Help:Editing

From iriver Wiki, your source for everything iriver - a part of MisticRiver.

NOTE: this page was grabbed from Meta.WikiMedia.org so some of the links will not work yet... it desperately needs some cleaning up. For a better user experience on this page, please go to m:Help:Editing.

Check the current wikipedia help which is maintained best.

General

To edit a [MediaWiki] page, click on the "Edit this page" (or just "edit") link at one of its edges. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the [wikitext]: the editable source code from which the server produces the webpage. For the special codes, see below.

After adding to or changing the wikitext it is useful to press "Preview", which produces the corresponding webpage in your browser but does not make it publicly available yet (not until you press "Save"). Errors in formatting, links, tables, etc., are often much easier to discover from the rendered page than from the raw wikitext.

If you are not satisfied you can make more changes and preview the page as many times as necessary. Then write a short edit summary in the small text field below the edit-box and when finished press "Save". Depending on your system, pressing the "Enter" key while the edit box is not active (i.e., there is no typing cursor in it) may have the same effect as pressing "Save".

You may find it more convenient to copy and paste the text first into your favorite text editor, edit and spell check it there, and then paste it back into your web browser to preview. This way, you can also keep a local backup copy of the pages you have edited. It also allows you to make changes offline, but before you submit your changes, please make sure nobody else has edited the page since you saved your local copy (by checking the page history), otherwise you may accidentally revert someone else's edits. If someone has edited it since you copied the page, you'll have to merge their edits into your new version (you can find their specific edits by using the "diff" feature of the page history). These issues are handled automatically by the Mediawiki software if you edit the page online, retrieving and submitting the wikicode in the same text box.

See also [MediaWiki architecture].

Minor edit

When editing a page, a logged-in user has the option of flagging the edit as a "minor edit". When to use this is somewhat a matter of personal preference. The rule of thumb is that an edit of a page that is spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text should be flagged as a "minor edit". A major edit is basically something that makes the entry worth relooking at for somebody who wants to watch the article rather closely, so any "real" change, even if it is a single word. This feature is important, because users can choose to hide minor edits in their view of the Recent Changes page, to keep the volume of edits down to a manageable level.

The reason for not allowing a user who is not logged in to mark an edit as minor is that vandalism could then be marked as a minor edit, in which case it would stay unnoticed longer. This limitation is another reason to log in.

Dummy edit

A dummy edit is a change in wikitext that has unnoticeable or no effect on the rendered page, but saves a useful dummy edit summary. The dummy edit summary can be used for text messaging, and correcting a previous edit summary such as an accidental marking of a previous edit as "minor" (see Minor edit). Text messaging via the edit summary is a way of communicating with other editors. Text messages may be seen by dotted IP number editors who don't have a user talk page, or editors who haven't read the subject's talk page, if it exists. Each edit summary can hold 202 text characters. A dummy edit should be checkboxed "minor" by logged-in editors.

Examples:

• Changing the number of newlines in the edit text. Changing from 0 to 1 or from 2 to 3 (or vice versa) has no effect on the rendered page. Changing from 1 to 2 newlines makes a rendered difference that might not be a dummy edit. Adding newline(s) to the end of the article will not save as a dummy edit (see Null edit).

• Dot dummy edit. Adding a newline followed by "." (dot/period/full stop character) to the end of the article. The dot can be entered and removed repeatedly by two editors, to save each additional dummy edit summary during a text message dialog. This method is easier to learn and faster than seeking out suitable newlines to change, but it isn't applicable to section edits. In most articles a concluding dot is unnoticeable and harmless, but it should be removed if convenient during the next text edit.

Null edit

A null edit occurs if a page save is made when the wikitext has not changed, which is useful for refreshing the cache. A null edit will not record an edit, or make any entry in the page history, Recent Changes, user contributions, etc., and the edit summary is discarded.

Examples:

• Opening the edit window and saving. A section edit save is sufficient.

• Adding newline(s) only to the end of the article and saving.

See A category tag in a template; caching problem.

The wiki markup

In the left column of the table below, you can see what effects are possible. In the right column, you can see how those effects were achieved. In other words, to make text look like it looks in the left column, type it in the format you see in the right column.

You may want to keep this page open in a separate browser window for reference. If you want to try out things without danger of doing any harm, you can do so in the Sandbox.

Sections, paragraphs, lists and lines

== New section ==

=== Subsection ===

==== Sub-subsection ====

A single
newline
has no
effect on the
layout.

But an empty line
starts a new paragraph.