There are a number of ways you can contribute to Wikibon. These include:

• Edit existing work
• Publish a Professional Alert
• Publish a How-to note

First, Please Log-in

Create a Free User Account

Creating an account has several benefits. When you are logged in you can...

• Send messages to other users
• Personalize Wikibon preferences
• Create watchlists of your favorite pages
• Sign posts and be automatically notified of responses
• Receive attribution for your contributions
• Create and upload files.
• Protect your identity...logging in will mask your IP address when making edits

Edit Existing Work

To edit an existing note, click on the 'edit' tab at the top of any page.

Click to edit tab

Once you're in edit mode you can begin typing. You will see an Edit Tool Bar that will help with formatting and other functions, or you can use this Formatting Cheatsheet.

For a more in-depth discussion about editing MediaWiki-based Wikis, here's a link to an excellent Wikipedia Tutorial.

You can practice your edits by checking out the Sandbox where it's safe to experiment. Please note that all contributions to Wikibon may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then don't submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domian or similar free resource(see Project:Copyrights for details).

Creating a Note from Scratch

The best way to start a research note from scratch is to do the following:

1. Log in
2. Type the title, exactly as you want it in the search box. Make sure to be sensitive to the Wikbon convention of: Title lower case from there: Unless using a colon
3. Hit ‘Go’
4. You will see the following: “You searched for Your title…There is no page titled “Your title”. You can create this page.
5. Click create this page and the page will automatically be created
6. Place your content in the page and format accordingly (see Help for guidelines on formatting).
7. Categorize the article appropriately, e.g. or if your not sure how to do that place a note in the 'discussion' tab asking for help.

Publish a Professional Alert

Wikibon Professional Alerts catalyze community thought and actions. Alerts are written as advisory research notes, typically to IT customers but sometimes to vendors. A Professional Alert might be written in response to a public event, like a product announcement, or an individual insight that has broad community appeal, like a best practice for reducing energy consumption.

Here are some examples.

Note: Many users prefer to write the Alert in an application like Notepad or Word and then copy it into Wikibon. This reduces the chance of losing your work as unfortunately Internet applications and browsers will sometimes unexpectedly crash.

Professional Alerts are typically anywhere from 200 - 1,200 words in length (sometimes longer) and contain an action for the community. An Action Item is a single, critical action, rather than a laundry list of potential actions to be taken.

1. First please log in to Wikibon;
2. Make sure in 'my profile' (upper right on the page) that you have entered (and saved) your 'Real Name' or a name as you would like it to appear in the Professional Alert;
3. From the Home Page, find the RED 'Add an Alert' button;
4. Choose a great title. Notice that if you're logged in, Wikibon will automatically place your username and real name (if you've entered one in 'my profile') into the Originating Author box. If you're not signed in, your IP address will get credit for the post (bummer);
5. Enter the piece in the 'Body' field of the Professional Alerts Editor;
6. Enter an action item into the 'Action Item' field and footnotes (if any) in the 'Footnotes' field;
7. After you have finished entering your note, please categorize the note by clicking on the appropriate categories in the pick list. You can hold the control key down to choose multiple categories. If you select Storage_professional_alerts as a category, your article will automatically appear on the front page of Wikibon under Storage Professional Alerts;
8. Click 'Submit'

[Note: If you're not comfortable categorizing the piece, or formatting using Wikitext, don't worry about it-- someone from Wikibon will do it for you within a couple of hours of you posting the piece].

To start get started, register on Wikibon, log in and click here: Professional Alert Editor

Publish a How-To Note

To make it simple, we've created a model How-To note that provides you with a simple template for writing up your experiences. To get started on your How-To note, input the title here and click the "Publish How-To Note" button. An abreviated version of the model preloads when you enter your How-To note title in the form below and click the "Publish How-To Note" button.

<inputbox> type=create buttonlabel=Publish How-To Note preload=How-To note template </inputbox>

Sign your work!

Signing your work let's others know about your contribution and is common Wiki courtesy, especially if you're communicating on a talk page. to sign your work you can use the signature icon in the edit toolbar (shown while in edit mode) or you can sign ~~~.

Please remember to log in so your username, not your IP address appears.

Other Publishing Resources

• Check out the Contributor Center
• See Help for additional tips and hints
• Read the Wikibon publishing FAQ

Uploading Graphics to Wikibon

The essential steps are:

1. getting the graphic into .jpg format
2. uploading the graphic and linking it to the article
3. getting the graphic to present in the way you want on the article page.

For reference, the step details are as follows:

Step 1a. the simplest way of starting is to create an object of what you want on a PowerPoint slide.
Step 1b. select the object, right click on it and select “Save as Picture”. On the pop-up menu, select file type as .jpg, and save in the folder of your choice.

Step 2a. edit the article you are writing in Wikibon and enter [[Image:name of the graphics file page.jpg]] where you want the graphic to appear.
Step 2b. hit the “Save” or "Show Preview" tab at the bottom of the page. At the point in the article when you inserted the [[image:]] syntax, you will see a box with red lettering saying “Image:name of the graphics file page.jpg”. (see thumb)

Step 2c. click on the box. This will take you to an Upload File page in Wikibon. With the browse button, link to the .jpg file you previously stored on your computer. Hit the “upload file” tab at the bottom of the page. You will get confirmation that the file has been uploaded.

Note: In some cases you may encounter an internal server error at this step and may need to try again.

Step 3a. modify the syntax of the [[Image:name of the graphics file page.jpg]] to adjust the picture to your liking (multiple pressings of the “show preview” tab are usually required).
Step 3b. the complete syntax is [[Image:name|type|location|size|caption]].
Step 3c. use thumb for {type} if you want more control over the image.
Step 3d. if you want the graphic on its own, use Center as the {location}. If you want the text to flow round it, use left or right.
Step 3e. enter the name that you want to appear as the caption in {caption}.
Step 3f. if you want to control the {size}, use (say) 100px if you want the graphic to be 100 pixels wide (very small).

Here is sample syntax from the Analyzing tiered storage requirements note: [[Image:Tiered storage business case.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Example of a delta tiered storage business case]]. This is a good standard to use as a default. The user can get the full sized version if they double click on the graphic.

The best information on the gory details of graphics management is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Images_and_media.

Discussion Tab (Talk Pages)

The Wikibon community uses the 'discussion' tab to converse about key issues and resolve conflicts. Each article or userpage has a discussion page which can be edited just like any article page. Please familiarize yourself with the Wikibon contributor policies.

Building a User Profile

Please take some time to develop a user profile. It's a great way to introduce yourself to people, build your reputation and share your work. Your user profile page can be accessed by typing User:yourusername in the search box and hitting return.

If you haven't set up your profile page you'll be asked if you want to create one. Click on the red highlighted username and an edit page will open where you can:

• Add a picture
• Write a bio
• Add contact information
• Publicize projects you're working on

Here's an example of a simple but effective profile User:fmoore

How to Search for Stuff

You can search Wikibon by:

• Using the Navigation commands in the left hand nav bar to browse
• Typing a word or phrase in the search box and hitting Go (exact match directly to an article if it exists), Search (close match, multiple returns) or Return

Tagging Research Notes and Articles (Categories)

In Wikibon, tags are referred to as categories. Any article can be categorizied using the following syntax:

[[Category:Categoryname]]

Please choose categories that accurately reflect the note you're tagging.

The category will show up at the bottom of the page as a blue link. If you don't get the syntax exactly right, the link will be red.