Help:Editing primer
This guide is aimed at people who are completely unfamiliar with editing on MediaWiki sites but are familiar with traditional editing systems like WordPress, any sort of word document, and so on. This guide will hit on the items that are most likely to cause confusion. Hopefully, anyway.
For information on how the markdown of MediaWiki pages work, see Help:Formatting.
Terminology
So that we share the same language, please commit the following terms to memory.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Wiki | A website that has a system in place to allow collaborative editing rather than a central authority dictating content, such as a blog. Think the Zelda Wiki, or Fandom itself. |
| Wikipedia | More properly known as the English Wikipedia, it is the online encyclopedia that everyone can edit that everyone knows of.[1] |
| Wikimedia | A non-profit foundation that performs the administration and systems upkeep of the various language editions of Wikipedia. |
| MediaWiki | A free and open source software that is designed to provide a wiki-style of editing to a website. This software is what runs this very website and the English Wikipedia. |
User accounts
Editing is restricted to people with accounts for ease of site moderation. Any member of the Endurance Coalition Discord may request an account and in 99% of cases it will be accepted outright. This is done by reaching out to any wiki bureaucrat. Non-Endurance Coalition Discord members may still be eligible for an account if they can provide a convincing reason as to why they should. Presuming a bureaucrat does not decline the request, Fleff will be consulted and he will have the final decision making authority on the matter.
An account consists purely of a username and password. If any user forgets their credentials, or their credentials will not work, a bureaucrat can be contacted and they can assign a new password to the user.
Wiki administrators reserve the right to block accounts (e.g the user can login but not edit) for any reason. Bureaucrats reserve the right to decline creating an account for any reason. Editors are required to follow the directions of a wiki administrator when it comes to interacting with the wiki.
User privacy notice
Prospective editors are advised that the website logs the IP address of anyone who logs into an account. Some wikis, such as the English Wikipedia, use the CheckUser tool to natively view this data. This tool has purposefully not be installed out of respect for the privacy of editors. However, any user with access to the database of this wiki can view see this information. Something to keep in mind.
Creating pages
Creating pages is simple, yet unintuitive. One simply uses the search bar at the top right of any page and makes a search for the page (spelling and character-case matter) they would like to exist. A new page will appear telling the user the page does not yet exist and ask if they wish to create it. The user will click the red text that is the new page name, and then edit normally. Once the first edit to the page is published the page goes live.
Renaming pages
Unlike traditional word processing systems, such as Google Docs, MediaWiki uses the title of a page as it's internal database identifier. Page names are not cosmetic. The changing of a page's name in any way is called, in MediaWiki terminology, moving the page. This is because the edit history and meta data have to be moved to the new page name as well. This is accomplished by hovering your mouse over the button that says "More" and selecting "Move".
Redirects and page name importance
Something to keep in mind when moving a page is that any links on the wiki which point to it will, by default, break. So if a page titled Gummybears is moved to Gummy bears any page with a link to Gummybears will lead to a now non-existent page. This issue is mitigated by, when using the move tool, ensuring the checkbox for "Leave a redirect behind" is ticked. This then makes Gummybears automatically redirect a user that goes to it to Gummy bears. This is generally the acceptable means of handling this issue in 99% of cases. If a situation comes up where this is not desirable, then every page that links to Gummybears will need to be manually edited to lead to Gummy bears.
Non-regular editors of the war game wiki are encouraged to seek guidance from a wiki administrator or seasoned contributor before moving pages.
Warning on edit publication
 | This section is very important. |
Every edit, the content of the edit, who made the edit, and when the edit was made is publicly logged. Every version of a page after every edit is similarly logged. This makes this website incredibly resilient to breakage, but also means that it's difficult to truly delete information. Simply editing the information out and clicking "Save changes" is insufficient. Anyone with an internet connection can check the page's history and still find the information.
If an edit is published to a page with information that the user does not want to be publicly accessible, then the information should still be edited out, but then a wiki administrator must be notified so they can delete the edit from the public archives. This notification should be done privately to avoid the Streisand effect. For details on wiki administrators do this, check out Help:RevisionDelete.
Certain automated filters are in place that will detect when particular public information that is likely inappropriate to add has been introduced into an edit and either warn the user to exercise caution or disallow the edit entirely. Editors are encouraged to take such warnings seriously.
Categories
A category is a special kind of page that easily groups pages together for navigation and classification purposes. A list of all categories is available at Category:Categories. Any new page added should be given a minimum of one category, and it should be the most specific category available. Editors unsure of where to place a page should at a minimum place the page into Category:Categories and then post in some public place they did so, that way a more seasoned contributor can more appropriately classify it.
Categories are added in the Visual Editor by clicking the 3 horizontal bars to the left of the "Save changes..." button and selecting "Categories". In markdown mode, add the text [[Category:<category-name>]] anywhere on the page. For stylistic reasons, it should be at the very bottom.
Permissions
While few in number, there are a couple of permissions that are not given to all users:
- Administrator — Numerous additional functions for easy site administration. Most notably include blocking users, protecting pages, and deleting pages and logs from public visibility.
- Bureaucrat — Can assign and revoke permissions, edit user accounts, and create new accounts.
- Interface administrator — Can edit pages which dictate the look of the website (e.g MediaWiki:Editnotice-0-War game rules, which dictates the message shown to all editors that edit that page) and import pages from other MediaWiki instances to this wiki.
For an exhaustive list of all user permissions, and what each permission can explicitly do, see Special:ListGroupRights.
Any user with an account may request one of the above from Sirdog of whom may approve or deny such requests at his discretion. Those with prior history editing Wikimedia projects are considerably more likely to receive such permissions, though the biggest factor is level of editing activity, knowledge of wiki construction, and willingness to learn.
Fleff, due to his nature as the gamemaster and curator of the game this wiki is dedicated too, is entitled to all above permissions at his request. He is also capable of vetoing any request for advanced permissions and ordering the disabling of any user's account, along with directing that any advanced permissions an editor has being revoked.
Why can I mark edits as minor?
The intended effect of the box that says "This is a minor edit" is to allow those that review page history to differentiate between edits which are negligible, such as fixing spelling, punctuation, or grammar, from edits which actually add, remove, or edit content. This is somewhat useful on larger wikis (though even the English Wikipedia debates it's usefulness[2]), but for the purposes of this wiki, it is irrelevant.
It is encouraged that editors never tick the box, regardless of the edit's content.
Footnotes
- ↑ Keep in mind that there are versions of Wikipedia in various languages, such as Spanish and Italian. Click me for a full list.
- ↑ On their own page for the subject, Help:Minor edit, it's written "It's acceptable to never mark a single edit as "minor". If other editors complain about your use of the "minor" edit flag, then it's likely a good idea to stop using it."