ProleWiki:How to contribute

NOTICE: Due to spamming (see Lemmygrad post), creating and editing articles have been restricted for everyone except trusted users. We hope to unrestrict access to editing and creating new articles again in a few weeks. --FelipeForte (talk) 03:37, 17 November 2020 (-03)

Hello, comrades! This is a page reserved for updates on how you can contribute to the development of our encyclopedia. Readers are also encouraged to contribute in any way possible, as they'll be not only helping the project but also helping spread Marxism-Leninism and make our science more accessible to all.

Editing

Article Contributions

There is currently no academic criteria for citation of sources, and you don’t need an account to edit articles, feel free to do it right away (although your IP will be publicly seen unless you create an account). Our encyclopedia is in need of quantity of articles, not quality at the moment. You can write a stub, you can contribute with just a sentence in an existing article, and it will be a valuable contribution. You can also collectivize parts of articles from other projects such as Leftypedia and Wikipedia. Just try to clean any traces of bourgeois ideology in it. Collectivizing articles from our comrades over at EcuRed (translations: en) is not only allowed, but also encouraged. Please do it.

For reference on how wiki articles are written, check this link.

For reference on our editing conventions, please go here.

Translation

To make translating as efficient as possible to all languages, an English language version of every article should be available. We have support to all languages, and will add more by demand. Besides English, we have support for French, Spanish and Portuguese. However, as of November 2020, we are focusing on English articles mostly.

Before you translate any work, be in mind that there is a lot of labor involved, even if you use deep learning algorithms, since you'll have to revise the text in any case. For that, it helps to have a practical use in mind before translating. To address and combat pervasive bourgeois ideology among people who speak other language besides English is a good practical reason to translate an article. So keep that in mind, you're translating for people to read, and sharing the article after you translate helps spreading marxism-leninism to the world, because all workers should have the tools to understand their own reality.

At the moment, our encyclopedia is not at all adequate to translate, and its current translation system has a lot of rough edges. This is mainly due to the limitations of our hosting plan, which was cheaper at the time the project was first developing. However, the comrade currently hosting our server is in the process of updating our server. The other reason is that we're all still understanding how MediaWiki works, and it's rustlin' our sickles since day one. And another reason is that we need more comrades contributing to the project. This just means ProleWiki needs to be known, so if we share the work we've been doing from time to time (on Lemmygrad, on Reddit, bunkerchan.xyz, on Tankie Bunker discord, etc.), you've already attracting more comrades to join our effort. The quality of our articles should always be the reason more people join us, so after we have a considerable amount of articles, it will be time to focus on their quality, with referencing, formatting, etc.

You may have noticed some articles have the "/en" in their URL addresses. This is how translating has been done for the ProleWiki:________ namespaces. You can translate some articles to experiment with the current practical limitations of this method, and discuss ways to improve it. This requires some knowledge of the MediaWiki engine, so by contributing consistently to articles you're actively learning how the software works. Don't forget you can always refer to https://mediawiki.org for documentation on MediaWiki.

Web and wiki development

We are currently in need for comrades who can work with PHP to add more languages to our language list in our home website. We also need a version of this front page a bit more accessible to smartphone users, since the majority of people only use smartphones to access the internet. In the far future, comrades can also fork Wikipedia's Android app to make it functional for ProleWiki, but that may also take a while to organize. Wiki development means using MediaWiki's engine formatting to make editing articles easier. It's not that hard, anyone can learn MediaWiki's engine formatting by looking at the article sources in Leftypedia, Wikipedia, etc. This work makes editing articles a lot easier for everybody and it's very valuable to all comrades.

WikiMedia Templates

When editing articles, a most valuable tool is having ready-to-go templates for styles that handle certain necessities. For example, we can create a template for quotations, like it was used here. The best way to know what features are needed for editing articles is to edit yourself the articles and understand how any work could be made easier through templates. Another thing is figuring out if templates can be used across different languages, since MediaWiki templates are local by default, and having to write them in different languages is also labor.

Donate

See: ProleWiki:Donate

Not only we live in a class society and are part of the lower class, but we also live in a market economy. Hosting websites has its expenses, and to keep ProleWiki, we have to pay an yearly fee. Currently we have no donation platform, so it's not yet available. Every donation (and expenses) are transparently shown here and if our project ends up with a surplus amount of money, we can discuss collectively how this money can be used to develop our work. Any donation is based on class solidarity, we reject any funding from enemies of our people.

Share our work

ProleWiki's sole purpose of existence is to provide a resourceful tool to workers from all nations, so they can have the theoretical knowledge to understanding their own realities. We are marxists-leninists, however, which means we are not satisfied with understanding our reality, we also want to provide practical knowledge to assist in changing the current state of things.

For that, ProleWiki intends to be an international organization in the future, keeping the same purpose of assisting revolutionaries all over the world. Changing the world is no small task, and it won't be done by a sect or small conspiracy group, this will be done by the mass of people through revolution. This is the reason we should make our project as known as possible. Not only to have more contributors available to enhance the quality of our collective work, but to make the revolutionary ideas more known.

By sharing our work, you're making sure this project thrives for longer.
By contributing, your effort becomes part of the collective effort.

Long live marxism-leninism!