Editing

Introduction

ResearchWikis are free-content market research articles. They includes a wide range of articles on hundreds of market research topics. The goal is to let the global community of researchers and others contribute high-level core research on all major business research topics. Our contributing community is worldwide. It includes research professionals, product managers, education professionals and business professionals. The community provides this broad range of information which will provide the reader a core understanding of a topic primarily within its business context.

This is not intended to be encyclopedic or historical information. Our contributors felt there is a clear need for core market research information on key business and other topics available to the global community – in short – anyone who uses market research.

The sections covered in a ResearchWikis article can vary depending on the contributor’s knowledge, but in general, each topic consists of several key sections including Background, Market Structure, Industry Definitions, Market Metrics, Industry Players as well as Trends and Recent Developments. The information provided by contributors is intended to provide accurate, current business related information about the subject. It is not, for example, intended to provide the history of the topic or related information as the chemical nature of a mineral. Those types of information are provided on other sites. The simple goal is to provide the reader a clearer understanding of the topic, its business impact and directions.

The community recognizes a need for core, initial level research information to be provided free to users – giving visitors an easy-to-access resource to get fast business information about a topic. Many sites sell this type research for a fee. Yet considerable information can be found in publicly available resources. The challenge has been the time required in searching for the information. ResearchWikis are intended to provide instant core information in one community site.

The information provided is not intended to be all encompassing. But the core sections provided should give the reader a high level understanding of a topic or industry, its direction and potential opportunities. Thousands of researchers worldwide can take this research to the next level – for example, by updating a topic though consumer surveys, by going very deep on competitors or by focusing on a particular geography in detail. All of these are examples of market research at the next level. ResearchWikis get the user initial insight into an industry.

Each one of the sections of a ResearchWikis article should provide the reader basic information on the topic. "Background" lays out the definition of the industry and how it developed. "Market Structure" is intended to provide information such as whether an industry may be consumer related, business-to-business, how it relates to other industries, etc. "Industry Definitions" provides the reader an understanding of terms which may be specific to the industry. "Market Metrics" outlines key statistics of the topic including general revenues, recent growth, its international impact such as imports and exports and which countries may be the major producers. "Industry Players" provides a view of companies which may be dominant producers or distributors including their revenues, locations and ownership. "Trends and Recent Developments" provides key information about directions the industry may be taking and what factors may be impacting its growth.

Topics in ResearchWikis can generally be edited by clicking on the editing link. Again, contributors come from many backgrounds. They include researchers, publishers, academic and business professionals and industry experts. You are welcome to contribute or edit a ResearchWikis article.

Background

ResearchWikis topics are continually being added to the site. On an ongoing basis, contributors are constantly editing market research articles or adding new ones. The goal is that the quality of the research articles will improve over time and accuracy will go up as a contributors balance out information as additions are made to each article. Users should understand that the quality of an article is a “best efforts” from contributors. The site is self-policing and may inadvertently at times contain inaccurate information. It is uncommon to have articles which are purposely incorrect and in most cases, the information provided comes from a limited set of sources and is likely to be changed when additional information is gathered. Again, research statistics which may be several years – or more – old may not gave an accurate current picture of an industry. In general though, information should be minimally and directionally correct. Sometimes contributors may post information in different sections of a ResearchWikis article which may not support the other information. We hope, in time, our contributors will continue to make corrections to topics where appropriate.

The ResearchWikis will change over time. We expect contributors to add new sections to a topic if they have valid and accurate market research which can enhance a topic. Again, we welcome as much market research information on a topic as contributors can provide.

Registering

All users are welcome and encouraged to contribute research articles to ResearchWikis. To create new articles, however, you must be a registered user. You must create a username and password by clicking on Sign In or Register Now. Make sure you retain the ID and password you submit for future reference and use.

Policies

1) ResearchWikis are for intended for the purpose of market research. Our users are generally searching for market research information about a specific topic – whether an industry of other subject. This information would include market size, growth rates, competitors, producers, usage, user preferences, trends and opportunities. In most cases, the user is less interested in the historical development or “chemical composition” of the topic. Other sites can provide that background.

2) ResearchWikis are generally about usage or business. In the case of healthcare, for example, relevant information would includes incidence of a disease and efficacy of treatments. This is valuable to a user. In many other industry topics, information of high value might includes the size and growth rates of industry revenues. In all cases, information about ”users” or “consumers” is highly valued. What do they prefer? How are they using it? Are they using a lot if it? Contributors should expect that in many cases, users are gathering the information to make informed business decisions. For example, is this a geography or business I want to get into? A fact that ancient Egyptians used the product is not particularly relevant to a user’s business decision today.

