History Commons Entries for 'Dummies'

Okay, you're new to the History Commons, you've written an entry or two, or five or ten, and you're ready to start publishing. Excellent! But you hit that forbidding entry screen and suddenly your tail droops just a little lower. What the heck? you ask yourself.

Well, it's okay. Let's step through this one bit at the time, and you'll see that it's easier than falling off a ... okay, I'm lying, it's not that easy. But it can be done, and with a (relative) minimum of work.

Note: This walkthrough and help guide is based in large part on the History Commons Style Manual. The manual is packed with information, including much I did not reproduce here. You might keep it open as you peruse this page. It also includes material based on Kevin's Inputting Entries for Newbies post on our blog, and on my own personal experiences with getting things right and, more often, getting them wrong and having to fix them.

This is the official home of this page: Contribution and Style Manual. It has the "standard" formatting for the History Commons -- not an aesthetically pleasing format -- and as of now is already "obsolete," since it isn't being consistently updated. So for the time being this site, with all of its lovely CSS-driven glory, will remain. I don't know what the ultimate fate of this particular iteration of the style guide will be, but this material will be available for the foreseeable future in one format or another.

I've also found that this page doesn't look so hot in Internet Explorer 6. Instead of finding ways to dance around IE's many and annoying display problems, I'll just cop out and recommend that you use a different browser. I'm partial to Opera myself. Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are also good choices.

Also, I've used some Vista fonts as the main fonts for this page. If you're running Windows XP or Vista and the fonts, particularly the sans-serif in the paragraphs, look truly awful, you may need to enable your ClearType display. Here's how you do that. Use the second method, not the confusing and potentially damaging Registry edit, unless you're better at tech-geek things than I am.

Side note: We tend to use the terms "project" and "timeline" interchangeably. For the purposes of this help site, they are interchangeable. There is a difference: a project contains one or more timelines. Usually just the one, which is why they're pretty much considered the same. Technically, they're not, and we're trying to move away from swapping those two terms for one another. Check out the "US Health Care System" project to see an example of a project with two timelines: "US Health Care System" and "Other Health Care Systems." (The two timeline names are indeed confusing, considering one has the same name as the project. Let's not go there today.) Newer multiple timelines are in the "US Electoral Politics" project.

Getting In the System

First off, you have to edit your user profile to allow you access to the timelines (timelines, projects, at the moment the terms are functionally interchangeable, though we need to correct that) you'll be working in. Log in and access your user profile by clicking on the "My Profile" link in the right-hand sidebar. Then click "Edit Profile." Do a little scrolling, and you get to this screen:

This is my project listing, and yes, I'm a member of all of them. I'm an admin, so I need to be able to play in these projects. (In reality, I work in about two-thirds of them.) You're welcome to choose as many projects as you like, but you can only add and edit from projects you belong to.

While you're in this screen, set the "Max entries to edit per month" to 99. As with those things they sell on infomercials at 3 a.m., just set it and forget it.

Adding an Entry

Grant recipient Karen Wehrstein has created an alternate version of the entry creation walkthrough. I highly recommend you check it out. You may prefer hers over this one, or vice versa, or you may want to combine elements of the two. Whichever works for you, she's created a valuable resource.

Once you're registered to work in to some timelines/projects, you can go into one and choose the Add Entry option.

Finding it isn't as easy as it looks. Click into the timeline that you want to work in (I've chosen the Iraq invasion timeline just because, and yes, I know the official title is something different), and you'll see something like this:

This is the first of 32 entry pages for the Iraq Invasion timeline. All of them have the same links on every page: "edit timeline," "add event," and "references." (Actually, I don't think you get the "edit timeline" choice until you're either a project manager or an admin.) The "references" link is an alphabetical list of the yea zillion sources used in that particular project.

Here's what the next screen looks like from my computer, with a little trimming and shrinking to fit the page a little better (for reasons best not explored, the example shifts to the "2001 Anthrax Attacks" timeline. Who needs consistency?):

Like most things, I find the best way to deal with this is to prepare ahead of time as much as possible. So I write my entries beforehand, including dates, headers, source listings, internal link codes (we'll get to that), and so forth. (I use a text editor, EditPad Lite, just because writing in Word adds tons of behind-the-scenes formatting, but if you're comfortable in Word or OpenOffice, go for it. Matt prefers to use a full-blown word processor. Either one works, because as he writes, "it is easier to see what your finished entry will look like, to check through it, and to make any necessary changes and corrections.") Personally, I don't see how anyone can compose an entry in the text field. You're welcome to try, but I don't think it's a good idea.

Matt gives another key piece of advice: check your entries thoroughly. "One of the most important things to do when writing for History Commons is to check your entries very carefully, to see if you can improve them and to pick out any factual or grammatical errors," he writes. "I recommend that, once you have finished writing an entry (or several entries, if you prefer), print it out. Read through it carefully to see if there are any obvious errors or if it can be reworded to make it clearer and more concise. After making any changes, go through the entry again. This time, carefully check the information in it against your source articles. I have found this to be particularly important, as there have been many occasions where I have misrepresented information without realizing it, or perhaps failed to include an important detail from a source article. Finally, after making any corrections or amendments, read through your entry one last time to make sure that it still reads well." Good advice. Whether you print them out or not is your call, but it is true that looking over entries in two different venues -- screen display and print -- can help you catch errors you might not have seen otherwise. Printing them out also gives you an idea of just how much you've written. You will surprise yourself as to just how much copy you're generating. All for a good cause.

Here's a dummy entry, laid out the way I write them. Open up an empty "Add Event" screen in a timeline, doesn't matter which one, and follow along. Here's a jaunty little fake entry to give us some context.

If you're a minigrant recipient and you clicked on any of the news article links, you have to give the money back. :) There isn't a periwinkle field behind the White House, either. Not sure about the video arcade.

Actually, embedded in this silly little faux entry are examples of most (not all, but close) of the things you'll deal with on a regular basis as you write and post entries. Let's take it from the top.

Formatting

A lot of what I'm writing is in the History Commons Style Manual. As I noted at the beginning of this little romp, it's not a fun read by any stretch, but it's all in there. You might have it open for reference as we go through the process.

IMPORTANT: A lot of new contributors have gnashed the enamel off of their teeth due to the same simple problem: the failure to add the six-dash line every time you add a source (or cite, or citation, whatever term you prefer) to an entry. This is how it works (changing the sample "periwinkle" entry a bit just for demonstration purposes):

That six-dash line is very, very important. More about this in the Sources section, but I wanted to point this out up front.

