ENWiki:Wiki Tutorial
From ENWiki
As you probably know by now, EN World added a wiki to our site after the upgrade to EN2. Wikis are known for being easy to edit (wikis get their name from the Hawaiian word for "fast"), but they can be hard to work with for those who are new to them. This page is designed to help wiki newbies quickly learn the ropes and begin contributing to ENWiki.
Note that EN Wiki uses MediaWiki, which is the same software used by Wikipedia. If you know how to edit Wikipedia you know how to edit EN Wiki, and vice versa.
More detailed help can be found the Help:Contents.
Please keep the wiki guidelines in mind when editing the wiki.
Contents |
[edit] Editing Pages
To edit a page, click the "Edit" tab at the top of a page. This will take you to a new window where you can edit the contents of the page. Wiki pages can use "wikitext", the wiki's markup language, or HTML, though not all HTML tags are supported.
[edit] Wikitext Formatting Basics
This is only a subset of what wikitext can do. More detailed information about wikitext can be found here, but the basic formatting you will need is:
| Formatting | Wikitext |
|---|---|
| Three single-quotes make something bold. | Three single-quotes make something '''bold'''. |
| Two single-quotes make something italic. | Two single-quotes make something ''italic''. |
| Five single-quotes make something bold and italic. | Five single-quotes make something '''''bold and italic'''''. |
Different numbers of equal signs make headers.
[edit] Example Header 1[edit] Example Header 2[edit] Example Header 3If you have more than four headers of any kind in your page a table of contents will automatically be added. | Different numbers of equal signs make headers. == Example Header 1 == |
| Link to a page in the wiki with double square brackets. | Link to [[a page]] in the wiki with double square brackets. |
| Make your link say something different with the pipe symbol. | Make your link [[a page|say something different]] with the pipe symbol. |
| Use one set of square brackets to link to a page outside the wiki. | Use one set of square brackets to link to [http://www.google.com a page outside the wiki]. |
[edit] Discussing Page Edits
Sometimes you may want to talk about a change to a page before you actually do it. Each page on the wiki has a "talk" page associated with it. You can get to the talk page by clicking the "Discussion" tab for that page. Since we have a forum right at our fingertips it would be perfectly acceptable to first create a forum post discussing your page, then post a link to that thread on the discussion page.
If you do use the discussion page instead of a forum thread, try to use the "+" tab to add a new link, and sign your comment with --~~~~ (there is a button for this in the editing toolbar) so that people know who made the comment.
[edit] Tips for Editing Pages
- Use the "show preview" button. Make sure your formatting and spelling are correct before you submit your page. Some browsers have plugins to allow you to run a spellcheck in a text-editing box (and some, like Firefox 3, have this built-in).
- A lot of the content on this wiki is fan-created content. Before making changes to fan-created material it's considered polite to post something in the talk page or message the page's creator. Just because you can make changes to somebody else's custom bard rewrite doesn't mean you should.
- Write an edit summary and use the "minor edit" checkbox if necessary. There is a box at the bottom of the edit page marked "Summary". This text will be listed on the page's history and will help people determine what you changed in your edits. The "minor edit" box indicates that your edit was something small, like formatting or spelling errors, and did not change the overall content of the page.
[edit] Adding New Pages
There are two ways to create a new page. One is to click on a link to a page that doesn't exist. The other is to type the name you want into the search box and hit "Go". If there is not already a page by that name the search results will include a link to create the page.
[edit] Tips for Adding Pages
- Search for a similar page before adding a new one. If there is a page already created with the name you want, follow the wiki guidelines for naming your new page.
- Use templates and categories whenever you can.
[edit] Categories
Categories are ways to group similar pages together and help make finding pages easier.
Adding your page to a category is easy. Just type [[Category:Your Category]] anywhere on your page. Most people add them to the bottom. This special link will not show up where you place it, but will add a bit to the bottom of your page about the category it is in. If you want to actually link to a category, put an extra colon at the front of the link, like [[:Category:Your Category]].
Some templates already include a category, and adding that template will automatically add your page to the category.
You can create new categories simply by adding the category link to your page. This will create the category automatically. Before making new categories, please try to be sure a similar category does not already exist.
A list of existing categories can be found here.
[edit] Templates
Templates are special pages that are inserted into other pages. Most templates contain parameters that let you customize the template for your pages. They are useful in making pages look the same and provide a way to edit a group of pages at once. For example, there is a template for 4th Edition D&D monster stat blocks. If Wizards of the Coast were to release a newer version of their monster stat block then this template could be edited to match the new format, meaning all of the monster pages that used the template could be converted to the new format at the same time.
You can add templates to a page by typing the name of a template in {{double curly brackets}}. (Note that you do not need to include "Template:" in the brackets.) You can define parameters for templates in two ways:
{{templatename|parname1=parvalue1|parname2=parvalue2}}
or
{{templatename|parvalue1|parvalue2}}
ENWiki:Templates is a page that describes many of our existing templates and how to use them. If you create a template you think will be useful to others, please add it to this page.
[edit] Creating Templates
Creating templates is a bit more detailed, and I will defer to the instructions in Help. You should probably get used to using templates and other parts of the wiki before you try and make a template.
[edit] Deleting Pages
Ordinary users cannot delete pages. If you accidentally created a page that you would like deleted, or if you see a page that you think should be deleted, add the Marked for deletion template. A user with the correct permission will delete the page if they agree with the reason you list in the template.
