Weekend Surprise: Line in the sand

  • Article

Already from the day TechNet Wiki first saw the light of day on 25 feb 2010, it has been encouraging the contributors (commonly known as Wiki Ninjas) to contribute boldly and edit gently.

With a very small community of a few contributors, the TNWiki grew significantly over time.

This also means that the TechNet Wiki is a living platform and the growth has a significant impact on the contributors community.

Significant impact on rules, guidelines and operations too.

TechNet Wiki started off with:

The Getting started has some key information like (but not only):

Some time after the initial launch, the community started building more detailed guidelines, like:

Over time a collection of Wiki guidelines was defined:

I want to highlight the introduction by Durval Ramos on the guideline for publishing videos.
In fact it does apply to the core functionality of TNWiki.

(quote) "The "good practice" in the TechNet Wiki, for articles with "videos", requires that you need a brief description of the video content and if there is "source code" for a solution, this must also be written in the body of the article. All this is intended to reduce some cases of sharing videos that end up not adding content to TNWiki, since it is not possible to index information within the videos, only on texts added in articles and in this case some videos are "lost" giving the impression that there's no great value.

It will also increase the visibility of your content, since several other search engines can find your articles.

Also add a description in the section "Introduction" and other content whenever you believe will enhance your article, for example a section "References" adding links from the Microsoft Web sites for more information on the subject or; about where to download an application, or on any content referring to your personal website (if that is relevant to the topic of the article).

You can also add a "See Also" section to link to other articles on the same subject within the TNWiki, like "Windows 10 survival guide" or the "Platforms", which increases browsing your content on TechNet Portals and also ends up evolving your profile within the community."

Why do we need these rules and guidelines?

If we don't apply rules, we can't manage TechNet Wiki (or any other platform) and it quickly turns into the Wild-Wild-West.
We will lose value and lose our community very very quickly.

Just realize that the TNWiki is a living community and a moving target.
So we need to adapt our behavior, our rules and guidelines accordingly to keep in best shape.

This also means that rules and guidelines evolve to guarantee the Wiki operations.

I invite you to have a good look at these 2 key articles and bookmark them:

If you need more in depth information feel free to dig up my previous post on the Wiki blog.

Lately, we're encountering a growing interest of spam users and fake accounts attacking genuine valid articles (not easy to counteract), instead of creating spam articles (which we detect immediately).

So I want to draw a clear line here.

We welcome you to the TNWIki and are very happy you want you to contribute to TechNet Wiki.
But make sure you do understand the rules, guidelines and expected behavior, that is a primary condition to participate.

If it's not clear or you need help, please do ask for help (like the Wiki Forum at https://aka.ms/WikiForum)

But, if you have malicious intent or an evil motive, just know the community will shorten your Wiki life very quickly.
And if you wish to play your own game and don't want to comply to the rules, look for a different play ground.

When you feel like bending the rules, you'll get a clear warning, 1 time, maybe 2 times.
Articles that explicitly violate the rules and guidelines will be removed.
Sadly enough the number of violations is growing.

But we rather prefer to think positively as a Wiki Ninja: Contribute boldly, edit gently!  

Shine like a Wiki Ninja and be proud to help build our community!
It's easy to keep clear and spend your time on useful content!