The Date: Straightforward enough. You'll see the date box on the top left of the entry screen. Cut and paste it in. For now, you can ignore the "Actual Date if Needed" field.

Remember, the date you use is when the event occurred, not the date it was reported.

As noted, dates are not always accurate. While you should be as accurate as possible, you might have one of these variants:

Be as specific as you can, but as I said, sometimes you just can't pin down a particular event that specifically.

On the other hand, there are rare occasions where the time of day is important. Don't list it unless it's pertinent to the entry:

The database understands the parentheses and inserts the entry in the proper place in the timeline.

The Internal Link. You have two choices here: change it or leave it alone. I left it alone for hundreds of entries, until Paul Thompson finally convinced me to start writing my own links. In the sample I'm in, the default link for the entry is

because I happened to go into the US International Relations timeline. This is an example of a link that the system automatically generates for a new entry every time you open a new Add Entry screen. Here's why we like to change these automatic links to something else:

This is the actual link generated when I just now opened an empty screen in the Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere timeline. Gah, it's huge and unwieldy. And when you want to use the link from that entry in another entry, you'll find yourself having to write something like:

Rewrite it. There are enough of those around as it is without adding new ones to the system.

There is no one particularly recommended method of writing internal links. This is the official style manual methodology: just abbreviating the title. For example:

The primary reason for doing this is simplicity and identity: each internal link MUST be unique. It's unlikely that such a text string as "BuenosAiresWaterUtilPrivatizd" is going to be mimicked in a later entry.

For purposes of completion, this is another method that some contributors use. Caveat: Derek, the site's founder and executive director, doesn't recommend this method. I'll put it in here because it's often used (by me, among other contributors), and because Kevin already mentioned it, but it's not the best way to do it. Start with the letter a, then the digitized date, i.e. 040108, plus a word or two to help identify and set off the entry, i.e. aprilfool. So we get for this dummy entry:

When you delete the automatically generated link, make sure it's all gone. Sometimes you just get what's visible in the field, not the rest of it that's cleverly hiding past the field. Then you paste in your link but all unknowingly end up with something like:

Tricky at first, but as with all things, it becomes second nature in fairly short order. I never forget to change the autolinks now. Hardly ever. Usually.

The Title. Paste your title over the [Title] placeholder text. Don't use double quotes in titles. Use single quotes if you're quoting someone in the title.

What else? Capitalize everything except articles (a, an, the) and prepositions (between, over, around). Check the manual for more ticky guidelines about capitalizing titles. No punctuation except colons, semicolons, and single quotes.

Matt suggests using this Preposition guide, and says, "I found this list very handy, and still refer to it all the time." I'm bookmarking it for my own use as well. (When I teach prepositions in my classes, I use the "squirrel is ON / ABOVE / BENEATH / etc the log" example. This page uses a similar example, with cute photos of pug dogs. What's not to like?)

First off, leave the ------ right where it is. The system won't like it if you remove it. (Remember, the six-dash line is very important, and MUST be added every time you add a source. Not an internal link, but a source.) Do get rid of the Write a summary of the event here. You must provide at least one source. phrase. Copy and paste your entry in this box, from the first word to the last source. Paste it above that ====== line. The field will accept the entire entry, and then some.

Styling: You can also see examples of bullet lists and underlined headers. You probably figured out already that ---*--- gives you a bullet link, ---Phrase to be made into a heading--- gives you an underlined heading, and two single quotes: ''word to be emphasized'' gives you italics. One of the most frequently used is the ------ , which most often comes into play like this:

The source listing demands the ------ once a source appears. Note: it's six dashes. Not five, not seven. Six. (I keep hammering on this six-dash line thing because it is the single biggest causes of errors, hairballs, and contributor frustration.)

There are other formatting choices besides italics, bullet lists, and headings, but we rarely use them. Find out more in the Syntax tab (see below to find that tab).

might be useful if you write your entries in the text field. My recommendation: don't do it. Get used to writing entries in your text editor or MS Word or whatever. But just for the sake of completeness, they mean, in order:

Comments: At the top right, you'll see a fairly large, open field titled "Comments:

Here you can leave comments for other users who will read and possibly edit your entry. They in turn may leave comments for you, often to explain why your entry got the hook. These are used strictly for in-house communications about entries, and are never seen by outside users.

When you submit the entry, the comment goes along with it. The current comment shows up when you hover over the yellow balloon beside the entry (this is discussed later). All the comments, present and past, are preserved in the History of each entry.

This little navigation menu also has some other useful links: "Sample Event" is just what you think it is, a sample entry (and a rather old one). "Writing Guidelines" brings up the style manual, the same one we're using to follow along with this page, except in a pop-up window. And "Create Another Event" brings up a blank entry field, as discussed earlier in this article.

Entities

These are the people, places, organizations, businesses, and what have you mentioned in the course of your story. They go below the ======. You have two options: go through the system's Add New Entity and Search process, or make your own entity listing and be prepared to add and search anyway. I gave you an example of how I do it. But I've done a few kazillion entries before, and I know a few things: for example, the system will kick back

You won't know that until the system kicks back a few of your attempts to enter Cheney as an entity. Then you'll grumble and write it down somewhere for later use. (I have a million little text files with all kinds of info in them. I've forgotten what's in half of the files, and have to check periodically to see what they contain. Make a folder titled "History Commons" or something equally definitive and keep your stuff in there. You will eventually have subfolders, oh yes. Did I mention keeping a copy of every entry you submit?)

Anyway, entities. This is the way you'll probably end up doing them, but if you don't feel comfortable doing it that way at the outset (and you likely won't), then here's the "easier" way -- easier how, I'm not sure, except the system will do some of the work for you.

