We know first-hand how important cars are to their owners, especially to members of the tuning community. That means the community needs some assurance that the How-Tos they read are reliable. We believe the vast majority of our community members want to help this effort, so our checks and balances are handled by individual members. We feel this helps the community write and maintain high quality how-tos while maintaining a friendly atmosphere.

User Classes

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Each community has members classified as admins, editors, or public. Information provided by or about each class is color-coded. In how-tos, black text signifies that an admin provided the information, while green signifies editor, and orange signifies public. The three different classes have different responsibilities to their communities, and their communities should consider their contributions in different ways.

When a member first joins a community, the member is public. Because the community does not know how reliable this member is, this member's orange-colored contributions should be taken with a grain of salt. Public members are limited to text contributions, and cannot upload images, unless the images are for a new How-To the member wants to submit for approval.

Once a public member adds to their community by submitting a new How-To, and an admin approves it, the public member becomes an editor. As an editor, the member's contributions become green-colored: the community should understand that the green text signifies a member who has contributed significantly to their community. Editors can contribute both text and images.

After continued positive contribution, community admins can vote an editor into becoming a new admin. Once an admin, the member's contributions become black-colored; black text signifies contributions from the most respected community members. The admin is responsible for approving new How-Tos, keeping up the community's main page, and maintaining the admin versions of individual How-Tos, as described below. For more, see [ Admin Expectations].

Communities

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Communities are defined for individual cars. For instance, editors and admins in the Toyota Corolla community are not necessarily editors and admins in the [ Mazda RX-7] community.

How-To Versions

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Each How-To has two versions: admin and community. The admin version is maintained only by the community's admins, who review new contributions to help weed out bad advice. The community version uses the admin version as a foundation, and is maintained by admins, editors, and the public. The expectation is for the community version to be more up-to-date and cutting edge than the admin version, while the admin version is more carefully scrutinized.

It is important to understand what happens when a how-to's admin version is updated:

1. An Admin picks and chooses aspects of the current community version to incorporate into the new admin version.
2. The Admin can then edit the text to incorporate new content and to generally improve readability.
3. Once complete, the new admin version is live, and the community version is reset to the new admin version; by submitting a new admin version, the community version is given a new foundation.

Version History

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How-tos are continuously evolving with community contributions. By default, the most recent version is displayed, though every version is saved and can be individually viewed through a how-to's version history. The history lists when the change took place, who made the change, the contributor's comment about the change, and what class of community member the user is. Versions can also be "differenced," meaning the additions and deletions between two points in a how-to's history can be viewed.

This information is useful if information you need no longer exists, or if you are curious who submitted certain information. For instance, community members can use this information to solve problems that arise from such an open How-To system, and admins can use this information to get a feel for an editor applying to be an admin.

See Also...

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• [ Website 101]