EvaWiki:Boot Camp for Newbies

This page is meant to train newbies who have no idea how to do things using the MediaWiki layout of the site *whatsoever*, in the basics of how to write things on EvaPedia.

You need no prior knowledge of MediaWiki code to do stuff here

Do not be scared of the Mediawiki-format of this site. We'd rather have an Evangelion fan with no knowledge of have to use a wiki, than someone who knows everything about how to run a wiki, but knows nothing about Evangelion

Wikipedia.org says it is "a site anyone can edit", but it often turns out to be "a site only wikipedians can edit". This is an Evangelion fansite, and not a "wiki" (philosophically). While it would be nice if people come here who know how to use MedaWiki code, if you're reading this "BootCamp For the Newbies" page chances are you have no idea how to edit a wiki-format page whatsoever and are afraid of what to do.

You will not be judged here based on how well you can manipulate MediaWiki, this is an Evangelion fansite. In keeping with the actual spirit of "anyone should be able to contribute using this stuff", all of the fancy rules and regulations and policies wikipedia would throw at you have been stripped to a bare minimum (were you really planning on making an advanced algebra template for this Eva fansite? Probably not, so we're not wasting your time and confusing you by cluttering up this page with instructions on how to make on). Something like 90% of the wiki-code you would ever actually use is the simple instructional guide written out below, more or less all you actually need. Read it from start to finish, and you will be ready to actively contribute within a few minutes. The few higher functions can be handled by Administrators that know how to do those kinds of things. So when in doubt, rather than being scared away from the site by imposing wiki-code, just ask an Admin to do it for you. You will rarely actually need to be "skilled" at wiki-code to use this site. Reading this simple guide will be enough to get you through the basics.

That said, this online encyclopedia is meant to be accessible, and you will not be penalized if you have only seen Evangelion casually: the idea is that by reading this entire encyclopedia, you will be educated in all aspects of Evangelion, growing from a newbie who has never analyzed the series in-depth before, to a complete expert on Evangelion.

What do those buttons on the top of the page mean?

You can see several tabs on top of each article. The one on the far left, the one actually selected, is the actual "article" page, for the article you actually want to read. Clicking "Discussion" leads you to a "Talk" page for the article: basically its like a piece of note-paper taped to the article, which editors write notes to each other about things in that particular page (more on Talk pages will be explained below). "Edit" is the tab you click to actually make changes to an article.

The "History" tab leads you to the History page for an article: it lists all changes that have been made the the article, in chronological order, who made those changes, and dates them. You can click on "diff" to see what changes an edit made to the page. There is also a "Move" page, which is basically used for renaming an entire page: it moves the article to a new page, and actually automatically creates a redirect which links every page which was originally linked to the old name, to the new one. Depending on your user privileges, you might not be able to to "Move" pages. You're really only supposed to Move pages occasionally, and unless an article name is mispelled or something obvious, you should tend to discuss moving a page with other editors before moving it (go to the "Talk" page and say "I think this should be moved to (new name) because...". If you do not have user privileges to Move a page, it would be a good idea to directly ask an Administrator to move it. There is also a "Watch" button, which adds pages to your "Watchlist", basically your Favorites list.

The links in the extreme upper right are for your own account on EvaWiki, not related to the page you are looking at. Clicking on your screename taks you to your user page. Please fill this out (copy the format you see on other user's pages). "My preferences" takes you to your preferences page (you don't really need that). "My Watchlist" shows you what looks like a "History" page, but which actually shows you only the recent changes that have occurred on pages you have clicked "watch" on (that you have favorited). This helps you keep track of articles you are concerned with, or just plain interested in. "My Contributions" lists only edits made by you, in chronological order.

By the way, a red-colored link means that the link is broken, usually because it links to a page that doesn't actually exist yet. Help EvaWiki expand by "filling in the red links".

How do I know what is currently happening on EvaWiki?

