Wiki Usage and Editing

Article Synopsis

---

This "wiki" is based on the same open-source code used to make the famous Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia work. The concept is simply to make information findable and update-able in a rather plain wrapper with no coding experience required (though some "wiki markup text" items may help enliven your entries). It invites regular folks to use the tool with little in the way training or experience required.
This is a new or updated article by Don (DErik (talk)) Erikstrup being reviewed

Getting started

When looking for information that may already have been provided, search for it by entering what you think might appear in the name of the page. No guarantees of course. You will notice that, as you type, suggested pages that do exist will be presented.
If you click the "Search full text" button, the entire wiki will be searched for the words you enter in the content of the pages and a page will be presented displaying the pages and excerpts of what it found.
If no page is found, then you will be asked, on that results page, to create the page, using the text you enter as the title of the page. Try it out.

 

If you know you are adding something new, type the name of a page you would like to create in the box below. You will be taken directly to a new page creation page. If that page already exists, you will be presented with its current contents to edit it.

What you will get first is a notice that the page does not exist. That's exactly what you should expect. On that page is another link to create the page. On the edit page, there will be a set of buttons at the top. These might be arranged differently depending on the "skin" you may have chosen for display of the pages. But for most, there will be two buttons in particular:

• An "Edit" button for a WYSIWYG type editor. This provides almost exactly what will be displayed when the page is saved.
• An "Edit source" button for editing the actual text. This will allow you to edit those special "wiki markup" things to enhance your page. And it includes formatting buttons along the top of the editing window. And a live preview option so you can see your changes as you make them.

What and How to Include Things

You can type in anything of course. But you can also include images, videos, links, even other documents. For details on some of these things please refer to some of the help files mentioned below.

Synopsis First

The first (well, after the "Works In Progress" - see the "Publication Work Flow" chapter in the Sample Article Structure) thing you should include is the following line at the top of your article.

<span style="font-size:1.5em;">Article Synopsis<hr></span>

This introduces your article with text that looks like a chapter heading like so (and see the top of this article),

Article Synopsis

---

followed by your synopsis of the article. The synopsis text will be displayed in a popup preview of the article when the cursor rests over the link to your article. Try it out by passing your cursor over the link above. Do not use the wiki heading, or even an HTML heading tag. That will stop the preview from retrieving the synopsis text. But, unfortunately, not including a heading means the synopsis will not be included in the table of contents. But that's OK, since it should always be the first thing a viewer sees at the top of the article.

Also, if you deliberately include a TOC in your article (more on that later), be sure it precedes any imagery you include. For example, inclusion of [[File:My Picture.jpg|thumb]] will cause problems with presenting the preview, if it precedes the TOC. After the TOC is fine.

Formatting

Formatting your text: Provides all sorts of ways to format your text, such as section headings, font settings, including pre-formatted text, inserting tables, creating lists, special symbols, and even some HTML tags.

Links

Inserting hypertext links: Tells how to link to virtually anything, anywhere. In the same page you are editing, to another page in the wiki, to pages elsewhere in the network. Links are probably essential to any page created here. Take a look at how many there are on this page! When you are editing your article, you will see a couple of icons in the editor's toolbar that will make links and references for you.

References as Footnotes

While including links to related web pages, documents, etc., right in the text is important, it is often useful to include a consolidated list of such references to the end of your article. To do that you need to include the links you would normally insert in the text as "footnote references" instead. When a reader moves the cursor over the reference, the reference link and other information associated with the reference will be presented in a pop-up bubble right there on the page. This will avoid cluttering the text itself with the reference text, making the sentence more easily readable and understandable. And the reference will also be included in the final listing of all references at tha bottom of the page.
To include a reference, such as to another web page, add the following in-line with your text as you would a simple web page link, but wrap the reference in a reference HTML tag like so:

Text needing a reference<ref>[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite Help:Cite]</ref>

That will create a reference link that looks like this:

Text needing a reference

Put your cursor over the numbered box to see the actual reference. Then, at the bottom of your article, include the following:

<references/>

This will create the listing like this:

See the reference above for additional details. And you might want to include an article heading like "Reference List" or "Further Reading" just before the reference list. And include some other references that were not included in the body of your article.

Uploading Files

Documents

Uploading files for your article: To upload a file, typically a JPG, JPEG, PNG. But other files as well such as XLSX, PPTX, MPP, DOC, PDF and others. This also explains how to thumbnail a picture, with or without caption, and size and position it. As an example, here's how I included my YouTube videos:

Images

Images can be uploaded and shown on the page is a variety of ways. Rather than show all the options here, please refer to the Help:Images MediaWiki page.

YouTube Inclusion

• Include a YouTube reference link
  You can include a simple link to a YouTube video like any other link. For example:
  

  [URL-of-your-youtube-video A Title For Your YouTube Video]

  where the URL-of-your-youtube-video is a cut-and-paste of the URL from a browser displaying the video. An actual reference in an article

  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peGN_RN7JgA AMTRAK loops Monkey Puzzle]

  will look like this:
  
  AMTRAK loops Monkey Puzzle
  
  It opens in this browser window, so you must use the browser's back button to get back to the wiki page. Or you could open this in a separate tab or window by using the browser's mechanisms, which vary with the browser.
  
• Embed a YouTube video directly in the article

Alternatively, you could embed the YouTube reference directly in the article page. Just type in

<youtube>video-file-identifier</youtube>

where the video-file-identifier is a cut-and-paste from the "v=video-file-identifier" portion of the URL from a browser displaying the video (see the example above). It would look something like this:

This method is not really advocated for a couple of reasons:

1. It takes up a lot of room on the page (usually)
2. It slows down loading of the page

See the YouTube Extension page for more details.

Security

Ostensibly, you should be a member in good standing with the Rose City Garden Railway Society to create and edit pages. But everyone can LOOK all they want. That is sort of the point of a wiki, to share information! You can apply for an account following the link in the upper right labeled "Request an Account"!!

See Also

1. Link Reference in the Wiki: This provides more detailed information on just how setting up links in your article can be done and how they work.
2. DErik's Admin Assist: This is something I'm putting together to make finding relevant help easier. The MediaWiki stuff itself is rather poorly organized, and help is sometimes rather obscure.

Authors and Contributors

• Don Erikstrup - Please use the discussion tab above to leave me a note or comment. Or leave a coment at DErik's talk page.
• Eric Timberlake