Help:Writing and Editing for the JFA Wiki
The JFA Wiki offers you a unique opportunity to contribute to the animal rights and vegan movement by lending your writing and research skills, as well as your specialized knowledge to this collaborative site. You also have a chance to grow with us and become a trusted contributor, moderator, or editor, as explained below. We hope you will participate, and can't wait to see your contributions.
Creating an Account and Your User Page
Before you can write articles and edit content, you need to create an account and verify your email address, according to the guidance offered in the article Help:Your Account and Personalization Creating an account offers benefits beyond just enabling editing, as is discussed in the article.
Contributors, Editors, Moderation, and Approval
Due to the nature of the subject matter on this site, we are using a multilevel moderation and approval system which will render vandalism pointless and encourage compliance with our guidelines. As a user, your edits will require moderation (acceptance) before they become part of page history and become visible to other users.
As you make more edits, you have a chance to progress from user to other more trusted levels:
- Contributor: Your edits bypass moderation and show up in page history. They must still be approved to show up in the default view of a page, but your changes are readily viewable by anyone.
- Senior Contributor: Your edits bypass both moderation and approval, but could still be reversed by an editor.
- Moderator: You provide the first level of defense against vandalism, misuse, and other violations.
- Topic Editor: You provide compliance oversight of one subject area, such as environment, health, or ethics.
- Copy Editor: You contribute to the style guides and help enforce compliance with the style guides and other guidelines. A copy editor also edits to improve readability, clarity, fitness for purpose, grammar, and style.
- Managing Editor: The managing editor takes the lead in managing the site and its contributed content.
At any level, all contributions to JFA Wiki may be edited and substantially altered by other users. It's also possible your edits could be reversed.
The following may result in you being blocked from further participation:
- Reversing edits made by editors.
- Consistently submitting content that violates guidelines.
Paid Writing Assignments
You can get paid for writing for the JFA Wiki at justiceforanimals.org. Our current rate of eight cents per-word USD is at least competitive, if not high, for non-profit assignments. As an example of what you can earn, our 6,568-word article on Chickens would pay $525, while a short article like the one on Honey would pay $123. These numbers assume you have contributed all the words to the article.
General Information
Background
Justice For Animals' recent conversion to a wiki expanded the mission of the site to include being an encyclopedic and collaborative resource for animal rights and vegan advocacy, not just a resource to aid in answering objections. This calls for new foundational articles on a variety of topics—one for each species of farmed animal; one for each kind of product made from animals; one for each of the ways we exploit animals; one for each of the health problems that are mitigated by a plant-based diet, etc.
To kickstart our goal of meeting this expanded mission, we are offering paid assignments. We expect these paid assignments to continue until at least the foundational articles needed are completed. These paid assignments will in no way stop writers from contributing their time to the wiki without remuneration.
Qualifications
Our ideal writer:
- cares about animal rights and veganism
- can write with a friendly voice
- holds a college degree or equivalent work experience
- has experience authoring and/or editing online content
- possesses a willingness and an ability to perform academic research
- is committed to providing high-quality, accurate information
- can take direction from editors and work in a collaborative environment.
Expectations
Before you consider writing for us, you need to understand the kind of writing that will be expected and accepted. This is explained in the Content Guidelines. But the best way to get a feel for what is expected is to familiarize yourself with existing articles. As the Content Guidelines explain, the articles on this site are written in an informal academic tone with an objective point of view, and substantively differ from articles on other wiki sites such as Wikipedia.
Because providing credible citations for factual statements is a requirement, much of the time spend on an article will be spent in research. If you are a new contributor to the site, we will more closely monitor your progress on an article to help ensure you stay on track and that you don't waste time on content that will not be accepted.
How It Works
The following steps in writing an article with an invitation are explained in detail in the following sections. The steps are:
- Show your interest
- Receive and accept an invitation
- Write the article
- Get a pre-publication review
- Get paid
- Stay involved with the Article
Show Your Interest
If you feel you meet the above qualifications and wish to write for the JFA Wiki, create an account and your user page if you haven't already done so. Include on your user page the following:
- your connection with animal rights and veganism
- why you are interested in writing for the JFA Wiki
- examples of (or links to) your writing. Writing of an academic nature involving research gets higher consideration.
- the topics you would be interested in writing about
- the articles you would be interested in contributing to. See Articles Needed.
Finally, go to Preferences -> User Profile, scroll down to Email Options and make sure Allow other users to email me is checked. This will show your interest in writing for us and also allow us to contact you for further information, or with an invitation to write a specific article.
If you need help with this process, contact your.friends@justiceforanimals.org.
