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
- How to make edits to an article
- 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- 32 KB page size limit (probably outdated)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?
- If in doubt...
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:
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.
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.
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.
