Contributor's Guide (TD-2.org)

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====== Contributor's Guide ======

The goal of TD-2 is to become an open wiki with many contributors. To avoid problems with spam and abuse, though, account registration isn't open. If you're interested in contributing, please contact info@td-2.org to request an account.

There's a general [[todo]] list available, that includes both some big items to improve the look and feel of the website, and a number of areas where more content needs to be written.

===== Organization =====

Dokuwiki has a concept of "namespaces" or paths. For general topics, like technologies or telephone systems, you can create articles in the "root" namespace. For some of the topics (mostly those in the sidebar) there is a specific namespace for new articles that is set up with a template and other features---please be sure to create articles in those topics, like articles on specific telecom sites, in the correct namespace. Of course this can always be fixed later if there is a mistake.

===== Policies =====

==== Archiving ====

One of the major struggles of telecom history is that a lot of the prominent online collections have disappeared over the years. Links in old discussions are routinely dead. To mitigate the problem, TD-2 should always link to resources in the most reliable possible way. Consider one of these options:

  * Link to where a document can be found in a reliable collection like the [[https://www.telephonecollectors.info/|TCI Library]].
  * For other webpages and documents, link via the Internet Archive whenever possible.
  * Documents that aren't found in existing archives should either by submitted to the Internet Archive and referenced there, or added to the archive kept here at [[:collections]]. Prefer the Internet Archive when possible so that your work can outlive even this website.

==== Attribution ====

A tricky counterpoint to the archiving problem is that copying information from one website to another can easily become unwelcome plagiarism. To avoid upsetting valuable sources, heed the following.

  * Do not upload contemporary material like photographs or descriptions of sites to TD-2 unless you have the permission of the person who created them.
  * Whenever possible, give the original source for information or documents.
  * Link to other resources available online, rather than rehosting (link via the Internet Archive to make these reliable).

==== Licensing ====

The contents of TD-2.org are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. This license allows you to freely use, distribute, and modify the contents of this website, as long as you release your version under an equivalent license and attribute TD-2.org as the source. Suggested attribution: "Information from [[https://td-2.org|TD-2.org]], the telecom history wiki."