Getting Started (editing)

From Spider-Man Wiki

Contents 1 Find your way around 1.1 Editing a Page 1.2 History 1.3 Edit Summary Box 2 Formatting and editing 2.1 Bold and italics 2.2 Headings and subheadings 2.3 Indenting 3 Links 3.1 Linking dates 4 Categories 5 External links 6 Talk pages 6.1 User talk pages 6.2 Indenting 6.2.1 Plain indentations 6.2.2 Bullet points 6.2.3 Numbered items 6.3 Example discussion 7 Well... 8 External links

[edit] Find your way around

Wiki pages can be confusing sometimes, but not to worry! Here's what you need to know:

[edit] Editing a Page

Editing a page is really easy. All you need to do is to go to a page and click "Edit" or "Edit this page." Then, put in whatever things you feel need to go in there!

[edit] History

Each page has an editing history, and you can view that history by clicking the "History" tab. It will show you the past of that page, among other things like how many edits there were. Use it to see what's changed!

[edit] Edit Summary Box

When editing a page, there is a small box that says "Summary:" in front of it. In there, type what changes you made so we can know what to look for!

[edit] Formatting and editing

Here's the really juicy stuff. All the helpful stuff you'll need to edit a page is right here. Keep in mind, our wiki uses Wiki markup, instead of HTML, so you don't need to learn anything horribly difficult. This is actually so simple, you'll need to forget anything you've ever learned about coding.

[edit] Bold and italics

The most commonly used wiki tags are bold and italics. Bolding and italicizing is done by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('):

• ''italics'' appears as italics. (2 apostrophes on either side)
• '''bold''' appears as bold. (3 apostrophes on either side)
• '''''bolded italics''''' appears as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on either side)

When writing a new article, be sure to bold the subject of the article. Example:

Venom is one of Spider-Man's worst enemies.

Venom, of course, being the subject.

[edit] 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.

Headings can be created like this:

• ==Top level heading== (2 equals signs)
• ===Subheading=== (3 equals signs)
• ====Another level down==== (4 equals signs)

If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents will automatically be generated. Try to avoid big blocks of text, and organize your articles.

[edit] Indenting

The only time you'll ever need to indent is on talk pages, but to do so, but a colon (:) in front of whatever you're typing. To indent more, put two colons (::)

[edit] Links

Links are a huge part of the Spider-Man Wiki. When talking about a subject, make sure to link any other articles that are brought up in the text. For example, When writing about Venom and Spider-Man:

Venom is one of Spider-Man's worst enemies.

We can turn Spider-man into a link:

Venom is one of Spider-Man's worst enemies.

When you want to make a link to another page (called a wiki link) you have to put it in double square brackets, like this:

[[Spider-Man]]

If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of 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, if you wanted to make a link to Spider-Man, but wanted it to say "my text" you would write it as such:

To view the article, [[Spider-Man|my text]]...

It would appear as:

To view the article, my text...

but would link to the Spider-Man page.

[edit] Linking dates

Linking dates may not seem useful; however, please link dates since it enables the use of a user preference in how dates are displayed. An unlinked date, like July 13, 2004, will always be displayed in that manner. If you link the date:

[[July 13]], [[2004]]

The Wiki will display it in one of the following ways:

July 13, 2004

13 July 2004

2004 July 13

2004-07-13

-according to the preference set by the individual user. (This feature is only available to logged-in users. It only works if the date is linked.)

[edit] Categories

You can also 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.

To make a link to a Category page (for example, as a reference for further research), simply put a colon (:) at the beginning of the "Category" tag, like this:

[[:Category:Super-baddies]]

The above code would produce the following:

Category:Super-baddies

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.

For more information regarding categories and categorization, refer to the Special:Categories page.

[edit] External links

If you want to link to a site outside of The Spider-Man Wiki, it should almost always go under the "External links" heading at the end of an article.

The easiest way to make a link is to simply type in the full URL for the page you want to link to. If you want to make a link to Marvel, all you need to do is type:

http://www.Marvel.com/

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. In practice, you won't see this format much, as raw URLs are ugly and often give no clue to what the site actually is.

To make the link display something other than the URL, use one square bracket at each end. If you want to make a link to Marvel, type:

[http://www.Marvel.com/]

This will display the link as a number in brackets, like this: [1]. This format is mostly used for citing sources within an article. It looks like a footnote, so it's best to use it only as such (for example, following a direct quote or a statement which requires a source). Avoid this usage: "According to [2], the last full moon of the second millennium occurred on December 11, 1999." Also avoid using an external link when it's possible to accomplish the same thing with an internal link to an article.