Other than site announcements on the main page and such, MediaWiki format has a link labled "Recent Changes" in the "navigation" bar you see to the left. Click that to see the the changes that have occurred most recently, on any page of the site. It's basically a combination of all of the "History" pages from every article on the entire site, letting you see the most recent edits to everything at once. That's usually a good gauge of what's being worked on at the moment, or "in the news".

How to make Edits to an article

The most basic thing you need to start out with if you have physically never tried using MediaWiki before, is how to Edit, that is "make changes to", an article.

First, locate the "edit" tab on top of the page. Click it and it will take you to a "Editing (page's name)" page. Write what you want. When you've finished writing what you want, look below the editing box: there is a "summary" box, in which you may write a note to the other people editing the site, explaining why you made the change you did, etc. You don't necessarily need to write anything there, and it doesn't serve as an "official" notification of stuff, but it's a nice feature to have. Below the "Summary" box are three buttons. The one right on the left says "Save Page": click this button to make your edit actually happen.

There's also two other buttons, "show preview" and "show changes", which both basically preview the changes you are making. You don't really need those, though they help, as you can edit as many times as you want, so if you are unhappy with something you've changed you could just instantly change it back. There is also a box which you can check which says "this is a minor edit". This leaves a little tag in the "Recent Changes" list which lets other editors know "this is a minor edit". Please just click "minor edit" for things like spelling corrections and such. This isn't really enforced or anything, but please don't do something like routinely erase an entire paragraph of information you don't like, listing each edit as a "minor" one. Sometimes you might just accidentally click "minor edit" when you're clicking "Save Page" (happens all the time). Don't really worry about this, just please use your own judgment and try to list something as a "minor edit" only for spelling corrections, etc.

Besides the "Edit" tab on the top of the page, some pages have subheadings which have their own "Edit" tab. You do not absolutely need to use these, because you can just edit everything on an entire page by using the "Edit" tab on top. However, if you want to edit only a specific subsection of an article, in a very long article where it might be confusing to try to edit the whole thing at once, click this secondary "Edit" tab to just edit one subsection.

What does "Edit Conflict" mean?

If you're editing a page and it won't let you make a change when you click "Save Page", saying "Edit Conflict" instead, that just means that someone else was editing it at the same time you were, and managed to change the original article before you did. If this happens, the information you just wrote isn't lost, the "Edit Conflict" page will list "What you wrote". Just copy-paste it: copy it, click the "Edit" tab, and paste it back in. Of course, that's if someone was editing a part of the article you weren't working on. Someone may have been changing exactly the same thing you were working on, and disagree with you because of the overlap. Try to integrate both if they don't contradict each other, but more on "Revert Wars" below.

How to create a new article

You find articles on EvaWiki by either clicking a link from another page or navigation bar, or, by entering the name into the Search bar to the left (that's fairly obvious and didn't need its own subsection in these instructions). Click "Go" to try and link to it directly, or click the button "Search" on the right. "Search" won't take you to a new page but it will search the site for places the name you're looking for comes up, in any article. What you're looking for might not have an entire article devoted to itself yet.

To create a new article, enter the name you want for the new article into the "Search" bar, the click "Go". You will see a message that says "There is no page titled "(name of your article)". You can create this page. Click "create this page" and it will take you to a new blank editing box, and creating a new page is really just like "editing" a blank article. Edit it as you would a normal article, by adding in new information, then click "Save this Page", and the article will be created.

It is very important to remember, however, that article names are Case Sensitive. "Case Sensitive" means that it actually makes a difference if the words in the title are capitalized or lower case. If you are really new at this, don't worry, Admins and other users will probably take care of it. If you have a problem with this, contact an Admin. Basically, this just means that if you are creating a new article, at the least, make sure that the first letter of the first word is capitalized. Sometimes depending on the article the first letter of every word is capitalized. Please do not write in full capital letters unless it is referring to an acronym. Do not let worrying about this hinder you from creating a new article, the Admins will take care of it.

How to make links to other articles on the site

You make links to other articles on EvaWiki by writting double brackets around a word or set of words, for example: [[Evangelions]] will create a link to the Evangelions page.