See those five tabs -- Text, Entities, Categories, Topics and Countries, and Syntax? Okay, four for you because you don't have the Categories tab yet. You will after you get some entries under your belt. The Entities tab is highlighted, so we're in the Entities portion of the entry screen. You're concerned with three things: the "Search Text" field, the "Add new entity" text link, and the "Perform Search" button. For some reason, the Search Text field and the accompanying Perform Search button are not side by side, though they work together. Let's say you want to add His Nibs to an entry. Type it in:

The first one is what you want. See how it shows up as Richard ("Dick") Cheney? Told ya. (We don't do the "unnamed official" stuff any more.) Just click the Add link and it automatically gets inserted into your text field below the ====== line. Use the tab to go back to the main text screen. Here's what you get:

We didn't look at the + beside Cheney's name. Why that particular mark? Well, there are three marks we use, and each entity gets one depending on what function they served in the entry. Like so:

where Cheney and the Bush administration (in the person of unnamed officials) are active participants, the FBI is an inactive participant (Cheney was going there when he disappeared), and Priest is the journalist who observed and reported the incident. Note the difference: though both Priest and the Bush officials merely stated information, because of the role they play -- Priest as a reporter, hence an observer, and the officials as participants who speak for the administration -- they get different classifications. (Some might argue that the Washington Post also deserves an entity mention; I would not, but I agree that it's worth discussing. In fact, some of the others say that neither the Washington Post nor Dana Priest need to be given entities in this entry. We didn't quote Priest word for word on anything, so they have a good point -- we usually don't cite reporters as entities. There is, of course, a counterargument to that, which I refer to as the "Judith Miller Shaping the News by Writing It Counterargument." We can tussle it out in the blog or via e-mail if you like.)

There is a very cool "matrix" in the HC Style Manual that gives more detailed info about who gets pluses, who gets minuses, who gets at marks, and who gets left behind at the station.

Side notes: You don't get the spiffy, begging-to-be-misused "Automatically approve myself" checkbox. I have it because I have admin status, but I don't use it except in very rare and specific instances. To use it would circumvent the peer review process, and that isn't what we do. Also, there's a dropdown menu called "Entity type." I never use it, so I can't tell you what it's good for.

This sample doesn't have Cheney in it, but it illustrates the concept nevertheless. Each entity in this listing -- Robert Mueller, Coleen Rowley, Charles Schumer, FBI, Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, Jeff Sessions, Arlen Specter -- is a clickable link that, once clicked, takes you to a list of all the entries featuring that person, or organization, or whatever. Feel like skimming over all things Robert Mueller? Click his link and off you go.

Side note: What's that timeline tag? You don't always see it; it depends on how exactly you get to an entry. Don't ask. Some entries belong to more than one timeline. If you write an entry that you think should go into two or three timelines, e-mail me or someone with access, and we'll cross-post it for you. Or better yet, as Kevin suggests, just leave a comment in the entry form (see above for details on commenting).

Just make sure that everything is spelled correctly, and that if it's a business, you don't identify it as a person, and so forth. By the way, in this example, the system told me that there is a similar entity already in the system: Gregory Newbold. It's the same guy, so I didn't submit this entity. That would have been a duplicate, and we don't like duplicate entities. (You won't get the "Automatically approve myself" option just yet. Sorry.)

If you screw up and create a duplicate entity, or designate a business as a person or whatever (and you will, oh yes), please e-mail me with the details. I can fix it fairly easily, or at worst put it on my already-long list of entities that need Derek to fix them or make them go away. Don't feel embarrassed, that list was long before you added your own goof to it. Just don't forget to alert me or Derek.

Categories: You can't get to the Categories tab until you've posted, I believe, 50 entries in a particular timeline. (There's a reason for that: new contributors tend to put things in the wrong categories.) But when you're able to get into this tab, you'll see a variety of possible categories. Each timeline has different categories, of course. Here's a (now outdated) example from the Domestic Propaganda timeline. I picked it because it's an easy one:

Click the ones you feel are appropriate to your entry. Feeling frisky? Go check out the category list in the Complete 9/11 Timeline (they're visible in the right-hand sidebar). It's quite lengthy and detailed.

Topics and Countries: The system requires you to choose some appropriate topics and countries. Here's a random screenshot of part of those two screens (they appear together, in a two-column display):

Scroll down and pick the ones you feel are appropriate. If you're not sure, e-mail one of us.

Side note: This two-in-one screen has to do with a secondary organizational facility of the Commons that organizes entries by topic and country. Click into Timelines and click that second, or middle, "Topic" tab and you get this screen:

Not much to look at, huh? Well, click on either "Expand all" or one of the + icons beside Regions or Topics, and one heck of a list appears on your screen. Prepare to be amazed. You don't have to worry about populating these, the system handles all of this itself. But these listings are why you are careful to pick the proper topics and countries for your entries.

Syntax: Strictly a help function. You'll get some mileage out of this at the beginning, particularly. But I'll leave this to you to peruse on your own. We're going to cover some of the material in this screen later on anyway.

Preview: Hit Preview before you do anything else. This will show you what your entry will look like, and will catch some errors, mostly in the entities.

Let's see our periwinkle entry in Preview. I'm doing this strictly for tutorial purposes; this entry will not, repeat not, be gracing the pages of the Commons any time soon. Hmmm ... let's put it in US International Relations, why not:

Did you see that the entry identifies the reporter as Jeff Gannon, but in the entity list he's James Guckert? That's because Guckert is Gannon's real name. When I entered him, I used the "Alias" field to also list him as Jeff Gannon. (I have a ton of entries on Gannon/Guckert that haven't been posted yet, just so you know if you do a search.)

See that Bad_link: complete_911_timeline_543 notation in red? That's because I made that link up for the purposes of this demonstration. If it were a real link, it would have appeared as a clickable link, with a date visible and the title of the entry visible on hover. And I just noticed a second problem: I forgot to put an opening [[ on the a21509gannonguckert]] internal link. Had I done it properly, it would have also shown up as a bad link. Since I didn't, the system would have let it through, and one of the editors would have (hopefully) caught it. Or it would have been published, and my karma would have been forever besmirched.

Side notes: Like before, you guys won't get the spiffy "Automatically approve myself" option. And did you see the category listing is "NATO?" Random, entirely random, unless of course Bush was performing the NATO Shuffle for his admirers.

Images: In many cases, we upload images to illustrate our entries. We generally get these from sources such as news outlets and so forth, not from pay-to-use stock photo providers and the like. We have a certain amount of leeway on our image usage as a result of our Creative Commons license, but we don't have the freedom to use any darn thing we please. We often use head shots of participants. Going to a random page in the 9/11 timeline, I find:

Images need to be roughly the size of the one in the screenshot. They need to be cropped so that irrelevant imagery -- background, microphones, neckties, etc -- are not visible. The best way to learn about images is to wander through the Commons and note the variety of images used. Except in specific and rare instances, the images do not need to be much larger than the photo in the example. A really large image will give the option of clicking on the image to show it in its original size, and display a (fairly large) thumbnail image in the entry. Unless there's a real need for that to happen, shrink the image down to a reasonable size. I find IrfanView is a terrific basic graphics editor that doesn't require a lot of knowledge to use. If you're a Photoshop maven, don't let me interfere....

