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Introduction

This article is a practical guideline for every author posting on TechNet Wiki, with or without experience, fresh or seasoned article writers...

If you can get past the checks below, without a stop command, you're ready to go posting your article.

In essence, every one has started as dummy...  

 

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Topic

Find an interesting and unique topic

• Challenge yourself: Are you able to write a unique article with minimum 3 useful paragraphs?
  • If yes, then add 3 headers like
    1. Introduction, case or scenario
    2. Discussion, solution or step-by-step actions
    3. Conclusion, See also, References
  • No? STOP posting and think again.

   

Microsoft technology focus

• Is there a technology focus?
  • No?
    • Is it a Microsoft related topic?
      • No? STOP, TNWiki is not the platform to post on.
  • Yes?
    • Go to next question
• Is the main technology focus on Microsoft?
  • Yes? Continue.
  • No? STOP. TNWiki is not the platform to post on.

 

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Research

Validate your content

• Did anyone else write about the same content?
  • No? Then continue.
  • Yes, stop and double-check your content. You risk publishing duplicate or pirated content.

 

Check other Wiki resources

• Did you collect useful resources at TNWiki?
  • Yes, use a "See also" Section.
  • No? Are you sure? Check again.
    • If it's no again, you're a pioneer. Keep going.
• Did you collect useful third party resources outside Wiki?
  • Yes? Use a References section
  • No? Impossible. Start over.

 

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Writing your article

Prepare offline

It's very useful to prepare your content offline for various reasons.

• Did you prepare your article offline?
  • Yes? Great, see below for some practical tips. Continue to next question.
  • No?
    • Go into the online editor and copy the HTML into an offline tool (even Notepad works...).
    • Check the hints and tips below. Continue to next question.

Working offline for preparing your article has major advantages:

• Backup in case of posting failure
• Avoid posting empty articles
• Offline cleanup of redundant HTML is much faster (replace all...)
• Slowing down your pace as you're forced to rethink your article before posting. Don't post articles on-the-fly. It will greatly improve your quality

 

Title

• Did you compact your title to the absolute shortest possible and useful value?
  • Yes? Great, check the guidelines below for more help. Continue to next question.
  • No? Rethink the title and check below. Continue to next question.

Hints & tips to carefully check the guidelines on titles:  TechNet Wiki Article Title Guidelines

• In General: KEEP IT AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE
  • Finding a good title is difficult, so you should spend enough time on it
  • Finding a short good title is smart
  • If you can skip a word in the title, start over
  • If all words in the title are significant: CONGRATULATIONS!
• By default, use the format: <technology><subtopic>: <action>

 

Sections

• Do you have at least 3 sections?
  • Yes, great! Start filling them with valuable and unique content
  • No

Hint: use a TOC by adding the [TOC] reference at the beginning of your article, see these articles to start:

• Wiki: How to Automatically Add a Table of Contents (TOC) to a TechNet Wiki Article
• Tips & Tricks to Fix the Wiki Article TOC (Table of Contents)

 

Content

• Did you copy content from other sources?
  • No? You're safe, continue to next challenge.
  • Yes? Check for piracy. It's illegal to copy content you don't own.
    • Check Wiki Governance: Types of Articles Not Appropriate for TechNet Wiki

Structure

• Did you fill the article paragraphs with more than 1 line of text?
  • Yes? Great. Next question!
  • No? Please spend some more time on providing valuable content. See hints below.

   

Videos

If you plan to add video links to your article, make sure the article has more than just a video: http://aka.ms/wiki_video.

Essentially, the video just supports your essential content. The video itself is secondary to your content.

See these wise words of Durval Ramos.

The basic check here is: if your article doesn't have valuable / searchable content, go back to line 1.

Source Code & scripts

See here: http://aka.ms/NOTForTNWiki#Source_code_management

"It's not sufficient to simply copy and paste a piece of source code into your article, an article should contain a decent explanation on the purpose of the code. Provide some info on the functionality, functions used, reference articles, purpose of the code...

If you wish to share and maintain an open source project (publishing your source code), better use Codeplex , MSDN Code sample Gallery , "

 

Layout

KISS

If your article looks like this, then your article is short lived and ... just STOP and reset your layout.

Better read this article to understand layout basics.

 

Personalization

• If you copy your article from your blog, rewrite the article to remove all personalized content
• You must use third person, do not use first person view
• See: http://aka.ms/wiki_personalization

 

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Wrap up, finalizing you article

Tags

• Have you set useful tags?
• Have you set short 1 or 2-word tags
• Reuse tags as much as possible,
  • When you use unique tags, people have difficulty finding your article.

 

Quality Check

• Remove personalization
• Use basic, simple layout
  • Remove redundant layout, keep it simple

 

Bug check

Check your article in HTML to circumvent known issues with the current Wiki platform

 

<br> tag issue

•  Do not use <br> tags in HTML

 

<span> tag issue

•  minimize (or even eliminate) the <span> tags in HTML, most of the articles can do without it

 

Color RGB codes to names

•  Do not use numeric values for color codes, but use color names
  • Wiki: Fix Color Issues in Wiki Articles
  • Using Powershell to fix RGB codes to RGB names in your HTML code

 

TOC and headers

• Start your headers at H1, then H2, then H3 ...
•  Do not use '0' in header names (<a name='...0...'><a>) it will break your TOC

 

Piracy recheck

• Did you write your article yourself, from scratch? Perfect, it's unique. No risk of piracy.
• You don't know? More detailed guidance on piracy is available at: http://aka.ms/wiki_piracy
• Anything else: ...you'll get caught. Better stop and rethink.

Hint: Guidance on providing proper source references and credits is here

• http://aka.ms/wiki_givecredit
• Wiki: Best practices for source references and quotes

 

Other sources

• Did you use content from other sources?
• You must add a References and Credits section 

 

Copyright

• No third party content (including TechNet/MSDN content) must be copied in your article.
• Only copy the strict minimum in your article, with a very clear source reference

 

See also and References

• Use references and point to these references correctly

 

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Before you hit the save button

There are some essential guidelines you must know, without excuse.

Get rid of personalisation:

• no greetings
• no me or I
• no signature

 

And there is more, exactly for that reason, we made it easy to remember:

• http://aka.ms/notforTNWIKI, if your article is compliant to this non-exhaustive list then... STOP.
• http://aka.ms/wiki_piracy
• http://aka.ms/wiki_personalization
• http://aka.ms/wiki_givecredit           

 

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See Also

Getting started

• TechNet Wiki: Getting Started
• Wiki: How to Contribute Content to TechNet Wiki

Governance

• Wiki Governance: What Is Considered Quality Technical Content?
• Wiki: Guidelines to write a good Article (meeting the expected quality)
• Wiki Governance: Types of Articles Not Appropriate for TechNet Wiki
• Wiki: Governance and Guidelines Portal
• Wiki: Code of Conduct
• Wiki Governance: Copyright, Privacy & Piracy

 

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Bonus: everyone has started as a dummy: wiki for dummies - article series