Help:Editing
- After reading this page, please see our rules on the OniGalore:Policy page.
We won't be giving a detailed course on MediaWiki markup here; just a few basic "how to"s, "do"s and "don't"s that will mostly get you by, when it comes to our wiki. For more details, see the section "Further help" below. Wikimedia's general Help is also available in Italian and Russian, as well as many other languages. That is where you'll find the most detailed info on the MediaWiki software.
Text formatting
Common formatting
The most common way to emphasize or set apart some text in a line is to use apostrophes to create italicized and bold text:
''Using two'' will give you italics.
'''Using three''' will give you bold.
Underlining text is not as convenient; it requires you to fall back to raw HTML markup:
<u>Here's the underline tag</u> gives you Here's the underline tag.
Finally, although we have not been in the habit of using it on OniGalore, you can highlight text with the mark tag:
<mark>Pay attention</mark> yields Pay attention.
Monospace and unformatted text
This line actually starts with a " " character. It is rendered in a box, with a fixed-size font.
Do this for several lines to set apart a whole block of text (e.g., programming code). The previous line is only empty in the rendered box; if you edit this page, you'll see the " " character in the wiki markup.
You can still put text in italics, bold, or bold italics. However, leading "*", "#", ":" and ";" won't work : *bla #bla ;bla :bla
- For regular indentation (like this line), you should start the line with ":" as shown below.
There are several other options, the <pre>, <tt>, <code>, and <nowiki> tags, which will not be discussed in-depth here, but play around with them to see how they behave slightly differently from each other.
Line formatting
Everyone likes lists. Below are four methods for listing items.
Normal newlines
A quirk of wiki markup is that two consecutive lines will be displayed as one line. In other words, a single newline is ignored. This actually goes back to the fact that wiki markup is based on HTML, which behaves the same way. Instead of hitting Return once to start a new line, you need to hit it twice. Alternately, you can force a linebreak at any time with the <br /> tag.
Numbered lists
- This line actually begins with a "#" character.
- This line actually begins with two "#" characters.
- So does this one.
- Here's the next single-"#" line.
Bulleted lists
- This line actually begins with a "*" character.
- This line begins with two "*" characters.
Indented paragraphs
- This line begins with a ":" character. The whole paragraph will wrap around using this indentation.
- When starting a second indented line, you don't need to put an extra newline after the previous line like you normally would.
- The more ":"s you put at the start of the line, the more indentation you get.
Titled paragraphs
- This line starts with a ";"
- Starting the next line with a ":" creates the impression of a paragraph under a title, useful for typesetting word definitions, dialogue lines, etc.
Links
Basically, there are thee types of links: (1) links to external pages and files, (2) intrawiki links to other pages on the wiki, and (3) interwiki links.
External links
(1a) Write the following to get some text acting as an outgoing hyperlink.
[http://oni.bungie.org/forum/ here is our forum]
The result is: here is our forum
(1b) If you omit the label text, the result will be different:
Here [http://oni.bungie.org/forum/] is our forum
The result is: here [1] is our forum. However, this is not part of our usual style on this wiki. You should always label your links.
(1c) You can also write URLs without any markup. Like this:
- Here is our forum: http://oni.bungie.org/forum/
Note that external images will appear inline if you use their bare URL like this.
Intrawiki links
(2a) Write the following to get an intrawiki link to one of our own pages:
[[Quotes/Consoles#STURMANDERUNG_:_Final_Stage]]
The result is this: Quotes/Consoles#STURMANDERUNG_:_Final_Stage
(2b) Write following to get an intrawiki link which is labeled with some text:
[[OniSplit#Download_links|You can download OniSplit here]]
The result is this: You can download OniSplit here
This kind of link (2a/2b) spares you from writing http://wiki.oni2.net/OniSplit#Download_links
Anchor template
If you want to link to something that isn't a section, use the {{Template:Anchor}}.
{{Anchor|your_anchor}}
With this you can get an ordinary "page#your_anchor" URL.
