User blog:Akamichi/Key Tips to a Succeeding International Wiki

"Jar Jar is the key to all of this."

- George Lucas

Hello, I am Akamichi, an international speaker of 3 different languages and English. So, I've edited many different Wikis, learned about some, their editing style, and all sorts of things. But today, or whatever day it is for you; I decided I would show some good things to do for helping out with editing and perfecting a good International Wiki. So, let's get started!

Where do I start?
So, the first thing everyone starts with when creating their international wiki is... where does this person start? If you're making your Wiki and let's say you were to create the German Community Central Wiki, it is all created but we're missing something. A design of course.

Layout and Design
You always want to start by creating a design for your wiki, some sort of layout that can grab the Wikian's attention which makes them WANT TO edit there. You don't want the plain normal looking backgrounds because those just don't look so well unless it is a Vector Skin or Monobook Skin. So, get your own background/theme set up and you'll be on your way! Whenever you finish that, you can go ahead and continue with a good favicon and wordmark, favicon being the icon that appears on your tab inside your browser. Make your own, find one off the internet and add that in there as an .ico file. We can then do your wordmark, then customize all the buttons with your favorite hex colors, etc. So, go ahead and go to your painting program such as Photoshop, Paint.net, Gimp, and others... Make a new file that is 250 x 65 dimensions wide. Add your own things, a logo of a game such as Assassin's Creed and other things.

Your first edits
Now that you've created your own wiki, added a nice layout with designs; you can get down to business. Adding creative content that you find off the internet but give credit to and reference things with reference tags will also help you. Find your topic, whatever the topic of your Wiki is; going from a game, to a book, to a musician, or to even your own company. When your topic is known, you'll know what to do next. Write about that topic, if it refers to a Comic Book series such as Marvel or DC Comics. Read the books or novels and then write about information and make your own Infobox (I will not do a tutorial on Infoboxes, you should figure that out yourself). Tell people who the author of the novel/comic strip is, who are the main characters in it? Make sure to have a Note Template stating that it will contain Spoilers too if you know it will spoil the whole comic. Don't forget to add categories so it will be easier for people to know what species they are, what race they are, or even if they are Male or Female. Hope this helps you on making your mark!

Promoting your Wiki
You can help promote your Wiki a-lot of ways such as the actual Promote Your Wiki button that is currently being remodeled but, you can also post on your language's Community Central like the German Community Central, etc.

NOTE: If your language does not have their own Community Central, maybe post it on the English Community Central!

Even ask your friends that speak your language to help you out too, the more people that edit will help your Wiki be a collaborating success too. Answer questions and help people out, let them know what your Wiki is about; give vital information and feature an article with an exclusive Home Page. Good luck promoting your very own Wiki and good luck on making it a success!

Editing on someone else's Wiki
If you are trying to edit on somebody else's Wiki, check to see if they have their own Manual of Style on how they edit their wiki and make sure to read their own rules, guidelines, and their policies. Thus, including the Wikia Terms of use being the mandatory rules for all Wikis. Follow all of the Bureaucrats, Admins, and Moderator's rules to ensure that you are not blocked from their Wiki and helping yourself with your own things. Make sure it is a topic that you may fully understand too. Know all of the information you're putting into your Wiki, treat it as an encyclopedia or a dictionary/study book. Something you can learn from others too, collaborate with other users on their forum or chat.

Is the Wiki Inactive?
Let's say that your on a Wiki and it's inactive, right? Nobody is editing, it's been inactive for a long time now and you're the only one editing and beyond editing... You've come to the right place if it is over at Community Central, you can easily sign up for an Adoption Request for that Wiki so you can earn Bureaucrat permissions from Merrystar who will in eventually less than a week or two, give you the permissions and rights to rename pages, delete them, and so forth. It is best to always adopt the Wiki if you don't know what else there is to do and especially if there will be vandalism and spammers. (Just a note that I will NOT be doing a section on vandalism and spamming until maybe, just maybe later)

I hope this helped some users get a better feeling or understanding of what they can do to make their Wiki look good and improve, I will update this later at some point too as it is very late when I typed this.