Help:How to contribute

Is This the Place for You?

The first thing I should note, is that this is a conservative voter guide, so if you do not consider yourself to be generally conservative, then this may not be the place for you. Apply voting principle number 4 to yourself:

Assume members of liberal parties are liberal.

Maybe you're actually not in the right party for your political ideology. If that's the case, then I would recommend taking a look at what political parties there are.

Pick an Issue

It's generally best to contribute for issues that are relevant to you, so you should probably pick an issue you would actually be voting on.

I also recommend looking at local issues. The more local the better. We at the Shtick believe in having strong local governments, and the only way that can happen is if we each locally pay attention to what is going on. More general issues are important too, and it would probably be convenient to at least have a page for the more general issues to provide a path for users to navigate to local issues, but don't overlook the local.

The issue you pick may be something you already know about, or something that you want to know about. Being too close to an issue may impair your critical thinking skills, but it also may provide you with information not publicly available. This information can be important, but you need to make sure you document your sources. If this is something you know about, you might find another page to describe your experience on. Some recommendations for this are user sub-pages, talk pages, or article sub-pages.

Do Your Research

Don't be in a terrible hurry to decide. The sooner we can decide, the better, but start by doing research. While it is nice to decide a good week before election day, it's not really necessary to have decided until election day itself.

Start by doing research. Find sources of information and document them on the page for the issue.

Write about Your Thoughts

Write about what you think about the data that has been gathered. Write about your reasoning. Keep in mind the principles of the voter guide.

Decide

Sometimes an issue is easy. Document the simple reasons for the decisions and then go for it. The decision may not be final, but that's OK.

Sometimes decisions are hard. If you've hit an information roadblock, go ahead and sit on it for a while. Maybe you'll find something new. If nothing new is coming, however, you can still decide. Reasoning should be covered as you document your thoughts, and uncertainties should be apparent. We don't live in a perfect world, and decisions are not always clear-cut. Perhaps someone will come along and clarify things. Perhaps not.

Very often the issues often become clear with research.

Collaborate

This is a wiki, and as such, anyone can get an account and contribute. Perhaps someone will edit something you wrote. Don't worry. If it's vandalism, it can be dealt with. If it's not, then try to appreciate the help. The collaborative environment means that someone might decide an issue you were researching, or reverse your decision. If we're clear about why we're making our decisions, most of these issues should be easily resolvable.