Engineering Wiki is dedicated to collecting information about Engineering. It is written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any page right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears at the top of the page.
Much of this wiki follows a similar setup to its parent wiki, Wikipedia.
Browsing Engineering Wiki[]
Engineering Wiki intends to contains a huge amount of information on all sorts of subjects within Engineering, ranging from Engineers of various fields, Technology, Engineering societies, Culture of engineers to everything and anything in between. Try browsing the various categories now.
You can also search for text in articles. Just go to the "search" field to the left, enter your search term and click "search". Note that the built-in search function may be disabled in times of server overload; in these cases you will be redirected to a Google-based search of the Engineering Wiki database.
If you read something that you really like, then why not drop a note on the article's talk page? First select the discussion link (look for it in the tabs above the page or at one side), to get to the talk page. Then select edit this page on the talk page, or click the + to the right of edit this page (if there is one) to simply add a new comment. We always love to get a little positive feedback.
Editing[]
Everyone can edit pages in Engineering Wiki — even this page! Just click the edit this page link at the top of any page (except for protected pages) if you think it needs any improvement or new information. You don't need anything special; you don't even need to be logged in. If you want to experiment first, without risk of "messing up" a real article, please head over to the sandbox, where you can practice editing to your heart's content. To practice editing an existing page like this one, just copy and paste it from the article's edit page into the sandbox. If you want to learn more, try Help:Contents or check out the Wikipedia Tutorial to learn the basic info you should know as a member of our project.
You may find this a bit intimidating at first, but see replies to common objections for an explanation of why the system still works.
(Bear with the multiple Wikipedia external links for now, we are in the process of fixing these. In the articles that we do copy from Wikipedia, the links and categories usually still work but point to pages of this wiki, most of which have not yet been created. There's an opportunity for you! But links to pages that are never likely to be created here can be edited so that they point back to Wikipedia: inside the link, add "wikipedia:" before the name and a pipe ("|") after it unless there is one already there.)
Policies[]
Engineering Wiki has a few policies and guidelines that you should look at. The three most essential principles are NPOV, GFDL, and civility. What does this mean?
- NPOV, or neutral point of view means that articles should not be biased, and should represent differing views on a subject fairly.
- "Copyleft": All contributions to Engineering Wiki are released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). This specifically ensures that Engineering Wiki will remain freely distributable in perpetuity. Please do not submit any content that is copyrighted without permission of the copyright holder. (See Copyrights for more information).
- Civility. Engineering Wiki works by cooperation, and therefore mutual respect, civility, and wikilove should be practiced universally. Please assume good faith when you disagree with someone, stay cool, and talk things over civilly. It is good practice to provide an edit summary explaining your changes so as to assist others with noticing and accepting your changes. If you find that your edits get removed or modified by a registered contributor, wait a while, 24 hours maybe, before reinstating them. First check the page history, your talk page, or the article's talk page to discuss. See also Wikiquette.
Don't be discouraged[]
If you run into conflicts in your first forays into editing, then don't let it get you down. In any collaborative project there are clashes. Have a look at the writers' rules of engagement page as well as the other articles in the tutorial wing below. Use them to help you resolve the problems and learn how to become an active and productive contributor.
And if there's anything you don't understand — be it technical or social — and you're not sure where to look, just post a question on the project:Community Portal, and someone will be happy to help you.
Have fun!
Want to join?[]
Anyone can edit, but there are advantages to creating an account if you want to contribute regularly. To join, create an account and then introduce yourself to the community at the new user log.