VassarWiki:About: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:20, 9 April 2026

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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 (from the Hawaiian word for "quick"^[1]) is a collaboratively edited website.^[2] While many wikis are encyclopedias, they don't have to be. VassarWiki was created to be an encyclopedia and more. It's a space for the Vassar community to collectively share and organize information—building a persistent institutional memory and bridging 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 can I contribute?

Once you register an account, click the "Edit" button. You can either use the visual editor (recommended for new editors) 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?

Contributions generally don't require prior approval, so be bold! If there's an issue with your edit, another editor can revert it and you can discuss on a talk page. It's recommended that you read and understand VassarWiki policies and any relevant guidelines before you edit.

What belongs on VassarWiki?

VassarWiki is deliberately open-ended to adapt to community needs. There are a few main types of pages. If you feel limited by these types, please bring your concern to the village pump!

Encyclopedia pages are about things like student orgs, events, classes, departments, and college lore. Content should be written from a neutral point of view and be sourced.

Unlike other pages, user pages can only be edited by the relevant individual. You can put pretty much anything in your profile (e.g. interests, projects, org memberships, essays or freeform content, contact information).
Project pages (those with the prefix "VassarWiki") deal with the governance and maintenance of VassarWiki. All project pages should be listed with Template:Consensus to indicate whether the page is established consensus, a proposal under consideration, or the position of a specific group or individual.
Every page has a corresponding talk page, where you can resolve disputes about page content or otherwise talk freely about that page's subject.
Pages can be assigned to multiple categories, to assist in navigation and organization. Categories are listed at the bottom of a page. To add a category to a page using the visual editor, click the hamburger menu button (yes, that's what the three-line menu icon is called^[3]) and then "Categories". In the source editor, just wikilink to the category at the very bottom of the page.

Templates are pages designed for inclusion in other pages.

Policies and guidelines

Policies are foundational principles of the site that should always be followed. Like everything on VassarWiki, they are established by community consensus.

They should not be confused with guidelines, which are records of consensus that contributors should attempt to follow, generally regarding more specific issues.

Administration

VassarWiki adopts a collective governance model, which means it has no single owner or leader. However, certain technical actions require their access to be limited to a smaller group of contributors. Administrators are contributors who have been granted the ability to perform special actions on VassarWiki, including:

suspending users for policy violations
deleting and restoring pages
approving prospective contributors who lack a vassar.edu email

Administrators are not given any precedence in content disputes (unless the dispute involves a legal issue).

Anyone can apply to be an administrator. While there are no official requirements, candidates should have a track record of constructive editing. Applications to be an administrator are approved by consensus through community discussion. Administrators who abuse their authority should be reported.

References

[1] ttps://www.britannica.com/topic/wiki

[2] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

[3] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_button

[1]

[2]

[3]

@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 * '''[[VassarWiki:Templates|Templates]]''' are pages designed for inclusion in other pages.
-== Policies ==
+== Policies and guidelines ==
+{{Main article|VassarWiki:Policies|VassarWiki:Guidelines}}
-'''Policies''' are foundational principles of the site. They should always be followed. Policies are established by community consensus.
+'''Policies''' are foundational principles of the site that should always be followed. Like everything on VassarWiki, they are established by community consensus.
 They should not be confused with [[VassarWiki:Guidelines|guidelines]], which are records of consensus that contributors should ''attempt'' to follow, generally regarding more specific issues.
-=== Build consensus ===
-Disputes over content should be discussed on the respective talk page and resolved through consensus. While voting can be utilized, it should not act as a replacement for discussion. If a dispute doesn't go your way, please respect the community's decision and move on.
-Where there is a dispute and a consensus hasn't yet formed or cannot form, the page should remain at the ''status quo ante bellum'' (the status quo before the conflict). If this is for some reason especially untenable, please [[VassarWiki:Reports|report]] the page and it will be dealt with by an administrator. Edit warring (reverting back and forth) is not tolerated (even if you're right).
-=== Leave a trail ===
-{{See also|VassarWiki:References}}
-Please sign all messages on talk pages. The visual editor should do this for you automatically on talk pages. When in the source editor, you can add your signature with four tildes (~).
-To help page histories be navigable, please write a short edit summary for each of your contributions.
-All content on encyclopedia pages must be sourced with in-line references.<ref>Like this one!</ref> While you are not required to source content on other spaces, it is encouraged.
-=== Don't steal ===
-All content on VassarWiki must be original or in the public domain. If you want to include a resource that is copyrighted, please link to it in an "External links" section. By contributing to VassarWiki, you release your contribution under the [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License].<ref>See [[VassarWiki:Disclaimer]]</ref>
-=== VassarWiki is not censored ===
-VassarWiki is not censored. As a result of this principle, negativity towards any subject is allowed. On encyclopedia pages, negative information must be verified by sources of types 1 or 2, and like all other pages, written from a neutral point of view.
-Information about living people is held to a higher standard than content about other subjects. Please consider other people's privacy.
-=== Conduct ===
-Please be respectful and civil. Harassment, defamation, and privacy violations are not tolerated. Deliberately nonconstructive edits will be removed, and editors responsible may be permanently or temporarily suspended from editing VassarWiki.
-Unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, assume that fellow contributors are here in good faith to improve the project.
 == Administration ==