Columbine Wiki:How to help
From Columbine Wiki
The only way Columbine Wiki is able to provide a useful and comprehensive repository of information is through the hard work of many users around the world. In a sense, what everybody gets out of the site is directly proportional to what everybody puts into the site. We need contributors, and if you're interested enough in the subject to be here, we need your help!
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Editing the wiki
Editing the wiki is a relatively painless process. You'll first need to register and log in, as anonymous editing has been disabled to prevent spam and vandalism. (As a bonus, having an account will allow you to track your edits, "watch" pages for changes, and interact with other users through their User pages and Talk pages.) Beyond that, you're good to go: all existing pages can be edited using the Edit link at the top, and if a page doesn't exist, you'll need to Create it instead.
Wiki syntax
The MediaWiki syntax (which this site runs on) is also pretty straightforward. If you've edited Wikipedia you'll feel right at home. However, here's a brief rundown:
- To create sections (headers), you enclose the section name between sets of equals signs; two for main sections, three for subsections, etc. == Section 1 ==; == Section 2==, === Section 2.1 ===; == Section 3 ==, === Section 3.1 ===; etc
- To link to an article within the wiki, you use double brackets -- [[Columbine High School]] results in Columbine High School
- Use a pipe symbol: | to display different text than the article name -- [[Eric Harris|Eric]] links to the Eric Harris article but displays Eric
- To link to an external website, enclose it in single brackets, with the link followed by the text you want to display -- [http://www.columbine-wiki.net Columbine Wiki] becomes Columbine Wiki
- To add images to an article enclose the image's page in double brackets -- [[Image:Columbine.jpg]]. You will rarely want to insert the full sized image, so:
- Use pipe symbols: | to specify thumbnail sizes, borders, captions etc -- [[Image:Columbine.jpg|thumb|100px|This is a caption.]] displays a captioned 100-pixel wide thumbnail of the image. Beautiful!
References
References are important for any user-maintained resource in order to ensure validity of information, and Columbine Wiki is no exception. Thankfully MediaWiki and the Cite extension make this pretty straightforward. See the Cite extension homepage for detailed instruction, but this should give you a basic working knowledge:
For one-off citations:
- Following the sentence you want to cite, enclose your reference, including the link if it's a webpage, and/or all other applicable information between opening and closing <ref> tags. Example: Eric Harris grew up in Littleton, Colorado.<ref>[http://www.link-to-webpage.net/page.html Eric Harris' biography]. Accessed 9/13/2010.</ref> Once the article is saved, the link will appear at the bottom of the page, like a clickable footnote.
For multiple-use citations:
- Following a sentence you want to cite, enclose your reference, including the link if it's a webpage, and/or all other applicable information after a <ref name="reference name here"> tag and a closing </ref> tag. The 'reference name here' bit is how you will call up the same citation elsewhere in the article. Example: Eric Harris grew up in Littleton, Colorado.<ref name="ericbio">[http://www.link-to-webpage.net/page.html Eric Harris' biography]. Accessed 9/13/2010.</ref> You only need to do this once. Then anywhere else in the article you need to use that reference, you just do <ref name="ericbio" /> and that's it.
Finally, if it does not already exist, you must create a References section at the bottom of the page (using code, i.e. == References ==) and then place a <references/> tag there. This tells MediaWiki to aggregate all of the citations and references you've created throughout the article at that tag's location.
Templates
Columbine Wiki has a number of templates you can use for specific purposes. These are generally clean, visually consistent ways to present common information, images or links. For example, there's a Transcript template you place at the beginning of an article to indicate to readers that the page contains original writing. There's also a Wikipedia template to provide a link to a Wikipedia article about a certain topic. Templates are called with double braces, and optional parameters are defined by pipes: {{Template|param1|param2}}
- See also: Category:Templates
- Transcription: To indicate that a page contains original writing. Use at the top of an article: {{Transcription}}
- Wikipedia: To link to a Wikipedia entry. Use at the beginning of an article or section: {{Wikipedia|article=Article_Name_Here|title=Name of Article Here}}
- Photo: Nice way to display a photo, usually for a person, also includes parameters for date and location: {{Photo|image=File.jpg|size=#px|align=left/right (optional, defaults right)|name=Name of Person|when=When taken|where=Where taken}}
- Document: To display a document with name and subtitle: {{Document|image=Document.jpg|size=#px|title=Title of Document|subtitle=Page number, etc.}}
