Content Contributions

We are actively seeking collectors and enthusiasts that would like to be a part of helping develop WikiBoombox. There are several methods that one can contribute:

1. Email Contributions of content that can be used to help develop the wiki and images galleries
2. Develop and enter wiki pages directly into WikiBoombox
3. Develop and enter Articles directly into WikiBoombox

Email Contributions of content is simply that, sending us an email with information you feel would be useful for the administrator or one of the contributors here to use for developing wiki pages. You need to do nothing more, it's simple and we will take it from there. However, as the information would be added to a queue, it could take time to use the material supplied. A couple of rules applies regarding contributed material however. 1. We would like our material to be original and not a copy/paste from another website. So any text should be in "your own words" to prevent claims of material being "copied." 2. Images should be your own and not harvested from another website unless you believe they are not copyrighted. If you see an image of a boombox sitting on somebody's tabletop, it is very likely a personal photo snapped by someone else who owns that image. We can not use it. If you see a person in the image, we definitely can not use it unless that person has given permission.

Wiki-page contributors are users who wish to create and enter wiki pages directly. To be able to do that, one needs to have Contributor status. You can not self register to be a contributor, it will need to be conferred or granted to you by the administrator. To start, simply register an account at WikiBoombox and send us an email with your user-name and inform us of your desire to be a direct contributor. It would help if you could send us a brief introduction of yourself so we could know you better. This is not necesary however, if we already know you. We will review your request and once we change your status to contributor, we will notify you by email, and you could immediately begin developing content. However, please familiarize yourself with the guidelines and ettitqute for contributors before you start. Wiki pages and wiki-articles differ in that wiki-pages should conform to a particular layout for reasons of consistency. The basic content for a wiki-page should be a description of the item, an image (or images), specifications. Personal observations are permitted (such as: this is a loud model, very heavy, and has better than average sound). Content not appropriate for the wiki is a how-to-tutorial, customization webinar, etc. Those contents are more appropriate for a wiki-article. However, it is perfectly fine to link the wiki to the articles.

Wiki-Articles contributors are users who wish to create wiki Articles pages directly. Articles are content that does not necessarily conform to a wiki format, but are material that the community would find useful or interesting. A how-to-tutorial or a customization feature would be perfect for an Article. Additionally, while we would like to keep a wiki page as consistent as possible from page to page, an article is free, encouraged even to freely express greater artistic expression of the content. Personal subjective writing style is fine. Or an article of how Butch ate your boombox is OK too, although as content grows, such content might make it harder to find more useful content (since one would need to wade through a bunch of articles to find something releveant) such as how a church was able to use 25 boomboxes linked together for their music system, etc.

General Rules and Guidelines for direct Contributors:

