Wiki Usage and Editing

This is a new or updated article by Don Erikstrup being reviewed

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.

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:

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.

Categorizing Pages

As you may note in the "MRT SIG Topics" page, we have suggested several different categories for various articles. These categories are by no means the be-all and end-all. If you have another category in mind, please suggest it.

If you believe your article belongs in one of the categories, you can include it there by adding the following line somewhere (perferably the top or bottom of your page).

[[Category:whatever category you want]]

The category you supply need not even exist. That's OK too. But if you do, please inform us of it, and provide a brief description of what would typically be included in that category. It will then be added to the topics page.

Publication Work Flow

The steps that should be taken to publish an article here should be the following. At present, we are not enforcing this either, and frankly, I'm not sure that we can. But good etiquette and practices should indicate the need for these steps.

1. You first create a draft of the article. You can use whatever medium you desire and feel comfortable with. For example:
   • Simple paper and pencil (and maybe some crayons) would work to create the first draft.
   • Or you could use Apple's "Text Editor" or Microsoft's "Notepad" applications. These produce text (.TXT) files with no formatting capabilities. Very simple and easy to use.
   • Or step up a bit to use "Notepad++", a free download, but it only works on Windows platforms. But it understands things like programming languages (Java, C++, C#, Python, PHP, others) and markup languages (HTML, CSS, XML, even TeX which is used for math equations, but it doesn't understand Wiki markups 🥲). It will save files in with an extension compatible to the type of file it thinks it is. But they are all essentially straight text files. There is no formatting capability saved with the file.
   • To save a bit of formatting you could then step up to using:
     • Apple's Pages (creates a .PAGES file, but can be exported to PDF, Word DOCX, Rich Text Format (.RTF file), and a few others).
     • Or MS's Word (DOCX for latest version of Word, also exports as PDF, DOC, ODT, RTF, MHT, MHTML, others). The MHT and MHTML are somewhat equivalent to HTML or HTM pages, which are what are normally stored on web servers and what you see in the browsers.
     • Another option is using LibreOffice, a free download that has capabilities for formatting similar to MS Word. The default file type is ODT (see the MS Word export types), which is similar to a DOC or DOCX file. It can also save files in XML, HTML, RTF, and a few variations of MS Word formats. And it runs on either Apple OS or Windows.
       (Note: I'm not advocating or advertising for LibreOffice. But I do find it useful for cross-platform editing.)
   • You could also use spreadsheet applications, like Excel (.XLS or .XLSX files), or Apple's Numbers (.NUMBERS files), or LibreOffice to generate MS Excel type files with default extension of .ODS.
   • And presentation applications, like Apple's Keynote (for .KEY files) or MS PowerPoint (for .PPTX files) or LibreOffice (for .ODP files).
   • Or you could use the MediaWiki itself. Just create a new page (with a name you would like to use for the article) and go for it.
2. When you create the new page, the first thing you should do is include the line

   [[Category:Works In Progress]] <span style="color:red;">This is a new article being developed by "your name"</span>

   at the top of your article. This puts the article in that category so the MRT SIG, and others, know that the page is not yet complete. You will see that it adds a reference to the bottom of the page indicating its inclusion in that category. You can click on the category to see additional notes and instructions on how the article creation process should work, as well as getting a list of other articles currently in progress. You may find one similar to your own. Then be sure to copy&paste from whatever application you used to draft the article to the wiki page, and make additional adjustments as needed.
3. When you feel you are done and are happy with the draft, be sure to "Save changes...". Then use the buttons at the top of the page to "move" the page to a new page with the same name, but with the suffix " - Updated" appended to it. Then edit that page to remove the inclusion of the article in the Category:Works In Progress to be

   [[Category:Pending Review]] <span style="color:red;">This is a new or updated article by "your name" being reviewed</span>

   category. This lets the MRT SIG, and others, know the article is essentially complete. However, the MRT SIG folks would first like to review the article. This is requested so that a second set of eyes can review it for clarity, understandability, completeness, and such things. Think of it as submitting an article to a publisher or newspaper. They always review it for content conformance, suitability to their policies, grammar and vocabulary, and other things. We would like to do that as well, just to make sure we are publishing the best possible articles we can. Know that these articles are viewable by EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. So we need to do the best we can.
4. When the article has had a review, and additional changes are requested or needed, the article will be "move"d back to a page with its original name, that is dropping the " - Updated" suffix, and the category inclusion returned to the Category:Works In Progress. If no further changes are needed, the page will be "move"d back to the original page, again dropping the " - Updated" suffix. And the inclusion in the Category:Pending Review will be removed.
5. Finally, if it hasn't already been done, the article will be included in the various categories it should belong to. (See the MRT SIG Topics page for existing and recommended topics, but feel free to create your own. Just let the MRT SIG know, and provide a brief description of the category so others will know what to expect or include in it.) This will allow it to be easily found by one and all.

Conformance and Consistency

To attempt to make these pages as understandable and usable as possible, we have created a "Sample Article Structure" page that suggests what needs to be included in a page and how to arrange it. We aren't [yet] enforcing this, as we are just getting started and we want feedback on this. So take a look at it and let us know if it meets your needs. And if not, how to improve it.

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"!!