Some articles have more than one word in the title; just put the brackets around all words in the title, like [[Shinji Ikari]]

As said above, article names are case-sensitive, so it actually matters if the links are capitalized or not. Please just write the name of the article you want to link to exactly as it appears on top of the page, and you'll be fine.

A neat little trick is that you can actually write one thing as the name in the link; this is like when on a messageboard it asks for the address of a website you're linking to, then asks "what would you like this link to say"? For example, instead of simply linking to "Shinji Ikari", you can write "useless whiny geek", and clicking on that will take you to the "Shinji Ikari" page.

To do this, instead of adding double right-brackets like normal, add in a vertical line "|" (the key above Enter, hit "shift"), then write what you want the link to say, then end in double brackets as normal, like this: [[Shinji Ikari|useless whiny geek]]

How to make links to webpages not on the site

You might want to link to another website outside of EvaWiki. You could just copy-paste the link directly, and hypertext will automatically be created: http://www.google.com/

However, you might want to write a message for the link instead of adding in the address like that: indeed, some addresses for news articles and such get really long, and it would save space to summarize it in a few words.

Linking to pages not on EvaWiki is a bit different from linking to pages on it, but it's pretty simple. Put the link in single brackets, and leave a space between the end of the address and the message you want to add. For example: writing [http://www.google.com/ A Big Search Engine] would result in the link A Big Search Engine

Use of apostrophes: how to bold or italicize text

Under *NO* circumstances use a single apostrophe to make quotation marks, always use full quotation marks:

NO: 'Feel free to take advantage of anything here'
YES: "Feel free to take advantage of anything here"

The reason for this is that Auto-wiki-code for putting text into italics or boldface uses apostrophe marks. Use two apostraphes at the beginning, and then two at the end, of a set of text to make italics. Use three for bold text.

Thus, ''Shinji Ikari'' = Shinji Ikari, and '''Shinji Ikari''' = Shinji Ikari

So NEVER use apostrophes to quote things, it screws up wiki code. It ends up italicizing things you don't want italicized. You do need to use apostrophes sometimes when it's actually showing something.

For example: "Shinji is fond of Asuka's boobs or Misato's boobs?" "Shinji is fond of Asuka's boobs". For that, you'd have to put: ''Asuka's'' enclosed by double apostrophes.

This gets a little wonky because sometimes it works perfectly fine, and other times an entire paragraph gets put into italics as a result of italicizing a possessive word like that with an "'s". Don't worry about that, if it's a problem someone else will fix it pretty quickly. Usually it doesn't do that though (if you must know, the way around that is to go through manually adding in "<nowiki>Asuka's"</nowiki> around any possessive words. If you see that an entire paragraph has becom italicized as a result of you doing this, try adding the "<nowiki>" thing around stuff. It turns off the auto-wiki-code in text inside of its brackets.)

How to do fun tricks with text font

There are several different sets of code which you can enclose around a section of text, to change the font, and size, of the text. You do this just like how on a messageboard you wrap bold or italics bboard tags around a section of text.

For example, enclosing a section of text with: <big>Big text</big> will result in Big Text
Use <small></small> to create Small Text
Use <u>underlined text</u> to create underlined text (keep in mind that this might confuse some people into thinking the underlined text is a link when its not).
Use <s>stricken out text</s> to create ~~stricken out text~~. For example, to write: "Shinji is a ~~useless whiny geek~~ troubled young man".

How to write with a superscript: N² Mine and S² Engine

Two fairly frequently used terms from Evangelion use superscripts: N² Mine and S² Engine.

You can just write "N2 Mine" or even "N^2" Mine, and no one will get mad (Admins will eventually fix it). How should you try to write this correctly? Well, it would be preferred if you actually wrote the superscript " ² " character but you might not be able to do that with your computer. You could just copy-paste the word "N² Mine" from the original article. If you really want to, there is a way to write it out long-ways by hand using wiki-code: Type "N<sup>2</sup>" to make "N²".

