Help:Writing and Editing for the JFA Wiki
This page is a work-in-process draft.
Background
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.
Continual Refinement
You can write new articles, paid or not as explained below. Our wiki platform also allows you to help with making continual refinements and improvements with smaller edits.
Smaller edits can:
- clarify, or correct grammar and spelling
- bring an article up to date
- correct faulty or weak logic
- add additional pertinent information
- provide more convincing or compelling wording
- provide additional evidence
- replace unconvincing or weaker evidence
Paid Assignments
Our 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 (as shown in our vision for a future home page) 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 for new articles. 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.
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.
To learn more about writing assignments, both paid and unpaid, see Writing Assignments.
Articles Needed
The focus for new articles in the near-term will be foundational articles that need to be written to fully realize the site's new mission of being an encyclopedic resource. You can find a list of these foundational articles in our vision for a future home page.
Technical Help
Technical help can be found at Help:Technical Help and Hints.
Qualifications
Our ideal writer, particularly those writing new articles under assignment:
- 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 covered 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.
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 ethics, 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.