You'll have to download the pic you intend to use from wherever you're getting it, then upload it through the "Image (optional)" field, using the "Browse" button to find the location of the pic on your computer. The "Picture Caption" should be short, descriptive, to the point, and not necessarily in a complete sentence. The "Image Source" should be accurate, whether it's from the FBI as is the picture in the screenshot, or another source. You don't have to do anything except type "FBI" or "New York Times" or whatever (no quotes) in the field, the system adds the word "Source," and the italics and brackets for styling.

Sources

Remember in the periwinkle entry, we had three sources, all of which looked like this:

Basically, you've got the publisher, the title of the article, the date of publication, the author(s), and the URL. (Notice the way the multiple authors are listed? Name + name. The system prefers the plus sign.)

to stand for the source. You are going to create a "source ID" for this source, one which can be used over and over again. When you submit the entry (or save it as a draft), the system does not just accept your entry. First, it kicks out a pop-up window that asks for source information for the various sources you've used. Let's take a look. I'm going to have to submit a real entry with a real source for this demonstration, because the system won't let me cancel a source without some database ramifications that I want to avoid. Therefore there will be no periwinkle foolishness for the immediate future. This is from a real BBC news article:

You have X remaining sources left: In this instance, I have three sources to add. In reality, I only have two, because one of the sources gets used twice. A nice check to see how many more of the things you have to add before you can be done and go do something else, like pet a cat or watch the ball game.

Option 1: Lets me check if this source is already in the system. Check the dropdown menu. If your title is listed, just select it and choose "Preview this source." It populates the field and you can simply go down, click "Next" (or "Use this source" if there are no more sources to add), and move on. In this case, I didn't use this option.

Option 2: Here you get to search the database for the title of the entry. If it's in there, it will appear in a big gray box on the right. You can click "Preview this source" in the big gray box, and once that's done, follow the same steps as above. In this case, I didn't use this option, either.

Option 3: Now you get to create a source for yourself. Because of the way I formatted this source in the entry field:

the date was already up there. I added the Publication, the Title, and the Url. The BBC rarely lists the authors of their articles, so I left the field blank (fields listed in bold must be populated, otherwise it's optional). Check it over, click Next, and this source is in the system.

This BBC piece was classified as "News article (online OR print)." This is the most common choice, and the system default. But you won't always use just news articles from the Internet. Let's do another (real) entry and show you some more. You have two main categories, Commercial and Government

The system won't let me screenshot the dropdown menu for the various types of sources, but I'll list a few of the ones I use most frequently:

For this entry, the source is a book, Alasdair Roberts's The Collapse of Fortress Bush.

Since it was already in the system, I was able to use Option 1 above and have it appear without re-entering (again, that would create duplicates, and we don't like duplicates). Note the fields in gray: I can't change them. You can see what's required: Author, Date, Title, Publisher, Publisher Location, ISBN, and Page(s) Cited. Of these, I can only add the Page(s) Cited in the bottom field, in white (numbers only: 141, say, or 141-143, or 141, 325). The "Use this source" button is below, out of the screenshot. Click and go.

When you go back into the entry, say to correct an error, you'll see the source with a system-generated ID number, like so:

The 141 in the middle of the string is Page 141. So, you can copy this into a text file for later use. If you create another entry from, say, Pages 235-237, just change it and paste it in:

Easy. (Remember, the system has to generate the ID. It strikes me that some enterprising soul with a taste for cutting corners might decide to just write an ID for themselves and avoid the whole mess. It won't work.)

Some of the other source entry fields -- court and Congressional documents, journal articles, others -- are quite complicated. If you have any trouble entering sources, let me or one of the others know and we can walk you through submitting the source.

If you're using an online source whose domain name is usually considered part of their name, then include that code in parentheses, like so:

Also, if you're using multiple sources, don't list them side by side. List them in a vertical column. Like so:

If at all possible, you should store the sources that you use. Probably the easiest way for an Internet-based source is to save it as a text file, stripping out all the extraneous, and storage-eating, images and code. You should keep books and other printed material at hand whenever possible, or at least ensure their availability, i.e. through your library (I use a lot of library books). If you don't have the hard drive space to store the text or Web files, let me or someone know. We're discussing this same topic now.

Side note of great importance: Every time you use a source, you have to alert the system that a source is being used by some kind of line break. The six-dash line is most often used, but the bullet list or header works, too. Like so:

This will cause you a world of confusion. "Why won't the system take my entry!" you'll howl, and end up smashing your monitor into flinders. I can't afford to buy you a new one. So don't do this:

Once you submit that final source, you are done. The entry goes into the system, popping up in the timeline in all of its glory. Here's an entry similar to what you'll see:

That ugly diagonal "Draft" in gray stencil shows that the entry is in draft. People who aren't logged in as contributors (or editors, or admins) can't see this draft at all. But you know it's there, and so do we. It will eventually get posted, and you can bask in all the glory of a job well done. (What exactly is "draft?" We're getting to that point.)

Actually, this entry isn't quite done. I can't submit this for publication until I post the entry that goes with the (see Bad link: a40906newboldzealots) link. It's a real entry, but as of the time I'm writing this, it hadn't been posted. (Update: it's in the system now.)

What's those four icons in the top right corner? The only one you'll use regularly is the first one, the pencil and paper icon. Clicking that allows you to edit the entry again. The others are as follows: "Show History" (useful in certain situations), "Add, move, or copy event" (you won't do this for now), and "Delete event" (never, ever click this!).

Side note of considerable importance: when you're making an entry and you get to the point of inputting a source, never never ever ever abandon the entry in case of foul-up. Don't quit on it. Don't close it in disgust. Don't try to delete it. Just don't do it. Kevin reminded me to make this recommendation, and he added the following dire warning: "This is the only chance they get to fill them in. There are no second chances." He's right (or almost right; admins can usually fix such an abandoned entry or a glitchy source, but it's a pain). Preparation is 90% of avoiding this little speed bump. Have that source info ready to go beforehand as delineated above, and this won't come up. We hope.

