Some Guidelines for Contributing to the MJP Instructional Wiki

Who can add material to the wiki?

The MJP instructional wiki is open to the public, so anyone on the internet can read it. To contribute material to it, though, you'll need to get permission from us. We feel this kind of gate-keeping is necessary to block out spammers and other visitors with non-serious (or malicious) intent. It's also an attempt to assert a degree of quality-control over what gets posted on the site.

As we mention on the wiki home page, the MJP instructional wiki is intended to be a place where "teachers and scholars can directly contribute materials to the project and edit communal texts about the MJP periodicals." While we don't want to turn anyone away who has good ideas, we do want to privilege teachers and scholars of modern literature and culture among our users; this may include college professors, high school instructors, independent scholars, and graduate students who have used the MJP site and have begun teaching at their host institutions.

How to become a contributor to the wiki

If you more or less fit the above profile and have something you'd like to post on the wiki, you need to do two things:

• First, click on the "request access" link that appears in the upper right-hand corner of each wiki page. When you do this, you'll be asked to enter your email address and given the option of composing a message. Enter your email address—but you can save your message for the following step.
  
• Next, use the same email address you just entered in the "request access" box to send an additional email message to the MJP project manager (who is currently Mark Gaipa) at MJP_Project_Manager@brown.edu. In your message, we'd like you to identify yourself by name, where (in the world) you're located, your institutional affiliation (i.e., where you work), and what you might want to do on the wiki. What's most important here is that you let us know who you are and give us enough information about yourself so we can independently validate your identity. Once we're satisfied that your request is credible, we'll give you writer privileges on the wiki (more on that below).
  

When we grant your request for access, you'll receive an email that contains a link that you can follow to join the modjourn workspace: you will be asked to set up a user account by entering your name and password, and then directed to a series of tabbed pages where you can select certain preferences (e.g., whether you want to be notified when changes are made to the wiki) and type in other basic (and optional) information about yourself.

What you'll be able to do with writer privileges

With writer privileges on the wiki, you will be able to do a number of things:

• You'll be able to create new pages on the wiki, as well as (if you like) new folders in which to place them.
• You'll also be able to edit pages that you and other users have created, and create links between pages on the wiki and links to other websites.
• And you'll be able to upload files to the wiki and move them to an existing folder.  

What you won't be able to do:

• You won't be able to delete entire pages or folders once they have been created (even by you).  
• Nor will you be able to rename pages or folders, or move them to a new place in the wiki structure.

These constraints may be welcome news to some users, since you won't be able to accidentally delete entire pages created by someone else. By the same token, if you decide that you'd like to rename a file, or place it in a new folder in the wiki, you won't be able to make the change without the help of the MJP project manager (who is also the wiki administrator). However, there's plenty you can do within these constraints—and the project manager is happy to work with you any way he can.

Getting to know the wiki and its structure

Before you add material to the wiki, it's probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with its structure and where we're building different things on the site. (For an overview of the wiki's deep structure, please refer to the site map.) We tried, when constructing the wiki, to organize it into a handful of clear-cut areas that complement the materials on the teaching pages. There are currently three major sections on the wiki that users can contribute to:

• Projects: here we are collecting practical ideas for doing things with periodicals and the MJP materials.
• Tools: here we are assembling things that help us to use MJP materials or to act on the ideas in the Projects section.
• Forum: here we can discuss a variety of issues related to periodical studies and the MJP. (Note: we may soon be migrating this section to a blog, which is better suited to the conversations and give-and-take we'd like to conduct here.)

Each of these major sections is divided into sub-sections, which try to anticipate various kinds of topics that fall under the encompassing subject: thus, in Projects, you'll find sub-sections devoted to projects defined in three different ways—by subject matter, by skill-set, by MJP tool—which hopefully anticipate the kinds of project ideas people may have: e.g., an assignment idea that involves a magazine's letters to the editor. If you open the pages in these sub-sections, you'll discover that many are currently empty. We hope that you'll be able to help us fill in these pages with your teaching and research ideas.

The thematic structure we've devised for the wiki is also reflected in the wiki's folder/page system; thus, when we develop a new major section (like Forum), we will also create a new top-tiered folder for it among the existing folders and then place all new pages related to it inside of that new folder. Mirroring the wiki's thematic structure with its folder/page system is important for two reasons: it makes it easier for new contributors to locate pages on the "Pages & Files" tab, and it better enables everyone to use of the wiki's Navigator (which appears on the right side of every wiki page), which works with the site's folder system, to navigate the wiki's contents.

Should you sign your own work? (pending)

Trouble-Shooting (pending)