Help:Product User manuals

Overview

Having user manuals, or other reference materials such as specification sheets or quick start guides, for products is always helpful. However, not everyone keeps their documentation in an easy-to-access location. Generally, companies have had no issues with getting free help with supporting their customers. This lessens the burden on their support staff and helps keep their costs lower.

Also, see the product image guidelines when naming and uploading product images.

Reasoning

There are many reasons why DCCWiki maintains a repository of backed-up user manuals:

The manufacturer goes out of business and the manuals are lost
The manufacturer changed everything around and the links are no longer available
The manufacturer stops providing manuals for really old decoders

By maintaining a backup of product user manuals, users of these products will be able to find a copy of their manual easily.

Guidelines

When creating new products, or editing existing products, such as decoders and boosters, upload the product's original user manual if it's available, along with any other items such as specification sheets and quick start guides.

File Standards

When possible, upload the manufacturer supplied documentation files. If that's not possible, anything is better than nothing.

Files supported

Currently, DCCWiki accepts files for:

Manuals - Full detailed manual
Quick Start - Quick start guides to help users get going quickly
Specifications sheet - Typically, one or 2 pages detailing the product specifications
Other - A place for a any remaining documentation items. Be sure to provide details in the product description.
Additonal Items - Additional items may be uploaded to DCCWiki if they are provided by the manufacturer. Thrid party supplied documentation isn't accepted here, but can be uploaded and referenced in the product description.

Naming Standards

Following this filename template will help others find the manual as well as have a filename when downloading the manual.

[File Type] [Manufacturer Name] [Item type] [Model Name] [Date published or revision number].pdf

An example filename would be: User-Manual Lenz Decoder 10231-01 2nd-edition.pdf

File Type: User-manual
- Acceptable names:
- Product-manual
  - Spec-sheet
  - Quick-start
  - Errata
  - Or other 1-2 word descriptions
Manufacturer Name = Lenz
Product Type = decoder
- Acceptable names:
  - Booster
  - Command-station
  - Decoder
  - Starter-set
  - Throttle
  - Other 1-2 word descriptions, with a dash '-' between the words.
Model Name/Part Number = 10231-01
Date published/Revision number = For this particular file, there is no publication date but it appears to be 2nd edition.
- Acceptable date format: YYYY-MM or YYYY if the month is not available. An example would be: User-Manual Lenz Decoder 10231-01 2010-01.pdf

Description Box

In the description box, provide any details about the manual such as the source location of the file. At the bottom of the description box, add ''{{Product user manuals}}''. This helps our system catalog the manuals.

If the product doesn't exist yet in the wiki, no need to link to the product yet. You can come back after the product page is created and linked later.

Here is an example description text that links to the manufacturer and the product page.

Manual for the [[Lenz]] decoder [[10231-1]]. File obtained from the manufacturer's website.

{{Product user manuals}}

Note: Be sure to include {{Product user manuals}} to help with displaying the proper information about this file and for categorization.

Uploading a File

Just like images, use the upload file tool.

Copyright Product Removal Requests

For companies wishing to have items removed, please edit any existing product pages with the offending content. Additionally, a copyright holder may request to have any files removed by opening a support ticket and providing the URL to the file.

Prohibited Manufacturers

DCCWiki was created in 2005. There have never been any companies (manufacturers or vendors) that have requested any content removals. This section will be updated if this action has ever occurred.