Help:Contribute

You are welcome to contribute to the KDE TechBase wiki. To maintain high quality content and articles there are a few guidelines you should follow. This is a brief introduction to editing and contributing.

What Content belongs in KDE TechBase

KDE Techbase is the primary place for high quality technical information about KDE targeted at 3rd party developers, ISVs, distributors and system administrators.

Techbase is the place where technical people who aren't necessarily part of the community should find all information they need to get started with KDE. This covers development of KDE application, administration of KDE installations, or distributing KDE software. The content is of high quality and stability, and includes tutorials, information about release schedules and policies, technical background information and answers to frequently asked questions.

Techbase doesn't require its users to be involved in the community, be subscribed to any KDE mailing lists or any other community internal sources of information to be able to fully understand and use the provided information. Developers working on KDE applications will find useful content on techbase as far as it overlaps with the needs of 3rd party developers, but they are not the primary audience of techbase.

More details can be found in the article Help:Wiki Structure.

For end-user documentation use KDE UserBase. For community info use the KDE Community Wiki. See the Wiki Landing Page for an overview.

Where to put new Articles

The KDE TechBase wiki uses subpages. Take a quick look at the article about the Help:Wiki Structure. In short: Do not randomly add toplevel pages.

It is possible to translate KDE TechBase articles into other languages. Read the article about Help:Wiki Translation for further details.

The Procedure

You want to add new content. To keep high quality, please create the article in your userpage first (e.g. User:foo/My Acticle). Once it is ready, discuss the article with other developers and proofread it. Finally, if a location is found, move the page.

After moving the page please add yourself to the watch list by clicking the Watch register. You will get a notice by mail whenever the page changes.

Editing Basics

You need to register to be able to edit pages.

Review Policy and Conventions

Make sure that you submit information which is relevant to the specific purpose of the wiki, or your content might be deleted. You can always use the Discussion or talk pages to ask questions or to check if your idea will be accepted. Please make sure your contributions are not violating any licenses.

Start Editing

To start editing a KDE TechBase page, click the Edit link at the tab on the top. This brings you to the edit page: a page with a text box containing the wikitext - the editable code from which the server produces the finished page. If you just want to experiment, please do so in the sandbox, not here.

Type your Changes

You can just type your text. However, also using basic wiki markup to make links and do simple formatting increases the value of your contribution. Please follow the style used in other wiki articles. If you follow this, your contributions will be more valuable as they won't need to be cleaned up later.

Summarize your Changes

Write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box.

Example: "Fixed a typo"

Preview before Saving

When you have finished, click Show preview to see how your changes will look before you make them permanent. Repeat the edit/preview process until you are satisfied, then click Save page and your changes will be immediately applied to the article.

Wiki Markup Reference

The wikipedia provides a quick introduction about the most important mediawiki syntax. Please read the Page editing help.