Quickie Wiki Intro

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Welcome!

This article explains how to create an article as well as some basic editing techniques and wiki etiquette. Read the the main article text first; refer to footnotes for additional details.

In case you feel totally lost with editing a page, please contact a Mentor Scribe or add all your content and then write

{{wikify}}

on top of your page. A more experienced editor will try to fix the style of your article afterward.

We encourage Wiki contributors arriving to create a Wiki Profile Page for yourself on the Second Life Wiki so people can always find you. This is particularly useful for those with language abilities or other skills.

You can detail information about yourself above and beyond your inworld profile. Additionally, you can incorporate simple templates into your page that automatically "register" your group role or abilities.

Also watch Torley's Wiki Video Tutorial @ YouTube.

Log In To Create Your Profile Page

If you haven't already you must first Log In to the Second Life Wiki.
  • Click the LOG IN/CREATE ACCOUNT link at the top right of this page. Use your IN-WORLD name and your IN-WORLD password.
  • Once logged in, your name will appear at the top of the page. Click your name. It is a hyperlink which will take you to a page such as: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Your_Name and you will placed into EDIT mode (if the page doesn't exist).


Create Your Content
  • If you are familiar with Wiki's, begin creating your Profile Page. Even if you're not familiar with Wiki's, put something in there that you can think of and is pertinent to your Second Life. You can work on the formatting later.
  • Review the next section for a sample wiki content. You can then customize from that point on.


Seek Help
  • You can also view the wiki markups of other people's pages, to see what they did to make their pages look the way they do. Edit the other mentor's page to view the markups, 'but do not save your changes to their pages!!!'.
  • If you are not able to figure out the wiki markup, contact the any number of SL Mentor Scribes and ask them if they'll help you with your page. Please note that there will need to be "sweat equity" on your part. You will provide the content and the Mentor Scribes will help create your page in a nice, Wiki format. You can also add {{wikify}} on top of your page to request a makeover of the current content of your page by an experienced Wiki user.


How To Create A New Article

Create An Article In 3 Steps

So in case you'd like to create an article in the Wiki, you'd need to ensure that an article with the same topic isn't already in existence. To do so, you can either use the Wiki search[1] or - recommended - use Google for it. You can filter Google search results to the ones connected to the SL Wiki by entering

site:wiki.secondlife.com KEYWORD

in the searchbar of google.com with KEYWORD beeing the word or phrase you're searching for. So in case you'd like to write an article about Linden Bears, you'd browse to Google and enter

site:wiki.secondlife.com Linden Bears

You can now have a look at the search results and browse to the pages to edit them in case they are not in someones userspace. We'll come back to that later.
If there is no article about your particular topic and you're sure that your article belongs here[2], you'll need to decide on the right namespace for it, depending on the content you'd like to contribute. For beginners, there are only two interesting namespaces: main namespace and userspace. So a general rule is: Userpages in userspaces. Your page would count as a userpage in case it's somehow personalized to you.
For example: If Mia Linden would want to write an article with the name: Mia's guide on how to create a Linden Bear she'd need to place it in her userspace. However, an article just about Linden Bears would be best in the mainspace.
Depending on the namespace you chose, you can enter one of the following URLs in your web browsers navigation bar:

mainspace: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Your_Articlename
userspace: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Your_Username/Your_Articlename

with Your_Articlename - you guessed it - beeing the name of your article, with underscores instead of blanks. The Wiki will tell you that the page you're trying to access hasn't got any text to display, but that you're able to edit - and therefor: create - it. Press the provided edit this page link to access the editor and to start with your article.

Procedure in short:

  1. Search if your proposed article is already existing
  2. Decide on the right namespace
  3. Create the article


Link And Categorize

While there is always the possibility to find your article via the internal or an external search engine, it is highly recommended to link it at related articles too. Visitors who are interested in one topic might also be interested in a related topic and therefor easily stumble upon it, in case it's linked. Have a look at Help:Contents on how to create links in the Wiki[3].

A nice way to sort and list articles of a certain topic are categories. You read about them in the Quickie Wiki Intro already and used templates to add your userpage to them. Categories will be displayed at the bottom of a page and list all pages which are in the same category, trying to sort them by name[4]. Besides the use of specially designed templates, you can always register your page to a category by just writing

[[Category:NAME OF THE CATEGORY]]

Although it looks like the syntax for a internal Wiki link, this code will not result in a simple link to the category[5] but will register your page and display the category on the bottom of it. Therefor, it doesn't matter where to place the code on your page. However, it is considered as a good style to add it down on the bottom, so future editors can easily find it. To find the right category for your article, you can browse related articles and look at which categories they are registered, so they might fit for your article as well. There is also a list of all current categories in the Wiki[6].


