Help:Contents

Guidelines for Editing Pages and Contributing New Content

Your contributions make TransitWiki.org more useful to the transit planning community. TransitWiki.org welcomes:

• Specific examples of how transit agencies have implemented a measure or strategy discussed on the page and what they've learned
• General information about a measure or strategy discussed on a page
• Correction of errors and clarification of language used on TransitWiki.org

Please ensure that your contributions will be readily understood by the transit community. Commonly-used national acronyms and jargon are generally OK, but please spell out acronyms or detail plans that may be unfamiliar to visitors elsewhere in California or the United States.

You must register and confirm your email address to edit TransitWiki.org. Most users will be most comfortable using the built-in [1] feature, which will enable you to edit and format your contributions in a [2] manner. If you're familiar with Wiki Markup Language, used by millions to edit Wikipedia, you can toggle off the wikEd feature. Editing TransitWiki.org requires that you use special characters for formatting - known as the Wiki Markup Language. Wiki Markup Language is

Guidelines for New Page Creation

Page titles

Page titles should describe strategies, measures, or concepts as clearly and accurately as possible please:

• use active voice
• use simple language
• avoid prepositions
• avoid redundancy when possible (eg: transit, bus, rail)

Page elements

A page presents information related to a strategy or measure. Each page should have:

1. an introduction to the concept for the intelligent reader who may not be familiar with this specific concept (required),
2. an overview of the benefits and drawbacks involved with pursuing the strategy, including how the strategy can help an agency in pursuit of any desired parent outcome or result, but also any adverse effects the strategy may have on other strategies, aspects of transit service delivery, or stakeholders (required)
3. examples of agencies which have studied or employed the concept (preferred)
4. at least one link to further reading (required)

The minimum length of a mature page should be 10 lines or longer. Any mature page not meeting these criteria is considered a "stub" and should be rolled up into its parent.

Further reading

Always include a link and short abstract that helps the reader answer the question "should I follow this link?". A major feature of this wiki is that it can facilitate the identification of cost effective strategies that are appropriate to an agency, and connect agency staff with the additional information they need to explore and implement the strategy.

Standards for further reading and citations

Please cite authoritative sources such as studies, reports, and journal articles from reputable authors or organizations. For the most part, blog entries or news articles should be avoided. In some cases, an especially well-developed encyclopedia (Wikipedia) article can be offered for further reading with a proper introduction that is a well-done survey of a topic, but shouldn't be the sole source of research for a plan or strategy.

Citation format

Citations, references, and links to further reading should take the form: Author or Institution Name. "Publication Title." Year of Publication

References and footnotes

Occasionally you will want to cite statements made in pages. Any in-line citation should use the the following code to produce a footnote citing a specific source: <ref>[http://linkurl.com/example Author or Institution Name. "Publication Title." Year of Publication.]</ref> Alternatively, one can produce a text-only footnote by omitting the link code brackets <ref>example footnote</ref>. See these instructions for code needed to have more than one reference to the same source or footnote.

Produce a list of footnotes using the <references /> tag at the bottom of the page under a == Notes ==. section.

Adding Images

Images can make the transit wiki visually interesting and convey information not possible through prose. Consult the following to add images to your pages:

• Find an image that you own, is in the public domain, or is licensed for use on this Wiki
  • Visit Wikipedia's finding image tutorial for an overview on which images are acceptable to use in a Wiki like this one. Creative Commons licenses that allow non-commercial use with or without attribution are acceptable for this Wiki. Please always cite the source of an image, even if attribution isn't required by the license.
  • Places to find pictures
    • See what's already on this Wiki at Special:ListFiles
    • Creative Commons Image Search
    • the Wikipedia Commons
    • Metro Library Flickr Archive
    • Flickr photos with Creative Commons licenses
    • The Federal Transit Administration's photo galleries: Region 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
• Upload or sideload (paste image URL) the image at Special:Upload. Please cite the source of the image with "Source: http://linktosource.page/image and the Photographer's Name, User Name or Organization" in the summary field
• Use the code [[Image:Your Image Name.JPG|right|thumb|350px|Caption Text]] to place an image on the right that is 350 pixels wide. These parameters can be adjusted, for more information see MediaWiki help on adding images - a how-to-guide for placing images in an article.

Categories

Category titles

Juan has created titles from the outline following the above relationship rules. You shouldn't need to create a new category. Should you need to, please coordinate with Juan by email.

Category page contents

A category page is a special page that will auto-generate a list of child categories. A category page can also be edited to include an introductory section that describes the group of categories, category, or outcome/result (See Category:Improve_user_experience for an example). In relation to a paper report, you can think of this as a brief introductory section (e.g. 4.0) that would precede several sections on a specific strategy (e.g. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3.2).