How to Create a New Wiki Page

Know your guidelines

To make the wiki as useful and welcoming as possible to all, contributions should be:

• Relevant to climate change or directly related issues.
• Objective, accurate and based upon verifiable sources. While relevant independent research is welcome, it should be published through some working paper or journal or expected to be published through similar means.
• Neutral in point of view.
• Attributed properly when including media or when presenting information as fact or the views of identified individuals or organizations.
• Free to be edited, modified or reproduced.
• Polite and non-disruptive.

For more details on participation guidelines, please see Climate Lab Wiki Policies.

Try editing first

Perhaps the best way to familiarize yourself with the wiki page structure, elements and features is to edit an existing page. For more information, see How to Edit the Climate Lab Wiki.

Consider using templates

Templates can help organize your new article and provide consistency to different categories of articles. The templates button is in your page editor and allows you to choose between a number of preset templates that, when selected, automatically insert suggested sections into your page according the category of page you're planning on writing.

For example, if you're writing an article about solar panels, you might choose to use the "Technology" template, which would insert the sections such as “Background,” “Technology basics,” “Applications,” “Advantages,” “Barriers,” “Costs,” etc.

Know your audience

The Climate Lab wiki is for anyone interested in issues related to climate change—from professional researchers and policy experts to community-level activists.  At the same time, articles should aim to provide useful and applicable information for those people actively working on climate change issues on a day-t0-day basis to create positive change.  "What would someone researching this particular topic professionally, or because they want to take action in their community, want to know about this topic?  What information is useful and practical?"

Write effectively

For suggestions on how to write effective wiki articles, see the Principles of Article Writing.