Help:Beginner's guide to validation

After a page, or an entire book, has been proofread, it needs to be double-checked to ensure that it was proofread correctly. This process helps to make sure that our works are as faithful as possible to the originals. This is called "validation".

What is validation?

Validation is simply checking someone else's work and confirming that they got it right. Validation is the last step in proofreading. After a page has been proofread, it needs to be validated by a different user.

Validate button

Normally, when you edit a page in the Page: namespace, the bottom of the edit box looks like this:

Screenshot of the standard page status radio buttons.

If the page has been proofread and you can validate it, the bottom of the edit box will look like this instead:

Screenshot of the page status radio buttons with the extra (green) Validate button.

The green button on the right of the "radio buttons" (next to the words "Page status") is the Validate button.

How to validate

1. Go to a page that has been proofread
   • Its page number will be highlighted in yellow on the Index page.
   • It will have the message "This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated" at the top of the page. This will also be highlighted in yellow.
2. Click Edit to edit the page.
3. Check the proofread text in the text field against the text in the page scan (just like proofreading).
   • If it is not correct, either:
     1. Make any changes you need to fix the page.
     2. Change the page status to either Not Proofread (red) or Problematic (blue). Say why you are doing this in the edit summary. Try validating a different page instead.
   • If it is correct (or you have fixed everything), continue.
4. Select the Validate (green) button to change the page status. The edit summary will change to "/* Validated */".
5. Save the page.
6. The page is now validated.
   • The message at the top of the page will be "This page has been validated." This message will be highlighted in green.
   • When you look at the Index page, the page number will also be highlighted in green.

Validation rules

• You must be a registered user to validate a page.
• You must be logged in to be able to validate a page.
• You cannot validate pages that you proofread.
• Only proofread (yellow) pages can be validated. You cannot validate any page with any other page status.

Helpful links

• All works with pages that need to be validated can be found in Category:Index Proofread.
• Click here to go to a random page that needs to be validated.