Writer Guidelines

Originality/Adaptability
It is our desire to collaborate to make SGHistory.com a unique website. Never copy and paste articles from another website even if you were the original writer.

Understand that another SGHistory.com contributor or the site owner may update your article at a later date. By posting an article to SGHistory.com, you are giving SGHistory.com the right to display and change the article in the future. Obviously, our primary goal is to present the facts as accurately as possible and the way we intend to do that is through collaboration.

Neutrality
We welcome contributions from anyone with an accurate knowledge of a portion of Southern Gospel history. Please avoid personal biases. Language that is unnecessarily demeaning or overly congratulatory will be subject to reversion. This especially holds true if you are contributing information on yourself, a group, or an organization of which you are a member. Phrases that read too much like an overblown press release should be avoided just as much as any derogatory language. SGHistory.com is a neutral site and articles should be written from a neutral point of view.

Creating New Articles
A new article is created by going to the appropriate main page and inserting a link. To create a new link on the main page for Groups, for example, you should click Edit, type your link at the appropriate spot, and surround the link with brackets, as in [[M/My New Page]]. The first letter of the link MUST be entered twice with a forward slash separating the two letters. Examples: [[G/Gold City]] or [[I/Inspirations]] or [[A/Anthony Burger]].

Once you've created a new link on the appropriate main page and saved it, you should see your new link with a ? mark beside it. Click the new link to add content to your new page.

Once you've finished editing your new page and saved it, you can use the "Search" form at the top left of the page to find other articles with references to the article title you just created. Editing those pages to change the plain prose to links to your new page is the best way to create cross-references throughout the site and help our readers find your new page.

We no longer encourage "pre-linking" to articles that don't yet exist. The goal is to not have links with ? marks for any extended period of time, since this tends to confuse our readers when they click and get prompted for a password.

Naming New Articles
We accept articles in four categories: Groups, Individuals, Organizations, and Songs. Every word in an article title should be capitalized.

The title of a new article should be as follows:
1. Groups: Use the group name. Example: Mark Trammell Quartet. If the same group used more than one name during their history, you should list them by their current/final name and add an AKA ("also known as") line under the page title. Group articles can have several main sections, including: History, Member List, And Discography. (See below for format or look at this Group Template.)

2. Individuals: Use the individual's name. Example: Brian Free. This can be a soloist, a popular member of a group, or a non-performer who has impacted Southern Gospel. You can also include a Discography section within the Individual article to list their solo releases using the same format indicated below for album information.

Don't include any periods in your links, as this will confuse the software. If you want to display something other than the link, you can insert a | mark after the real link and then type what you'd like to display. Example: [[J/James S Wetherington | J. S. Wetherington]]. This also works for nicknames. [[J/James S Wetherington|Jim Wetherington]], [[J/James S Wetherington|"Big Chief" Wetherington]], and [[J/James S Wetherington|J. S. Wetherington]] will display something other than the actual link, which in this example is James S Wetherington.

3. Organizations: Use the organization name. Example: ASCAP.

4. Songs: Use the song name. Example: I Bowed On My Knees And Cried Holy.

You can also create "redirect" pages. The code (:redirect B.Bill_Gaither:) on the William J Gaither page will automatically take anyone who visits that page to Bill Gaither. Note that the first letter in the link must be included twice with a period in between. Also, an underscore mark must be inserted if the link has more than one word.

Changing Existing Articles
You can make direct edits to any article. Please include your name in the Author field of the Edit page, so we'll know who made the edit.

Layout for Discography sections of Group/Individual articles
DATE Album Title In Italics (Record Label/Number): Song Title 1; Song Title Last. (Group member 1, Group Member Last).

Example:
2003 Walk The Talk (Cathedral Records/CD0010): Somebody Sing Me A Gospel Song; That Little Baby; Calvary Conquers It All; I’m Saved, I’m Sure, I’m Ready; Walk The Talk; Then We Shall Sing; I’ll Say Thanks; I Can’t Do Without The Lord; God Is Unwilling; God Handled It All. (Jay Parrack, Jonathan Wilburn, Daniel Riley, Tim Riley, Channing Eleton, Doug Riley, Adam Borden).

If you’re only doing short entries (like date, title, and record label) that generally fit on one line, it’s fine to single space entries. Otherwise, double space after each entry. We want it to be easy on the eyes of the reader. Even if you just have one entry with song titles, double space after every entry so the overall look of the post will be consistent.

Contact the Artwork Editor using the email address on the main SGHistory.com page if you want to contribute scans of album covers.

Layout for History section of Group/Individual/Organization articles
Individual/group/organization name (Date it began or date of birth-date group ended or date of death)
Prose

Long histories should be broken down into sections with bold headers.

Layout for Member Lists sections of Group articles
Part (eg. tenor, lead, etc.)
Name (Dates of service)
Example:
Tenor
Bobby Clark (1963-1967)
Mack Taunton (1967-1971)
Roger Horne (1971-1972)
Bobby Clark (1972)
Roy Tremble (1972-1979)
Kirk Talley (1979-1983)
Danny Funderburk (1984-1990)
Kurt Young (1990)
Ernie Haase (1990-1999)

If a group member switched roles at some point, list their name in both sections and indicate “switched to from” or “formerly sang/played.”

Layout for Songs
Song title (writer/copyright information)
* Artist name (DATE, album title in italics)

Do not include song lyrics. Just list the artists who have recorded the song.

If songwriter information is already included, don't add another artist to the list unless you can verify it is in fact the same song. List songs with identical titles on the same page, but in separate lists with horizontal lines in between. (The code for a horizontal line is four dashes at the beginning of a line.)

For an example, see "Thanks To Calvary." Note on that page how we have listed the writer and copyright info followed by the artists who recorded one version. Next, there is a horizontal line. Finally, there is a list for the second song. This example also shows that even when the same artist recorded a song with an identical title, you can't assume it was the same song. The Statesmen recorded both versions of "Thanks To Calvary." So did the Old Friends Quartet. The inclusion of the album title and the horizontal line should make this distinction clear to the reader.

All articles are the property of SGHistory.com and should not be copied, stored or reproduced by any means without the express written permission of the editors of SGHistory.com.
Wikipedia contributors, this particularly includes you. Please do not copy our work and present it as your own.