User:Dream

Dream's personal wiki page. Primarily used as warehouse for wiki projects. In need of a lot of work.

Wiki projects

Evawiki's boot camp restructuring.

Structure proposal

• Introduction
  • Be bold!
  • You don't need prior knowledge
  • Keeping up-to-date with the wiki
  • Write in third person

• Basic formatting and editing
  • How to make edits to an article
    • How to create an article
    • What's an Edit Conflict?
  • Headings and sub-headings
  • Bolding and italicizing text
    • Other nice tricks
    • Using supertext (N² Mine, S² Engine, etc.)
  • Making lists
  • Indenting text

• Page/Article management
  • What's up with those buttons atop the page?
  • Linking to other articles
  • What's a Discussion(Talk) page?
  • Creating Categories
  • How to redirect pages
  • Templates

• Images and scribe ettiquette
  • Uploading images to the site
  • Using already uploaded images
  • Montage boxes
  • 32 KB page size limit (probably outdated)
  • How to sign your name

• Where to go from here?

Introduction

Welcome! It's great to have another scribe eager to contribute to the ambitious and major project that is the EvaWiki. This page is intended to teach you all the basics (from editing to etiquette) necessary to contribute to the EvaWiki as a productive scribe. While it is by no means a full or comprehensive guide to all the tools, qualities or elements that the wikicode has to offer, it has all that is necessary to bring you from someone with no experience in wikicode to a functional scribe. We hope you enjoy your short time throught this boot camp.

Be bold!

You should be bold when it comes to updating pages or adding content into the site. This wiki has been primarily concerned with getting content created and uploaded than in smoothing out the information (in no small part due to it's low activity), and that's also the case today. Do not feel anxious or apprehensive at the time of adding new content or editing existing one, every bit of effort and contributions make the wiki a greater, better place even if some mistakes may be made along the way.

But above all, remember that wiki sites like these rely on the contributions of many different people for their content and quality. Next time you stroll around the wiki and see a few typos or sections with a few blemishes, you will be able to fix those errors (or add new content) and bring the wiki a little bit closer to it's ideal every time. We don't wish to just "allow" you to contribute to the wiki, we eagerly invite you to.

You don't need prior knowledge

While of course it is preferred (or at least easier) that you have knowledge or skill in MediaWiki, that is ultimately a secondary quality. The primary quality here is passion and knowledge about Evangelion. The vast majority of the wiki-code you will use is basic coding like the one shown in this tutorial. If you wish to either clarify some doubt about wiki-code, utilize more advance wiki-code, or simply improve your skills with wiki-code, you could either ask a member with knowledge of such matters for either explanations or assistance, or bring it up in the forum's "Editorium" section.

It should also be noted that this wiki is meant to be accessible both on the reader and scribe end. You will not be penalized, shunned, or discriminated in your contributions if you haven't seen much Evangelion material, just started getting into Evangelion, never analyzed the series, or anything of the sort. Once again, be bold in contributing to the wiki.

Keeping up-to-date with the wiki

There's the Editorium section on the forum, as well as a Recent Changes page where the most recent activity on any part of the wiki is listed.

Finally, there are also certain page categories intended to include the articles deemed in most need of current attention:

• Stub Articles
• Pages needing various kinds of help
• Wanted pages

Write in third person

Avoid use of first person or anything that makes you as an individual scribe stand out in the actual article. Not only is this unsightly and disruptive to the article's flow, but it's also contrary to the spirit we strive towards in this wiki. The wiki is intended to be a collaborative project of the EGF community, not the interpretations of a particular few.

So please use wording like "It is well known that" or "It can be noticed that" rather than wording like "I know that" or "I noticed that". Remember that the "Show preview" button is always just a click away.

Basic formatting and editing

How to make edits to an article

This is the base upon which all existing wiki content is based. While occasionally new pages will be created from time to time, the vast majority of a scribe's contribution to the wiki is in the form of editing an article (please note that this doesn't mean you will be unable to add new content to an article), so it's fitting for it to be the first thing you need to learn.