• You should be trusted enough to follow the guidelines. Violations such as vandalism of pages, using profanity or including obscene material, or pornography, or constant inclusion of material harvested from other sites will not be tolerated and may result is loss of Contributor status.
• Do not be offended if your material gets edited or corrected. There are many reasons an entry might become edited. Reasons an entry may be edited could be to correct an error, add ommitted data, remove inappropriate material, or for reasons of site consistency. Any contributor could edit another page so any number of authorized users could perform an edit so you should know that it is possible. If you are someone who could get attached to the contributed material and become easily offended by an edit, this probably isn't a job for you.
• Submitted material becomes the property of WikiBoombox. That means you may not claim ownership to the material in the future and demand removal or editing to your satisfaction. This is all the more reason not to become emotionally attached to the material. You can not "own" the material contributed, it becomes part of WikiBoombox once published.
• Edit of another contributor's material should only be performed for good reasons. Do not indiscrimiately edit material to suit your own "preference." All material should be treated with respect. Also you should know that what you deem to be an error might in fact not be an error. This is especially true since a lot of boombox models have variants that differ in terms of features. For example, a contributor might state that the Panasonic RX-5250 does not have a dial lamp. Due to personal experience you might believe that this is an error and that the RX-5250 does in fact have a dial lamp; subsequently you edit that out as an error. In fact, you would both be right, as the USA version does not have a dial lamp and the tuner scale is printed onto a metal dial, whereas the european version does have a dial lamp and an acrylic tuner dial scale. Unless you knew that both models existed and had personal experience with both models, you would not know this difference. For that reason, it may be best not to edit it as an error but add a note that states a different variant is known to exist with a dial lamp.
• Describe the changes made in the form field at the bottom of every edit page. This allows administrators to easily view page change history and revert back to an earlier version if necessary.
• Contributed material should be original. If you do not have an image but wish to create a wiki out of your knowledge, please do so. If you do not have specifications, do not worry. Another member can add that at a later time. If you have nothing more than an image, then just use that. If you do not have specs but have the actual boombox or device, please try to list the features you see such as separate bass/treble controls, wide or spatial features, auto-reverse, etc.
• A template is provided for your consideration. It is not a requirement to include all of the information in the template, nor are you required to exclude additional specification data that is not listed on the template. It is only a guideline.
• IMAGES: When images are displayed full size within the page, they should resized to 600 pixels wide if possible. That is because the text body displays best at that image size. Gallery images can be larger than 600 pixels but if they are, then they should only be displayed in thumbnail and not full size. That way, the page format does not get disrupted and the image can be enlarged by clicking on the thumbnail. Whenever possible, please do not upload extremely large images because that only makes it difficult to display the image and eat up valuable internet bandwidth and storage space. If your images exceed 300kb/image, they are probably too large. Most images of proper size will be under 150kb and allows the pages to load quickly. Free (open source) batch image resize tools that allow you to quickly resize images are available. We don't endorse any of them but here is one: ImageResizer
• Images should be watermarked if possible with the following: Copyright 2015 WikiBoombox. This is to help prevent image harvesting by other website or individuals who wish to copy stuff from the internet. If you don't do this, the image might end up being sold on eBay on a T-Shirt or on a iPhone cover or calendars. Watermarking discourages that behaviour. Another reason is that the watermark tells visitors that we have permission to use the images. You may choose not to watermark an image, that is up to you. However, please do not use any other copyright other than WikiBoombox. To do so would suggest to our visitors that we have used copyrighted material that we did not have permission to use. From a practical point of view, perception is reality. You can use any number of watermarking software but free open source versions are available. We do not endorse any in particular, but we have used this tool to watermark batches of photos with just a few clicks and with good results: JACo Watermark
• Combined watermark and image resizing tool. I am currently using Visualizer batch photo resizer which is no longer available. Member caution was able to find an installer online so if you guys want to use this same program, you can download it here visualizer_photo_resize_5.4.zip. It has the ability to watermark and resize an entire folder of images in a few mouse clicks in seconds. The image above is what I use to watermark images. While text watermarking is fine, I have found that depending upon font color and background color, the text is not always readable while the image watermark is always visible.
• You should be willing to "learn" the wiki syntax and how to to add pages, how to create links, and how to format the page for good appearance. There is a learning curve and if you feel you don't have the time to learn this, you will probably be better off as an email contributor. Unless you've had wiki experience before, the learning process can be frustrating. However, if a mentally tired mid-aged person like this administrator could learn it, YOU too can learn it.
• FILE NAMING CONVENTION: It is important that you rename your images before uploading them to Wikiboombox. The reason is that our system will overwrite existing files with the same names. You have no way of knowing if another user has already uploaded an existing fille with the same name. JVC-RC-M70.jpg will be a common name. Therefore to ensure no naming clashes exists, and prevent any renaming mishaps, we require that all members who upload files use the following file numbering convention:
  • (manufacturer-name)_(model)-(number)_(your user name)_(01).jpg
  • Example: jvc_rc-m90_superduper_01.jpg (and each additional image in that series would be enumerated +1)
  • image file names all lower case please.
  • FREE open source batch rename utilities are available on the internet (I use the free ones extensively). Can rename entire directories in seconds