ACT GreenGuide:Contribute

From ACT GreenGuide

This website is a wiki, which means it is very easy for you to contribute to it! Don't be scared if you've never done anything like it before! (I haven't!)

Though produced by the EC, the site should be just as useful to broader Canberra. 'Being green' is becoming very trendy these days, but I think many people are lacking good information on how to do it, past 'have shorter showers' and 'switch off the light'. Done properly, this could provide this information.

Editing pages

If when reading an article you think something is wrong, or you think you have something to add, first look at the article's discussion (also called Talk) page -- if it exists -- by clicking on the tab at the top of the article. If you are proposing a major or controversial change, it would be a good idea to discuss this there first, and see if anyone has any comments. You edit discussions pages in the same way as you edit articles themselves: see the next paragraph.

The first thing you have to do is create an account for yourself. Do this by clicking the link 'log in \ create account' in the top right-hand corner of any page.

When you want to edit the article, go back to the article view, make sure you're logged in and then click on the 'edit' tab. You'll see a box with all the text in it -- go edit!

To format the pages, for example to add bold or italics, section headings, links, or images, you need to use some special but simple commands and characters. These are usefully summarised at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. Also, when you go to edit a page a range of useful buttons will appear to the top of the screen.

For other tasks such as creating a new page, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages

Things to do

Some things to on the GreenGuide include: [please delete from this list when completed, and free free to add more]

• Verify, and update if appropriate, all the articles with possibly outdated information -- very important! This is not a small task, and is best suited I think to long-time Canberrans (which I am not). I have marked all articles with a template box if I think the information may be out of date. Once you've updated it, delete the box just be removing the <double curly start bracket> Notupdated <double curly end bracket> line.
  • I've gone through a lot of the Directories. It now requires some phone calls during businesses for things like the re-use section as many of these businesses don't have a web presence. SteveLade 23:22, 3 May 2008 (PDT)
• For someone with HTML skills, design a more attractive Main Page, maybe with boxes like the Wikipedia main page. (Eventually, maybe we could have featured articles as well?)
• Make sure all the articles are organised and linked in a sensible way. (Possibly, systematise the formatting of the articles and links according to the Wikipedia guidelines.) Best for someone who's done lots of procrastination on Wikipedia and know how wikis work.
• Find relevant external websites (for example, the Sustainable Living Foundation) and incorporate the links into this website.
• Make a nice small (A6?) flyer for advertising the GreenGuide. I've done this -- see Media:Flyerv1.JPG. Someone with artsy skills might be able to do a better job though. I will convert to PDF before putting on site.
• For someone with some legal knowledge, sort out the copyright situation -- see discussion at ACT_GreenGuide_talk:Copyrights that ran for a little while but then died.
• Raising awareness of the GreenGuide among enviro-friendly businesses. Get them to put an article on the GreenGuide -- this is free advertising for them! In return, we could get an advertising fee, or at least to have our flyers (point e) on display at their shop.
• Search out more cool groups to put on the GreenGuide and Green Map.

Discussions

For discussion of particular articles, please use that article's discussion page. To see what people have been talking about recently, go to the Special:Recentchanges page and search within the Talk namespace. Discussions of a general, website-wide nature can use article's talk page.