The Open Guide to Cambridge

This article is intended to provide guidance on whether a particular article is suitable for inclusion into the guide. If you are unsure about the interpretation of this you could either mail us or leave Comments.

The purpose of these guidelines is not to stifle creativity but rather to ensure that the Open Guide to Cambridge does not become cluttered with information that is best kept elsewhere, such as on a general community site like Wikipedia.

Geographical scope

Obviously the guide should be about things to do within Cambridge City. However, locations outside the City may be okay as long as they don't stray too far and don't belong better on another wiki. For example, articles on Milton or Balsham would be ok, but Haverhill and Huntingdon are probably too far away.

Other scopes

Apart from geography, the other general rule that applies is whether you can draw a direct link to Cambridge in what you are discussing, and the article contains information specific to Cambridge. For example, an alumnus of a College is probably a permissible article, if the article discusses that person in relation to Cambridge. Otherwise, a link to elsewhere (for example Wikipedia) is likely to be better. If there is a small amount of Cambridge-specific information that isn't covered in the external link, you can make a stub page with this information plus the external link. Or you could put this information in the context of the referring page. This rule is not a hard and fast one, as sometimes it may be considered useful to maintain nodes such as alumni nodes even though there is no Cambridge-specific content in them. Use your judgement, but choose in preference to link externally.

Anything that is more removed from this general idea should not be created within the Open Guide to Cambridge. So, for example, links within the text of such an "edge" node as discussed above should not be internal ones unless they are directly connected with Cambridge in some other way.

If in doubt, consider that the primary focus of the guide is to provide practical information about things to do in the City, not a general reference, and think about whether your proposed article would fit in, say, a published guide book.

General notes

Related to all this is the rule of thumb that making external links to articles is better than copying large blocks of texts from other sources if possible, even if the licence permits that. Often a stub node with just a single external link will be appropriate, and a few Cambridge-specific notes.

Attribution

This text was originally copied from the Oxford Guide.