Help:Editing

Editing a wiki can be daunting: it involves learning an entirely new formatting language, and fitting in with a new culture. Fortunately, the FSFwiki is welcoming and generous about correcting faults. Here are the syntax and style aids I have discovered so far, which should be enough to get you started. An excellent place to look for more helpful articles is the Category:FSFwiki_help. Note that many of the basic syntax functions can be found as shortcuts in the tiny square buttons above the editing box. Hovering over the buttons gives you their names.

How do I create a new entry?

Creating a new entry is baroque. There is no button or link for it: you have to enter the address for the new page into your browser's address bar. This is the first part of every FSFwiki entry address: http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title= Then you add the title you want after the equals sign. Such a link wil take you to a page that says "There is currently no text in this page", which contains a further link to where you can edit the page and add your info.

Another way to get to the address page of the entry you want is to make a internal link to it from another wiki page, and then click that link. To do this, simply click "edit" at the top of the page that will link to it, and add the title of the page within square brackets, like this:

[[Book swap of women writers]]

then click "Save page" at the bottom of the page. You will now see that "Book swap of women writers" is a red link, and if you click on it, it will automatically open up a new blank page.

Don't worry too much about the page title. If it isn't perfect, it can be moved later on. A number of people at the FSFwiki watch for new changes and "clean up" mistakes and standardize things.

A third way to make a new page is to use the search feature. Just type the name of the page you want into the search bar. This will say "There is no page titled "Page name here". You can create this page." Create this page will be a link to the edit page of you title. This more complicated but has the advantage of checking that the page doesn't exist already.

What's up with talk pages?

Talk/discussion pages are edited just like normal wiki pages. The difference is that they're connected to the page that spawned them, and that generally on them you're expected to make comments from your point of view and sign your comments.

Signing comments

You sign comments by using two dashes - and then four tildes ~. (The four tildes are the signature part; the two dashes are just style.) Before you publish, the signature looks like --~~~~. After you publish, the signature will look something like --Madeline F 21:47, 10 May 2007 (PDT), except with your login info. The "signature" button is second from the right in the line of tiny buttons above the edit box.

Indenting followup comments

You can make your comments in a thread look snazzy by indenting each step in the thread. Put one colon (these things : ) in front of the text to indent the whole textblock one step. Two colons, ::, indents the textblock two steps, etc.

Style

All wikis are different in how they wish you to interact with the subject matter and the other participants. An immensely useful page for FSFwiki style is FSFwiki:About. More specific info on style questions such as "to translate or not to translate" and "to spoiler or not to spoiler" can be found at the FSFwiki:Manual_of_style. More specific info on how not to be a dick can be found at Communication_Guidelines.

What to title a new entry

Title any entry you create as concisely as possible: go for the shortest title you can think of that still has the meaning you need. This makes it easier for other people to write the link to the entry.

You do not own your entries

You are releasing your entry free into the world! If you do not trust the rest of the FSFwiki users to treat it well and love it as dearly as you do, then you should instead put it on your blog and add a link to it. For more on this, see FSFwiki:Ownership_of_articles.

Syntax

The FSFwiki uses MediaWiki software. Since wikipedia also uses MediaWiki, there is a lot of in-depth information about the possible formatting things you can do. For another take on basic syntax info, see Help:QuickCheatSheet.

The general strategy of the syntax seems to be to surround words with two symbols for the first iteration of formatting, and three or more symbols for subsequent stacked/deeper iterations. You can almost always go deeper by adding more symbols.

Otherwise, in terms of carriage returns and so forth, MediaWiki is WYSIWYG.

Headings and tables of contents

When you include three headings on a page, it will develop, all by itself, a table of contents just above the first heading. That looks pretty darn spiffy, so you might want to think about how to add enough info to an entry to make it worth having three or more headings.

To make a H1-equivalent (highest-level) heading, you surround the words in it with two equals signs, like ==Syntax==. You can also do this with the tiny square button fifth from the left above the editing entry box. To make a H2-equivalent heading (next level down), you surround the words in it with three equals signs, like ===Headings and tables of contents===.

Italics and bold

To italicize something, you surround it with two single apostrophes ', like ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' The Left Hand of Darkness. To make something bolded, you surround it with three single apostrophes, like '''rocks''' rocks. The first two tiny square buttons above the editing entry box remind you of this.

Links

To make an internal link, you surround the title of a new page with two square brackets [ and ], like [[manxome foe]]. This is the third tiny square button from the left.

To make an internal link that links words which are not the title of the entry, you surround the whole thing with two square brackets, put the title on the left and the words you want to link on the right, and put a pipe symbol | between them, like [[manxome foe|enemies without tails who may have genetic spinal deformities]].

To make an external link, you surround the whole thing with one square bracket, put the full address of the external link on the left and the words you want to link on the right, and put a space between them, like [http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html Jabberwocky] If you don't want to link words, you can just toss the whole link in there raw and it will connect itself.

Indents and lists

Indents and lists are slightly different, syntactically. They only need a symbol on one end to set them off: they don't have to be surrounded.

:To indent text, put a colon in front of it. One colon will do a whole paragraph, and every paragraph needs its own colon.

::To indent text one step further, put two colons in front of it.

* To make an unordered list (with bullets in front of each item) just put an asterisk in front of something.

** To make a sublist indented one step further, put two asterisks in front of each item on the list.

Boilerplate text and machined links

Typing {{Spoiler}} will insert a standard spoiler warning. Typing {{endspoiler}} will indicate that the spoiler section has ended.

Typing ISBN (all caps!), followed by some ISBN number, will create a link to possible places to get that book. Like, ISBN 0-486-40648-2 makes this link, ISBN 0-486-40648-2, for the Dover Thrift Edition of Jane Austen's Emma.

There are more boilerplate text examples at Help:QuickCheatSheet, and more "magic word" examples at FSFwiki:Magic_words.

Categorizing your entry

Just make a normal internal link to the category, like [[Category:FSFwiki help]].

Capitalisation of categories

Please only capitalise the first letter of the first word in a category name, unless more than one word in that name refers to the title of a work or the name of an event, in which case those words can also begin by capitals. Here are a few examples:

Examples of categories where only the first word begins with a capital letter

Category:Women writers adopting neuter names

Category:Buffy episodes

Category:Novels

Category:Works featuring vampires

Examples of categories containing more than one word beginning with a capital letter

Category:Star Wars

Category:Blood Ties episodes

Category:Doctor Who serials

Special cases

The categories that begin with a number do not require a capitalised word after this numer. Examples:

Category:1976 publications

Category:1981 births

Category:1987 establishments