See Also: How_To_Help

First, Thank You!

Thanks for helping make the community better, making other DBAs' lives easier, and training other users. Your work is really appreciated.

Making Sure Your Changes Are Approved

Before you start writing, take a moment to look at the review guidelines. If you know what types of changes will be rejected, it'll help your changes get through smoothly the first time.

Don't Copy/Paste Content or Code

Plagairism will not be tolerated. Remember, your name gets linked to the edits you're doing, and the Editors each have a decade or more of experience working with databases. If you're copying content from somewhere, they've probably seen the content, and it'll be much tougher for you to get your contributions accepted in the future - even if they're completely legit.

If you want to copy/paste your own content from your blog, your web site or your documentation, make absolutely sure that you didn't sell the content to anyone else. If you've sold it to a magazine or web site, you need to get their written permission to put that content here, and we will ask for that permission to keep on file.

If you want to post code snippets, stored procedures, queries, etc, make sure you own that code and are willing to contribute it into the public domain. If you wrote that code while employed by a company, you may need to get permission from your employer to post the code, since that work may be considered owned by that company.

Formatting and Pictures

To write the most beautiful article possible, review the Help:Editing article where we explain how to format your article and upload screenshots. If there's images that help illustrate your points, by all means, upload screenshots. The higher quality the better.

Wherever possible, use the Wiki syntax for section headers. This page uses that syntax, and you can click Edit here to see the examples using multiple equal signs to designate section headers. That makes your section headers much more visible in search engines and help DBAs find the right answers faster.

Submit Your Changes

After your edits are submitted, one of the Editors will need to review it. They follow the procedures outlined in How_to_Review_Pages to make sure it meets our guidelines, and then approves or rejects it.

If your changes are rejected, don't throw yourself off a bridge in despair. Work with the editor to find out what the problems were and how to avoid that problem next time. We really want your help building up the community, and all of us know what it's like to get an article rejected from a publication or work with a tough editor. We'll try to make it the easiest, friendliest process possible because we're all here for the same thing: helping each other.