Preview content on link hover
For this to work you need some unformatted or simple formatted text before the first section (==section==). Previewing of images is possible but not documented. (See chapter previews.)
Similarly, you can use the H template to show some shortened custom text.
[[link|{{H|hover text|normal text}}]]
Interwiki links
You can link to pages on Wiktionary, the English Wikipedia and Meta-Wiki as if they were pages of our own wiki, using the shortcuts wiktionary:, wikipedia: and metawikimedia:. When you make an interwiki link, the outbound link icon changes from an upward arrow to a sideward arrow to show that you are linking to a fellow wiki, not some random web site.
An example of using an interwiki prefix would be [[wikipedia:Test]], which produces wikipedia:Test (you can supply alternate text using the syntax [[wikipedia:Test|Test]] to get rid of that pesky prefix in the final markup: Test). These prefixes accept language codes, so you could use the markup [[wikipedia:de:Test|Test]] to link to the German article Test (the URL will appear wrong, but Wikipedia knows what it means).
All of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects have prefixes available for linking to them. Also note that we have handy shortcuts for the two most-used prefixes; wikipedia: can be shortened to wp: and wiktionary: can be shortened to wikt:. The complete list of currently supported interwiki links can be obtained by clicking here.
Looking at the list, you'll see that some prefixes are not actually for other wikis, but general web shortcuts; google: produces a Google search query for the provided search term, and cache: produces a Google page cache query for the provided URL.
Images and categories
To place an image, you type its name inside of double brackets, preceded by "Image:", e.g. [[Image:TXMPPOSTER3.png]]. This markup will be replaced by the named image. If you only want to link to the page of an image, you type [[:Image:TXMPPOSTER3.png]] to get Image:TXMPPOSTER3.png.
Categories work the same way. Every page on the wiki should be placed into at least one category using this kind of markup at the end of the page: [[Category:Policies and documentation]]. This will cause the name of the category to appear at the bottom of the page. However, if you only want to link to a category page, not place the current page into that category, you use the same technique as linking to an image page: [[:Category:Policies and documentation]] gives you Category:Policies and documentation. To see what categories are available, you can look at the Site Map.
Templates and transclusion
Text can be "transcluded" from one place on the wiki to another using {{this markup}}. Transclusion means that whenever the original text is updated, so is the text inserted in place of the page link enclosed in double-braces. Transclusion is most commonly used in order to place templates on a page. Here's a list of templates. Pick one, and then click on "What links here" once you're on the template page. You should see a list of pages, each one probably followed by "(transclusion)". Look at the wiki code for those pages to see how the template's text or markup was placed into the page.
Templates are not a special kind of wiki page; they're simply a term that we use to refer to pages that are meant to be transcluded. Templates usually provide a standardized format for something like a table, or else they supply a standard header or footer. You should familiarize yourself with the templates if you plan to do a decent amount of editing; they are not only time-savers, they also help editors make their edits fit in with OniGalore standards, and make it easier to change large amounts of wiki text at once.
Further help
Here's some more comprehensive help, straight from the source.
- Reading
- Go | Search | URL | Namespace | Page name | Section | Backlinks
- Link | Piped link | Interwiki link | Redirect | Category | Image page
- Logging in and preferences
- Logging in | Preferences | User style
- Editing
- Advanced editing | Editing FAQ | Edit toolbar | Export | Import | Shortcuts
- Tracking changes
- Recent changes (enhanced) | Related changes | Watching pages | Diff
- Page history | Edit summary | User contributions | Minor edit | Patrolled edit
- Style & formatting
- Wikitext examples | Reference card | HTML in wikitext | List | Table | Sorting | Colors
- Special input and output
- InputBox | Special characters | Displaying a formula | Images (uploads) | EasyTimeline
- Advanced functioning
- Template | Advanced templates | Parameter default | Magic word
- ParserFunctions | Substitution | Array | Calculation | System message
- Page management
- Starting a new page | Renaming (moving) a page | Protecting pages | Deleting a page
- Special pages
- Talk page | OniGalore Sandbox page