Difference between revisions of "Help:Contents"

Revision as of 15:04, 15 February 2013

Editing a page

It's very easy to edit the contents of a wiki. It only takes a few clicks.

1. Click the "Edit" page tab at the top right side of the page. Alternatively, you can click on the "Edit" hyperlink for a particular section.
2. Make changes to the text.
3. Click the "Save page" button.

Simple as that!

Editing rules, editing conventions, and formatting

The number one rule of wiki editing is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try! There are all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophies for the editing of wiki pages, but the "be bold" rule overrides these!

An edit can contribute whole new paragraphs or pages of information, or it can be as simple as fixing a typo or a spelling mistake. In general, try to add or edit text so that it is clear and concise. Most importantly, make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the contents of the wiki.

When you need to use some type of formatting, such as for a new headings or bolding of text, you do this using wiki syntax or the buttons in the edit toolbar above.

Edit Summary

Before you save a change, you can enter a short note in the Summary: box describing your changes. Don't worry too much about this, or spend too much time thinking about it, but try to give a little description of what you just changed e.g. "fixed typo" or "added more information about sunflowers".

The summary gets stored alongside your edit, and allows people to track changes in the wiki more effectively.

Preview

It's a good idea to use the "Show preview" button to see what your change will look like, before you save it. This is also related to tracking changes because every time you save, this is displayed to others as a separate change. This isn't something to worry about too much, but it's good to get into the habit of eliminating mistakes in your own work, by using a preview before saving, rather than saving several minor corrections afterwards.

Show changes

Another option is the "Show changes" button which allows you to see the differences between the current version and your edited version.

Discussion

Every article has its own “discussion page” where you can ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss corrections.

You can format your text by using wiki markup. This consists of normal characters like asterisks, single quotes or equal signs which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two pairs of single quotes like ''this''.

Text formatting markup

''italic''

'''bold'''

'''''bold & italic'''''

<strike> strike text </strike>

<nowiki>no ''markup''</nowiki>

[[API]]<nowiki/>extension

== Level 2 ==

=== Level 3 ===

==== Level 4 ====

===== Level 5 =====

====== Level 6 ======

Text above
----
Text below

* Start each line
* with an [[Wikipedia:asterisk|asterisk]] (*).
** More asterisks gives deeper
*** and deeper levels.
* Line breaks<br />don't break levels.
*** But jumping levels creates empty space.
Any other start ends the list.

# Start each line
# with a [[Wikipedia:Number_sign|number sign]] (#).
## More number signs gives deeper
### and deeper
### levels.
# Line breaks<br />don't break levels.
### But jumping levels creates empty space.
# Blank lines

# end the list and start another.
Any other start also
ends the list.

;item 1
: definition 1
;item 2
: definition 2-1
: definition 2-2

: Single indent
:: Double indent
::::: Multiple indent

# one
# two
#* two point one
#* two point two
# three
#; three item one
#: three def one
# four
#: four def one
#: this looks like a continuation
#: and is often used
#: instead<br />of <nowiki><br /></nowiki>
# five
## five sub 1
### five sub 1 sub 1
## five sub 2

 Start each line with a space.
 Text is '''preformatted''' and
 ''markups'' '''''can''''' be done.

Start each line with a space.
Text is preformatted and
markups can be done.

 <nowiki>Start with a space in the first column,
(before the <nowiki>).

Then your block format will be
    maintained.
 
This is good for copying in code blocks:

def function():
    """documentation string"""

    if True:
        print True
    else:
        print False</nowiki>

Start with a space in the first column,
(before the <nowiki>).

Then your block format will be
    maintained.

This is good for copying in code blocks:

def function():
    """documentation string"""

    if True:
        print True
    else:
        print False

Paragraphs

MediaWiki ignores single line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line. You can force a line break within a paragraph with the HTML tag <br />.

Inserting symbols

Symbols and other special characters not available on your keyboard can be inserted through a special sequence of characters. Those sequences are called HTML entities. For example, the following sequence (entity) → when inserted will be shown as right arrow HTML symbol → and — when inserted will be shown as an em dash HTML symbol —

®

§

¶

See the list of all HTML entities on the Wikipedia article List of HTML entities.