Multiple Sources: We don't require that entries have multiple sources. Sometimes it's impossible to find more than one, and sometimes the entry just isn't significant enough to require such sourcing. But when you can find more than one source for a particular event, we urge you to use them. Here's an example I wrote just the other day (not yet posted) using two sources, the AP and Reuters. The entry was based on the AP report (because I found it first), and augmented with material from Reuters. That material is highlighted in red:

You can see how I slotted in the Reuters material. Since I didn't just ram a solid chunk of material into the article, but sprinkled the two quotes into the larger body of the story (with some rewriting to make the entry flow as one piece), I just stuck both sources at the end of the entry.

I don't have to tell you that using multiple sources gives a fuller, more complete picture of an event. And I'm aware that this subject is more to do with content than with formatting, but, well, yeah.

Acceptable Sources: Whee, here we go down the slipperly slope. The History Commons lives and dies on the reliability and objectivity of its sources. Having said that, I know that the entire concept of reliability and objectivity are not fixed points that we must move past -- this is reliable, that is not; this is objective, that is biased -- but rather swaths on a continuum. So it's something of a judgment call. You will no doubt do the same thing I have done, and still do, battle passionately for this or that source to be considered "acceptable," and find contributors and admins who differ. There are sometimes no right or wrong answers here; sometimes it's a community decision whether to trust a source or not.

With all that in mind, here's a highly incomplete compendium of what we like, what we refuse, and what we think about:

Does this help? Well, maybe somewhat. Here are a few -- very few -- examples of each:

Is there room for argument with these and other sources? As the governor of Alaska would say, you betcha, not the least on the question of why "professional" corporate-shill, government-reliant journalists such as Judith Miller are considered reliable when independent journalists like Robert Parry are sometimes not. But when there's a disagreement on a source, we routinely come to some sort of consensus through lively discussion and occasional snarling and cursing (well, okay, usually that's just me). This listing is a rule of thumb, not a be-all end-all list graven in virtual stone.

There's no reason you can't use these "unacceptable" sources as places to find better sources. I am a proud member of the Daily Kos, and while I almost never quote DK as a source, I often use links from that site's diaries upon which to base my entries. If you're familiar with that blog, its posters are often quite erudite; their diaries are usually chock full of nutritious linky goodness, much of which can be used. Paul Thompson often used the material posted on Democratic Underground for the same purposes.

Veteran contributor Matt likes to print documents out and highlight key details: "By doing this, you will make it easier and quicker to re-locate that information when you write the entry."

Submitting an Entry

This is the final step in the process. Here's where it gets tricky, not the least because if you walk away from it during this part, or a power surge nails your computer, you can get a scrambled entry that will need fixing. We have all done it at one point or another, so don't get too worried. It happens. But the fewer times you can manage to do it, the better.

Submit or Save as Draft? There are multiple levels of submissions before your new entry finally gets published. Roughly, it goes:

Save as Draft » Submit » Content Edit » Copy Edit » Manager's Queue » Publication.

Until you become an editor (the next step up the ladder), you won't be able to see entries once they're in Content Edit or above. This is the heart of our "peer review" process. Editors for the Commons -- Derek, Paul, Kevin, Matt, me, a couple of others -- look over the submitted entries. If everything looks good, the entry goes to the next level, where someone else looks it over. If there's a perceived problem, the entry is rejected, which sounds awful. Really, all it means is that someone sees a change that needs to be made, so the entry is sent back into Draft for you to fix. Get used to it now: you will have entries rejected. We all have entries rejected. As I write this, in early December 2008, I have eight entries sitting in draft, rejected by one editor or another, waiting for me to fix them. Wanna see some?

And there are more underneath. One entry I retitled NULL. That one has been superseded and can be overwritten. (Which reminds me: we always overwrite entries. We never delete them. Say it again: We never delete entries. Don't ask me why, Derek and the database folks can tell you more if you're interested.) The red hand with the rudely pointing finger indicates a "rejected" status. The yellow balloons contain comments from whoever sent your entry back into the queue. Hover your mouse over them to read what the editor or admin said -- you'll see why the entry was rejected, and usually will get suggestions as to making corrections. If you can think of a better phrase than "rejected," let me know.

Anyhow, I'd strongly recommend saving everything as drafts to begin with. We can see your drafts, comment on them, and push them through. Once you "Submit" them, you can't see them again unless one of us rejects them. As long as your entries are in draft, you can tinker with them.

If you're not comfortable with an entry you've made, let someone know. Send us the title of the draft entry, or send the whole draft in a text attachment to an e-mail, and we'll put our virtual heads together to get it figured out.

Side notes: In the entry screenshot at the top of the page, see the box marked "Drafts of this entry can be viewed and edited by other project members." Always, always leave this box checked. Usually it's checked by default, but not always, so check to make sure. And, you won't get the "Automatically approve myself" option here, either.... Also, we consider entries communal "property," and as such, anyone is free to edit or add to them. And we do, often.

The Construction of an Entry: An Example from Inception to Completion

Or, Why It Takes an Hour to Write an Entry that Takes a Minute to Read

I wrote an entry entitled "Three Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation" in December 2008, based on notes I took from pages 157-159 of Alasdair Roberts's book The Collapse of Fortress Bush. Here's the way I first wrote it in EditPad:

Three eminent retired generals launch a broadside against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and what they see as his failure of leadership with the Iraq occupation. On NPR, General John Riggs says Rumsfeld and his staff "only need military advice when it satisfies their agenda. ... That's why I think he should resign." Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until his retirement in 2005, tells CNN that the Pentagon needs leadership "that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them." Retired Major General Charles Swannick Jr, the former commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells CNN that Rumsfeld "just controls our generals too much." [[Roberts | 2008]]

Not bad, and probably would be published without a problem. But while writing the entry, I decided that it shouldn't be too hard to find the original sources that Roberts used for his passage; maybe the interviews would contain other material worth including. I returned the book to the local library weeks before, so I couldn't check the end notes (and like an idiot, I didn't notate the original sources when I was going through the book). But I did have Google, and I began hunting the sources based on the names and quotes. It was easy to find the story that used the Riggs quote. So I inserted some material thusly:

Three eminent retired generals launch a broadside against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and what they see as his failure of leadership with the Iraq occupation. On NPR, General John Riggs says of Rumsfeld, "I think he should step aside and let someone step in who can be more realistic." Rumsfeld and his staff "only need military advice when it satisfies their agenda. ... That's why I think he should resign." Riggs says that he supported the invasion of Iraq, but accuses Rumsfeld and his staff of "arrogance" and "micro/mismanagement." Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until his retirement in 2005, tells CNN that the Pentagon needs leadership "that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them." Retired Major General Charles Swannick Jr, the former commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells CNN that Rumsfeld "just controls our generals too much." [[Roberts | 2008]]
[[National Public Radio | 4/13/2006]]

