Authoring guidelines

Who can contribute to this Wiki?

Anyone with a Compute Canada account. CC staff has the primary responsibility to keep the documentation complete and correct, but this is the age of Wikipedia. If a user spots an obvious problem, like a dead link or a typographical error, they are welcome to fix it. If you have a user who is willing to write an entire page, for example, on some piece of installed software with which they are more familiar than you are, they are also welcome to do that. We’ll review it once it’s posted to see that it meets these guidelines.

No anonymous editing is possible. You must log in with your Compute Canada credentials before you are allowed to edit, so we can tell who has done what.

What belongs on this Wiki?

This Wiki is not the place for information which properly belongs in the purview of the Compute Canada executive team, particularly the Executive Director of External Affairs (henceforth called the Executive). This obviously includes any communications intended for the general public, media or funding agencies. Materials related to training and outreach also don’t belong on this technical documentation site. To that end, ask yourself before you publish a page or make a change:

• Is this about what services or clusters are available? If so, has the service or cluster already been announced? If not, consult the Executive before publishing.
• Status information which changes on short notice --- available, offline, in maintenance, etc.--- will likely be the responsibility of the Monitoring Team.
• Is this information useful to a user, as opposed to other CC technical staff? If technical staff, then it might belong at https://ccdb.computecanada.ca/wiki/ rather than https://docs.computecanada.ca/wiki/.
• Does the information have implications for the security of our systems, or data on our systems? If so, consult the Director of Information Security before publishing.
• Is the information of interest only to a prospective user, as opposed to an existing account-holder? This is a gray area: A prospective user might want to know technical details about our services and facilities, the same as an account-holder, but if the information is only of interest to a prospective user then it properly belongs on https://computecanada.ca rather than https://docs.computecanada.ca/wiki/.
  • External links may be appropriate, see e.g. "Getting an Account".
• Is this about how to use an existing service, cluster, or application? If so, go ahead.

Style

En cas de doute, imitez les maitres. Trouvez une page que vous aimez et appliquez les mêmes effets de style. Si vous ne trouvez pas sur docs.computecanada.ca, cherchez sur Wikipédia dans son ensemble.

• &nbspIsolez le contenu graphique du texte autant que possible. Évitez d'insérer des sauts de ligne pour ajuster l'espacement vertical. N'utilisez pas des espaces ou des tabulations à la fin des phrases. Il est préférable d'utiliser une feuille de styles ou un gabarit.
• &nbspAjoutez des captures d'écran, particulièrement dans les tutoriels et pour expliquer des procédures. Toutefois, une image plein écran placée à même le texte crée un bris dans la structure et le rythme. Placez donc les images à la marge de droite et diminuez leur taille. Si une dimension acceptable ne permet pas de voir certains éléments importants, peut-être serait-il préférable de rogner l'image (crop), ou d'inviter le lecteur à "Cliquer pour agrandir".
• &nbspNe variez pas les synonymes. S'ils rendent le texte moins ennuyant, ils créent souvent de la confusion chez les nouveaux utilisateurs ou ceux qui connaissanent moins la langue; par exemple, l'emploi sans distinction de machine, hôte, n&oeligud, serveur peut nuire à la compréhension.
• &nbspFaites un saut de ligne entre la fin d'une section et le titre de la section suivante : c'est ainsi que la fonction de traduction délimite les unités lexicales.

Templates

There are multiple templates, available. Please use them as appropriate. Of particular interests are templates for Including a command within the wiki and for Including a source code file within the wiki.