ProleWiki:How to contribute

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 worldview more accessible to all.

Contributing to pages

Editing an article

In the top right, click the "Edit" button to open VisualEditor. You'll be able to edit most text directly, using the toolbar to modify how the text is shown. As for templates, you can double-click those to edit their parameters.

Click "Save changes..." and write a short description of the changes you made.

Creating a new article

Click the search icon and type the name of the article you'd like to create. If it doesn't already exist, you can click on the red link (highlighted in the image below).

Note: recently created accounts do not have permission to create pages, this permission is granted after the user has contributed enough through editing. While this permission is not granted, anyone can request for pages to be created to Forte or CriticalResist.

Click the red link of the page name to create a new page

"Where should I start?"

Here are some pages that can help you get inspiration for pages to create:

• Recent changes - to see which things others are actively working on, and help them develop
• Wanted pages - auto-generated list of pages with dead links pointed to them
• Stub pages - pages that are short and need to be expanded
• Articles needing cleaning up - mostly old pages or pages imported from another source

Over time, we might add more maintenance category pages to help contributors to tackle pending tasks. If you need any help on how to write articles on MediaWiki, take a look at this handbook provided by Wikimedia. We are also happy to help you on the Discord server as well.

Article guidelines

It's recommended that you cite sources for the information you are writing. This is not hollow academicism, this serves to track sources of information so that they can be verified to ensure we are delivering trustworthy content and to give readers sources so that they themselves can read and study.

Wanted pages can be created with small stub articles, but try to cite at least one reference for it.

We also have some editorial guidelines, which helps us have a consistent work throughout the encyclopedia.

How to find sources?

There are many resources you can use to find sources to give certain claims a minimum threshold of verifiability.

• Search for the subject on Reddit's r/communism, r/communism101, and r/informedtankie and on Lemmygrad. Many users in these communities share sources so users can read further about certain subjects.
• Search for the subject on Google Scholar. It's recommended that you take a good read on the article before you uncritically use it.
• If you know a book, see if it's available on Library Genesis
• You can use Google to give you a certain direction, but using Yandex and DuckDuckGo can be very useful as well, as these search engines give different results.

If you are writing about current events, you can search for your subject on these resources to give you material to write your articles with:

• Black Agenda Report (article)
• CGTN (article)
• Liberation News (article)
• Monthly Review (article)
• Sputnik (article)
• TeleSUR (article)
• The Grayzone (article)

You can also find sources in these categories:

• Anti-imperialist news outlets
• Socialist media outlets

If you are writing about history, these books are good sources:

• A People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn)
• An Indigenous People's History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)
• History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (Joseph Stalin)

Social media work

We have opened accounts for ProleWiki on numerous platforms, such as Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, and we plan to open in more platforms. But, as you may easily see, these platforms are lacking any content whatsoever. ProleWiki depends on the voluntary workforce to develop the work on these platforms. This is no irrelevant work, these social media platforms are very important to make our work known and this attracts more comrades to contribute their labor with us. A creative approach to social media content to bring attention to us can be essential for the project to keep going.

Financial contributions

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 a yearly fee. 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 our class enemies (they have no reason fund us, in any case).

Development

See: ProleWiki:Development

To summarize, we need more comrades available to do this work:

• Development of MediaWiki templates and modules
• Website administration
• Fork Wikipedia's app to work with ProleWiki

It's essential for the long-term success of our project and our goals of educating people on the theory of Marxism-Leninism that we have a mobile app for ProleWiki. Forking Wikipedia's app is not an easy task, and requires an understanding of Kotlin and Java programming languages. Developing an app from scratch may also be an option. If you think you have the knowledge to do that, please, let us know in any way possible.

Translation

To have ProleWiki translated to your language, firstly invite others who speak your language to use the Weblate tool to translate the system interface: https://weblate.yerbamate.ml/projects/prolewiki/interface/

Opening a ProleWiki for another language requires a lot of work on the part of the administration, and we need some reassurance this work won't be in vain. So, considering that, we require that at least 3 other people join you in developing ProleWiki in your language and that you can speak fluent English so that our work can be discussed.

Spread the word

ProleWiki's ultimate purpose of existence is to provide a resourceful source of information to workers from all nations, so they can have the theoretical knowledge to understanding their own realities. By spreading the word of the project, you are also helping us immensely, and helping other people get acquainted with Marxism-Leninism as well.