Help:Contents/Editing
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The Basics
With the exception of a few protected pages, every page has a link (in a tab at the top of the page) that says "edit" or "edit this page", which (duh) lets you edit the page you are looking at. It is WikiMobiDex's most basic feature, and allows you to make corrections and add facts to articles. If you add information to a page, please provide references, because unreferenced facts can be removed.
NOTE: YOU MUST BE REGISTERED AND LOGGED IN TO CREATE AND EDIT PAGES.
How to Create a Page
The easiest way to create a page is to go over to the search bar (on the left side of the screen) and search for the page you'd like to create (this also acts as a check to make sure the page you want to create doesn't already exist!). If the page doesn't exist on WikiMobiDex you will see the following:
- There is no page titled "the name of the page you just searched on ". You can [create this page]
The [Create this page] will be in red - which is WikiMobiDex's way of telling you that the page doesn't exist, but if you click the link it will automatically create it for you. So... click the red link and you're off to the races!
Show preview
One important feature to start using now is the Show preview button. Try making an edit in the sandbox, then clicking the Show preview button instead of Save Page. This allows you to see what the page will look like after your edit, before you actually save. We all make mistakes; this feature lets you catch them. Using Show Preview before saving also lets you try format changes and other edits without cluttering up the page history. Do not forget to save your edits after previewing, though!
A little etiquette!
The "Show preview" button is right next to the "save page" button and below the edit summary field. Before you hit Save, it is considered good etiquette (or "Wikiquette") to enter a polite explanation of your changes in the Edit summary box between the edit window and the Save and Preview buttons. It can be quite short; for example if you just enter "typo", people will know you made a spelling correction. Also, if the change you have made to the page is minor, such as correcting a spelling or grammar error, be sure to check the box "This is a minor edit" (this is only available if you have logged in).
Style and Formatting
The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding and italicizing are done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ( ' ) - two on each side of the word or phase for italics, or three for bold - or by selecting the word or phrase in question and using the "B" or "I" options in the text editor at the top of the edit pane.
Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up the article by inserting a heading for each section.
To create a header, select the text in question and hit the "A" button in the text editor at the top of the edit pane. To make this a subheader, add an equals sign (=) to each side of the word/phrase in the header. Repeat process for sub-sub headers, etc
If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will automatically be generated.
HTML
HTML code can be used in pages to produce more advanced formatting such as colors, tables, and edit page layout. However, you do not need to know HTML to use WikiMobiDex and follow formatting conventions.
Links to other WikiMobiDex Pages
Linking WikiMobiDex articles together is very important. These easily created links allow users to access information related to the article they are reading and greatly add to WikiMobiMedia's utility.
When (not) to link
Adding links to an article makes it more useful, but too many links can be distracting. This is why you should only link the first occurrence of a word.
Looking at other WikiMobiDex articles can also help you learn when to add links.
How to link
To make a link to another WikiMobiDex page (called a wiki link), put the name in double square brackets, like this:
- [[Help:Contents]] = Help:Contents
If the page doesn't yet exist it will appear in red after you save. Click on it to create that new page.
If you want to link to an article, but display some other text for the link, you can do so by adding the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards) followed by the alternative name. For example:
- [[Target page|display text]] = display text (clickable)
or a real world example:
- [[Help:Contents|Help is on the Way!]] = Help is on the Way!
If you want the display text of the link to appear in italics or bold, nest the double square brackets for the link within the multiple apostrophes that delimit the italicized or bold text, like this:
- ''[[Help:Contents|Help is on the Way!]]'' = Help is on the Way!
Please check your links to ensure they point to the correct article. For example, Apple could point to an article about the fruit (not that we'd want that type of content here!), while Apple, Inc. is the title of the article about the computer manufacturer. There are also "disambiguation" pages - these are not articles, but pages which contain links to articles with similar titles. Some, such as Apple (disambiguation) are obvious, while others such as Georgia use generic titles. These differing titles make piped links especially useful, as a link to Georgia (country) is far less readable than a piped link called Georgia.
Categories
It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED put the article in a category with others in a related topic. Just type [[Category:]], and put the name of the category between the colon and the brackets.
It is very important to put in the correct categories so that other people can easily find your work. The best way to find which categories to put in is to look at pages on similar subjects, and check which categories they use. For example if you write an article about a type of tree, you may look at an article on another type of tree to see which categories could be appropriate.
References & External Links
Provinding sources to your posts is crucial to the credibility of your pages and edits. To avoid confusion please do not link to any other wikis, such as wikipedia [dot] org. For many situations it is best to use inline citations so that other editors can verify the information you add. Make sure your sources are trustworthy and authoritative!
Footnotes
The easiest way to create an inline citation is using footnotes. You can create footnotes with Wiki markup (under the edit box on your Wiki GUI) by adding
- <ref>YOUR SOURCE</ref> ref tags around your source, and
- {{Reflist}} or <references/> under the heading ==References== near the bottom of the page.
If your source is a website, you should create an external link to the website address. Do not use Wikipedia articles as sources.
To create an external link to your source, use the "External Link" button in the style editor box at the top left of the editing pane - or put the website address (URL) in square brackets after the text you add, such as
- <ref>[http://www.google.com Google search engine]</ref>
It is a good idea, though not required, to provide a short description just after the external site address. This description will be displayed in the reference list as the title of the external site, rather than the actual URL of the site.
To cite a webpage without giving a description, you can just use the "External Link" button or give the URL and enclose it in ref tags, for example
- <ref>http://www.google.com</ref>
The external links section
Many WikiMobiDex articles have a separate section labelled External links. This section is for linking to websites with significant and reliable additional information on an article's topic. Before adding a website to an External links section, you should suggest it on the article's Discussion (talk) page.
If you simply type in the full URL for the page to which you wish to link:
The wiki will automatically treat this text as a link (as has been done with the URL above) and will display the raw web address, including the "http://" part. It is recommended that you do not use this format much, as raw URLs are ugly and often give no clue to what the site actually is.
By including a space after a URL and inside a single set of brackets you can decide what text will be visible, for example:
- [http://www.google.com Google search engine]
will make only the text following the space visible, yet will still keep the link seen here:
Help Table of Contents
- Getting Around WikiMobiDex
- Sidebar (left)
- Top tabs (above the article)
- User options (top right)
- Why You Should Register & Log-in
- How to log in
- Editing 101.
- The Basics
- How to Create a Page
- Show preview
- Some etiquette
- Style and Formatting
- Headings and subheadings
- HTML
- Links to other WikiMobiDex Pages
- When (not) to link
- How to link
- Categories
- References & External Links
- The external links section
- How Categories work *IMPORTANT! READ!*
- Adding images
- How to add an image
- Supported file types and max size
- Wiki vandalism defined
- How to spot vandalism (and protect your page!)
- How to respond to vandalism
- How NOT to respond to vandalism
