WikiAnesthesia:Author guide
WikiAnesthesia is an open platform in which anyone is welcome to contribute. Our philosophy is that knowledge should be freely accessible and that sharing information is most successful when barriers to contribution are reduced. Similar to Wikipedia and other medical wikis, WikiAnesthesia is based on the idea that a dedicated community will self-regulate to produce high-quality, accurate, and useful content.
Getting started
Create an account
To give credit for contributions and help prevent spam, an account must be created in order to contribute to WikiAnesthesia.
- Create an account. We ask for users' real name and credentials to attribute credit appropriately and facilitate growth of the WikiAnesthesia community.
- Confirm your email address (required before creating content). If you do not receive a confirmation email, check your spam folder. You can also resend the email from the email options section of my preferences.
New users can create and edit most articles on the site immediately. To combat spam, any changes made by new users will be visible to that user, but not immediately reflected to the public until they are reviewed by an editor. Once a new user has made several successful edits, their account will be promoted to contributor status which will bypass editor review and contributions will automatically appear to the public.
Getting credit for contribution
Contributions to WikiAnesthesia are automatically associated with user accounts in several ways.
Contribution scores
Every user has a user profile which shows the number of pages edited, the total number of edits, and an overall contribution score which is defined as:
(number of unique pages edited) + 2 * square root ((number of edits) - (number of unique pages edited))
Article contributors
An unordered list of contributors is displayed at the bottom of every article. More details can also be found on the contributors and history pages for each article.
Editorial levels
WikiAnesthesia has several user levels which are reflected on users' profile pages and determine access to editorial and site administration tools.
- User: The default user group assigned to new accounts. Users can create and edit most articles, but changes will not appear publicly until reviewed by an Editor.
- Contributor: Contributors can create and edit articles without editor review (changes appear publicly immediately). Users are promoted to Contributor by Editors after one or more substantive contributions have been made.
- Editor: Editors can approve or reject pending contributions from Users, promote users to Contributors, and edit most protected pages. Users are promoted to editor at the discretion of the editorial board.
- Administrator: Administrators can edit all protected pages and modify site-wide configuration.
How to create and edit an article
- You must first create an account
- Once your account has been registered and email confirmed, you can begin creating/editing articles.
- Initial edits are considered provisional (and not publicly visible) until your account is approved by an editor
- Find an article to create or edit. You can find an article by:
- Searching for an article
- If an article does not already exist, you will have the option to create the article you searched for.
- Click the link for "Create the page on this wiki!" in order to create the new article for your search term.
- If an article does not already exist, you will have the option to create the article you searched for.
- Referring to the Table of contents
- Selecting an article featured on the homepage
- The homepage has a list of articles that have been prioritized for development.
- The homepage has a list of articles that have been prioritized for development.
- Searching for an article
[Note: Need to include guidelines around what type of articles to create, including specificity of articles, etc.]
Style guidelines
- Use lists, bullets, and tables whenever feasible
- Organize content in a manner that is mobile-friendly
General guidelines
- Keep articles as brief as possible, while still be informative
- Our goal is to have articles easily digestible in a couple minutes.
- Use the article's inbox to highlight the most high-yield content within an article
- Focus on practical knowledge that is readily useful in the clinical environment
- References you sources
- This is especially important when adding information that is not universally agreed upon by medical professionals.