Revision as of 20:17, 14 February 2009

Important note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution into the public domain. If you don't want this or can't do this because of license restrictions, please don't edit. This page is one of the Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software; see Help:Contents for an overview of all pages. See Project:PD help/Copying for instructions.

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 of the page.
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 can be all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophy governing the editing of wiki pages, but the "be bold" rule overrides these!

In general try to write clearly and concisely and make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the wiki contents. An edit might be to contribute whole paragraphs or pages full of information, or it could be as simple as fixing a typo or spelling mistake.

When you need to use some type of formatting e.g. new headings or bold text, you do this using wiki syntax. See Help:Formatting for some of the common types of formatting used.

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 “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.

Other types of editing

With wiki edits you can start a new page, move (or rename) a page, or even delete a page:

• Help:Starting a new page
• Help:Moving a page
• Help:Deleting a page

Remember you should always aim to improve the overall contents of the wiki with your edits.

Discussion

Every article has its own "talk page" where you can ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss corrections. See Help:Talk pages

Template

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: Template loop detected: Template:Languages