First, you need to locate the "Edit" tab. Among the page tabs (Discussion, History, etc.) you should see a tab titled "Edit", in this wikia only seen when you log in. Click the tab, and you will be taken to a screen with a major text-box occupying the vast majority of the page, with the title of whichever page or section you're editing above, and below a short legal declaration, a Summary line, two tick boxes, three clickable boxes and finally two links. The legal declaration and links are not important, we'll just focus on the other elements.

As you might have likely guessed, the text box is where the magic happens. Here is where you write or make all the text, code, and other content that go into creating a wikia. The three clickable boxes are respectively named "Save page", "Show preview" and "Show changes". First thing you should know is that the "Save page" button is what you have to click once you're already happy with your edits and are ready to upload them to the article. Remember: You need to click the "Save page" button for the changes you made to take effect.

After that, there are the "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons. "Show previews" lets you quickly check your edits for any spelling errors or fluidity of text by displaying the content on your textbox right above said textbox when you click it. There also appears a small template reminding you that this is only a preview and the changes still haven't been saved. "Show changes" is basically a significantly more advanced and exact manner of checking your edits and feeling the difference between the current texts and your edit. While it is recommended that you try and see it for yourself since that is the best way of understanding how this particular feature works, a textual description will be attempted here:

Side by side, two boxes are displayed with the titles "Latest revision" and "Your text" in the upmost left corner of them. Both boxes display an excerp of text (yellow background for "Latest revision", and green background for "Your text") in which an edit you made took place (just below the mentioned revision/text heading, it says the number of the line in which your edit took place), with the title of the article's section in which the edit took place just above the excerpt and below the line citation, and the title of the closest next section/heading at the bottom of the box.

If there is a character amount difference (and there usually will be), the changes feature will also display that: The section with lesser character number (compared to the other) will have a minus symbol at it's left, and the section with greater character number (compared to the other) will have a plus symbol at it's left. Also, this feature shows you not only where and how much you changed, but what. Any text removed in your edit will be marked in the "Latest revision" box with striken out text. Any text added in your edit will be marked with underlined text.

Finally, please note that multiple pairs of boxes can be displayed at a time when/if you edit various parts of an article.

If all this sounds a bit complicated, daunting, or intimidating, you don't need to worry. The "Show changes" button is not a necessity in the least for scribe work, and is in fact rarely used. It still is, of course, a nice thing to have in the rare case you feel the desire or need to be really meticulous with the edit or if you wish to compare your edit with the previous text (for example, if you significantly changed the structure and order of a paragraph), so it's a nice thing to have.

The summary is a text line in which you can include any comment regarding your edit (plus, if you selected a specific section to edit, the summary will include that in the article's edit history), like "fixed typos" or "arranged paragraph structure". These could be as long as you feel the need for them to be, but remember that there is also always a discussion page for any article (or you can always create it) so there's no need to voice your concerns with the article there. Summary description is simply for a concise explanation of what your edit was about.

You can also tick the box "This is a minor edit" for your edit to be filed as a minor one in the edit history. Please use this for edits like fixing typos or grammar. Inserting or removing key information or entire paragraphs from the article is very much not a minor edit. You tick the "Watch this page" button if you desire to be notified of any activity with that specific article.

How to create an article

To create an article, write the title of the article you wish to create into the search bar and click "Search". You should see a message that says "There is no page titled [name of your article], you can create this page" (or something of that kind). Click the link to either the text of "create this page" or the title you entered in the search bar that has a red link (typical code of non-existent pages) and you will be taken to the same textbox you use when editing.

Please remember that article titles are case sensitive. This means that it makes a difference if certain letters are capitalized or in lower case, so an article titled "Anno" would be filed as a separate article from one titled "Anno".

If you have any further doubts or questions, you can always ask the Editorium section or an admin.

What's an Edit Conflict?

If you're ever editing a page and after clicking "Save changes" you get, instead of the usual result, a message saying "Edit conflict" it means another scribe was editing that article (or that section of the article) at the same time you were, and saved their changes on the articles before you did. Don't worry, your edit isn't lost in this case. The "Edit conflict" page should list "What you wrote". Just copy that content, enter the edit mode again, and paste it onto the page. Of course that's if the other scribe was working on some other part of the article from the one you were. They could have been working on that same part of the article, and might even disagree with your changes. This situation will be further described below, but as a general rule, please try to integrate both contributions if possible.

