Blame Roget for the title, he's the one calling you dummies.

Hi. I'm Leveritas, moderator for the forum crit team and recently added to rewrite. I also manage the SCP-914 experiment log.

So with the recent rise in popularity in the SCP-914 experiment log, we became interested in reviving more collaboration pages in the same way. If all goes well, we create environments where newbies can safely practice without having to post an actual SCP first, since standards are becoming higher for those as the wiki evolves. It's also fun to do, I speak from experience.

Roget asked me to list a few things I do in order to keep the quality up and what effect this had on the 914 collaboration page.

At first, I just started pruning entries and announcing them in the discussion page. I was JS back then. The posts ended up in 'recent forum posts', which attracted the attention of more users, which posted their entries in turn.

[[include :scp-sandbox-3:image-zoom name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/guide-to-curation-for-dummies/914-1.PNG|caption=Pruning posts draw attention|width=300px|align=middle]]

After a while, the amount of people adding entries became numerous enough to warrant guidelines for entries, which I wrote shortly after: [[[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-914-experiment-log-guidelines]]]

So now we have semi-solid rules for the addition of entries, which means occasionally, the members start self-correcting:

[[include :scp-sandbox-3:image-zoom name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/guide-to-curation-for-dummies/914-4.PNG|caption=This is what you want|width=300px|align=middle]]

+++ So what do I do?

Apart from the pruning, the only real interaction I have with the contributors is explaining changes I made out-of-universe, and notes in-universe:

[[include :scp-sandbox-3:image-zoom name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/guide-to-curation-for-dummies/914-5.PNG|caption=Veritas is a bit of a grump|width=300px|align=middle]]

Note that I only added that last line, and people love it, which brings me to a very important note:

**Don't let your contributors go too far in this.**

At part three, users were sawing each others' heads off and putting them in 914 to get my attention. I'm glad that I put my foot down then, I removed a lot of notes and reeled them in. I also added to the guidelines:

> * You can place notes at the end of tests, and feel free to be creative when doing so. It can give some interesting insight into dynamics within the Foundation. Having said that, don't make Foundation personnel look like idiots/psychopaths/juvenile/a combination of those. It's a professional research organization, not a fraternity ward or a death cult.

Solved!

+++ Be consistent in pruning.

I check in every weekday, prune where needed, and add to the pruning post. This is around 10 minutes a day, but the difference this makes to occasional mass prunings is gigantic. Why? Because new people are never exposed to wrong entries for long. The rules are enforced consistently, which makes it very clear what we expect from them as a community.

+++ Be strict when you have to be.

Newbies usually need very clear boundaries and you're the one in charge, act like it. You're the one removing entries and that's final. With 914, unauthorised edits have a grand total of 2 strikes. One removal of an entry that isn't yours is a warning PM to the editor, since it may be a mistake. Do it again, and I have reasonable suspicion that it's on purpose, and you're out. Fortunately, it only ever came to step one so far.

[[include :scp-sandbox-3:image-zoom name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/guide-to-curation-for-dummies/914-6.PNG|caption=Don't mince words over things like this|width=300px|align=middle]]

+++ This is what happened to frequency of entries:

> It took 9 months and 4 days to fill part II.
>
> Part III took around 2 months and 21 days to complete.
>
> This part has been open for 35 days, a little more than a month, and it's already going to be full in a few weeks, maybe faster.
>
> I don't really keep any rules for how many entries are max, I just eyeball it, but it definitely goes exponentially faster.

+++ In the end, this is what you want:

[[include :scp-sandbox-3:image-zoom name=http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/local--files/guide-to-curation-for-dummies/914-3.PNG|caption=Best case scenario|width=300px|align=middle]]