Wiki Life: The one excuse you never can use.

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You didn't know.

 

Although TechNet Wiki is a fairly open platform, it has a major difference with the TechNet and MSDN forums.
Do you know which?
All have a very strong and interactive community...
All have the same Terms of use.
All have a very strong social control (although the MSDN/TN Forums have more direct communication...).

All have the SAME focus on MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY: you should not go off-topic by posting chicken soup recipes on the MSDN/TechNet forums and Wiki. Off-topic content is removed, you should really target on Microsoft focused content.

What's the difference then?

The TechNet Wiki has it’s specific governance model and best practices, based on internet standards (as I mentioned in previous article)

The TNWiki governance is built on a series of rules, guidelines and best and common practices by the community. It's not built by 1 person, it's not built in one day and it's constantly evolving.

Check the Wiki landing page, on the right hand side, upper part,
(FYI, this week I rearranged the menu a bit to collect the 'small print'... The 'Help & Feedback' section is more practical now.)

Before you contribute

The small print

 Help & Feedback

Please realise this menu is just the start, scratching the surface of TNWiki Governance.

Luigi Bruno has put some serious effort to collect the Wiki guidelines in the Wiki: Governance and Guidelines Portal
So this is an important starting point.

Allow me to highlight some key articles:

You probably noticed the guidelines I refer to almost daily in comments when doing TN Wiki article maintenance (cleaning personal content, cleaning spam, cleaning pirated content, ...):

Last week I re-discovered and updated an interesting article, worth to share: Wiki Governance: What Is Considered Quality Technical Content?

Why is this important?

Because at TN Wiki we strive to build quality content. And the bar is set high.

So all of us really need to act and comply to the guidelines to maintain Wiki in good shape. Else our community will disperse quickly. We don't want to destroy our valuable community we have been building over the years, with lot of effort.

The series of governance articles cover the various areas of interest in the TechNet Wiki.
So, hell yes, the amount of guidelines is pretty huge.

When confronting people with their mis-behaviour, it's not exceptional to get a reply like "How should I know?", or "I haven't read the guidelines.", "Uhhhhmmmm..."

By using the TechNet (and MSDN) platforms you've agreed to comply to the rules and guidelines and you're expected to know them.
By using TechNet wiki: idem, all of them.

There is a specific Latin quote for it " Ignorantia juris non excusat" (freely translated as: ignorance of the law is not an excuse)

Have you memorized the constitution? Good luck with it, but probably not.
Can you ignore it? Good luck with it, but certainly not.

Looking forward for more of your quality content on TechNet Wiki!