Headings and sub-headings

Making sub-headings in a page is very simple. All you have to do is add sets of equal signs on both sides of the text you want to make into a heading:

==Example1==

==Example2==

The number of equal signs (remember they have to be the same in each side) will determine the size and type of heading.

It is a good idea to start with a heading of two signs ("==") for a section. Headings of a single sign ("=") are rarely used.

It is worth noting that headings of two signs will have a line extending accross the screen (making it easy to tell where one section ends and other begins) whereas headings of 3 or more signs will not have such a line.

You can use a great number of "=" signs, for example:

==ExampleA==

===ExampleB===

====ExampleC====

=====ExampleD=====

======ExampleE======

But for most basic purposes, headings of two and/or three signs will do just fine.

It is, of course, possible to make headings with a single plus sign, but it makes the heading considerably huge and is a big garrish. Hence why two equal signs are the default for headings. An hypothetical exception where single signs could be used is for an article that would need a considerable quantitity of headings, and in which the other option to single-sign headings (using a lot of 6+ sign headings, which aren't that different from normal text) is even more impractical.

Bolding and italicizing text

Basically, you use a set of two apostrophes in both sides of the text to italicize it, and three apostrophes to bold it. Just like headings!

Example: ''Shinji Ikari'' = Shinji Ikari '''Shinji Ikari''' = Shinji Ikari

It really is that simple. How it basically works is that the auto wiki code recognizes a specific use of apostrophe marks as a call for code, which is extremely practical. However, it's also important to note that (because of this) it is very much not the same to use apostrophes or quotation marks to quote something, so please make sure you're using the right key when quoting a piece of text. That said, if you ever find yourself in the need to bold or italicize a piece of text within a quote, all you have to do is put the apostrophes around the text you want italicized/bolded just like you would in normal text. For example:

"Did Hideaki Anno prefer working in Nadia's production, or in Eva's?" If you wanted to italicize "Nadia's", you would need to write ''Nadia's'' which would give you: "Did Hideaki Anno prefer working in Nadia's production, or in Eva's?"

However, it is important to note that this also leads one to a small risk of entire paragraphs getting italicized due to rare failures of wiki-code.

Don't worry, in the very unlikely case that happens you're not going to cause fifth impact or anything like that. Someone will likely fix it soon enought.

Other nice tricks

There are of course many other things you can do with text: Change font and size of text, underline it, etc. If you happen to be acquainted with bbcode tags (the code you use in forums to alter text or add images) This will be very easy.

With the tags for <big>big text</big> you can make Big Text

Or use the tags for <small>small text</small> to create small text

The tags of <u>underlined text</u> can make underlined text

And the tags of <s>striken-throught text</s> can make striken-throught text

Using supertext (N² Mine, S² Engine, etc.)

You can just write "N2 Mine" or "N^2" Mine and it's not a big deal, someone more skilled in wiki-code will probably fix it. However, if you want to do it right here are two ways how:

One of them is simply using the superscript " ² " character but your computer might not be able to do that. If that's not an option for you, you can also use wiki-code: Type "N²" to make "N²".

Making lists

There are two types of lists you can make: Bulleted or numbered. Since the format for the both of them is essentially the same, we'll just focus on a bulleted list. Keep in mind that making a numbered list is the same as making a bulleted list, only replacing "*" with "#".

For making a bulleted list, you use asterisks. One asterisk at the beggining of a line creates a bullet point. Thus with "*Bullet point 1 we get:

• Bullet point 1

And you write two asterisk marks one after the other to create a subsection that visually stems from the original bullet point:

• Bullet point 1
  • Bullet point 1-1
    • Bullet point 1-1-1
  • Bullet point 1-2

Which was obtained with:

*Bullet point 1 **Bullet point 1-1 ***Bullet point 1-1-1 **Bullet point 1-2

The sub-divisions are theorically unlimited, but on practical terms you'll probably rarely go beyond three asterisks for a line.

