Help for New Editors
Welcome to my little soapbox. There's plenty of room for everyone. Make yourself comfortable and feel free to rant about your least-favorite Windows products.
As much as I'm sure you want to vent, it's important to make good entries here, to help visitors understand what you're saying and to help the targeted, er, mentioned company improve their product. A good entry needs these elements:
The complete product name
Visitors can search the catalog by a partial name. There's a better chance of their finding your entry if it's named: "whiz bang super fun product 2005 for kids" when they search for "whiz bang" or "super."
A useful category name
Visitors can search by category or browse existing categories. Try to use an existing category before creating a new one.
A brief, yet concise, description of the problem and workarounds
There is plenty of room to rant, so use it. If you choose to use HTML, use the allowed bits of HTML to format your rantings for readabilty, and to include links to outside sites. Use "br" tags instead of "p" tags to separate paragraphs.
Citations for sources!
Unless you are submitting your own text from your own experience, provide at minimum one reference. Cite all third-party material you include in your entry and provide web links where available. If you're having trouble finding a reference, try discussion threads in forums dealing with the product.
If you are quoting from the targeted, er, guilty, er, mentioned company, include a link to that company's document. Nothing will be more embarrassing than letting them point out their own poor design.
The "web1" and "web2" reference fields automatically become clickable links that open in new browser windows.
Be prepared to defend your claims
I ask for your e-mail address during registration so I can ask additional questions of you. I won't make your Catalog entry visible without basic fact checking, so expect questions about stranger things.
Stick with recent products
Windows 2000 first introduced rigid controls over its file system, for a Microsoft operating system anyway, by default. By comparison, Windows NT 4.0 and earlier installed with "Everyone / Full Control" in most places on the file system. Also, earlier versions of Windows NT didn't include DirectX and other modern technologies.
We can assume that anything released before January 2000 qualifies for an entry here, but that would lead to an oversized Catalog.
Stick with products released since January 2000 to keep the Catalog to a manageable size and to keep it current.
Providing these basic things will ensure you're providing a factual and usable resource to help prevent Windows computing problems before they can happen. You wouldn't expect less of a resource like this, so don't provide less.
Happy ranting.
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