Receive and Accept an Invitation
If you have been selected for a writing assignment, an invitation will be posted on the talk/discussion page associated with your user page. You should create an empty user talk/discussion page after you create your user page, and then make sure you are watching the page. This will ensure that you will receive a notification if an invitation is posted.
You must be offered and accept an invitation in order to receive a monetary reward for your writing. You can still contribute to an article without an invitation, but you will not receive remuneration. The invitation will specify the number of words (as a range), the payment rate per word, and the expected completion date.
If you do not accept the assignment within 48 hours, the invitation may be rescinded without notice so that we can invite another writer. You will be instructed in the assignment how to accept the assignment.
If you accept the assignment, a beginning draft article will be created for you to begin work.
Write the Article
You should begin composing the article directly on the JFA Wiki soon after accepting the assignment. Composing directly on the wiki will allow us to monitor the progress of the article. As you write, guidance and instructions may be provided by an editor via direct edits to the article or by editorial comments in the article. This will potentially avoid your spending time on sections of the article that might not be accepted.
The editor may suggest a structure for the article by putting headings in the initial draft. You may have a better idea as to structure and propose it to your editor. Or the editor may ask you to suggest a structure by supplying the headings. You and the editor should agree on the structure before you continue with substantive content. If you are collecting substantive content before the structure is decided, you can put that under a temporary heading and move it later. And of course, the structure can be changed during the course of authoring if better ideas regarding structure surface in the process.
When you have completed the article, please this indicating this by editing your talk page, and under the assignment heading for the article write "Assignment Completed" followed by your signature plus timestamp.
Get a Pre-publication Review
An editor may have made some edits and provided editorial comments as you were writing the article, but after you indicate the article is finished a more thorough review will be done. During this review, an editor will likely make some changes directly to the article, and may also annotate the article with editorial comments regarding potential edits to be made after a discussion. You can continue to edit the article while the editor is making changes and editorial comments.
Then a zoom.us session might be scheduled at an agreed-upon time to go over the edits that have been made as well as the proposed edits.
The review could involve more than one iteration of this process, and additional communications using other messaging channels may take place.
During this process, you will become more familiar with the expectations of the editors, particularly if this is your first article for the JFA Wiki. This should result in the review process being quicker for subsequent articles.
Once the pre-publication review is done and the requested changes have been made, the article will be moved from the draft namespace to the main namespace, and your payment will be initiated.
Get Paid
You will be paid the per-word rate for the number of accepted words in the article written by you at the time the article is moved from the draft namespace to the main namespace. You may continue to edit the article without remuneration after that time. The word count used for remuneration is the word count shown by Google Docs when the article is pasted into an empty document and footnotes are deleted.
The word count may be adjusted downward for boilerplate text used or for contributions to the article that you did not make. Also, edits by a topic editor, copy editor, or managing editor during the process of writing the article while is article is in the draft namespace may result in words being removed from the article, lowering the word count.
When a paid article you authored is moved from the draft namespace to the main namespace, we will send a payment via PayPal using the email address you have provided. If you do not have a PayPal account, you will receive an email informing you how to create one. You must already have a PayPal account or create one before we can pay you.
Any payments made to you are subject to PayPal Fees. In addition, recipients outside the United States are subject to exchange rates. Paypal operates in over 200 countries and 25 currencies. If you do not live in one of these countries, we cannot pay you and it's up to you not to accept a paid assignment.
Here's the procedure: When it's time for you to receive a payment, we will send you an email through the wiki email facility, asking what email address you want to use for the payment. If you have a PayPal account, reply giving the email associated with the PayPal account in the text of the reply. If you don't have a PayPal account, we still need an email address so that you can receive an email from PayPal informing you that you have a payment available, and that you need to set up a PayPal account.
Stay Involved with the Article
You can receive notifications about edits to an article by making sure the article on your watchlist. If you have edited the article, it should already be on your watchlist.
You have no obligation to stay involved with the article, and there is no payment for doing so, but it's good if you do. After the article is published, you may think of additional information that needs to be in the article, improvements to existing content, better arguments or sources. Feel free to improve the article.
Also, others may edit the article, and you may be interested in these changes.
Additional Terms
Early Termination
It is our intent to develop a trusting relationship with a number of writers. We know, however, that not everyone who accepts an assignment will work out. Because of this, we can notify you to discontinue working on an article for remuneration. You can still be paid for the number of accepted words you have contributed to the article up until such notification. Such a payment will occur only by request after the article is moved from draft to the main namespace.
Going Over the Assigned Due Date
Going Over the Assigned Word Count
Arbitration
Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to these terms shall be settled by arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association in accordance with its Arbitration Rules, and judgment on the award rendered by the arbitrator(s) may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof.
Articles Needed