3) ResearchWikis are best when they expand through consensus. Encourage other to add information on a topic. Consensus on market research is highly imnportant to increasing the quality of the articles.

4) Show respect for all contributors. Our contributors are from many geographies and have different sources of information with different levels of value. If you are a world expert on a topic, our visitors will benefit from your insights. Other contributors may be able to enhance your knowledge even more. All contributors should be treated with respect.

5) Show respect for intellectual property. Trademarks, copyrights and patents are critical to the growth of knowledge and must be absolutely respected. Contributors with original content of their creation are encouraged to add material to ResearchWikis. It is not acceptable to add material from third parties without their consent. Watch for material that is marked with copyrights or confidential markings. This information is free to our visitors but articles cannot include information that would damage the welfare and rights of others. Information that is found to be in doubt in this regard will be removed.

6) Include your sources of information. If the information was found from a public source such as a government web site, contributors should cite that in “Sources” at the bottom of their article.

Visitors will want to know the level of accuracy that is behind the market research information. A lack of listed sources does not instill confidence in an article.

Contributing and Editing

ResearchWikis are open to anyone who wants to contribute market research. Clicking on the "Edit" tab will open an article and allow a contributor to change the content in an article. Contributors should only add research information that has a source and can be verified. It should not contain biased information or sections which reflect personal views and opinions. For example, speculation that the ABC Company is going to dominate a market or industry may be pure speculation. Facts are the basis of true market research.

If you have determined that there is no current ResearchWikis article on a particular market research topic, you can research the topic and contribute the article yourself. Our users expected that the article contains useful and valid research information about the subject.

Editing ResearchWikis pages

We provide contributors with a simple page layout that makes page editing easy. ResearchWikis articles are written in and are based on MediaWiki rules.

Editing pages

The most basic feature on a ResearchWikis page is the edit command which is generally on the right side of the article page on the opposite side from the section heading.

This link lets you “open up” the page to editing. You can simply type in the text you want or copy it in from another source such as an MS Word document. When you have added material, you can click on “Show Preview” at the bottom of the page to review what you have added. This allows a contributor to see what the edited page will look like after the edit, but before it has been actually saved. You can also click on “Show Changes” to simply see a description of the changes you have made. You can always click on “Cancel” on the bottom of the page if you do not want to continue with your edits. No edits will be posted to the site until you click “Save”.

When you are satisified with your changes, click on “Save” and your edits will be posted and displayed on the page.

Formatting ResearchWikis Pages

This is not as simple as MS Word or Powerpoint. As with other wiki software, contributors need to use a few different but simple commands to insert and control their edited information. For example, you cannot simply type in a word and then make in “bold” or “italics” like MS Word lets you do. You need to use a few commands to accomplish this, but it is not difficult. A few commands and you should be able to get your core, edited material into the site quickly and easily.

The language ResearchWikis uses to accomplish this is know as Wikitext and it was developed to use simple commands and format. Let’s outline the key one’s you will probably use.

If you want to use bold and italics, you will surround those words with multiple apostrophes. There are 2 ways to do this.

Highlight the word or phrase you want to bold or italicize by holding down the left key on your mouse and running it over the word you want to highlight. With that word or phrase highlighted, click on either the Bold or italics symbol buttons at the menu bar immediately at the top of the page you are editing. Bold is the button at the left with a “B” on it. The italics button it to the right of the bold button and is marked with the symbol “I”.

Alternatively, you can mark the word or phrase right on the page by using multiple apostrophess. You would do the following by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):

You type You get italic italic bold bold bold italic bold italic

You can also enter Headings and Subheadings into a page by using other commands. Headings and subheadings are a good method you can use to improve the readability and organization of your edited article, such as breaking up an article by inserting a heading for each section.

Headings can be created as follows:

You type	  You get
== Heading ==	   Heading
=== Subheading ===	Subheading

If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will generated at the top of the article automatically and it will be easier for a reader to understand the flow of the market research article.

HTML

HTML code can be used in pages to produce more advanced formatting such as colors, tables, and edit page layout. However, you do not need to know HTML to use ResearchWikis and follow formatting conventions.

Formatting Conventions

Wikitext will generally try to condense any spaces you may have inserted. Although you can add spaces after a sentence, in some cases, wikitext will try to eliminate spaces.

This may cause you, for example, to lose spacing in a table of data you may want to insert. Tables of data are very helpful in market resaearch and there is a simple way to insert them. You must tell wikitext to treat the table as “free text” and not format it.