All well and good. The Batiste material was just as easy to find:

Three eminent retired generals launch a broadside against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and what they see as his failure of leadership with the Iraq occupation. On NPR, General John Riggs says of Rumsfeld, "I think he should step aside and let someone step in who can be more realistic." Rumsfeld and his staff "only need military advice when it satisfies their agenda. ... That's why I think he should resign." Riggs says that he supported the invasion of Iraq, but accuses Rumsfeld and his staff of "arrogance" and "micro/mismanagement." Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until his retirement in 2005, tells CNN, "I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork." Retired Major General Charles Swannick Jr, the former commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells CNN that Rumsfeld "just controls our generals too much." [[Roberts | 2007]]
[[National Public Radio | 4/13/2006]]
[[Washington Post | 4/13/2006]]

At this point, I began thinking, why pile all of the sources at the end, when there's a fairly easy distinction between the generals and their sources? So I did this:

Three eminent retired generals launch a broadside against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and what they see as his failure of leadership with the Iraq occupation. [[Roberts | 2008]]

------
On NPR, General John Riggs says of Rumsfeld, "I think he should step aside and let someone step in who can be more realistic." Rumsfeld and his staff "only need military advice when it satisfies their agenda. ... That's why I think he should resign." Riggs says that he supported the invasion of Iraq, but accuses Rumsfeld and his staff of "arrogance" and "micro/mismanagement." [[National Public Radio | 4/13/2006]]

------
Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until his retirement in 2005, tells CNN, "I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork." [[Washington Post | 4/13/2006]]

------
Retired Major General Charles Swannick Jr, the former commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells CNN that Rumsfeld "just controls our generals too much." [[Roberts | 2008]]

The Washington Post article gave me supplementary material from another retired general that I added at the end. Now, all that remained to do was find the Swannick material. Or, actually, Swannack, as I learned when I began doing a Google search for the story that quoted him. I checked his Wikipedia entry to see how he spells his name, and made the changes. The CNN source didn't give the exact same quote that Roberts gave for Swannack, so I used the CNN source instead; Wikipedia also led me to a New York Times entry that fit with the story.

By this point, the entry was getting rather long for a single paragraph, so I decided to use headers to divide it into chunks. I made the split based on the generals' quotes -- a simple, natural set of breaks.

Altogether, I came up with the following.

Three eminent retired generals call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, citing his failure of leadership with the Iraq occupation. [[Roberts | 2007]]

---Rumsfeld Accused of 'Arrogance,' 'Mismanagement'---
On NPR, General John Riggs says of Rumsfeld, "I think he should step aside and let someone step in who can be more realistic." Rumsfeld and his staff "only need military advice when it satisfies their agenda. ... That's why I think he should resign." Riggs says that he supported the invasion of Iraq, but accuses Rumsfeld and his staff of "arrogance" and "micro/mismanagement." [[National Public Radio | 4/13/2006]]

---Need for 'Teamwork,' Mutual Respect---
Major General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until his retirement in 2005, tells CNN, "I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork." [[Washington Post | 4/13/2006]]

---'Too Much Baggage'---
Retired Major General Charles Swannack Jr, the former commander of the 82nd Airborne, tells CNN, "I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him." Swannack continues, "Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there. ... And I believe he has culpability associated with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and, so, rather than admitting these mistakes, he continually justifies them to the press ... and that really disallows him from moving our strategy forward." [[CNN | 4/14/2006]]

------
Swannack tells a New York Times reporter, "We need to continue to fight the global war on terror and keep it off our shores. But I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq." [[New York Times | 4/14/2006]]

---'Floodgates' of Criticism Beginning to Open, Say Other Generals---
Other retired generals, such as Marine Lieutenant General Wallace Gregson, expect the backlash against Rumsfeld to continue. He says that many current and retired flag officers "are hugely frustrated," in part because Rumsfeld gave the impression that "military advice was neither required nor desired" in the planning for the Iraq war. Gregson, who refuses to express his own feelings about Rumsfeld's leadership, says he senses much anger among Americans over the administration's handling of the war, and believes the continuing criticism from military professionals will fuel that anger as the November elections approach. [[Washington Post | 4/13/2006]]

------
"Are the floodgates opening?" another retired Army general asks, drawing a connection between the complaints and the fact that Bush's second term ends in less than three years. "The tide is changing, and folks are seeing the end of this administration." [[New York Times | 4/14/2006]]

And this is the final entry, ready for submission. Here's a link to the real thing. Feel free to open it in edit and see how it's put together.

Content

You know how to create and format an entry, but can you write one that won't get edited to death? (Shouts from the other admins: "Well, Max, judging from the amount of entries you've had rejected, neither can you." Yeah, yeah.)

Let's go back to the periwinkle entry. There are some things in it worth a second look.

I've cut out the entities and sources because we aren't focusing on them right now. Instead, let's look at the writing itself. First, some basics.

Verb Tenses. We operate mostly in the present tense. Entries are written to reflect the date at which they took place. Since Bush went tripping and stumbling through the periwinkle field on April 1, and the entry reflects the events of that particular day, the entry is written as if it is happening now. If it references past events, say:

You'll get used to writing in future tense, especially when you quote someone who wrote an article after the event. In the periwinkle entry, Corn wrote his article on April 24, over three weeks after Bush tripped the light fantastic. So when we quote Corn, we do so using the future tense:

If the date spans a longer period of time, you can get away with using the present tense for quotes and events that happen throughout that time period. For example, let's say I write an entry about six days of legislative hearings in Congress. The entry covers the dates of those six days. Anything that happens during that time span can be written in present tense. Like so:

Inserting Internal Links. Did we cover that transcendant moment on the bridge? Then find that entry -- you will get very used to searching for entries and copying their links -- and link it:

Put the internal link inside a set of parentheses, with the word "see," and insert the whole thing before the punctuation -- before the period, in this case.

By the way, when you find that April 2003 entry about Bush breakdancing in Brooklyn, you'll notice the words "copy link" beside the title:

Click it. It will copy the link onto your Clipboard, where you can just paste it straight into your text file. (Note: This function is currently broken. Derek intends to fix it ASAP.)

