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From Helpful
If a page here has helped you, cool.
The whole idea is to have information useful for those that specifically look for it.
...which usually means augmenting useful information already out there. And being brief.
Feel free to dump anything that is useful, pragmatic, and in a shape you would have liked to find it yourself (and might like to find when you've forgotten the details in a few months).
Doesn't have to be interesting to everyone, just to someone - probably someone like you.
- Augment
If wikipedia has a good summary, link to it. If you find a detailed, in-depth web page or other resource, link to that too. In some cases a few good links will save a visitor so much time that it's good enough in itself, and there's really no point copy-pasting content.
...but often enough there's something to add - such as a little perspective.
When only long explanation exist on a subject, a condensed summary can be nice.
When you mostly see fragmented or scattered notes, something that puts it in coherent context can be nice.
When all notes are technical, an intuitive introduction can be nice.
When only entangled cross-referenced RFC-talk exists, the occasional "okay, in practice this is mostly ..." can be nice.
When something is theoretical or just complex, many of us prefer first getting an intuitive bootstrap (e.g. within math, a geometric interpretations - or the note that there isn't really one). Even if we'll eventually forget it and boil our mental models down to the most minimalistic things we initially disliked.
Multiple distinct approaches can't hurt when people may find one much easier to grasp than another. I find that writing pages in wikis like this is a good way to do both of those next to each other.
- Succinct
I think some of the best content on the web is the stuff written out of necessity - like your own notes when learning something, or the few-sentence summary you might give to a friend asking for some introduction.
Brief and succinct is good - as a tendency.
There are plenty of pages that are bulky semi-coherent unskimmable things. Usually it gets better after an good culling some time later. (May be much later, depending on how much time authors have).
If it shows any promise of coherency it's welcome. Just know that it'll get rewritten (and possibly eventually culled). If it's useful (and not particularly duplicate) information it'll stick around.
Oh, and people doing good rewriting are very welcome :)
- Some final notes
Be aware the GFDL license applies to submitted content, so is freely copyable under that. Don't add copyrighted information.
Wiki started and currently most content by a certain scarfboy, but don't let that stop you.
If you like the idea of the wiki - you're welcome here, but if there's a bit of a threshold (in the antispam, or being overly careful with other people's text), then you may want to experiment with your own. For something simple, and free or cheap look at sites like wikispot, wikia, wikispaces, perhaps google sites, and others like it. Or you could host your own, which is a little more work (there's a page here with some details on that).
After spending many, many hours removing automated spam, I added a bit more bother. Sorry. If you want to contribute more than once and get annoted by the captcha, don't hesistate to create an account - I'll probably accept it as soon as I see it.