If you want the link to appear with text that you specify, add an alternative title after the address separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as The Marvel Website, just type:

[http://www.Marvel.com/ The Marvel Website]

Note: Using certain characters, such as a pipe (|) in the URL of the link will cause the link to fail; however, URL syntax provides the ability to specify any character in a URL as a hexadecimal equivalent to its ASCII representation, so you can, for instance, write %7C instead of the pipe character. See Wikipedia's table of ASCII printable characters for more hexadecimal codes.

When placed under the "External links" heading, the links should be listed in bullet-point format:

==External links==

*[http://www.marvel.com/ the Marvel Website]

[edit] Talk pages

Taken from Wikipedia :

If you want to ask a question about an article, or you have a concern or comment, you can put a note in the article's talk page. You do that by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Don't worry if the link shows up in red; it's ok to create the talk page if it doesn't already exist.

When you post a new comment, put it at the bottom of the talk page. The exception is that if you're responding to someone else's remarks, put your comment below theirs. You can indent your comment by typing a colon (:) at the beginning of a line.

You should sign your comments by typing ~~~ for just your username, or ~~~~ for your username and a time signature (see the example discussion below). When you save the page, your signature will be inserted automatically. Most of us use time signatures because it makes following discussions much easier.

You can get a username by creating an account (it's free). If you don't have an account, or if you have one but haven't logged in, your computer's IP address is used instead.

[edit] User talk pages

Every Wikipedian has a user talk page, on which other Wikipedians can leave messages. If someone has left you a message, you will see a note saying "You have new messages", with a link to your user talk page.

You can reply in either of two ways. One is to put a message on the user talk page of the person you're replying to. The other is to put your reply on your own talk page beneath the original message. Both are common on Wikipedia; however, be aware that replying on your own talk page runs the risk that your reply won't be seen, if the user doesn't look at your talk page again.

[edit] Indenting

Indenting can improve the layout of a discussion considerably, making it much easier to read. A standard practice is to indent your reply one more level deep than the person you are replying to.

There are several ways of indenting in Wikipedia:

[edit] Plain indentations

The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph.

For example:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

:This is indented slightly.

::This is indented more.

is shown as:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

[edit] Bullet points

You can also indent using bullets, usually used for lists. To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation.

A brief example:

*First list item

*Second list item

**Sub-list item under second

*Third list item

Which is shown as:

• First list item
• Second list item
  • Sub-list item under second
• Third list item

[edit] Numbered items

You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#). This is usually used for polls and voting. Again, you can affect the indent of the number by the number of #'s you use.

Example:

#First item

#Second item

##Sub-item under second item

#Third item

Shows up as:

1. First item
2. Second item
   1. Sub-item under second item
3. Third item

[edit] Example discussion

Here is an example of a well-formatted discussion:

Hi. I have a question about this article. I'm pretty sure purple elephants only live in New York! JayRandumWikiUser 02:49, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, last time I was in New York, the elephants I saw were green. — try2BEEhelpful 17:28, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think you should find a source for your claims. Living × Skepticism 20:53, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Okay, these elephant journals agree with me:

• Elephants Monthly
• Elephants World

— try2BEEhelpful 19:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I live in Australia, where the elephants look like kangaroos! The people below agree with my statement: -DontGdayMateMe 17:28, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

1. ElefantLuvr 01:22, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
2. AisleVoteOnAnything 05:41, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
3. alittlebehindthetimes 18:39, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Note that if you want to include a list in your comments, add colons before each item, for example:

:::Okay, these elephant journals agree with me:
:::* ''Elephants Monthly''
:::* ''Elephants World''
:::— [[Wikipedia:User page|try2BEEhelpful]] 19:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Also, signing your message off is done by:

• Writing ~~~ for the name (try2BEEhelpful), or
• Writing ~~~~ for the name and date (try2BEEhelpful 19:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)), or
• Writing ~~~~~ for the date only (19:09, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)).

You should usually sign with both name and date but votes are often signed with names only.

[edit] Well...

Some of that was taken from Wikipedia's tutorial, but most was my doing. Also, see the Spider-Man Wiki: Manual of Style page.

[edit] External links

• See Wikipedia:Tutorial for more help.