Move And Redirect

Even after some thoughtful thinking, it might happen that you missplace an article or find a name which describes it better. So you got the ability to move your (and almost any other)[7] article with the move link right next to the history link on top of the page. This will result in the whole page, including it's editing history, beeing moved. A redirect to the new spot will be created on the old page, so users who don't know the new article name will automatically be redirected to the new one. You can also manually create redirects from one page to another by entering

#REDIRECT [[NAME]]

with NAME beeing the name where the page is supposed to redirect to. Please use this code only on empty pages.


On Article Editing

Tracking Changes

For basic users, there are three ways on how to track changes in the Wiki. All most recent changes are listed in the Recent Changes Log. You can filter this log so it only shows a particular namespace, hides minor edits, hides your own edits, etc. to be able to better keep track of what's going on. Since only a few users are interested in tracking all changes in the Wiki, it also has the so called Watchlist feature. Every page displays a watch button on top of the page which you can click to add the page to your watchlist.[8] In case a page on your watchlist has been changed, the Wiki will list the most recent change on that page in your watchlist. Pages on your watchlist will also be written in bold letters in the recent changes log. If you would like to remove a page from your watchlist again, just browse to that page and press the unwatch button.

History

As we learned before, any user can edit almost any page in the Wiki.[7] This might scare people from editing pages, since an edit isn't necessarily an improvement for an article. Therefor, the Wiki stores any edit ever saved to the page and logs them in the articles history. It logs date, contributor and changes, allows to compare versions and also allows to undo edits. You can find the blue history button on top of almost any page in the Wiki.[8] Have a look at this pages history to become familiar with the feature.


Discussion Pages

Having the ability to edit and undo anything can lead to some frustration when two (or more) editors have different opinions on how an article should look like. In a worst case cenario, this can lead to an unwanted course of events known as editwar in the Wiki culture. Therefor, any Wiki page has a so called discussion page.[8] This page is supposed to provide a forum for suggestions on how to improve the article, as well as to handle disputes about it. Please use these pages to explain the intentions behind an edit, in case it might cause curriosity by another editor. The etiquette at a Wiki discussion page is a little different then at other articles. There are two main rules you need to have an eye on. These are

  1. Sign your edits with four tildes ~~~~ or the signature button Button sig.png.
    These will automatically be converted into your username and a timestamp once you saved the edit.[9]
  2. Never ever change someone elses discussion entry.[10]

These two rules are very important to ensure that people can keep track of the discussion. There are also other editing etiquette suggestions - called: ediquette - which you can find here.


Uploading Pictures

Unlike some other websites, the SL Wiki can not display external images.[11] However, you are allowed to upload your images to the Wiki in order to display them in your article.[12] The toolbox in the left sidebar provides a link called Upload file. Just browse there, search the picture on your HD and then upload it to the Wiki. Note that there is a recommended file size limitation of 150kb per file, in order to save load on the database and to keep Wiki sites fast. Remember that every user who browses to your article will need to download the file to the browsers cache and not everyone has a fast internet connection which can handle it in a reasonable amount of time.
Add a picture to your page with

[[Image:Your_Image.jpg]]

with Your_Image.jpg beeing the name of your image. It is also possible to change the width of the image to a certain amount of pixels or to align it left, right or in the center. Your picture with the width of 100 pixels and aligned to the right would need the following code:

[[Image:Your_Image.jpg|100px|right]]

You can even display the picture as a thumbnail of a certain width and add describing text beneath it via

[[Image:Your_Image.jpg|thumb|100px|some describing text]]

All these are combinable, so play around with them to become a fealing for it. Don't forget to use the Show preview button, rather then the Save page button, in order to keep the recent changes log and the database clean. It's part of the previously mentioned ediquette.


Footnotes

  1. ^ Besides the basic search in the left sidebar, there is also a more advanced Wiki search at Special:Search.
  2. ^ Please refrain from advertisement or spam.
  3. ^ Note that there is a different syntax for internal and external links.
  4. ^ The sorting by articlename is only the default option. You can force your article beeing treated differently by defining a sort parameter. Read more at MediaWiki Help:Categories.
  5. ^ You would need to write [[:Category:NAME OF THE CATEGORY]] in order to just create a link.
  6. ^ You can of course create your own ones as well. The right namespace would be the Category namespace: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Your_Category
  7. ^ There are only a few articles which aren't allowed to be edited or moved from normal users. These pages are listed at Special:Protectedpages.
  8. ^ Special pages are the only pages without a history, a discussion page and the ability to add them to the watchlist.
  9. ^ You can change the way your signature looks like in the Nickname: box of your preferences.
  10. ^ Changing of style, in order to fit the layout of the discussion page is O.K. but refrain from editing any content. In case you'd like to edit an old discussion entry of yours, because you have changed your mind on something, please use <strike>old entry</strike> to strike your old entry and write a short new note that you changed it (signed with four tildes again).
  11. ^ This is for security reasons, rather then beeing a limitation of the Wiki itself. See WEB-11.
  12. ^ Note that you need the copyrights on the image you'd like to upload. With every edit and upload, you automatically agree with the Contribution Agreement.


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