It is very important, however, that you note that the lines you want to make a subsection must come inmediatly after the parent line. That is to say, if you want to include subsection to a list, you must not leave spaces between the lines. If instead of including subsections like in the example above, you leave spaces like this:

*Bullet point 1 **Bullet point 1-1 ***Bullet point 1-1-1 **Bullet point 1-2

You'll get this:

• Bullet point 1

• • Bullet point 1-1

• • • Bullet point 1-1-1

• • Bullet point 1-2

Which looks quite unsightly and most likely isn't what you were going for. So make sure you do not leave a space between subsection lines.

Finally, while numbered lists are pretty much the same, you can make numbered sub-headings with them.

Indenting text

To indent text, you simply need to add a colon to the beggining of a line. :This =

This

You can also add multiple colons to make it indent more:

This text has four colons, thus been indented four times

This text has five colons, thus been indented five times

It is important to note that different computers have different monitor displays, meaning that they will indent to different amounts. So if you try centering something just by indenting it, while it might look centered in your computer, it can't be guaranteed to be the case for every user checking the page (and it most likely won't be the case). So for a text you want centered, you can use code like this:

Text you want centered

Which was obtained with:

<div align="center" style="text-decoration:italic;">Text you want centered</div>

Finally, please never indent by using spacebar. Attempting to indent by just pressing spacebar can result in broken wiki-code. For example: Imagine that you've written a particularly long paragraph with, say, 500 words in it. And you indented it by hitting "spacebar". Now, because indenting with spacebar can sometimes cause the entire paragraph go on a single line, you will have line of over 500 words that will just extend to the right hand side of the screen, many times over. Doesn't sound very good does it?

Page/Article management

What's up with those buttons atop the page?

There are multiple tabs on tops of each article. From left to right they are: News, Forums, Article/User page, Discussion, Edit, History, Move, and Watch.

You'll probably note that the "Page" (Also known as "Article Page" or simply "Article") is set in bold unlike the rest. This means it's the currently selected tab. The Article tab presents you the article as it's meant to be read according to the code and content that was written, the vast majority of your visits to wikipedia (to name an example) are probably on such tabs of the articles. The "Discussion" tab leads you to a talk/discussion section of the article, it's basically a section where you can talk and discuss with other editors about matters or concerns related to the page (check some discussion pages from character articles -Shinji Ikari and such- to get a feel for them if you're unsure of what they're about). The "History" tab takes you to the History page for an article: It list all the changes made to an article in chronological order, as well as who made them, when, and how many characters they ended up adding or removing (in total), and you can click on "diff" to check exactly what changes an edit brought to a page. The "Edit" tab is the one you click to make changes to an article.

The "Move" tab moves the article to a new page (Also essentially changing the name of the article, like fixing a typo or such) and automatically creates a redirect in the old page, in case there were some links directing to that page, to the new location of the page. Please note that depending on user privileges you might not be allowed to move pages. Moving pages is an extremely rare occurrence and it's strongly recommended to talk about it on the discussion page or ask an admin before performing such a task. The "Watch" tab functions as a button that adds pages to your watchlist. Once you selected "Watch" on a page, the tab's name will change to "Unwatch". Click it if you wish to revert your choice of watching that page. Finally, the "Move" and "Watch" tabs are invisible when you're not logged in. Finally, the "News" and "Forums" tab will take you to Eva Geeks's blog and forum, respectively.

Of course, you might have noticed that if you're not logged in, you don't see the same tabs as when you're logged in. Instead of the "Edit" tab, you get the "View Source" tab, which is basically a read-only version of the edit text-box. The "Watch" and "Move" tabs are invisible if you're not logged in.

Also, on the upmost white bar on the screen (you should see an old teacher sprite next to it) you should see a bunch of links if you're logged in as a scribe. If you're not you would only see a link titled "Log in". These links are not related to the page you're currently in. Clicking on your username takes you to your user-page, which will be empty (red link) first time you check it. It is not a necessity to create or develop an user page, but you should feel free to do so after a few contributions. "My preferences" takes you to a preferences page where you can set various aspects of your user and scribe experience. "My watchlist" takes you to a page listing all the changes that took place the last 72 hours to any article you decided to "Watch". "My contributions" list edits only by you in chronological order, in a format similar to the "History" tab. Finally "My talk" is essentially like a discussion tab, but for a particular user. If someone needs to ask you something or you want to let other scribes know something, that's a very useful page.