How to make a bulleted list

Use asterisks. One asterisk at the beginning of a line will create a bullet point:

" *Bullet Point 1" creates:

Bullet Point 1

Write two asterisk marks one after the other to create a subsection, visually stemming from the original bullet point:

Bullet Point 1
- Bullet Point 1-A
- Bullet Point 1-B

You can keep doing this to keep making more and more subsections, but after 3 or so it gets really cluttered. Its better that you don't do that at first until you're used to using it.

However, the lines you are making the bulleted list subsections out have to be immediately after each other. When you've just got a list written with only one bullet point each this isn't noticeable, they're still just one bullet point. However, if you are making multiple subsections of the first bullet point, and you leave spaces between each line:

*Bullet Point 1

**Bullet Point 1-A

***Bullet Point 1-A-a

Bullet Point 1-B

The result would be:

Bullet Point 1

- Bullet Point 1-A

- - Bullet Point 1-A-a

- Bullet Point 1-B

This looks really wacky and means you're doing it wrong. Thus, whenever you are making a bulleted list, most commonly in the "Notes" sections of articles, please make sure that each bulleted subsection is on the line immediately after the last one, do not leave a space.

How to make a numbered list

Actually this works pretty much the same as making a bulleted list, except that you use the number symbol "#" instead of an asterisk. This can be used to make numbered subheadings, for example:

Numbered point
1. Sub-numbered point
2. Sub-numbered point

You won't use these as nearly often as you use bulleted points using the asterisk key.

How to indent text

Add a colon to the beginning of a line:

:This text has been indented once

Results in;

This text has been indented once.

You add multiple colons to make it indent more

This text has five colons, and thus has been indented five times

HOWEVER, a key problem you have to remember is that different computer monitor displays will actually indent to different amounts. The result is that if you try to center something simply by indenting it, it might look centered on YOUR computer but unknowingly it won't be centered on every computer people are reading it on. For now, just indent once, or maybe indent twice if you really have to.

How to center a line of text

As explained above, just because something looks centered on your screen, using colons to indent, doesn't mean it is centered on everyone else's screen. If you need something centered, there's a special set of wraparound code to put around the text you want centered. Around the "Text you want centered" write:

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

This will result in:

Text you want centered

Never indent a line by hitting spacebar!

ALWAYS start writing at the beginning of a new line. DO NOT try to indent by hitting spacebar 5 times like you would in a word processor. This cannot be stressed enough. New paragraphs are made by hitting "Enter" and IMMEDIATELY starting to write something. Do *NOT* hit spacebar to try to indent. You indent by using colon signs, never spacebar. Leaving a space at the beginning of a line screws up the entire wiki code, for the entire paragraph.

It makes the entire thing just go on a SINGLE line. Everything from the entire paragraph. Imagine that you've written a particularly long paragraph with 500 words in it. And you indented it by hitting "spacebar". Now, a SINGLE line of 500 words will just extend to the right hand side of the screen, many times over, screwing up everything. Don't do it.

How to make subheadings on an article

To make subheadings on a page, add sets of equals signs to either side of the subsection's title:

==Heading 1==
==Heading 2==

The number of "=" signs you use changes the size of the subsection's header.

You should always start by using two on each side "==" as seen above. Please never use a single one "=" (those will only occasionally be used).

==Heading 1==
===Subheading 1-A===

==Heading 2==

Headers created by two equals signs will have a line extending across the screen (this makes it easy to tell where one section ends and another begins).

Headers created using 3 ='s on each side do NOT have a line extending across the screen.

You can actually make a large number of ='s signs, for example:

==Heading 1==
===Subheading 1-A===
====Subheading 1-AA====
=====Subheading 1-AAA=====

But please, for now try to avoid doing this. The two equal signs =='s and the ==='s subheaders are all you really need.

Headers with a single "=" sign are possible, but it makes the text even HUGER and is a big garrish. Thus two equals signs "==" are the default. We'll only use the HUGE single "=" ones if a page needs a LOT of subheaders (to avoid using something with like 6 equals signs "======" which is so small its not really much bigger than normal text.

