Help:Editing

Editing Help

=Editing advice=
 * 1) Discuss proposed (big) changes - not individual edits, but large-scale structural or vision changes- either here, on IRC, or on a special list to be created if necessary.
 * 2) Use the Talk: pages, accessible on the tab labeled "Discussion" at the upper-left corner of the relevant wiki page. This is a good place to make note of proposed changes before you make them, or to talk about the larger context of a series of smaller edits you're making, or to explain why you've changed something that might be contentious.
 * 3) Don't make monster edits. Adding a big block of text is fine, but committing a bunch of additions, deletions and other changes all in one edit is bad, because it makes difficulty in un-doing things. If you make a monster edit and then want to roll back _part_ of it, you then have to do it by hand- and the next item becomes impossible.
 * 4) Use the history. If you are on fire to re-do something large and complex (see item 5) but you don't have time to leave the page in a good state, you can commit what changes you have time for and then roll the page back to the state in which you found it. Then, when you have time, you can merge your changes back in and continue.
 * 5) If you're working on a large and complex page, and you didn't write it yourself, keep in mind that it represents the effort of other people. Don't chop things up willy-nilly, and use the "Summary:" field on the Edit page to explain why you made each change. Even if no one else actively works on the page, these blurbs will help you to remember what you did and understand why you did it. Don't assume that you'll be able to remember in two years why you made today's commits.
 * 6) If you find yourself typing the same information over and over, or if you run across the same thing repeated in a bunch of places, make a Template. A template is a blurb of text that you can just link to, like the "deletion requested" banner. If you were to flag a page for deletion, you add  to the page. You can edit Template:Delete just as you would any other page.
 * 7) Be careful when deleting pages. Remember to check Special:WhatLinksHere (Under Tools on the left-hand sidebar) before deleting so as not to leave orphaned links.

Categories
The pages in this wiki are organized into so-called categories. A page can have more than one category.

Categories contain pages and subcategories. Most top-level categories are or should be linked to the Main page, to aid discoverability.

When you create a new page, please give it at least one category. To avoid confusion, please try to use the categories already listed in Special:Categories.

There is a special category called unfinsihed for pages which are known to be incomplete.

You can add a page to a category simply by putting a link to the category on the page like so:

Templates
Templates are replacements for frequently-repeated text, like our maillist address:. They are particularly good for things that are repeated in many places and change periodically, like the name of someone in a particular role. If, say, we expect the role of the treasurer to change frequently, we can declare a template like and place its text in Template:Treasurer, or rather in the page to which that wikilink would point.

See all templates here: http://freegeekseattle.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Template%3A&namespace=0

Namespaces
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Namespaces

Special pages
Special pages are another place to look for editing opportunities. Orphan pages and broken redirects need to be fixed, among other things.

Some handy instructions on wiki editing:

Wiki Cheatsheet

Wiki Markup

Wiki Editing FAQ

Don't worry
Edit without fear. This wiki has version control! If you make a mistake or do something wrong, your changes can always be reverted. With that said, don't be a jerk. Admins have ban-hammers, and we're not afraid to use them.