Help:Get involved
Maker Trainer is a wiki, created with the idea of sharing practical knowledge between makers from all over the world. The website is still in its infancy, and we need every help we can get to make it a valuable resource.
Why a wiki is necessary
To use a crude analogy, if mathematicians never recorded their findings and methods, every new student would have to invent calculus on their own.
While theoretical knowledge is well-documented by academia, practical knowledge is mainly passed down orally between the old and new generations of makers. Every seasoned maker represents a lifetime of trial and error. We believe their experience should not be repeated, but learnt from and built upon.
Maker Trainer aims to collect and preserve practical knowledge, so that generations of makers can master their craft faster, and develop new techniques within their field.
Writing an article
Plunge forward
To borrow a phrase from Wikivoyage, we want you to plunge forward, and be bold with your contributions. Your experience is just as valid as anybody else's, and might be very valuable to the next person reading it.
Edit freely and without fear. If anything breaks, or turns out to be wrong, we can revert it easily. Don't worry about making it look nice, information is more important than formatting.
Topics
Articles can cover a wide variety of topics related to 3D printing, but the content should be helpful in some way to the maker. This can mean giving step-by-step instructions for techniques, useful explanations, clever analogies, tips for efficiency, relevant data and many more.
If you can't think of what to write about, check out the glossary. All of the grey links are articles that are waiting to be written.
What to avoid
Our aim with Maker Trainer is to offer practical knowledge, ie. information that makes your life easier as a maker. For instance, the history and science of 3D printing is fun to read about, but it will not help you unclog a nozzle.
There are already some great encyclopedic resources out there for all the theory. We want to tackle the glaring need for categorizing practical knowledge.
Styling
Though you shouldn't worry too much about styling, you can try to mimic the format of other articles already written. For general information on how to edit a wiki, check out Wikipedia's editing guide.
One thing that is important, is that any images you upload are copyright free — and beautiful. We prefer professional stock photos to home-made ones, even if they are a bit less illustrative. Copyright free images are available at:
References
If there is a concrete source for the information you're sharing, please reference it using the Cite button. This can be anything from a book to a Youtube video, it doesn't have to be "academic".
Very often there will be no documentation you can point to for your knowledge, and that's okay. The lack of documentation related to practical knowledge is the reason why Maker Trainer exists in the first place!
