Wipipedia.org:Getting Started

Revision as of 20:27, 24 March 2005

Using the Wipipedia

Using the Wipipedia is simplicity itself. From the main page you can follow any of the links in the introductory article to a wealth of information. At the top of the page is a list of categories which will show you all articles held on the system related to that category. Finally there is a search box on the left of the screen, type in a word or phrase and click search

Registering as a User

Anyone can browse the Wipipedia without registering as a user. However if you want to add or edit articles then you must register first. To login or register click on Create account / log in this will take you to the login screen. To register all we need is your username and a password, unfortunately your LFS account will not work with this system but we do suggest that you use the same Username where possible to avoid confusing people.

Editing Existing articles

At the top of every page are a series of tabs, if you click on the edit this page tab you will be presented with a screen that you can type into. At the bottom of screen are buttons to preview and save the modified article. Before saving please preview the article and correct any minor mistakes before saving. Before making any changes look at a few articles to understand how they are structured. There is a full help system which describes the markup system but to get you going here are a few simple pointers;

Paragraphs should be separated by a blank line

If you want to break your article up into sections use;
===Section One===
===Section Two===
===Section Three===
The Wipipedia will automatically create a table of contents for you.

If you want to link to another article enclose the link in double square brackets like so;
[[link text]]

If you want different text to appear in the link than is being linked to separate the display text from the link text with a vertical bar
[[link text|Display Text]]

If you want to link to an external site use the following;
[http://www.website.com Display Text] or just
http://www.website.com

You can make text bold by enclosing the text in three single quote marks like so;
'''bold text'''

If you want to create a bulleted list just start each item with a *
* Item One
* Item Two
* Item Three

You can also upload pictures to the Wipi. The process is not complicated but it is beyond the scope of this very basic introduction. More information can be found Here

When making changes to articles try not to make lots of small changes saving each one separately, instead try to make as many changes as possibe in one go, then save at the end. This will help reduce the number of history records created for each article and will make it much easier for people to see how an article develops over time.

Adding New Articles

Adding new articles is not difficult. Whenever the Wipipedia finds a link to an article that does not exists it presents the user with a text input screen so the user can start typing immediately. If the article you want to create does not yet have a link pointing to it you can modify a suitable existing article, add the link, save the article, then click on the link to bring up an edit screen to create the new article. There is also a special page on the Wipipedia which show all the articles with links to them but no content which you can look at to see if there is a suitable link.

Before you create a new article check that there is not an existing article which covers your topic, which could be modified.

Any articles that you write should be linked to one more more categories, a list of all the categories can be found here. This list will be expanded and subdivided as the Wipipedia grows. You can add your article to a category by putting the following at the end of your text;
[[category:BDSM]]