This way I can just keep writing and find the link later. When I do find the link, I just copy and paste it over the words INTERNAL LINK before I copy the entry into the text field for submission. And if I forget, the system will kindly gakk on the wording and remind me to put a properly formatted link in between those brackets.

I didn't write "... dances like a fool ..." or "clownishly dances" because that's a value judgment. He probably did look like a fool or a clown, but we don't pass judgment on anything in our language.

Let's say that again, with emphasis. We don't pass judgment on anything in our language. That will get your writing rejected faster than just about anything. We don't do partisanship. We don't do advocacy. We don't do the thinking for our readers. Save that for blog entries on the Daily Kos or Powerline or whatever. Seriously.

So we let the participants and pundits do it for us. We use descriptive phrases from Bush's press secretary, including the rather ludicrous praise for Bush's "uncanny sense of rhythm." Then we add some perspective, in this case from Democrats who found Bush's get-down moment ridiculous. Steny Hoyer, doing his best imitation of a stuffed shirt, huffed about leadership and made a fun little reference to Bush's "underground treehouse," so that goes in. Then we include an "alternative view" from journalist David Corn, whom we identify as a "progressive pundit" in the interest of transparency. Corn believes Bush whiled away the day playing his Game Boy rather than performing whatever arcane, faintly sinister "Seven Days in May" tasks a president performs in the underground bunker. Corn is a reliable Washington insider, and he bolsters his speculation with assertions about Hastert and Rumsfeld joining Bush to play "Halo 3." So we put that in there. Whatever overall impression this entry leaves is painted by the pundits and participants, NOT by us.

Same with using words that describe how a person said something. If your entries always have Republicans "insisting," "claiming," "asserting," (or worse, "whining," "squealing," "blabbering," "slobbering," and other extremely loaded words) while those statesmanlike Democrats always "state" or "say," then you're slanting your writing. Try to be evenhanded. If a reporter or author writes that "Pelosi gibbered through yet another legislative session," then you can quote it, but there should be a reason why you choose that particular description that paints Pelosi as a gibbering idiot. And what news outlet are you using, anyway?

Now, take another look at the entry. There are at least two things that I might correct as potentially judgmental in the entry. Bonus points if you can find them:

Found them? Let's see. First, I used a value judgment term in describing Laura Bush's own dance moves:

"Decorously?" How do I know? Was I there? I don't know, for all I know she was taking liberties with Secret Service agents there in the wildflowers. (Highly doubtful, but there you go.) So I should lose the term, or better yet, find a description to back it. Since this is a make-believe entry, I'll make up a quote from La Perino:

Better. (We could probably argue the concept of the "impromptu" dance move, but if the news article indicated that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, then we could live with "impromptu.")

Fair and Balanced Coverage -- Seriously. The second? Well, notice that outside of the White House's mouthpiece, I never quoted anyone sympathetic to Bush's episode of Dance Fever. Not one Republican heard from outside the White House. Fortunately, Minority Leader John Boehner just happened to chime in:

Now we have to add Boehner to your entity list, but we've now covered your bipartisan bases. It is not always necessary to get all sides represented in a particular entry, but we do it when we can. And you know, most of the time, the guys on the "wrong" side of the issue, whatever that may be, will hang themselves with their own words. We always go for that.

Active and Passive Voice. For some reason, people think that writing in passive voice conveys a sense of impartiality and fairness. No, it doesn't. It conveys a refusal to take responsibility for an action and a sense of being dead. No one wants zombie entries slogging around the timelines of the Commons, muttering about "brains, must have brains" as they shamble through the pages, dropping pieces of themselves and generally mucking up the place. Avoid the passive voice when you can. Let's compare:

Bleah. Let's just suck the life out of it, shall we? This is fractionally better:

Better, in the sense that it's better to be beaten with a tree branch than shot with a pistol. We could avoid the whole issue and be direct:

That's it, a strong action verb powering the sentence, and a clear identification of exactly who charged whom with what. Much better. Unlike the earlier ones, this sentence fairly crackles with energy.

(Want to talk about flipping sentences so that the direct object comes before the subject? Active verbs and passive verbs? Receivers of action preceding performers of action? We can, but not here. And you, the smart guy in the back, if you do a search of my entries, you'll no doubt find egregious examples of my writing stumbling along from one passive construction to the next. I know it already. I am doing penance for my sins, so let it be.)

The Inverted Pyramid. Everyone who took Journalism 101 knows this one. Here's an illustration for those who rearranged their schedules to take Pottery 1A instead:

What this means is that, like a good news reporter (a vanishing breed), we lead off with the most important details first. The 5 W's -- who, what, where, when, why, and that pesky H, how, that sneaks in there -- must be covered as soon as possible. Who got charged? Who charged him? Where did it happen? When? (That's covered by the date, but may be worth repeating.) Why were charges brought? How did it occur? Answer these questions first. The more important the information, the more towards the beginning it should be. And we strive for short, punchy entries, so if it's not important, leave it out.

Sorry, no can do. That doesn't mean we don't cover personal reactions and such when they can be documented. After the lead sentence or two (or three, or whatever) covers the major events, we can document such:

Break It Up. We don't cover multiple events in one entry. One event, one entry. If you're like me, you will get one entry after another rejected, and be told over and over again, "Break it up. Make two (or three, or five) entries out of this one. Spin this section off. Take this out. Sprinkle the information in this entry among these other entries." I'm terrible for writing what Derek calls "thesis" entries -- of the eight entries I have sitting rejected as I type this, three are in there for being too long and unfocused, or rather focused on too many topics. Try to avoid these. But again, if you're like me, you'll do it anyway, and you'll get your entries rejected. It's gonna happen. Don't worry about it, we don't tote up rejections (hmm, Max has 347 entries rejected and Kevin only has 29, guess we'll just have to sink Max into the swamp). Just learn from the rejections.

Paraphrasing. We are not Xerox machines. We do not, repeat not, cut and paste large chunks of news articles, or retype swaths of paragraphs from books and journal articles, into our work. Unless we're quoting, we're paraphrasing, and editing, and cutting, and editing, and rewriting, and cutting, and editing.... Quoting an official or an observer -- a president, a senator, an eyewitness, a pundit -- is fine. Quoting a reporter from his or her article is a rarity. I've done it, and I will do it again, but only when I feel it is unavoidable. This is important. We do not want to hear anyone complain about the History Commons committing plagiarism.