To insert a free text table, first provide yourself some room in the article to insert the table by hitting the enter key a couple times to provide your table of data some spaces. Now you want to insert a command to deactivate the formatting of wikitext and allow you to enter in “free text”.

<pre>

This tells wikitext not to format and condense the spacing of what comes next. You can then enter the table of data you want. You will need to space our columns and headings by using the “space bar” on your keyboard to move across the page. The “tab” key you may have normally used will not work in this case. When you have entered the last information for your table of data, enter the following: </pre> . This command tells wikitext to again start formatting the text that follows the table you have entered. The table of information you have entered will be displayed as a a highlighted table inserted into your article.

Make sure you click on “Show Preview” to see what your table looks like. You may have to go back and forth a few times to make sure your columns are properly aligned and spaced the way you want them to appear.

Linking Information on ResearchWikis

You may want to link information from different research articles together. For example, Herbal Teas may be associated with an article on Teas. These links are simple to create and enhance the usability and value of ResearchWikis.

First determine if a link is helpful by asking youself if it would enhance the understanding of the topic. You should generally link only the first, and only the first, occurrence of a word/term in the article.

How to link

If you want to create a link to another MarketWiki article (called a wiki link) you have to put it in double square brackets, as follows: Tea = Tea

If you want the display text of the link to have a different title, you can do so by adding the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards) followed by the alternative name. For example:

[[Target page|display text]] = display text

You can make a link to a specific section of a page like so:

[[Target page#Target section|display text]] = display text

Categories

You can also put the article in a category with others in a related topic. Just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets. To make a link to a Category page (for example, as a reference for further research), simply put a colon (:) at the beginning of the "Category" tag, like this: Category:Tea

The above code would produce the following: Category:Tea

To help users find your work, it is critical to put in the correct category names. The best way to find which categories to put in is to look at pages on similar subjects, and check which categories they use.

Indenting and Bullets

Indenting

Indenting and bullets can enhance the readability of your articles.

Wikitext lets you indent a few ways:

Simple indentations

Place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line.

The more colons you put in, the more indenting you will get.

A new line (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph.

For example:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

is shown as:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

Bullet points

Bullets can also be used to indent. To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation.

A brief example:

* First list item 
* Second list item 
** Sub-list item under second 
* Third list item

Which is shown as:

• First list item
• Second list item
  • Sub-list item under second
• Third list item

Numbered items

You can also indent and use bullets by simply using a colon and an asterik ( :* )

You can also create numbered lists, using the number sign (#). Indent the number of time you want to indent by the number of #'s you use.

Example:

# First item 
# Second item 
## Sub-item under second item 
# Third item

Shows up as:

1. First item
2. Second item
   1. Sub-item under second item
3. Third item

Attaching Supporting Information

Contributors are encouraged to add charts, data, pictures or other information which supports their ResearchWikis articles. This information can be inserted into articles in a few simple steps.

Uploading Files

Files which can be imbedded into ResearchWikis articles generally can be only in a few formats such as JPEG or some other types. File types supported include the following extensions: .jpg, .png|alt text, or .ogg

To upload a file or image, make sure the file has been saved in one of the formats described above. You must be registered on the system to upload a file into an article. Register or log in if you have not done so.

Click on Upload file on the navigation bar on the left side of the ResearchWikis page. The top of the page will ask for a “Source filename”. Click on “Browse” to search through documents on your computer to find the correct file or image you want to use. Click on the correct file name. It should enter that name into the “Source filename”. It should also have pre-filled a “Destination filename” in the field below that. Make sure if it is a JPEG file that the extension is capitalized. For example if it is “HerbalTea.jpg”, change it to “HerbalTea.JPG”.

Click on the Upload File button. The image should be displayed on the page. Make sure you have noted down the name of the destination filename, in this case “HerbalTea.JPG”

Go back to the page you want to insert your image or file into. Click on edit to open up the article. Position your cursor where you want to insert the image in the article.

At the menu bar at the top of the ResearchWikis page, click on the middle button on the bar, on the symbol that looks like an image or picture. To make sure you are on the right button, when you run your mouse over the image, it should show the label “embedded image”. Click on this button.

Where your cursor was placed in the article, the phrase should be displayed. Change this to reflect the name of the image you want to embed, for example, you would change it to Image:HerbalTea.JPG If you are satisfied with where the image is being displayed in the article, click on Save Page at the bottom of the page. When you look at the saved page, your image should now appear in the article.