Always write in the Third Person

Always write in the third person. NEVER write "I think this" or "I noticed this". A real encyclopedia would write "it is well known that" not "I know that", etc. etc. Just ask yourself if this were a printed encyclopedia you were reading, what person they'd be speaking in. This isn't a messageboard, it's a collaboratively written encyclopedia.

How to sign your name

DO NOT. SIGN. YOUR NAME.

NEVER sign your name on the ACTUAL article pages themselves. EvaWiki is a group project.

Actually, every wiki page has two pages: the *actual* article, and a "Discussion" page: for example: "Shinji Ikari" and "Talk:Shinji Ikari"

While you are never supposed to sign your name when you make changes to an actual article, you ARE supposed to always sign your name when you leave comments on Talk pages.

To sign your name after something you have written on a Talk page, type two dashes and four tildes, grouped together with no spaces in between: "--~~~~"

What a "Discussion" ("Talk") page is and how to use it

The "Talk" (or "Discussion") pages are essentially where things specific to that page should be talked about; basically you're supposed to talk about problems being encountered on the page on the "Talk" page instead of asking someone in the forums about it; something in the forums can be lost or might not be noticed, while the "Talk" page is basically like a sheet of paper taped onto the real page, on which we pass notes on it back and forth to each other. As it's always located "right next to" the real article (thanks to those little tabs on top) it's just more convenient for day to day issues.

While you must NEVER sign your name on actual article pages, you ALWAYS have to sign your name on Talk pages.

How to create Categories to group multiple pages into

At the bottom of some pages, you can see a "Category" link: this is an easy way to organize articles using MediaWiki. To create a new "Category" to label articles with, type "[[Category:Name of Category]], and add this link to the bottom of an existing page. This should result in a red link (it doesn't exist yet). Click on the link, and just add something like "These are all articles that belong to the (Name of Category)". This will actually create the category. Proceed to adding the Category tag to other pages that it applies to. Always add Category links at the extreme bottom of a page.

How to Redirect pages

If someone enters "Asuka" into the "search" bar, or if you create an in-age link to "Asuka", they won't immediately go to "Asuka Langley Soryu". A "redirect" has been created, so that is someone searches for "Asuka" they will instantly be taken to "Asuka Langley Soryu".

If you are a total newbie, you normally don't have to worry about this. Administrators will clear up most of these. The Admins have usually decided what the "official" title for an article should be, and it would be nice if you asked if you want something redirected; redirecting a page causes wide-scale changes throughout the site.

To crate a redirect, go to a new blank page, and type "#REDIRECT[[NameofArticle]]"; the number symbol "REDIRECT" in all-captials, and a link (which is done using double brackets) to the article you want it to link to; all with no spaces between characters. 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".

Again, if you are a total newbie, don't be afraid of this; normally you really wouldn't have to do this and the Admins should be handling it on their own, so bring something to their attention if you have a problem.

How to use Templates

"Templates" are an advanced feature that lets you quickly reproduce the same information on multiple pages. Often this is used for creating "infoboxes", those information boxes you see on Character and Episode Guide pages. If you are a complete and utter newbie to using MediaWiki, you don't actually have to worry about how to create new Templates just yet. Most of the major templates needed for the website (Episode Guide infoboxes, etc.) are already created directly by Admins. You've just got to worry about how to use them.

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

The big difference is that while normal links use double brackets like [[]], notice that when you are using a template you use double braces: {{}}

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 for "Template:Stub" writing "{{stub}} adds that Template.

Templates are really an advanced feature that can be used for all sorts of things, most importantly the Infoboxes. If you're a newbie and don't understand this at all, you can eventually figure it out by observing how Templates are used on existing pages and "reverse-engineering" them, but basically you don't have to worry about Templates that much for now. Admins will walk you through it if you are confused.

How to use images

There is more to using images on here than just physically loading them on, that is, lots of legal stuff. If you are a newbie, you don't need to worry about this.