Linking to other articles

You can make links to other Evawiki articles by double brackets around a word. [[Evangelions]] will create a link to the Evangelions page, for example. The same procedure applies to any articles with more than one word, like making to the Shinji Ikari article. Remember that since article names are case-sensitive, it makes a difference if you capitalize certain letters.

Want to know a really neat trick? You can actually write one thing as the name of the link. What this means is that instead of simply linking to "Shinji Ikari" you can write Puppy boy and that link will take you to the Shinji Ikari page. You do it with this code: [[Shinji Ikari|Puppy boy]].

Of course you might occasionally want to link to articles outside the Evawiki. You could just copy-paste the link directly, and hypertext will automatically be created: http://www.google.com/

But some URL addresses (like news articles) can get really long, and having a way to summarize them in few words saves both space an eyesore.

Linking to pages outside the Evawiki is slightly different, but no more difficult. You simply put the link in single brackets and leave a space between the end of the address and the text you want to add (remember that you need to put the URL first, and the text second) So with [http://www.google.com/ A Big Search Engine] you get A Big Search Engine

What's a Discussion(Talk) page?

The "Talk" (or "Discussion") page is like a section accompanying the main article where you can talk about matters specific to that page, or put another way a place intended to talk about about problems encountered on the page. Since by it's very nature the discussion page is always going to be right next to the main article, it's simply more convenient for everyday issues than other methods like forum discussion.

Please note that it's good ettiquete to always sign your contributions when participating in a talk page (don't worry, you will learn how to sign later on in this page).

Creating Categories

At the bottom of some pages (in this page you can see "EvaWiki Policies" and "Site Policies" as examples) you can see a "Category" link: this is an easy way to organize articles using MediaWiki. To create a new "Category" with which to label articles, you type: "[[Category:Name of Category]]", and add this link to the bottom of an existing page. This should result in a red link (since it doesn't exist yet), click the link and add a description that further explains the nature of the category, and then you have already created the category. You can now proceed to adding the Category tag to other pages that it applies to.

How to redirect pages

This is a matter that rarely comes up and, when it does, it's covered by admins or such. So while it's almost guaranteed that you'll never find yourself needing to use this, it's still included here for the sake of completion:

To create a redirect, you go to a blank page and type "#REDIRECT[[NameofArticle]]". Please note that "REDIRECT" needs to be in all capitals, and the link ("NameofArticle" between double brackets in the example) to the article you want it to redirect to is going to be case-sensitive. The entire code is done with no spaces in between. This will instantly redirect someone who searches for "Asuka" so that clicking "go" on an a search for "Asuka" will immediately link them to the "Asuka Langley Soryu" page. The "What links here" page at the top of the toolbox will let you see everything that linked to the old redirect, like "Asuka".

Once again, this happens only once in a blue moon and when it happens it's usually admins who take care of it, so you wouldn't need to worry about this.

Templates

A template lets you quickly reproduce the same information on multiple pages. This is generally used to create "infoboxes", which are those information boxes you tend to see in characters and episode guides pages. Most of the major templates necessary for the wiki have already been created (or will soon be) by the admins, so if you're starting out you don't need to worry about how to create a new template, just on how to use it.

The most basic template is a "stub" template: typing "{{stub}}" will auto-generate the template message "This article is a stub. You can help the EvaWiki by expanding it".

It's like writing the code for a link, just using braces {{}} instead of brackets [[]].

The name of actual Template pages (the page that generates them) is "Template:Name of the Template". Just take "Name of the Template" and put it between double braces on a new page, and this will insert the Template. Thus "Template:Stub" is added as a template by writing "{{stub}}".

Templates are really an advanced feature that can be used for all sorts of things, most importantly the Infoboxes. If you don't know or feel unsure about how to use templates, remember you can ask in the Editorium or to another scribe (either assistance or information), remember that you can also ask Admins for help.