Help:Editing
This article intends to give an idea of how to help improve this wiki. To see what needs to be done, see the todo list.
Write!
The success of a site like this depends on its contributors. If you see a mistake, no matter how small, edit the article and fix it. If you know that something is missing, please write about it, and if you don't know enough put something on the discussion page reminding others to add this information.
Discussion pages
Each article has a discussion page. Use this page to ask questions or suggest changes to a page. For instance, if you're not sure if something is right or not, and want to make sure before editing yourself, the discussion page is ideal. Likewise if there is something missing from a page that you don't know much about, the discussion page is a good place to put in the request. Don't hesitate to use these, and don't forget to sign your username with --~~~~.
New articles
If you'd like to create a new article and aren't sure where to put it, just give it a general name. We can always move or reorganize pages later. It's better to get the information down and worry about the details later.
When adding a new article, put something in the notes telling where you got the information (for instance if you copied it from somewhere else).
Editing articles
When possible, edit only the section that you'd like to change, rather than the whole article. This makes it less likely for two authors to be editing the same page at the same time. This also makes changes more atomic, and the section name is automatically added to the article editing summary, which makes it easier to see what part of the article was changed.
On the topic of summaries, please try to remember to add a summary whenever editing an article. It is somewhat annoying to have to check the diffs every time someone makes an edit. Just a few words will do, like "fixed spelling of 'pulchritudinous'" or "restructured for better flow".
To help keep the summaries simple, its best to also keep the edits simple. Don't try to totally rewrite an article in one edit, unless it's very short. If there's a logical way to break up the edits do so.
Formating
For detailed notes on the syntax for formatting the wiki, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting. The following gives some instructions on our preferred style for certain things.
Notes
If there's something you'd like to draw the reader's attention to, you can use the note template. Here's an example of how to use it:
{{note|Notes are hard to miss}}
| Note: Notes are hard to miss. |
Sections
Articles can be split into sections with sub-sections. If there are more than 3 sections the wiki generates a nice table of contents. To make a top-level section, put the section name between a set of double equal signs, like this:
==Overview==
A section of this would have one more equal sign on each side:
===Sub-section 1===
See examples on this page: Formating, Sections. There may be sub-sub sections, and sub-sub-sub sections, and so on. Don't get too carried away...
Links
The wiki generates links automatically in many cases. To link to something on an external site, use single brackets, with the URL first, followed by the link text, like this:
[http://vdrift.net/ VDrift]
To put a raw URL in an article, simply insert it without any brackets, it will automatically be turned into a link.
http://vdrift.net/
To make internal links, simply put the page's name in double square brackets. You don't have to put in any underscores as are added to the URL of the page. Here's a link to this page:
[[Contribution]]
To give a link of this nature a different link text, add a pipe character ("|") after the page name, and then put the link text:
[[VDrift:About|About the wiki]]
Unwritten pages
If there's a topic that really deserves its own article, but there is no information on the wiki about it yet, just add a link to the article where it should go. This will encourage others to write the page.
We really need a [[Time machine]].
We really need a Time machine.
Code blocks
The wiki makes it very simple to add blocks of pre-formatted text. Simply add a space before the lines which should be part of the code block.
cd vdrift
See above for an example!
Talking about files
When referencing file or directory names, it is important to set them apart from the other text so that the reader doesn't confuse sentence punctuation and other words with the directory or file name. The best way to address this is to make the text bold, by adding three apostrophes before and after the text:
VDrift's main menu in the simple skin is '''data/skins/simple/menus/Main'''.
VDrift's main menu in the simple skin is data/skins/simple/menus/Main.
Menu items
When talking about menus items, to reduce the number of words you have to write, just use arrows in between the items:
Go to File -> Insert -> Image.
Go to File -> Insert -> Image.
Buttons
When talking about buttons, put quotation marks around them:
Click "Updates" then "Manage Cars".
Click "Updates" then "Manage Cars".
Collapsible sections
If a page is getting very long, and has sections only relevant people (for example only Linux users), consider using collapsible sections by using the following code:
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> //Delete mw-collapsed to make the section start expanded. Title(optional) <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> Content </div></div>
Title (optional)
Content
Nevertheless
If you feel like you don't understand the above guidelines, don't worry about them too much. Go ahead and write your article or fix another, someone will probably clean it up later if there are mistakes or areas for improvement.
