Editing Guidelines
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Recent changes and minor edit
Since Sensei's Library is a collaborative effort by the Go community, anyone is welcome to improve its contents in anyway, so even minor corrections to typographical and grammatical errors are much appreciated. However, the folks at Sensei's Library track changes primarily through the recent changes page, which logs all the changes in Sensei's Library for the past few days. Unfortunately, very minor edits to too many pages can flood the recent changes page and make it difficult for regulars. Therefore, when making such small and inconsequential changes, it is recommended to check the minor edit checkbox that appears on the top of the edit page. When the minor edit checkbox is checked, the edits will not be logged onto the recent changes page. However, all edits to pages are logged onto the full recent changes page as well as its page history, so we can track down wiki vandals where necessary.
Unlike Wikipedia, there is no notification system in Sensei's Library, which is why we have to rely on recent changes.
Messages to people
To post messages to an individual in the library, it is recommended to post the message either directly at that person's homepage, or at the forum of the recipient's homepage.
Messages targeted at multiple people, such as those addressed to any librarian or admin, can be posted at the message board.
For general discussion, we normally use the meta discussion page.
It is also possible to (ab)use source comments (lines starting with one ‘%’) to leave a message to be seen by editors of an article but not by normal users.
Document mode versus thread mode, and talk pages
A page is said to be in document mode if it is written in the third person and left unsigned, or signed only at the bottom of the page in the list of authors. A page is said to be in thread mode if it consists of signed conversation by the community. It can be said that a number of pages in Sensei's Library are somewhere in between document mode and thread mode. While discussions are part and parcel of Sensei's Library, it is recommended that we keep most of the main pages in document mode, since it facilitates understanding of the arguments by the reader. On the other hand, thread mode tends to be messy and hard to read since arguments are found all over the place and are not in a logical flow.
Many factual pages or pages on technical topics are in document mode. It is recommended to discuss these in the talk page instead of inserting signed contributions. Many other pages are in thread mode, because they contain ongoing discussion. Some of these pages deserve to be turned into document mode, doing a wiki master edit, preferably when the discussion has died down. For other pages, mostly opinionated subjects, thread mode is suitable.
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