Contributing to Arbital
Arbital hosts a network of explanations written and edited by people like you in order to make humanity’s knowledge accessible to everyone. In order to fulfil this idea’s potential we need your help, whether that’s as simple as letting us know when you want something we’re missing, or as in-depth as writing a multi-page explanation of a concept.
Writing and improving pages
Writing new definition and explanation pages about specific subtopics is important to creating the network of knowledge that the rest of Arbital will be based on. See Arbital scope for a detailed overview of the kinds of pages we’re looking for.
The home page shows the most linked to pages which don’t yet exist, but you are welcome to create a page for any math topic that readers would want to read about. Great examples of individual pages
When creating pages, prioritize writing excellent summaries for the preview popup. Put yourself in the mind of someone who wants a quick but accurate idea what the topic is about and check other summaries of the concept to confirm you’re covering all the crucial points. Examples of pages with good summaries: Logarithm, Decit, Group theory, Function.
Quality assessment link/desc
Mention #reviews and getting feedback
mention arcs/paths once we have a guide for that.
Where to go next?
The best place to start is right on the home page. It lists pages which could be created and expanded. If you are not sure what kind of content to write, take a look at the exemplar pages pages and write something similar on a math topic you are familiar with.
Other places to find things to help with:
Pages to create or improve: Placeholders, Seeds, Stubs, Starts
Pages which need: summary, technical summary, accessible summary.
All current math pages (slow)
Feedback and content requests
If you like something, give it a thumbs up to brighten the author’s day! If you see anything you think could be improved (e.g. typos, style issues, or things which could be explained better) you’re encouraged to leave a comment on the page by highlighting the relevant text and clicking the comment symbol that appears on the right note%%. Or, if you have an idea about how to improve it yourself, propose an edit. Dive right in, you won’t break anything!
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If you’re trying to learn something and find a page is pitched for a different audience, you can use the blue “Go faster” <span><span>note:%% and “Say what?” note%% menus to request alternate versions of the page more appropriate for your background.
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Giving feedback on the site
If at any point you notice a bug, something you think could be improved about the site, or something you think is great, let us know! We want to understand how you interact with Arbital as a reader or editor, so we can make it work better for you. You can send feedback via an option in the quick menu (orange + button in the bottom right corner).
Content release
Arbital is fundamentally collaborative. Your original work will always be saved in edit history, but the public page is very likely to be modified by other editors. Author’s opinions are always worth hearing but pages you create are not yours to control, and you should not expect to have the final say.
Any content you create on Arbital is released under the Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0), and may be widely reused (with attribution).
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Writing guides
If you’ve got something to explain, creating complete guides we can feature is extremely valuable. This is the most in-depth type of contribution, but it’s proportionally rewarding. We’ll be putting these in prominent places as a demonstration of how Arbital can help accelerate learning. For examples of these, see Bayes’ rule: Guide and Introductory guide to logarithms (though note that both of these are still being polished). %%
Children:
- Arbital features
Overview of all Arbital features.
- Style guidelines
Various stylistic conventions people should follow on Arbital
- Author's guide to Arbital
How to write intuitive, flexible content on Arbital.
- Submitting a page to a domain
How and why to submit a page to a domain
- Arbital scope
What kind of content is Arbital looking for?
- Possible math pages
A list of things which we may want math pages on
- Arbital quality
Arbital’s system for tracking page quality.
- Arbital external resources
Arbital wants to link users to great content, wherever it is!
- Arbital math levels
How mathy do you like your pages?
- Arbital examplar pages
Exemplar pages on Arbital.
- Arbital projects
Arbital projects are small-scale drives to fill in areas of content.
Parents:
- Arbital
Arbital is the place for crowdsourced, intuitive math explanations.
“path” is the word we usually use.
(1) Some concepts are “big concepts,” in which case the main should give a high-level definition and a sweeping overview that points people towards many other concepts (like group theory and logarithm in the pages linked above). These pages should probably have a number of other lenses on them, some of which are the beginnings of paths.
(2) Some pages are “normal sized concepts,” in which case the main page should define the whole concept (in a fairly neutral way that a fairly technical reader can understand), with other lenses that explain the concept to different audiences and provide other stuff like examples and exercises (I tried to do this with https://arbital.com/p/3h4/)
(3) Some pages are part of paths, which are sequential posts that spend a whole series introducing a number of different aspects of a big concept; I’m currently putting together a logarithm sequence that demonstrates this. (The main posts are done, but I haven’t strung them together yet.)
~ Nate
This is awkward phrasing.
would add “by highlighting text and using the menu that appears on the margin” (or other text that basically says this and also is consistent with how it works on mobile).