Punctuation. Ugh. This can be irksome. Let's again look for help, in the bone-dry but eminently complete History Commons Style Manual. This is a terrific reference, not exactly written to generate excitement, but nevertheless, one worth having at hand at all times. In all cases, the manual goes into detail that I do not, particularly about plain old grammatical conventions. I'm sticking to what we do as opposed to revisiting Mrs. Abercrombie and her diagrammed sentences.

Acronyms. References, and Abbreviations: We use them all the time. In general, we don't use periods inside those acronyms. So "United States" will abbreviate to US, and the Central Intelligence Agency will become the CIA acronym. No periods, unless you use the acronym or abbreviation at the end of a sentence, in which case the period comes anyway. Make sure you identify the agency or whatever is being acronymed the first time it's mentioned:

There are a very few acronyms, such as CIA, which are so well known that they don't need identification. If you're not sure, err on the side of caution and identify it.

On a similar subject, references to people get the same first-time identification, usually when you're quoting someone:

Note both the Bamford and Hussein references, and how Hussein is identified with the bracketed first name. Note: We almost never refer to people by their first names -- we never write sentences like, "Saddam is brewing up vials of toxic sludge," "Osama is hiding in the Peshawar Holiday Inn," or "Barack placed Oprah in charge of the White House after-party." When others use first names, we identify them: "Author James Bamford writes, "Saddam [Hussein] is a jerk." He's not "Saddam," she's not "Oprah." It's "Hussein" and "Winfrey," no matter how breathlessly the mainstream media wants to put us all on a first-name basis with our political and entertainment celebrities.)

Italics. You already know how to make a word or phrase italicized -- by surrounding it with two single quotation marks. Like so, if your memory is as bad as mine:

The next question is, when? Well, we never use italics to emphasize anything we write ourselves. That's adding value judgments -- "look at me, I'm important!" Let the reader make that judgment. We will, of course, use italics when someone else uses them in a passage we're quoting. We also use them for, among other things, books, film titles, musical albums, newspapers, TV shows, court cases, the names of ships and naval vessels, computer games, and the like. Shorter and smaller titles, say those of newspaper articles, songs, and so forth, get stuck with quotation marks. Like so:

Side note: Although the style manual says to italicize periodical titles, as do the Chicago and AP Style Manuals on which ours is based, we haven't been doing it regularly. Some of the vets think we should begin italicizing the periodical titles and fix the others as we go; others say we should keep not doing what we haven't been doing and avoid the issue entirely. What do you think?

Mostly we use single brackets within quoted passages. Like so, from the bogus David Corn quote from the bogus periwinkle entry that I'm sure has had all the amusement long since drain away:

It's apparent that Corn actually wrote, " ... Dennis Hastert used to join Bush and Rumsfeld down there for a hot afternoon of Halo 3." But for the purposes of this entry, we need to remember that some of the readers won't instantly identify Hastert as the former Speaker of the House, might not remember that Rumsfeld used to be the Secretary of Defense, and might not know that Halo 3 is a video game. So we give them the info. In general, err on the side of caution and identify everyone, at least off the bat. Once you've identified the person, you're safe to just refer to him or her by last name only from there on out in that entry.

You also will, at times, need to change the verb tense of a quote inside a sentence to conform with the (usually present) tense of what you wrote. The style manual gives the following apt, if disturbing, example:

Side note: Don't use double brackets, ever, in styling your entries. The double [[ ]] brackets tells the database that a data string is coming. If you tease it by giving it double brackets and then don't give it something it can use, it will retaliate. It won't be pretty.

Underscores and Profanity: People curse, yes indeedy they do, and it's our job to report their words accurately. It's also in our interest not to get filtered by overly puritanical or aggressive browser filters and sniffers. So we split the difference. We use underscores to replace the vowels in those words that make your Aunt Prudence run shrieking for the bedroom. So, with the help of an apt quote from comedian George Carlin, let's give another illustration that I, at least, find less unsettling than the one just above:

And I'm forced to agree with George: the last word doesn't even belong on the list.

Colons: Like the bracket, we get a good bit of mileage out of the colon, too. If you know your grammar, you know it introduces a list: The president sent me to the store to buy the following: pretzels, beer, pickles, batteries for his remote control, and the latest copy of Penthouse. But we also use the colon to introduce a quote with more than one sentence (this one was a particular bugaboo of mine before Kevin finally helped me get it through my head, so hat tip to Kevin for this one).

Ellipses: We all know that the ellipsis (ellipses when they travel in packs) is the three dots ... that stand in place of omitted material in a sentence. We cut down as much as is feasible, and that often means cutting down quotes and passages. In those cases, we use the ellipsis. We leave spaces:

Quotation Marks: Here's an instance where the style manual and common practice don't jibe. According to the manual, we should use HTML special character codes to create so-called "smart" or "curly" quotes:

Many older entries use them, and there's no reason not to use them if you'd rather. (Some very old entries still feature the HTML ASCII codes. Talk about old school....) But Derek has written a patch of some kind that now allows the system to recognize simple "straight quotes" as curlies. So unless you're already comfortable typing or pasting the quote codes, you're fine just using regular quotation marks and allowing the system to do its thing.

Note: A large number of older entries employ an obsolete wiki system code for quotes: [dq] for double quotes and [sq] for single quotes, along with their closing forms of [/dq] and [/sq]. You'll come across these as you edit entries or take a look at how they're formatted. They should be replaced with regular " and ' when you find them, but it's no big deal -- don't edit and resubmit an entry merely to replace these quote codes. Just change them if and when you come across them while editing something else.

You can contact Michael Tuck ("Black Max," or "blackmax"), the primary author of this guide, through the Commons e-mail system:

You can contact any administrator or veteran contributor through his or her e-mails, if they've made their e-mails available through their user profiles. And you can post on the HCGroups blog. I urge you strongly to reach out if you have problems or questions, or just want to bounce something off of someone. We are a community, not a group of disparate investigators and researchers all working individually and apart. We do best when we keep our heads together and help each other out. Because God knows we all need it at one time or another.

Usually Acceptable	Sometimes Acceptable	Almost Never Acceptable
Major newspapers	Professional blogs	Personal blogs
Published books	Some openly partisan news sites	Personal Web pages
Government documents	Partisan sites which provide video/audio sourcing	"News" and opinion sites proven to be unreliable
Journal articles from established organizations	University Web pages, including those of faculty members	Wikipedia and other user-edited online encyclopedias and information sources
Research documents	Partisan commentary sites	"Citizen journalism" sites