Contribution Guide¶

EEDIY welcomes course recommendations, link reviews, route improvements, translations, project reproductions, safety corrections, and accessibility work. Quality depends less on the size of a contribution than on making every fact traceable and every judgment explainable.

Useful contributions¶

• Add a course with genuine publicly accessible learning value.
• Correct a link, access status, prerequisite, hardware need, price, or license.
• Verify problems, solutions, labs, code, and assessment evidence.
• Report actual completion time, blockers, and alternatives after taking a course.
• Improve a route dependency or stage exit criterion.
• Contribute a reproducible project, test data, or failure retrospective.
• Restore Chinese/English parity and accessibility.
• Report a safety-boundary or attribution problem.

Pure rankings, promotional copy, unsupported “best course” claims, unauthorized copies of restricted material, and link-only pages are not suitable course records.

Evidence priority¶

Prefer:

1. the official course or institutional page, syllabus, and public repository;
2. original material published by the instructor or laboratory;
3. official software, component, and instrument documentation;
4. reproducible learner evidence as a supplement to official facts;
5. aggregators, forums, and playlists only as leads to primary sources.

External pages change. Every important resource field needs a last verified date. Do not infer current availability from a search snippet, cached title, or old screenshot.

Minimum course fields¶

Evidence tier must match the record:

• S: a public teaching–practice–feedback–assessment/project loop that can support independent study;
• A: strong teaching with a small number of explicit, compensable gaps;
• B: valuable components without a complete mainline spine;
• when evidence is insufficient, mark the item for review instead of assigning a high tier.

Contribution workflow¶

1. Search first: confirm that the course, issue, or correction is not duplicated.
2. Limit scope: one change solves one clear problem; discuss a large route redesign first.
3. Collect evidence: open each resource and check login, payment, region, and specialist hardware.
4. Update canonical data: never hand-edit generated course or route pages.
5. Maintain both languages: facts, numbers, risks, and links match; phrasing may be natural.
6. Validate locally: run generation, the strict build, and quality checks; read the rendered page.
7. Explain the judgment: list the change, evidence, uncertainty, and verification beyond screenshots.
8. Respond to review: resolve disagreement with new evidence; preserve “review needed” when unknown.

Bilingual parity¶

Translation is not word substitution. These must remain semantically identical:

• course identity, links, and verification dates;
• prerequisites and completion standards;
• open/closed status and missing resources;
• tier, role, and rationale;
• safety, cost, regional, and license constraints.

You may localize:

• sentence structure, terminology explanations, and reader-facing examples;
• common Chinese names while preserving the official title on first use;
• time-unit presentation and reading order.

When a fact changes in one language, update the other in the same contribution. If a reliable translation is unavailable, mark it and request language review instead of leaving a silent stale fact.

Writing and attribution¶

• Lead with the conclusion, then evidence and limits.
• Separate official claims, contributor verification, and evidence-based judgment.
• Name the missing item; “resources incomplete” is too vague.
• Workload may use only one of two provenances: provider data with traceable evidence, or an explicitly labelled maintainer estimate.
• A maintainer estimate must state its basis and assumptions and require learners to calibrate for two weeks before long-term planning; “unknown” is not a substitute for this record.
• Summarize in your own words and link the source; do not copy course descriptions or books at length.
• Do not upload paid solutions, restricted slides, secrets, personal data, or unlicensed images.
• Give images meaningful alternatives; distinguish plots with more than color; use proper table headers.

Additional gate for safety content¶

Safety changes receive priority review. For specific electrical, laser, RF, battery, chemical, mechanical, or first-aid statements:

• prefer regulators, standards bodies, manufacturers, or formal laboratory procedures;
• do not present one jurisdiction’s threshold as a universal safe line;
• do not enable unqualified readers to bypass interlocks, protection, or supervision;
• raise the risk class and recommend simulation or a qualified facility when uncertain;
• state that educational guidance is not work authorization.

Change-description template¶

## Change
- Added/corrected:
- Chinese and English pages affected:

## Evidence
- Official entry:
- Practice/lab/assessment:
- Access, cost, and license:
- Verified date:

## Judgment and uncertainty
- Role/tier rationale:
- Workload provenance (provider evidence, or maintainer estimate + basis + two-week calibration):
- Known gaps:
- Needs further review:

## Validation
- [ ] Data generation succeeded
- [ ] Strict site build passed
- [ ] Chinese and English facts match
- [ ] Internal links and critical external links checked
- [ ] Safety and content license reviewed

Reviewer checklist¶

• The record solves a navigation problem rather than inflating the count.
• Every material fact traces to a primary source.
• Mainline/alternative/supplement role fits the route.
• Tier reflects the self-study loop, not institutional reputation.
• Missing resources, old tools, cost, and hardware are disclosed.
• Workload has traceable provider evidence, or is a labelled maintainer estimate with its basis and a two-week calibration requirement.
• Numbers, risks, links, and dates agree across languages.
• Projects and labs stay inside the supervision boundary.
• Third-party material is linked or used within its license.
• Automated checks pass and human reading finds no navigation dead end.

Conflicts and corrections¶

Disclose if you teach the course, work for the platform, created the material, sell relevant equipment, or have another economic interest. A relationship does not automatically disqualify a resource, but readers must be able to judge it.

Factual errors, safety risks, and license concerns may receive a minimal correction before a complete rewrite. Provide the exact page, current statement, evidence, proposed remedy, and urgency. Maintainers should record the disagreement and resolution rationale.

See Licensing and Attribution for reuse and third-party boundaries.