Generally, we prefer to see submissions of the following type:

• Addition of a new word or character that is in modern use
• Correcting a typo
• Improving a definition by adding new senses or glosses, or rewording existing ones
• Removing incorrect senses or glosses
• Deleting unsalvageably incorrect entries
• Fixing a formatting issue that may be hard to spot (such as extra slashes, extra spaces, extra brackets etc)

Or anything else that improves the quality of the dictionary.

We are no longer accepting most proper noun entries, unless they are the kind of proper noun likely to be found in any Chinese dictionary, or significant in some way to Chinese culture, history, language etc. We will most likely reject proper nouns that have no relation to China, and especially if they are already on Wikipedia. A comprehensive C-E dictionary of topics (including proper names) can be derived automatically from Wikipedia, and is likely to appear sooner or later. Pleco has indicated that they will offer this sort of name list after Pleco version 4 is released. So it doesn't make sense for us to continue adding names manually, covering what is inevitably only a tiny subset of the names in Wikipedia.

Examples of proper nouns we will probably accept:

• Continents and countries
• Provinces, prefectures, counties, districts (and similar administrative divisions) of China
• Major geographical features in China (黄河, 昆仑山 etc)
• Famous or culturally significant locations of China (长城, 故宮 etc)
• Famous historical figures of China (诸葛亮, 孔子, 秦始皇, 李白, 毛泽东 etc)
• Well-known Chinese literature (易经, 山海经, 西游记 etc)

Examples of proper nouns we will probably reject:

• Not extremely famous Chinese celebrity, politician, athlete etc
• Not extremely famous Chinese novel
• Small Chinese town or village
• Something with no relation to China that most Chinese people would not know of

The current thinking of CC-CEDICT editors is that we will preserve existing proper nouns, even if they are not the kind of entry we would accept today, as long as the entry is correct and not extremely insignificant. If there is a mistake in the entry, it can just be deleted.

The Chinese language has existed in some form since ancient times, and there are tens of thousands (if not a hundred thousand) of archaic, obscure, or unused characters that have long been discarded from the modern language.

As a general policy we prioritize documenting words and characters that are in current use. In many cases, the time and effort required to research rare, archaic or obscure words and characters is better spent improving coverage of modern, widely used vocabulary.

Please don't make a submission that is purely for converting pinyin to v2, or for correcting the grouping of glosses and senses. We already plan to go through all v1 entries and make those update ourselves, so any such submissions would just be duplicating work.