Amateur Radio Wiki:Contributing

Contributing to this wiki is both easy and important!

It's easy because it's a wiki that anybody can edit (powered by Mediawiki, the same engine that runs Wikipedia). If you have trouble editing the site, see the help system or the Mediawiki User's Guide.

Why is contributing here important
Contributing here is important because there's too many sources of information for amateur radio out there. It's hard both for new people and experienced operators to find the right source and the correct answers to too many questions when you have a problem. We need to build an authoritative documentation of all the spectrum (no pun intended) of knowledge that has gathered on the internet over the years, dusting in old 20th century web pages with turqoise backgrounds and blinking text.

As a newcomer, you need to tell us what's missing here. Feel free to edit pages to ask questions or to outline places you don't understand. You should use discussion pages to ask questions, but feel free to be bold and just edit the wiki, everything will settle in the end, trust us.

As a new, established or experience operator, sharing your experience here is invaluable. We need sound documentation on everything. A lot of information about ham out there is dispersed or in old books, we need to take it out of there and take it to the world.

When you contribute, do think about copyrights issues. We need the content here to be free of rights so that it can be reused and edited by other people.

Alphabetical navigation
The navigation of this site is intended to be largely alphabetical. Please, as much as possible keep to this in each page that you modify. It certainly helps new users and "lookers".

On the other hand, if you just want to drop some useful fact, do so and someone else will come along and tidy it up.

On links
This site should not just be seen as a repository for website addresses. The vision for the site is that it does over time, actually become an encyclopedia with authoritative articles, and other articles of interest to hams, such as construction techniques and modifications of commercial equipment for ham use.

If you would like to help with the running and organisation of this site, please contact  admin1@amateur-radio-wiki.net

Blocked pages
I have blocked editing of the help pages due to large amounts of spam. If you need to edit the pages, please email admin and I can unblock it for you. Apologies for any irritation this will cause.

-- Tim R

Welcoming new users
The How to learn ham radio? page has just been created, but it could use some feedback, both from experienced people and newcomers. It should be a gateway page for inexperienced users that doesn't throw people off guard, but still be a good and accurate reference.

What to do with wikipedia
There's a discussion to be had (in Talk:Main_Page) about the role of this wiki vs wikipedia. For now, please do not arbitrarily copy content between the wikis. You can summarize content from wikipedia (or the other way around), but the two wikis have very different audiences and "how to become a ham" page, for example, belongs here, not on wikipedia. One could also say that the Band plan here could be ditched in favor of wikipedia. Finally, if wikipedians start removing pages part of the amateur radio project on wikipedia, they can find a shelter here.

Please do communicate your work with the WikiProject Amateur radio.

Structure, structure...
A lot of pages can be reorganised to look better. The frontpage could need some help (see Talk:Main_Page).

Missing images
A recent problem with the server has left some pages without images. If you find that images are missing from pages you are looking at, please report it in the missing images page.