Rule of thumb, please don't load an image onto here which is obviously a high-definition non-promotional pic owned by Gainax or someone else. This has to deal with Copyright laws and such (more on that below). For now, as you are a newb, really just use common sense while loading what you want, and Admins will worry about the legal stuff. What you need to know is:

How to load images to the site

Go to the box on the left-hand side of the screen, below the Search bar, which is titled "Toolbox". Click "Upload file". Then click "Browse", select a file from your computer, then "Upload File" to load it to the site.

Files you load onto the site really shouldn't be bigger than 153 KB: You can load images bigger than that, but they are difficult to load and display in all web browsers.

Rule of thumb: If you want an image to be a "hero shot" for an article (i.e. the main infobox's image for Shinji on the "Shinji Ikari" page) they should be at least 30 KB.

Loading many high-quality images onto one-article can run into legal stuff, so if you want to load, say, screenshots of literally every single scene from an episode onto the same page, they should be of lower quality, around 15 KB. We will tinker with this on an image by image basis.

How to use images once they've been loaded onto the site

Once the image is loaded to the site, it will have a distinct image file name, along the lines of "Image:NameofImage.jpg". To use the image in an article, link to it by writing this full article name in a double brackets wiki-link, like this: [[Image:NameofImage.jpg]]

That, of course, might make the image be displayed too big, and not where you want it. MediaWiki code is capable of auto-formatting image files of any size into a standard display size, a "thumbnail". To make one, just add "|thumb" before the last double brackets: [[Image:NameofImage.jpg|thumb]] You can still click on the thumbnail to go straight to the full-sized image file.

Thumbnails are also good, because they let you write a caption underneath the image. You do this by just writing another vertial line after "thumb", then your caption, like this: [[Image:NameofImage.jpg|thumb|"your caption"]]

You can also change what side of the article the image is located on. If you just type "thumb" for five or six images in a row within an article, they're all automatically on the right-hand side and this can look a bit repetitive. So vary it up if there are many images by moving the images from side to side a bit. You do this by simply writing "[[Image:NameofImage.jpg|thumb|left]]" or just [[Image:NameofImage.jpg|left]]. Besides "left" you could also write "right" if you want it lined up on the right, or even "center" if you want the image centered (usually you won't center it though).

You can also change the display size of images including thumbnailed images. Just write something like "|250px" after "thumb"; the number (which is the size you want) and "px", with no spaces (you might want to play around a bit to find a good size, i.e. 100 px, or 250 px, etc. etc.)

Thus, you could have an image which is: [[Image:NameofImage.jpg|thumb|left|250px|"your caption"]], meaning that it is a thumbnail of your image with "your caption" underneath, set on the right side of the page, at size 250px.

You can't thumbnail and image that is used in an infobox.

The 32 KB page size limit

MediaWiki pages can only be 32 KB long before they run into length-limitation issues: you can actually make an article longer than 32 KB, but it will strain the ability of the page to display on some computers. The way to find out about this is simple: when a page is over 32 KB long, when you try to add something new to it, instead of instantly making the change, a warning will pop up saying "caution this page is over 32 KB, are you sure you want to add more?", etc. You can add more to it if you really want to. If the article is "finished" and say 33 KB long, we might just leave it like that.

However, for a particularly long article filled with a great deal of information, we have to split up the article into several smaller sub-articles branching off from the main page.

Administrators have to worry about this, you newbies do not. If you see the warning that an article is over 32 KB, please inform an Administrator, and they'll figure out what to do with it.

BE BOLD IN UPDATING PAGES

You should be bold in updating pages, and not let the rules stand in the way of a great idea you have. We're more concerned about physically getting content onto the site from newbies now: Administrators will iron out all of the details.

MediaWiki sites like ours develop faster when everybody helps to fix problems, correct grammar, add facts, make sure the wording is accurate, etc. We expect everyone to be bold. How many times have you read something and thought, "Why aren't these pages copy-edited?"---> You should make the changes.

We don't just "allow" you to add, revise, and edit the articles: we want you to change things.

Where to go from here

You can start editing at any time. However, as soon as you've finished this please head over to Rules and Regulations and read through everything there.