Please read and understand VassarWiki policies before you edit. It's encouraged that you read any relevant guidelines before you edit, but there is no need to be an expert.

VassarWiki is deliberately open-ended to adapt to community needs. There are two main types of pages:

• Articles can be about things like student orgs, events, classes, departments, and college lore. Content should be written from a neutral third-person point of view and be sourced when possible.
• Every contributor has a user page that only they can edit. You can put pretty much anything on your user page (e.g. interests, projects, org memberships, essays or freeform content, contact information).

But there are other types of pages as well:

• Every page has a corresponding talk page, where you can resolve disputes about page content or otherwise talk freely about that page's subject.
• Categories are assigned to pages to assist in navigation and organization. They are listed at the bottom of a page.
• Templates are pages designed for inclusion in other pages.
• Files like images, videos, and audio files, can be embedded in pages. Files should almost be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where they will be released to the public domain.
• Project pages (those with the prefix "VassarWiki") deal with the governance and maintenance of VassarWiki.

Policies and guidelines

Main articles: VassarWiki:Policies, VassarWiki:Guidelines

Policies are the site's foundational principles that all contributors must follow. Put simply, contributors should:

• Build and respect consensus when disputes arise
• Leave a trail of citations, edit summaries, and talk page signatures
• Not publish copyrighted work here
• Not censor information they don't like
• Be civil and assume other contributors come in good faith

Guidelines are records of best practices in content and behavior. While there is no need to be an expert on guidelines when starting out, contributors should generally defer to and attempt to follow them.

Like everything on VassarWiki, policies and guidelines are established by community consensus and can change.

Governance

VassarWiki adopts a collective governance model, where decisions are made through deliberation and consensus-building. The weight of each contributor's voice should be evaluated by the strength of their argument.

Certain technical actions require their access be limited to a smaller group of contributors called administrators. These actions include suspending users, deleting and restoring pages, and approving prospective contributors lacking a vassar.edu email. Administrators remain bound to community consensus and are not given any precedence in disputes.

Anyone can apply to be an administrator. While there are no official requirements, candidates should have a track record of constructive editing (given how new the wiki is, feel free to immediately apply if you're interested!). Applications to be an administrator are approved following community discussion. Administrators who abuse their authority should be reported.

See also

• VassarWiki:Disclaimer
• VassarWiki:Privacy policy