Contributing

How a guide travels from your keyboard to the official index.

Everything on Academy Network is written by people who know how to do something and took the time to teach it. No staff, no submission fee, no account to create: contributing happens entirely inside the app, under a pseudonym it generates for you. Here is the whole journey.

Writing a guide

Writing happens in the app's built-in editor: click in and type, like a simple document editor. Formatting is structure only (headings, lists, tables, images, links), because guides are about content, not typography. The editor helps you follow the guidelines as you go:

• Drafts save automatically, on your machine only; nothing is shared until you choose to submit.
• Inserting an image prompts you for alt text and handles the file distribution for you.
• Linking to another guide, or declaring one as a prerequisite, is a search-and-pick, and the editor won't let you declare a prerequisite from a higher level than your guide.
• Editing an existing guide starts from the current version; your submission shows reviewers exactly what changed, not a wall of text.
• Writing a new guide makes you its duke: the guide's title and its donate button are yours alone to change, at any time, without review. See The duke and Ads and donations.

When it's ready, press Submit. Your draft becomes a signed, permanent revision and goes to review.

How review works

Review is a jury, not a gatekeeper:

1. A jury is drawn. The network selects an odd-numbered jury (usually five) of verifiers in your subject, at or above your guide's level. The draw is random but verifiable; no one, including editors, can hand-pick a jury.
2. Jurors vote within a time window (about two weeks). Every vote must include written reasoning. A bare yes/no is invalid, and jurors who skip the reasoning risk their verifier status.
3. A majority approving publishes the guide. The protocol itself enforces this: a passed submission must appear in the next index update, and every copy of the app checks it. Editors cannot quietly bury a guide that passed.
4. Anything less returns it to you with every juror's reasoning attached. Revise and resubmit; a new jury is drawn, and most guides pass on the second attempt.

After publication

• Every guide has a talk page. A public, forum-style discussion thread on the guide: readers report what didn't work, writers coordinate improvements, reviewers explain their reasoning. Check it before you edit; the discussion often already knows what the guide needs.
• Readers rate guides up or down. Sustained heavy downvoting flags a guide for editorial re-review: readers can't be ignored, and they can't mob a guide off the index either.
• Anyone can improve your guide. Their edit goes through the same jury process, and the guide's full history stays browsable: every version, every author, every change note, forever.
• History is permanent. Superseded versions remain in the history. Restoring an old version is just a new submission that goes through review like any other.
• One exception: removal votes. The community can vote to remove a guide outright. Votes are weighted by earned standing and need a supermajority, so a real cross-section of contributors is required: no one can mob a guide off the index, or block a removal, with throwaway accounts. A passed vote delists the guide and deletes it from the network's storage. See Removing guides and Governance.

The duke

Every guide has exactly one duke: the person who originally wrote it. The dukedom is a clean split between a guide's properties and its content:

• Properties belong to the duke. The guide's title and its donate button are the duke's alone. The duke changes them instantly, with no review, and nobody else can touch them no matter how much of the content they've edited. Property changes aren't part of a content edit at all, so an edit can't smuggle one in.
• Content belongs to everyone. Text, images, and attachments are edited exactly as described above, by anyone, duke included. The duke's own content edits face the same jury as yours, and your jury-passed edit publishes without the duke's involvement.
• Dukedoms move when they need to. A duke can hand the title to someone else or give it up. If a duke loses their key, disappears, or abuses the donate button, the editors can reassign the dukedom, and every reassignment is public in the index's permanent history.

Becoming a verifier

Verifiers are the jury pool: people who've demonstrated they know a subject well enough to judge whether a guide teaches it correctly. Verifier status is per subject and per level: you might verify level 3 electronics and level 1 welding. You earn it by certification, not appointment: current verifiers in the subject vouch for you, and once enough have, the editors must seat you. No editor gets to hand-pick the jury. Status is earned by a pseudonym, so your real identity is never part of it.

Even once you're certified, being on a jury is opt-in. A simple "available to review" switch in the app decides whether you're in the pool: turn it on when you have time, turn it off when you don't, and the network only ever draws jurors from people who are switched on. Leave it off and you're never called; forget to turn it back on after a break and you simply, quietly, stop being drawn, no recall or penalty. Reading and even writing a guide never enroll you in review duty; only that switch does.

The obligations are real while you're on call: vote within the window, explain every vote in writing, and judge the guide against the guidelines, not against your taste. A verifier who reviews in bad faith can be recalled by a community vote, so the trust runs both ways. See Governance.

Becoming an editor

Editors maintain the official index, the shared table of contents every copy of the app displays. It's a maintenance role, not a power role: the protocol forces the index to honor jury outcomes and passed community petitions, several editors must co-sign every index update, and every update is public, permanent, and checked by every node. An editor cannot censor a passed guide, stack the jury, or block a removal.

Editors are drawn from long-standing verifiers with a track record of good judgment, and the editor group rotates its own membership. But they serve at the community's pleasure: if the editors are ever captured or absent, a community no-confidence vote can replace the whole set with one that clients will follow. Expect the role to be earned slowly and held lightly. See Governance.

Until the first release ships, the way to contribute is more direct: the project needs writers, developers, and future seed hosts right now.