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SmallBusiness.com:Who writes and edits SmallBusiness.com
Who writes and edits SmallBusiness.com
The answer to this question is people like you.
Volunteers do not need any formal training before creating a new entry or editing an existing entry. The people who create and edit entries in SmallBusiness.com come from all over the U.S and English-speaking world (soon, we'll be in more languages) and have a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Anyone who contributes to this sourcebook is called a contributor.
When a number of people are working to compile information on a given topic, disputes will arise. A useful feature of SmallBusiness.com is the ability to tag an entry or a section of an entry as being the subject of a dispute about a neutral point of view. This feature is especially popular for controversial topics, topics subject to changing current events or other topics where divergent opinions exist. To resolve the dispute, the interested editors will share their points of view on the entry's talk page. They will attempt to reach consensus so that all valid perspectives can be fairly represented. This allows SmallBusiness.com to be a place not only of information but of collaboration.
Many users of SmallBusiness.com consult the page history of an entry in order to assess the number, and the perspective, of people who contributed to the entry. You may also consult the talk page of any entry to see what other readers and editors have to say about it.
How to improve entries
When you find an entry that is incomplete or inaccurate, you can edit the entry to help make SmallBusiness.com more accurate and useful. Someone may place a notice at the top of the entry indicating that it needs to be cleaned up. It is also possible to create a new entry to share information that is not yet in SmallBusiness.com.
The best way to decide whether a particular statement is accurate is to find independent, reliable sources to affirm that statement, such as books, magazine entries, television news stories, trade journals or web sites. For more guidance on evaluating the accuracy of SmallBusiness.com entries, see SmallBusiness.com:Researching with SmallBusiness.com. It is SmallBusiness.com's policy to add to the sourcebook only statements that are verifiable, and not to add original research. The SmallBusiness.com style guide encourages editors to cite sources. Detailed citations allow readers of the entry to easily verify the content in question.
